The stink rises
If Canada’s Conservative-dominated, scandal-ridden Senate weren’t sufficiently discredited by the miscreants in its plush chambers, the stink has just risen to new heights. All three of the Senate’s top figures have been cited for questionable expense claims, in the eyes of auditor general Michael Ferguson. All have had some explaining to do, as well as some repaying.
Newly appointed Speaker Leo Housakos wrongly claimed $6,000 for a contract, Ferguson’s inquiry into the long-simmering Senate expenses scandal is said to conclude. The report will be made public on Tuesday. Housakos has already paid back $1,500 owed for a staffer’s expenses. Meanwhile Liberal leader James Cowan is said to owe $10,000 for travel. And Conservative leader Claude Carignan was flagged for travel by a staffer; the staffer has repaid $3,000.
And these are the Senate’s leaders! While Housakos and Cowan dispute Ferguson’s findings, this is yet another pre-election fiasco that Prime Minister Stephen Harper doesn’t need. He appointed Housakos Speaker on May 4 with a nod of approval from Carignan and Cowan. Barely a month later all three are in hot water.
It gets worse, of course. Ferguson has reportedly uncovered nearly $1 million in questionable expenses and is whistling in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on two sitting senators, Conservative Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu (suddenly an Independent) and Liberal Colin Kenny, plus seven retired senators. And he is questioning expenses filed by 18 other sitting senators.
There’s just no way to put a positive gloss on this. In Ferguson’s view no fewer than 23 of the 85 sitting senators (20 seats are vacant) have filed dubious claims. That’s one in four. Are the Senate’s rules that unclear, after148 years? Or is there fiddling going on? Either way, the place looks bad.
It doesn’t help that the Senate’s top three amigos have concocted a convenient appeals process for themselves and their honourable colleagues, at the very time they were under a cloud. After Ferguson’s office sent warning letters to those with questionable spending, they decided to appoint former Supreme Court justice Ian Binnie as an outside arbiter to hear their side of the story and adjudicate disputes with the auditor. They can now appeal to Binnie against the auditor.
That’s a benefit that suspended senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau didn’t have recourse to. When auditors red-flagged their expenses, they got the boot without further ado.
If the rules needed tweaking to include an appeal, it would have been better done by a panel with manifestly clean hands.
What’s emerging on Harper’s watch is the seamy portrait of a panic-stricken, Tory-stuffed Senate whose leadership is implicated in the expense scandal, where the auditor has found widespread evidence of dodgy claims and where the rules have been rewritten to give anyone under a cloud every benefit of the doubt. We’ll get the full picture on Tuesday. But what we’ve seen already would make a vulture gag. This isn’t helping the Conservative brand.