‘ Honourable’ Senate — ah — there’s the rub

Burn. It. Down. That will be the impulse, tinged by rage, of the overwhelming majority of fairminded Canadians who are good citizens enough, holding their noses and beating back nausea, to wade through the 116- page panoply of pork and grease that is the auditor general’s report into Senate spending, of a June afternoon. It is, truly, a staggering document.

Indeed, the honourable Senators may have doomed the Red Chamber to abolition, and in the process bequeathed to Canada another national unity crisis. Because the arguments for salvage, based on this meticulous vivisection by auditor general Michael Ferguson, become tenuous indeed, now. And the only way to do to the Senate what it so richly deserves, which is to say kill it dead, is a full- on Constitutional round. Yes, Virginia, we are back in hell.

This audit was a mere snapshot in the life of the Upper House, covering the period from April 1 2011, to March 31 2013. It examined expenses incurred by 116 current and former Senators. There were more than 80,000 such items. And of the 116 individuals audited, 30 were flagged as having claimed reimbursement in contravention of the Senate’s own guidelines.

Yes, it turns out, there are indeed rules laying out what is and is not an appropriate expense, billable to the Treasury. These rules are more than passing clear, generous and flexible, based on the summary in Ferguson’s audit. Any reasonable, ordinary person with even a cursory interest in saving taxpayers’ money should have been able to abide by them.

Yet more than a third of the sitting members, according to the AG, did not manage the feat. Nine cases, including those of two sitting senators, Pierre Hughes- Boisvenu and Colin Kenny, have been referred to the RCMP. Four Senators have repaid what Ferguson’s audit says they owe. Eleven have partially repaid. Fifteen have repaid nothing, yet.

The most egregious cases involve improper residency claims. The rest are a depressing litany of trips taken for personal reasons, perdiems that should not have been claimed, meals that should have been paid for with personal funds, and the like. Next to all this, a $ 16 glass of orange juice doesn’t even register.

But that isn’t the worst of it. The worst is this appalling misuse of public money, nestfeathering, whatever one chooses to call it, was systemic. Though the guidelines are clear, it was equally clear to the honourable members they needn’t be adhered to, that no one was watching, that there would be no consequences for infractions. Because they made the rules and were solely responsible for their enforcement.

In multiple cases, Senators simply spent, providing no records, keeping no receipts, yet expecting, demanding to be reimbursed. Tone of responses by some of those called out by the AG is almost comical: “Giving a voice to the voiceless is part of my duties as a parliamentarian,” huffed Senator Pierre- Hughes Boisvenu, found to have incurred $ 61,076 in questionable expenses and misstated location of his primary residence. Well then. That must make it OK.

The first takeaway: Whatever the details of Mike Duffy’s case may be, he has been at least partially vindicated, politically. He and his counsel have argued from the start what he did was not out of the ordinary. It seems that’s true. As Ferguson’s audit makes clear, it was more or less a free- for- all.

That must all change now: Indeed the AG has urged the Senate be placed under third- party oversight. Less clear is how this is to occur, given the Senate is the senior chamber and, constitutionally, a law unto itself. The Upper House was built, at root, on an assumption its members would possess honour. The absence of that virtue is a problem no audit can fix.