RCMP allege Wallin fabricated meetings
OTTAWA — Sen. Pamela Wallin fabricated meetings, charged taxpayers for flights and travel related to her work on corporate boards, and misrepresented many of her trips to Toronto even when confronted by external auditors, the RCMP allege in newly released court documents.
In all, the RCMP allege Wallin defrauded taxpayers of almost $27,500 for 25 trips made between 2009 and 2012. Investigators allege Wallin should have charged expenses to two private companies because the trips were part of her work as a director on the boards of Porter Airlines and wealth management firm Gluskin Sheff & Associates.
Instead, the RCMP allege Wallin charged them to the Senate, writing them off as “Senate business,” without providing any further explanation.
“Senator Wallin used public funds to travel to Toronto in order to pursue these private and business interests,” RCMP Cpl. Rudy Exantus wrote in a court document, known as an information to obtain, dated Jan. 29. The Ottawa courthouse made the document public Monday.
“Senator Wallin, when confronted by an external audit, misrepresented the nature of these trips to Toronto, and at times, fabricating meetings which the RCMP was able to determine (through interviews) to have never taken place. 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.”
Wallin has not been charged with any crime, nor have any of the allegations against her been tested in court. She remains suspended without pay from the Senate.
Her lawyer said Monday it was the policy of both companies to reimburse Wallin for her travel to board meetings or company functions, and that it was “an administrative error” that led to some of them being charged to the Senate.
The details are a small sample of what the RCMP describe as 150 suspicious expense claims that Wallin submitted to the Senate, which investigators continue to pore through as part of a probe that has lasted more than a year and a half and appears more technical than the one for Sen. Mike Duffy, who faces 31 criminal charges.
The investigation into Wallin’s questionable travel has seen investigators sort 246 travel expense claims Wallin filed with the Senate, and then check those against dozens of versions of her Senate calendar between 2009 and 2013, including annual and monthly backups; sift through 101 changes to the calendar made that disappeared, and then reappeared, near the end of Wallin’s Senate audit; reconcile printed versions of her handwritten personal calendar with the electronic Senate calendar; and interview dozens of people in the Senate and those Wallin met with in each of the expenses under scrutiny.
Wallin repaid the Senate approximately $150,000 for questionable travel claims, plus interest, after outside auditors from Deloitte found that she too often charged the Senate for personal business, or stayed in Toronto on trips to Saskatchewan — the province she represents in the Senate — that ended up costing the Senate more for her travel. She often stayed at a condo she owned in Toronto and flew Porter, which would have provided her free travel given her position as director.
NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus told reporters outside the House of Commons that the allegations in the latest RCMP document point to a need for the federal auditor general to deliver results of a probe of Senate spending before the federal election in the fall.
“I understand there’s a need for fairness, that there’s a need to make sure that due process is done, but the auditor general needs to recognize that at the end of the day it’s the Canadian people who have to decide whether things were done wrong and whether people have to be held accountable.”