A number of senators say they have been unfairly persecuted in a sweeping 116-page audit report on expense claims.
Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s report released Tuesday found a “pervasive lack of evidence, or significant contradictory evidence” to support expense claims for many senators. It recommends the Senate create an independent oversight body to review senators’ expenses.
There report also found a “lack of formal rules, policies, or guidelines” in the Senate Speaker’s office, and that financial management controls “that specifically applied to Senators did not apply to the Speaker’s office.”
All told, the auditor general flagged 30 senators in his report for problematic or questionable expense claims totalling almost $1 million.
However, many of the senators identified in the audit fired back at the auditor general in the 500-word responses they were allowed to provide for the report, with some calling the AG’s findings and comments “scurrilous” and “defamatory.”
One of the major problems identified in the audit is the same one under the microscope in Mike Duffy’s criminal trial: senators claiming expenses relating to their secondary residence in Ottawa when they declare a primary residence elsewhere.
The nine current and former senators identified in the auditor general’s report for having serious spending problems and whose files have been referred to the RCMP, include current sitting senators Conservative Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu (who has resigned from the Tory caucus to sit as an independent) and Liberal Colin Kenny
The other seven retired senators whose cases are being referred to the Mounties include: Gerry St. Germain, Don Oliver, Sharon Carstairs, Rose-Marie Losier-Cool, Bill Rompkey, Rod Zimmer and Marie-Paule Charette-Poulin.
Of those nine, five – Boisvenu, Carstairs, Losier-Cool, Rompkey and Zimmer – made ineligible claims for living expenses because they declared their primary residences were outside Ottawa when they, in fact, spent most of their time in the capital, Ferguson’s report says.
Kenny says he is being unfairly persecuted for about $36,000 in questionable travel expense claims because some of the trips included personal activities – for which the Senate was not charged.
“Invalidating an entire trip on account of one personal appointment seems disproportionately punitive,” Kenny writes in his 500-word defence, included in Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s damning audit report on Senate spending released Tuesday.
The audit identified $35,549 in travel expenses over two years, beginning in April 2011, for which auditors say the Senate Liberal provided “insufficient or conflicting documentation” to determine whether the trips were primarily for parliamentary business.
“Several of these trips included single short meetings pertaining to his parliamentary business, but began with or were followed by personal activities,” says the report. Details of the trips were not provided.
The report says some of what it characterizes as poor record-keeping was due to the Senate administration, at Kenny’s request, not backing up his electronic calendar file. Kenny did provide a printed copy of his calendar for the audit period and later provided an electronic version.
“We noted discrepancies between these versions,” says the report. “The Senator stated that, in his view, the discrepancies were not significant.”
The auditors also raise questions about Kenny’s use of his Senate staff. “Staff performed numerous tasks … payments of personal invoices, maintenance of personal books and records, planning of various personal activities … that were not related to regular office operations.”
Kenny, it says, replied that the activities did not account for a significant amount of his staff’s time and were in accordance with a Senate rule allowing such work provided it is “minor, customary and reasonable” and does not incur a direct cost to the Senate.
But because of “conflicting information” about the extent of such activities and “insufficient information” about other staff positions, “we were unable to reach audit findings as to whether the salaries and benefits were for parliamentary business,” says the report.
In his response to the allegations, Kenny says he and his staff on Nov. 24, 2014 provided a detailed binder of answers to a series of initial questions from the office of the auditor general. He says it included the names of participants for every hospitality or travel meeting, the reason for the meeting and a compilation of (newspaper) opinion articles produced largely as a result of the meetings.
When Kenny was made of aware of the auditors’ preliminary conclusions March 6, he says he and his staff sought an explanation for the concerns over hospitality, travel and staff expenses. Repeated attempts to find out the specifics of those concerns failed, he says.
It wasn’t until April 29, five days before the deadline to formally response to the allegations, that Kenny says he received documentation that “briefly listed” details of the concerns.
“The document was useful in that it was the first chance I had to respond to (the) concerns. It was, however, provided very late in the process. Had it been given to me earlier, I would have been able to more capably defend the use of my expenses.”
Kenny saves much of his consternation for the auditors’ questioning of his travel expense claims is because he included personal activities on the trips – but at no expense to the Senate.
“Despite the fact that Senate rules allow for personal activities, the audit team insisted that virtually any personal appointments – costing the Senate no money – invalidated an entire trip that had a number of parliamentary activities. It was repeatedly stated to me that because a personal activity had occurred, the primary purpose of the trip could not be determined.”