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We Don’t Have $37 Million and Two Years

In 2012, Canada’s auditor general reported on his review of a number of Senate expense claims revealing that several senators didn’t 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 Canada’s 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 Senate’s 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 they’d 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 auditor’s 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 that’s 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 I’d 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 debacle’s many conflicting narratives.

But unlike the exhaustive reports produced by the Gomery Commission’s 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:

 If, when the RCMP completes its investigations, criminal trials ensue, evidence provided at them will put a new gloss on current interpretations and keep the scandal alive for many more months. Some criminal charges have already been laid, such as those against suspended Senator Patrick Brazeau and former Senator Mac Harb, who were charged by the RCMP on February 4, 2014, as I finished this book;

 When Canada’s auditor general, Michael Ferguson, completes his audit of each senator’s expenses, other problems may come to light. Dealing with them, one way or another, will likely extend the run of this current Senate scandal. A preliminary report was expected, but the full audit is not likely before the end of 2014;

 When the Supreme Court of Canada delivers answers to questions from the Harper government about changing the Senate of Canada or even abolishing it within the framework of the Constitution, the justices will clarify matters for yet another round in the 140-year quest to do something about Parliament’s upper house;

 When the Conservative Party takes stock of what transpired with the Senate expenses scandal and how the developments altered the party’s performance capacity in national public life, pressures for change will be felt;

 When the 2015 general election takes place and the party leaders present Canadians with their divergent remedies to Canada’s problematic Senate, the long-running expenses scandal will surely be as prominent in their speeches then as it is in our minds now;

 When central players who face legal constraints in the current Senate drama become free to speak, their statements, political acts, and published memoirs will give the expenses scandal future life by shedding light on matters still a mystery today.

Despite the fact that all those elements are still in play, something that makes the rendering of a definitive account of the Senate expenses scandal impossible, I decided not to wait until the final ding-dong of the last evening bell fades to silence at twilight. I want this book’s historical perspective and timely lessons available when Senate reform is on the agenda and in our minds.

As the Senate scandal explodes, Canada’s major news organizations catalogue on their constantly updated websites wherever the bits and pieces land. This invaluable resource of parading news remains a work-in-progress because fresh developments, from revelations of more senatorial slip-ups to the laying of criminal charges by the RCMP, are steadily added to the list, while prior entries are revised to incorporate fresh information that casts different light on previously reported facts. Thanks to the way digitally recorded and paper-printed communications complement each other now, Our Scandalous Senate does not try to imitate what media websites do superbly: serve as detailed record-keepers for this evolving saga. Instead, this book seeks to synthesize the jumble of recent events into the larger story of which they are part — the continuing existence of this relic institution and its detrimental impact on the democratic well-being of our country.

The present-day Senate expenses fiasco and the century-old challenge posed by Parliament’s upper house are inextricably entwined, two faces of the same thing: the unfinished business of what to do about our scandalous Senate.