Carstairs not giving up on fight over legal fees

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This article was published 02/03/2017 (3115 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — A former senator from Manitoba says the red chamber should cover the legal expenses she racked up fighting a witch hunt over perfectly legal expense claims.

Sharon Carstairs will appear before the Senate committee on internal economy, budgets and administration this morning to appeal a Senate steering committee decision rejecting her claim the Senate pay $82,000 in legal bills.

“The Senate knew from the very beginning I had not broken any rules,” Carstairs told the Free Press in an interview. “They simply chose not to do anything about it.”

Carstairs’ legal saga began in June 2015, when she was named by auditor general Michael Ferguson as one of 30 current and former senators whose expense claims over a two-year period raised red flags. Ferguson said Carstairs was not spending enough time in Winnipeg to declare her home there as her primary residence. He said she should repay $7,528 in living and travel expenses she claimed as if Ottawa was her secondary residence during the audit period.

Carstairs said she realized during interviews with Ferguson’s staff they were concerned about her residency claims but she said they were told over and over again the Senate had no rule about how much time a senator had to spend in their home province to consider it a primary residence.

“They just rejected that and the Senate accepted the audit despite it,” Carstairs said.

She said the fact there was no legal basis for their thinking was underscored in April 2016 when Sen. Mike Duffy was acquitted of charges of fraud and breach of trust. Some of the charges were related to whether or not he fraudulently claimed Prince Edward Island as his primary residence even though he had lived in Ottawa for decades.

The Constitution Act requires a senator to maintain a residence in the province they represent in the Senate; however, it does not specify how much time they have to spend there.

The Senate to date has no requirement for spending a minimum amount of time in a place to declare it a primary residence.

It does require senators to declare the location of their primary residence and back it up by providing copies of a driver’s licence, health card and tax forms proving you are considered a resident of that province.

By those measures, Carstairs was considered a resident of Manitoba by the Manitoba government until 2011.

After Duffy was acquitted, the Senate consulted a lawyer to determine if it should proceed with suing people such as Carstairs to recoup the money Ferguson flagged, but ultimately decided in December not to.

Carstairs said she is left holding $82,000 in legal bills that she believes the Senate should pay. Last May, she requested they be repaid in a letter to the steering committee of the board of internal economy of the Senate, but that claim was rejected. The entire board will now hear her case today.

Duffy also sought reimbursement of some of his legal fees last year and was rejected.

The Senate did allow some leeway for senators who chose to go to binding arbitration to have up to $25,000 in legal fees covered, but the amount was based on whether the arbitrator, former Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie, decided not all of Ferguson’s findings were accurate. Carstairs initially agreed to binding arbitration but changed her mind because she felt she had done nothing wrong.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca