Senate audit leaves victims behind

Opinion

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This article was published 02/03/2017 (3119 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA — Former Liberal senator Sharon Carstairs says she was “devastated” by a Senate report on expense claims saying she falsely claimed Winnipeg as her primary home even though she hardly spent any time there.

She appeared before a Senate committee Thursday to ask the upper chamber to cover $82,000 in legal bills she amassed while fighting an RCMP investigation and a threat by the Senate to sue her to recoup $7,528 for travel and living expenses the auditor general said she was not entitled to.

Carstairs called the Senate expense audit an “unjust” process that tarnished her reputation and “made the 17 years of my work feel diminished and of significantly less value.”

Few Canadians will have sympathy for her. The majority of Canadians don’t like the Senate and don’t want to pay for senators’ salaries, let alone cover the legal bills of a senator called out by the auditor general.

The issue here is more complicated.

Carstairs was one of 30 senators the auditor general identified in 2015 as having made expense claims his office deemed out of bounds. She was one of nine he said had broken the rules so badly that the RCMP should take a look.

Her offence? Ferguson says Carstairs did not spend enough time in Winnipeg to consider it her permanent home and therefore she wasn’t entitled to make living and travel claims as if it was her primary residence.

However — and this is where it gets tricky — the Senate didn’t require Carstairs to spend a minimum number of days in Manitoba to make it her primary home. It required her to have permanent residency established in the city by having a Manitoba driver’s licence and a Manitoba health card, and to vote in and pay taxes in Manitoba. She fulfilled all those requirements.

Carstairs argues when the Senate received Ferguson’s report, it should have set him straight about what the eligibility was for her residency claims and that should have been the end of it.

“You chose not to do so,” she said brusquely.

Instead, the Senate called in the RCMP to investigate whether Carstairs broke a rule that did not exist.

After the RCMP cleared her, the Senate spent almost a year threatening to sue her to recoup the money. In essence, the Senate was agreeing with Ferguson that Carstairs had broken a rule.

Logically, someone should have to spend a majority of their days in the place they call their primary residence. Or at least a plurality of days. But the fact is, the Senate did not have such a rule and still doesn’t.

Sen. Leo Housakas, who chairs the internal economy committee, said Thursday the Senate has no precedent by which to pay legal bills for a senator charged with a crime. It’s the same reason it refused to pay the bills for Mike Duffy, who was acquitted last year on 31 charges related to his own expense claims. The judge in that case underscored Carstairs’ point that the Senate had no minimum residency days requirement for a primary residence.

But unlike Duffy, Carstairs was never charged with any crime, so that legal precedent may have no effect here.

The Senate also does have a precedent when it comes to legal bills for the audit. It agreed to cover up to $25,000 in legal bills if senators agreed to go to binding arbitration with former Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie to determine if Binnie felt Ferguson’s findings were correct. Thus far, the Senate has ponied up $101,830.39 to cover legal bills for five of those senators.

Carstairs didn’t go to binding arbitration because her lawyer said it was unwise while the RCMP were investigating, something at least two senators at the committee hearing acknowledged was sound advice.

Housakas was prepared to deny Carstairs’ legal claims Thursday but several other senators said they wanted to discuss the matter further. Carstairs doesn’t think she will win her fight. She says she needed closure on this situation and wanted a chance to tell the Senate in person what their actions have cost her.

Others have lost more than Carstairs. Rod Zimmer died before this saga ended. One other is fighting cancer and doesn’t have it in him to fight the Senate any further to clear his name. Another senator, the Free Press has been told by two different sources, was forced to sell her house to pay her legal bills.

Mia Rabson is the parliamentary bureau chief for the Winnipeg Free Press.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @miarabson