Senate probe creates a paper trail
The auditor general has senators now exercising extreme caution,
A probe by the auditor general into spending in the Senate has prompted senators and the chamber’s administration to start creating paper trails for decisions that previously weren’t documented.
The move to document every piece of work by a senator is mainly driven by a fear that auditor general Michael Ferguson will find something amiss in the Senate’s accounting books, even among those senators who believe they have followed all the rules.
Senators admit that there are those who keep more documentation than others, and some have relied for years on the Senate’s administration, a non-political bureaucracy, to keep accurate records.
Adding layers of paperwork, Senate sources said, is seen as a way to cover any shortcomings in documentation that the auditor general had pointed out.
For instance, one senator was asked to sign papers outlining a request to Senate administration for help to find a new employee for the senator’s office. Normally, paperwork would have been filled out only when a new employee was hired — although an internal audit suggested that hasn’t always happened.
In another case, a senator requested that Senate administration create a record of his request for “special travel,” the category used for trips that are not between Ottawa and the senator’s home.
All sources spoke to Postmedia News under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the auditor general’s audit.
Senators are being asked to provide the auditor general’s office with documents currently subject to solicitorclient privilege, one of a number of conditions the auditor general put to senators during closed-door meetings earlier this fall. Solicitor-client privilege normally means that what is discussed between a client and his or her lawyer is private.
Under the legislation guiding his office, Ferguson is allowed to ask for those documents and must protect them, but senators have never been subject to the Auditor General Act, and Ferguson wants them to agree to open up everything, Senate sources said.
There is a secondary fear that Ferguson will build on the spending audit of Sen. Pamela Wallin and define how senators should do their jobs. One longtime senator told Postmedia News the concern among some in the upper chamber is that Ferguson is being given the power to define how senators work — and whether they should travel.
The comprehensive audit of all Senate spending will take about 18 months to complete. Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre told the House of Commons on Friday that the review will look at expenses going back to 2011.
The probe has started with Ferguson’s reviewing the Senate’s spending policies and how well the Senate’s administration oversees how tax dollars are being spent. Ferguson is also looking at the detailed spending for the Senate’s leadership group and the 15 members of the Senate’s internal economy committee, which is tasked with ultimate oversight of Senate spending and its administration.
The goal is to then review the spending of the remaining senators, about 70 in all, in two batches that will each take at least six months.
Ferguson has said the whole process, which started in the summer, could take 18 months to two years to complete. However, the timeline for the audit will see information come out sooner than 2015. The first interim report from Ferguson’s office is expected by December.
The spending scandal will be the focus Tuesday in the Senate, as members decide whether to suspend three of their own: Pamela Wallin, Patrick Brazeau and Mike Duffy.