Wallin billed for TV work: RCMP
Force outlines 21 new allegations against Conservative ex-senator
Sen. Pamela Wallin charged the Senate for travel so she could offer “a Conservative Party perspective” on the 2011 federal election on a television news panel, the RCMP allege in newly released court documents.
The allegation is related to one of 21 expense claims that the RCMP allege Wallin should not have filed to the Senate, totalling more than $25,000. Combined with previous allegations, the RCMP are alleging that Wallin filed 46 fraudulent expense claims totalling approximately $53,000.
And the revelations may not be over: investigators identified 150 suspicious expense claims from the 246 such claims the Senate provided to the RCMP in late 2013, covering a timeline that goes back almost to the start of Wallin’s Senate tenure in 2009.
The new RCMP documents also take careful note of the Senate’s expense rules — rules that will be the focus of a criminal trial starting next week for Sen. Mike Duffy, who is facing 31 charges related to his Senate spending.
The Senate has long maintained that its members can take part in partisan activities, but it draws the line at anything that is purely partisan. The RCMP allege that Wallin crossed that line, including in the waning days of the 2011 federal campaign, when Wallin was a Conservative voice on a CTV election panel. The RCMP allege she attended weekend rehearsals for the May 2, 2011, election night panel, charging the Senate for a flight on May 5 to Ottawa.
The RCMP allege that while in Toronto, Wallin attended medical appointments, an event for the now-defunct Sun News Network and did “dry-cleaning.”
The RCMP list other events that allegedly never happened, such as a meeting with Dan Sullivan, Canada’s consul general in New York — a post Wallin herself once held — in April 2009.
According to the RCMP, Sullivan told investigators that he “has never met” with Wallin “at any given time.”
The RCMP also allege Wallin falsely charged the Senate for travel to the University of Guelph, where she was once chancellor.
“Senator Wallin used public funds to travel to Guelph and Toronto in order to pursue these private and business interests,” RCMP Cpl. Rudy Exantus wrote in one document released Tuesday.
“In doing so, I believe that Senator Wallin breached the standard of responsibility and conduct demanded of her and by the nature of her office,” he wrote.
“I believe that Senator Wallin’s conduct represents a serious marked departure from the standards expected of a Canadian senator.”
Exantus’s report was filed in late February in order to obtain a court order for corporate records.
In court documents filed Tuesday, the RCMP say they now have all the information they were looking for from the University of Guelph, BMO Nesbitt Burns, and Bell Media, to review Wallin’s travel expenses to each organization, as well as tax forms from Bell Media.
Wallin has not been charged with any crime, nor have any of the allegations against her been tested in court. Wallin’s lawyer has yet to respond to a request for comment.
Wallin repaid the Senate about $150,000, including interest, over her questionable travel claims in 2013. She lambasted the Senate for what she called a “lynch mob” mentality when she paid the money back, and accused top Conservative senators of a vendetta against her when she was suspended without pay in November 2013. In a subsequent interview, Wallin said she regretted repaying the money.
Previous RCMP court documents have alleged that Wallin charged taxpayers for travel that was related to her work fundraising for the Conservative party, and for her private business interests, or to attend to her personal affairs.
Investigators have had to pore over dozens of versions of her electronic Senate calendar, and compare entries to a printed version she provided to outside auditors Deloitte, as well as Wallin’s handwritten personal calendar. In the latest court document, the RCMP allege that only two people could have made the more than 100 changes to Wallin’s electronic calendars: Wallin or her assistant.
Those changes have come under intense scrutiny by the Mounties as investigators continue to build a case that Wallin filed fraudulent expense claims to the Senate to pay for travel that wasn’t for parliamentary business, but for corporate board meetings or to attend to her personal affairs.
In one case from the documents released Tuesday, the RCMP allege that Wallin was supposed to speak at the “arts and letters club” in Toronto on July 10, 2012. The event, however, was cancelled, and organizers told investigators that Wallin hadn’t actually been invited to the event.
Instead, the RCMP allege, Wallin filed an expense claim of more than $2,200 for a trip between Saskatoon to Toronto for a meeting as a member of BMO’s advisory council.