J. Patrick Boyer - Our Scandalous Senate

We Dont Have $37 Million and Two Years

I n 2012, Canadas auditor general reported on his review of a number of Senate expense claims revealing that several senators didnt have the necessary documents to support their travel and living expenses. Subsequent investigation followed into what the news media quickly dubbed the Senate expenses scandal. A small handful of Canadas 105 senators had claimed expenses that seemed problematic, mostly under a housing allowance but also for meals and, in one case, air fares. The claims had been duly approved and paid under the Senates own uncertain rules and lax administrative hand. Later, an independent audit suggested the senators in question gave themselves an unwarranted bonus. They were ordered to repay the money. Embarrassed, the senators protested theyd done nothing wrong. Two at least asserted that the housing charges had been pre-cleared. One even started a court challenge against the Senate to quash the repayment order.

The disputed claims were not new; indeed, they had been made, processed, and paid on an ongoing basis for a number of years. The senators in question alleged the rules were unclear, the forms confusing, and the auditors review a flawed process. A couple paid the money back. One appeared to do so. A garnishee order or two would complete the restitution of funds owed by another senator.

That skeletal outline does not, as every Canadian knows, even begin to cover all the moving parts and conflicting pressures that would cause this sorry saga to blossom into a serialized political scandal thats now lasted more than two years. The Senate expenses scandal obsessed Canadians and sent our parliamentary life spinning down an unfamiliar path.

Although I would like this book to be as current and comprehensive as possible, to show how the Senate expenses scandal became the phenomenon it did, my second goal has been at odds with this first one. I would like, just as much, to address the even more puzzling Senate scandal the continuing existence of this relic institution itself.

If Id waited for more pieces of the Senate expenses puzzle to fall into place, Our Scandalous Senate would have been delayed by months or even years because the end of the current scandal is still not in sight. As Senator Mike Duffy, a leading actor in this morality play, accurately said in an October 30, 2013, email to me, this affair is multi-layered and complex. Sorting everything out definitively would require a full public inquiry to find the plot and weave together this bizarre political debacles many conflicting narratives.

But unlike the exhaustive reports produced by the Gomery Commissions more than $37 million two-year investigation into the Sponsorship Scandal, or earlier royal commission reports on other big Canadian political scandals, no integrating evidence-based public investigation into the Senate expenses scandal is underway. Bob Rae called for one, when he was still Liberal leader, but his suggestion was turned down. As a result, no comprehensive official document will ever be produced.

Moreover, significant developments that are separate from but relate to the Senate expenses scandal continue to unfold according to their own uncertain timetables: