Suspended Senators Duffy, Wallin, Harb repay $465,000
Suspended Senators Duffy, Wallin, Harb repay $465,000
Three of the four Senators who were suspended last year for filing false expense and living allowance claims have repaid a total of $465,000 over the past year-and-a-half, including interest on the money they wrongly received, public accounts and Senate records show.
Three of the four Senators who were suspended last year for filing false expense and living allowance claims have repaid a total of $465,000 over the past year-and-a-half, including interest on the money they wrongly received, public accounts and Senate records show.
The repayments will be even higher—more than $511,000—if former Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau, now facing criminal charges from incidents that occurred outside the Senate, is ever able to repay.
The amount that has been repaid, including a total of $64,504 in interest charged on money that was owed by former Conservative Senators Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin and former Liberal Senator Mac Harb, turns out to be more than initial estimates released by the Senate before the four senators were voted out of the Senate last October.
Sen. Harb had to repay a total of $189,923 plus interest over the past two fiscal years after the Senate added $141,408 to his original 2013 repayment estimate “when further information was received and analyzed,” Senate media relations officer Nancy Durning told The Hill Times in an email.
Ms. Durning was responding to questions about a brief one-line reference in the 2013-2014 public accounts of Canada report to $55,665 the Senate received as “collected interest on loss due to claims for living allowance in the National Capital region and travel expenses.”
The reference turned out to be a record of the interest Sen. Wallin and Sen. Harb had to repay on top of their repayment of expense claims, with Ms. Wallin repaying $138,970 plus interest some time during the 2013-2014 fiscal year.
Sen. Duffy’s repayment of $81,333 in wrongfully claimed living allowance and expenses was repaid at nearly the end of the 2012-2013 fiscal year—when former PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright transferred $90,000 from one of his personal bank accounts into Sen. Duffy’s account to allow Sen. Duffy to pay off his expenses as the government tried to end a raging scandal.
A further $8,839 Sen. Duffy paid as interest on the amount he had wrongly received was inadvertently omitted from the 2013-2014 public accounts, Ms. Durning told The Hill Times.
Sen. Brazeau, unemployed, still owes the Senate $45,515.
Because the four Senators were suspended without pay, the Senate has no ability to garnishee repayments from Sen. Brazeau as it once planned.
All four Senators were found to have wrongfully claimed residences outside of Ottawa as their principal residences, which gave them access to lucrative living allowances and expenses while claiming their Ottawa apartments and houses as secondary residences.
Sen. Duffy is scheduled to appear in court next spring on breach of trust and fraud charges. Sen. Harb has also been charged with breach of trust and fraud, while Sen. Wallin remains under investigation.
NDP MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay, Ont.) said the amount of money the three Senators have repaid shows the public so far is likely aware of only the tip of questionable expense spending in the Senate.
“This amount of money that was owed by just three Senators shows us just a glimpse of the extent of the problems in the Senate, and we still don’t have real accountability,” Mr. Angus told The Hill Times in an interview.
“In terms of Patrick Brazeau, there were red flags from the beginning. The Prime Minister ignored all the warnings and put him in a position where he was unaccountable until age 75,” he said.
“I personally feel bad for Mr. Brazeau, he’s on tough times, but he was never really fit to be in this position in the first place,” Mr. Angus said.
“It goes back to the Prime Minister’s judgment, just like this scandal goes back to the prime minister’s judgment. These are key people the prime minister appointed, this scandal happened under his key Senate appointees who oversaw the Senate and Canadians still don’t have any answers about what is the extent of corruption that has gone on in that institution,” the New Democrat MP said.
Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s office has been auditing all Senator expenses and contracts since last year, and he is scheduled to release a report to Parliament in the spring of 2015.