Senate leaders pay back expenses on eve of report
AG to release details of Senate audit Tuesday
The Senate’s Conservative Speaker and its Liberal leader of the Opposition both announced Monday they would pay back expenses deemed inappropriate in a long-awaited audit report.
Speaker Sen. Leo Housakos said he would “reimburse in full the amount relating to my Senate office as noted by the auditor general rather than exercise my right to arbitration.”
Housakos said he believed in every senator’s right to challenge the AG’s findings, but made the move as Speaker because he didn’t want there to be “any question surrounding the integrity of the (audit) process or the manner in which it was implemented.”
Sen. James Cowan, the Liberal Opposition leader in the upper chamber, announced he had repaid “the full amount in dispute,” although he “respectfully” disagreed with auditor general Michael Ferguson’s conclusions that he was improperly reimbursed for three trips.
Ferguson’s report on senators’ expenses will be tabled in the Senate and publicly released Tuesday afternoon.
What’s in the report?
In an audit that took almost two years, the auditor general investigated the expenses submitted by all Canadian senators for reimbursement between April 1, 2011, and March 31, 2013. The final document reportedly accuses 21 senators — including Housakos and Cowan — of claiming inappropriate expenses. For nine senators, the alleged impropriety has been deemed so serious that their cases have been referred to the RCMP.
What prompted the Senate expense scandal?
In late 2012, Conservative senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau, as well as Liberal Sen. Mac Harb, came under fire for housing and travel expenses they had claimed. Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau are now suspended, and Harb retired. The RCMP has laid charges against all but Wallin; she is under investigation. All say they did nothing wrong. In the fall of 2013, the auditor general accepted the Senate’s request to audit all senators’ expenses. The exceptions are former senators Doug Finley and Fred Dickson, who passed away, and Sen. Joyce Fairburn, who retired early for health reasons, according to the Office of the Auditor General.