Arbitrator cuts amount owed by senators
A special arbitrator has slashed the amount of public money to be repaid by 14 senators for questionable expense claims, but still maintains most should have known better than to pocket a total of $178,000 for what remain glaring personal expenses.
In a long-awaited report tabled with the Senate Monday, former Supreme Court justice Ian Binnie approved $145,000 in questionable expense claims by senators initially flagged as illegitimate in a 2015 investigation by federal auditor general Michael Ferguson covering April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2013.
“I don’t see my report at all as exonerating abuse,” Binnie said after the release. “I see it as pointing at a different way of controlling of potential abuse … that has to be more seriously looked at by the Senate administration.”
Ferguson’s formal audit found more than $322,000 in improper claims for travel and housing expenses by 30 senators, about 45 per cent higher than Binnie’s evaluation.
But Binnie said the difference is because he had a much larger body of evidence on which to weigh the claims, he was able to hear at length from witnesses and he has a broad view of what constitutes a legitimate parliamentary purpose for senate travel.
Still, about 80 per cent of the problem claims Binnie examined involved senators mixing personal and Senate business, but billing taxpayers for the entire amount.
“I don’t think that’s right,” he said. “The rules are very clear. If the trip is predominately personal, you pay. The public only picks up the incremental cost of the Senate business. In some cases I was puzzled that an explanation would be put forward that just didn’t make any sense.”
In one instance, Binnie disallowed a travel claim from Sen. Nick Sibbeston, who billed taxpayers $1,471.88 to for a trip to Quebec City to “cheer on” his son’s ice-sculpture team.
In another, an employee of Quebec Sen. Jean-Guy Dagenais who lived and worked in Montreal, charged the Senate for “fictional” trips from Ottawa to Montreal to attend legitimate meetings in Montreal. Dagenais’ office billed for Ottawa-Montreal round trips as if the staffer lived in Ottawa because he was employed by the Ottawa-based Senate, said Binnie.
“How clear could the rule be that you only get reimbursed for the money you pay, actual expenses?” he said.
Fourteen of the 30 senators fingered by Ferguson agreed to binding arbitration with Binnie over the disputed claims. Most had the amounts reduced and now have 30 days to repay the money.
During a news conference, Binnie directed particular criticism at Sen. Colin Kenny, whose bill Binnie knocked down slightly, to $27,500 from $31,630.
Kenny, an acknowledged Senate expert on defence and national security issues, travelled about 40 times over the period in question to meet reporters, military, police and others to enhance his understanding of the issues.
Binnie found the meetings all legitimate, but their frequency and cumulative nature was a problem. They included, for example, 17 trips to Toronto for Sundaymorning meetings with a Globe and Mail reporter covering national security. That would typically require Kenny to book into a Toronto hotel on Saturday. After the meetings, he would attend to personal matters. Several other trips were to Vancouver and Victoria.
“There’s an air of artificiality about many of those trips,” said Binnie of the $153,000-worth of trips over the 24 months.
“The notion that you can simply authorize yourself a trip to Vancouver because you want to speak to a particular journalist on a Sunday morning, I think, are over. The onus now is on (senators) to really think, ‘Is this an expenditure that will stand up to serious scrutiny,’ because odds are (now) it will get serious scrutiny.”
Binnie found four current and retired senators — Lowell Murray, Dennis Patterson, Robert Peterson and Terry Stratton — must repay the entire amounts identified by Ferguson.
The Senate claimed a victory of sorts, issuing a press release that highlighted a Binnie quote taken from the report: “I impute no bad motives to any of the senators.”
While Binnie said he found no evidence of senators gaming the system, he suggested the line was taken out of context.
“The reason I put that in the report was because my job was not to look at motive, my job was to look at the facts, not whether something was done for good reason or bad. That’s for the police. So when I impute no bad motive, it’s simply a statement of fact.”
Nine other senators have paid back a total of $141,042 since Ferguson’s June 2015 report.
Seven others identified by Ferguson rejected arbitration and owe amounts from $1,120 to $176,014. The Senate has told them they have 30 days to repay or have their salaries garnisheed or, in the case of retired senators, face potential legal action.