Canada PoliticsDetails of Senator Pamela Wallin’s “troubling” audit released, to be forwarded to the RCMP
The Senate's internal economy committee has released the audit report on the travel expenses of Pamela Wallin.
It's bad news for the much-maligned senator.
The Deloitte auditors reviewed Wallin's $532,508 in total travel expenses from January 2009 to September 2012 and found that at least $121,348 of that was falsely claimed. The inappropriate expenses included trips for personal, private business and partisan purposes.
[ Related: Should Pamela Wallin face criminal charges? ]
The Senate committee also released a report outlining the penalties layed out against Wallin.
Here are some of the highlights from that report.
- Wallin to pay back approximately $121,348 plus interest in improperly claimed expenses
- Wallin’s travel is now restricted to only direct or immediate connecting flights between Ottawa and her home province of Saskatchewan
- All other travel must be pre-approved by Senate administration
- All her expenses will be closely scrutinized for 1 year
- The audit report will be forwarded to the RCMP
[ Related: Senator Pamela Wallin vows to repay over $120k but calls audit process flawed and unfair ]
Liberal Senator George Furey and Conservative Senator Gerald Comeau — the two members of the committee who spoke to media upon the audit's release — were vague about why exactly the document was going to the RCMP.
Furey said the audit was being forwarded to the Mounties "because of matters we found troubling."
The committee's report shed a little more light on the matter.
"The unusual pattern that required examination related to frequent stopovers in Toronto, where Sen. Wallin maintains a residence," the report read.
“Where these stopovers had evidence of parliamentary business or were made to avoid a late arrival at (her) final destination, Deloitte deemed the claims as appropriate; where assessed as not having such business, the incremental costs of stopovers have been designated as reimbursable.
"Other travel claims were deemed reimbursable in their entirety."
Wallin now becomes the fourth Senator — in addition to Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb — whose expenses are being reviewed or investigated by the RCMP.
[ Related: What’s in store for Senators Duffy, Harb and Brazeau? ]
In a prepared statement on Monday, Wallin said that she would pay back all the money — with interest — but called the audit process flawed and unfair.
"It is my view that this report is the result of a fundamentally flawed and unfair process.
When appointed to the Senate in 2009, I was determined to be an activist senator. One who saw it as her job to advance causes that are important to Canadians. When invited to appear publicly and speak on subjects including the role of women in public life, our mission in Afghanistan, support of our troops, I saw it as my duty to accept whenever I was able to do so.
Travel to these public speeches and appearances was, and is, in my continuing view, a legitimate Senate expense.
Deloitte has wrongly, in my view and in the opinion of my lawyers, applied the 2012 changes made to the Senators' travel policy retroactively.
The result is that travel expenses which were approved and paid by Senate finance in 2009, in 2010, in 2011, have, in a number of cases, now been disallowed.
The basis for this latter decision is apparently some arbitrary and undefined sense of what constitutes of Senate business or common Senate practice."
Comeau dismissed Wallin's remarks saying that Senate rules have always been the same but that they were only clarified in June of 2012.
[ Related: RCMP seek Duffy's personal banking, credit card records ]
In response to the audit release, the NDP released this statement taking a shot at Wallin and her ties to the Tories.
Of course we look forward to seeing the entire audit. But based on reports so far, these are more troubling revelations about hundreds of thousands in improper expense claims. Stephen Harper and his ministers claimed they looked at Pamela Wallin’s expenses and found no problems. Now we find out that Conservatives were misleading Canadians about Ms. Wallin’s actions and Conservative Senators were campaigning on the public dime. Canadians know they can't trust Conservatives or Liberals to clean up the many ethical scandals in the Senate.
(More to come)
(Photo courtesy of the Canadian Press)
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