Dave Dingwall said it best. “I’m entitled to my entitlements,” he told a House of Commons committee before resigning in 2005 as president of the Royal Canadian Mint because of expense claims deemed excessive.
That’s the thing about holders of high public office, whether they’re appointed or elected — a lot of them, anyway. They think the world’s their oyster on a half-shell.
George Radwanski certainly did, and he fell on his fork. He had to resign as Canada’s privacy commissioner because of his fondness for lavish lunches in 2003 and what a judge later called a “negligent and cavalier” approach to accounting for expenses.
Bev Oda, as minister in charge of the Canadian International Development Agency, showed scant regard for people facing poverty and hunger around the globe. Attending a conference in London in 2011, she upgraded to the posh Savoy Hotel and ordered a $16 glass of orange juice and a limousine. She’s gone, too.
And now we have a few bewildered old senators who aren’t as sure as Dingwall was about their entitlements — namely where they should be living at taxpayers’ expense, and how taxpayers should get them there and back.
Some newspapers and networks seem to think this latest “scandal” is more important than lives lost in tornados and terrorist attacks. But this conception is pretty well limited to the nooks and crannies of Parliament Hill and the gossips who inhabit them.
Canadians elsewhere should recognize that the fascination for the embedded media has a lot to do with politics, which is their beat — not just the partisan squabbling between Liberals and Conservatives, but the sentiment of a political mob that says an appointed legislative chamber has no business in a democracy and would sweep it away, and to hell with the Constitution.
Dingwall was hounded out of office by the same political motives that are operating against the former TV stars and taxi drivers in the Senate today. Most of the expenses he was presumed responsible for were incurred by underlings, and his claims were in accordance with mint guidelines.
But Dingwall held cabinet portfolios under Jean Chrétien and was appointed to the presidency of the mint by Chrétien. Paul Martin, whose fondness for his predecessor knew quite a few bounds, forced Dingwall’s resignation, as a retired judge concluded later.
What convulses the Senate today is penny-ante stuff compared to corruption such as the AdScam affair, which involved large sums of public money and both politicians and bureaucrats. It pales beside the waste and incompetence uncovered by successive auditors general, the out-of-control, on-again, off-again military-procurement process and funding under programs that have long outlived their usefulness, except to parties in office.
But an apparent misappropriation of funds can’t be ignored simply because it involves a few old dears who know their entitlements, but presume too much. It’s good to hear that the Mounties may be on the senatorial trail soon.
They were on the Commons trail in 1990. MPs were astounded to learn that 15 of them were under investigation by the RCMP, 11 of them suspected of criminal offences in the way they used their taxpayer-provided expense allowances.
Their reaction was to slink away to draft a law to give them the power to decide whether they should be investigated for wrongdoing.
“The independence of members of Parliament … must not be compromised,” the draft said. “Members must be free from interference or intimidation.”
This bit of cheek made no impression on then-RCMP commissioner Norman Inkster, and eventually the MPs backed down. To this day, though, the people who govern us, who stand up for us, who represent our interests, are bravest at claiming their entitlements, real or imagined.
In my days on the Hill, they enjoyed free haircuts, free exercise rooms, free picture-framing and grossly subsidized meals at the parliamentary restaurant and cafeterias.
Reader, so did I. And I wasn’t particularly particular in submitting to my newspaper expense claims for “entertaining sources.”
Today’s morally zealous journalists must be paragons. But I admit to a good grounding for a Senate seat. I don’t know why I wasn’t summoned.
