Retired senator ready to fight for expenses
Conservative says Ottawa will have to take him to court if they want him to pay
OTTAWA— At least one retired senator says the Senate will have to go to court if it wants him to repay travel and other expenses the auditor general said he claimed inappropriately, the Star has learned.
Gerry St. Germain, a retired Conservative senator for British Columbia, believes there was nothing inappropriate about the contracts, gifts and travel for both him and his staff that auditor general Michael Ferguson flagged in the report on his exhaustive investigation last year.
“Mr. St. Germain has informed Senate administration that he does not intend to provide reimbursement for the claimed expenses,” his spokesman, Bob Ransford, wrote in an email statement Friday.
“It is Mr. St. Germain’s position that the expenses were properly incurred in the conduct of his business as a senator. Mr. St. Germain will vigorously defend any proceedings that may be commended to recover those amounts,” the statement said.
The Senate says he still owes $67,120 after having repaid $468 — the amount he had claimed for a dinner meeting St. Germain had said was to wrap up parliamentary business, but other information indicated it was a family dinner, according to the audit report.
Thirty senators — both former and sitting — had until Thursday evening to reimburse the Senate for expenses Ferguson identified in his politically explosive June 2015 report on the Senate expenses scandal.
On Friday, seven former senators had not yet repaid a total of $527,788.54, which prompted the Senate to warn it would begin taking steps to get it back.
“The Senate has been clear about its intention to take legal action in order to recoup any monies owing by non-sitting Senators,” said a statement issued by Conservative Sen. Leo Housakos and independent Lib- eral Sen. Jane Cordy, the chair and deputy chair of the Senate standing committee on internal economy, budgets and administration.
“To that end, the Senate Law Clerk has been instructed to seek outside legal counsel to initiate such action,” the statement said.
The other six former senators are: Manitoba Liberal Sharon Carstairs ($7,528), Ontario Liberal Marie-P. Charette-Poulin ($125,828), New Brunswick Liberal Rose-Marie Losier-Cool ($110,051), Nova Scotia Conservative Don Oliver ($23,955.54), Manitoba Liberal Rod Zimmer ($176,014) and Newfoundland Liberal Bill Rompkey ($17,292)
None of the seven on the list chose to challenge the findings of the auditor general by participating in a binding arbitration process overseen by retired Supreme Court justice Ian Binnie, who delivered his conclusions last month.
Many of the expenses they claimed are similar in nature to those that got Sen. Mike Duffy into trouble and landed him in court.
The former broadcast journalist turned senator for Prince Edward Island was acquitted Thursday afternoon on all 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery, with Ontario Court Justice Charles Vaillancourt saying many of his expenses were allowed by the Senate administrative rules — now being updated — that were in place at the time.
Don Bayne, his defence lawyer, said he does not think the acquittal sets a “sweeping precedent for parliamentarians,” but it does send a message to the Senate.
“The Senate has to create clear rules, educate senators on what they can and can’t do in the public interest,” Bayne told reporters gathered outside the Ottawa courthouse Thursday.
In his findings on St. Germain, who retired in 2012, the auditor general said he could not conclude whether all of his expenses reviewed had been incurred primarily for parliamentary business. In his response, published in the report, St. Germain vigorously defended the expenses and his reputation.
“The presentation and tone of your general observations insinuate that I misappropriated my office resources in a nefarious manner. I find these apparent accusations to be a defamatory affront to my personal integrity,” said St. Germain, a former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister who was appointed to the Senate on the advice of Brian Mulroney in 1993.