Charges against Senator Patrick Brazeau have been dropped, and so the Senate expenses scandal fizzles to an end. Three senators previously under a cloud can return to the Red Chamber with their names cleared; a fourth can enjoy his well-funded retirement.
While the investigation and legal proceedings resulted in no criminal convictions, they focused the spotlight on politicians’ spending habits. Let’s keep that light shining — on the Senate, on Parliament, on the B.C. legislature and wherever else elected officials spend our money.
A Crown prosecutor told a judge in Ottawa Wednesday she was withdrawing fraud and breach-of-trust charges against Brazeau. Given the acquittal of Mike Duffy, said the prosecutor, there was little prospect of conviction.
Duffy, Brazeau and Pamela Wallin were suspended from the Senate in 2013 in relation to excessive living and travel expenses. The Senate commissioned an external audit and the matter was turned over to the RCMP. Mac Harb, facing similar scrutiny, repaid suspect housing expenses and retired from the Senate — with a parliamentary pension of $123,000 a year.
The 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery against Duffy were dismissed in April by a judge who said Duffy was only following Senate rules and was a victim of a scheming, deceptive Prime Minister’s Office.
In May, similar charges against Harb were dropped, and the RCMP said it would not pursue charges against Wallin.
The senators say they have been vindicated, or words to that effect. We do not agree. “Not guilty” does not always equate to “innocent.”
It was ludicrous and shameful for Duffy to claim a summer cottage in Prince Edward Island as his principal home, so he could collect expenses for living in Ottawa, his home of many years. He didn’t hesitate to state he was on Senate business while travelling for personal or partisan reasons.
Wallin’s conduct was equally disgusting. Flying to Ottawa from her principal residence in Saskatchewan, she often stopped over in Toronto to conduct business unrelated to the Senate, yet claimed expenses for the Toronto leg of her trip. Incidentally, following her appointment to the Senate, she earned more than $1 million in fees and stock options while sitting on corporate boards.
While Senate rules allowed the high-spending senators to do what they did, that does not excuse their greed and callous disregard for taxpayers’ money. The Senate has since tightened some of its rules, but changing the rules is not enough — there must be a fundamental shift in attitudes, away from a sense of entitlement and to a conscientious regard for the public purse.
That applies also to Parliament, where rules regarding expenses are even looser than the Senate’s, and where secretive procedures keep MPs’ spending largely under the radar.
Closer to home, it applies also to the B.C. legislature, where promises of transparency concerning MLAs’ expenses have resulted in scant progress.
It’s a basic rule of accounting to make proper records of money spent. In government, that accounting should be transparent and accessible to the public. All expenses should be posted on the Internet, in detail and at least quarterly. It should be a simple and straightforward process for people who are supposed to be wrestling with the complexities of government.
It is not technology that prevents transparency, but lack of will. Some politicians — Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Elizabeth May is probably the best example — post every receipt, every nickel spent.
Those are our nickels they are spending — they should tell us how they are spent. If they can’t account for how they spend our nickels, why should we trust them to spend millions and billions of our dollars?
