The Situation in the Senate

 

                                  By Kenneth Bagnell      

 

  “It’s a big country and I do travel a lot,” said Senator Pamela Wallin, the former TV celebrity, a few months ago defending her $360,000 expenses as professional: giving speeches, moderating panels, discussing policy that affected all Canadians. On the face of it, who could question that?  Well, Canada’s major audit firm, Deloitte, for one. (It’s the most credible of audit firms, its Canadian branch dating to 1911.) After an exhaustive look at her accounts, Deloitte concluded that too much of her expenditures didn’t justify payment from the public purse. (Senator Wallin somewhat airily dismissed Deloitte’s findings as biased, but no one took much notice.) The RCMP was called in to investigate. Hence, the former Conservative Senator, now sitting as a lonely, probably distraught Independent, can be fairly said to (a) be in a precarious personal position and (b) to have become the poster lady for those who want to abolish The Senate. What do we make of all this?

          For one thing, the expenditures are not at all excessive in financial terms if compared to the scandals headlined almost daily elsewhere in the world. (As of mid August the figure most often quoted as out of line was $120,000 which would leave Silvio Berlusconi smiling and Jacob Zuma laughing in Zuma’s new $30 million village getaway. The problem, to its credit, is the Canadian one: a matter of principle. Most of what was billed to the Senate was either personal in nature or expenses accrued from her life as a public figure, serving on two corporate boards, or speaking here and there on this and that for which she was quite well paid. But much of her pubic speaking was not on Senate business. Overtime, her problem has escalated to such a degree an ever darkening shadow envelopes her future, especially with the perception that accompanies the decision to involve the RCMP.

          Why did she ever allow this to happen? I can hear the cynical shouting: “because she thought she could get away with it.” I think not. (For the record I’ve never met her.) The chances are high that as a diligent bookkeeper of her expenses she was, well, a good television personality. A great many such people – notice I didn’t say all – have neither the inclination nor the disposition to manage their expenses. According to media reports, she didn’t even have a health card. From any province. If true what does that say?  To me it says this: somebody else had to look after certain aspects of Pamela Wallin’s life. Her failure I’m almost certain, was her lack of backup: an able assistant – we used to call them efficient secretaries – whose job, in large part, is to record day after day, week after week, detail and after detail, what’s  personal, what’s professional, what’s justifiably political. The lack of such made her financial records as messy as the proverbial Fibber McGee’s closet. For example The Globe reported August 17 that she claimed expenses for a speech to Toronto’s Arts and Letters Club, but, according to the Deloitte audit, the club hasn’t even got a record she spoke there. (Don’t ask me how such a person qualifies for sitting on two corporate boards.)

    But there’s something more important: the ramifications for current Senators, potential Senators, and, in fact, the very existence of the Senate itself. As for the first matter, it will be very difficult, for glaring reason in the near future and beyond, to find men and women of character and quality to accept a Senate seat. Not with the cloud left by the legacy of Wallin, Duffy, Harb and Brazeau. Secondly, much further damage will almost certainly emerge given the decision of the austere Auditor General Michael Ferguson to authorize an audit of the whole chamber. It has well over 300 members. The audit will take 18 months, thereby running into 2015, a year of the federal election. That’s had numerous voices among the intellectual elite saying it’s an ideal time to invite Canadians citizenry to abolish the Senate.

          One of them, to no surprise, is the former U of T historian Michael Bliss, who in mid-August, wrote in The Globe: “There is no possibility of effectively reforming the Senate. So the only solution is abolition.” He even went so far as to say that the kind of citizens who accept Senate seats are the kind of citizens nobody wants. Really? That’s a bit much. Many, who don’t make the media, do very worthy things, either individually or on committees. Moreover, through the years The Senate has been the legislative forum for many productive inquiries that unlike the House of Commons Question Period are taken seriously by the public. Consider a few you may remember: unemployment, mass media, science, poverty, aging and so on. Nonetheless, given what has now happened, and will get worse as fresh pages turn, Bliss has the public with him.

          Then it happened: The Prime Minister, as I write, has prorogued parliament, a tactic with an objective too obvious to enlarge upon. It takes the heat off. Thus he can, once prorogation ends in late October, deliver a fresh Throne Speech. Get ready people. It’s a new day. A new vision. A new agenda. Maybe even a new face or two. But one thing Mr. Harper can’t do is this: avoid the question that still must and will be asked, especially of a Prime Minister, widely viewed as the most competent manager ever to become Prime Minister. It’s quite basic: how could you appoint so many questionable people to the Canadian Senate?

 

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