Stop the Hogs!

Senate leaders caught up in AG expenses audit

[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/senate- ... 00126?cid= ]

Speaker Leo Housakos, Opposition leader James Cowan plan to fight auditor general's findings

By Chris Hall, CBC News Posted: Jun 04, 2015 2:33 PM ET| Last Updated: Jun 04, 2015 10:13 PM ET

The three most powerful figures in the Senate are among those flagged by the auditor general to repay inappropriate expenses.

Senate Speaker Leo Housakos, government leader Claude Carignan and Opposition leader James Cowan have confirmed they are among 21 senators who have been found to have filed ineligible expenses.

Another nine senators were found to have "big problems" with ineligible expenses and their cases will be referred to the RCMP for criminal investigation following the auditor general's exhaustive two-year review.

CBC News has learned that 50 copies of the auditor general's report will be handed over to the Senate today as well as to the Prime Minister's Office. The report won't be made public until next Tuesday, giving staff the weekend to craft talking points in response to the auditor's potentially damaging findings.

Housakos and Cowan are vowing to fight the auditor general's conclusions on their expenses. Carignan said the auditor's findings in his case related to expenses by one of his staff, who has already reimbursed about $3,000.

But multiple sources tell CBC News the revelation that the current leadership are among those with inappropriate spending has left other senators fuming about a recent change in the Senate's handling of the audits.

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[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/senate- ... 00126?cid= ]

Suspended senators were victims of double standard, their lawyers argue

[ http://www.vancouversun.com/News/canada ... story.html

JASON FEKETE, OTTAWA CITIZEN MARK KENNEDY, OTTAWA CITIZEN
Published on: June 5, 2015 Last Updated: June 5, 2015 8:43 PM EDT

Lawyers for the senators suspended from the upper chamber two years ago are accusing the Senate’s leadership of a conflict of interest and double standard for providing senators named in an explosive new audit with “due process” that, they say, wasn’t offered to Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau.

Nine current and former senators are identified in the auditor general’s report as having serious spending problems. Of those nine, two sitting senators – Conservative Pierre-Hugues Boisvenu and Senate Liberal Colin Kenny – could be suspended as Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau were, the Speaker of the Senate said Friday.

Another group of 21 senators – including Speaker Leo Housakos, Conservative Senate leader Claude Carignan, and Liberal Senate leader James Cowan – are also identified in Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s report for thousands of dollars in questionable spending.

Lawyers for Wallin, Brazeau and Duffy, all suspended in 2013 over their own expense claims, spoke out Friday, saying their clients were not offered the independent review process that’s now being provided to senators snared in the latest audit. The Senate leaders themselves will benefit from being able to argue their case to a special arbitrator.

“It’s more than a little ironic that the very people who denied my client due process in the Senate have now put it in place for themselves, knowing what was coming down the pipe for them,” Wallin’s lawyer Terrence O’Sullivan said in an interview.

O’Sullivan said there appears to be a conflict by having the Senate call in former Supreme Court justice Ian Binnie to act as a special arbitrator for senators who challenge the auditor’s findings when the three most powerful senators in the upper chamber – Housakos, Carignan and Cowan – all knew their own spending was being flagged as problematic.

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[ http://www.vancouversun.com/News/canada ... story.html ]

Senate balks at expense oversight after report reveals wasteful spending

[ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... e24870309/ ]

DANIEL LEBLANC AND GLORIA GALLOWAY Ottawa — The Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Jun. 09, 2015 6:52AM EDT Last updated Wednesday, Jun. 10, 2015 12:09 AM EDT

Hit by new revelations of spending abuses, the Senate’s leaders said they have already reined in the expenses of their colleagues, but stopped short of creating an oversight body as recommended by the Auditor-General.

In the report released on Tuesday, [ http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/Engli ... 40494.html ] Auditor-General Michael Ferguson revealed a series of cases of senators abusing the public purse, either by wasting taxpayers’ money or getting the public to pick up their personal expenses. In particular, Canadians paid a number of senators to go on fishing trips, play golf, attend hockey games, go on holidays, own two homes or get a staffer to bring a personal car back home to Halifax from Ottawa.

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The audit called for “transformational change,” namely the creation of a new independent body to scrutinize the expenditures of the senators.

In their responses to the Auditor-General’s findings about their spending, a majority of senators defended their actions and denied any wrongdoing, or simply blamed administrative errors for the claims.

Mr. Ferguson said the lack of transparency around Senate expenses became obvious early in the audit process.

“What struck me was not just the fact that that senators were not making the information available, but it was more a matter of the extent to which that seemed to be really a strongly held belief, a strongly held part of the culture, at least originally in the audit, that the senators did not have to be transparent and accountable with their spending,” he said. “And that’s what needs to change.”

(SK) STATEMENT FROM PREMIER BRAD WALL ON AUDITOR GENERAL'S REPORT

[ http://www.saskatchewan.ca/government/n ... by-premier ]

Released on June 9, 2015

Today's report just reinforces Saskatchewan's position that the Senate should be abolished. If the Senate was necessary to the proper functioning of Canadian democracy, I would say clean it up and get it working properly. But it isn't necessary and it isn't making any sort of a positive contribution.

I Iike to restore old cars, but that's only worth doing if, when you get finished, the car is going to run properly and it's at least worth the money you put into it. The Senate is never going to run properly and it's never going to be worth the money we put into it. So it should be scrapped.

I'm not going to actively campaign for the Senate to be abolished. Everyone knows Saskatchewan's position. I would like to see other provinces come on board but if they don't, even in light of this latest mess, then it's not really worth the effort to try to change their minds. -30-

For more information, contact:

Kathy Young
Executive Council
Regina
Phone: 306-787-0425
Email: kathy.young@gov.sk.ca
Cell: 306-526-8927

Would abolishing the Senate be impossible? Maybe not.

[ http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/karl-ne ... -maybe-not ]

By Karl Nerenberg | June 9, 2015

EXCERPT:

Sober second thought

There is another putative role for the Senate, the one envisioned by John A. Macdonald.

It is to be the chamber of "sober second thought."

Liberal MP and former party leader Stéphane Dion has posted a well-reasoned essay on Senate reform on his website that, for the most part, does not overly tilt toward partisan advocacy.

In it, Dion cites the way in which, historically, the Senate has played that "second thought" role.

"Between 1994 and 2008, the Senate amended nine per cent of the Bills approved by the House of Commons and only explicitly rejected two out of 465 Bills." Dion writes. "The Senate acted exactly how a Chamber of sober second thought is expected to. Year in, year out, it amended from eight to 10 per cent of the Bills proposed by the House of Commons and almost never rejected any."

Dion explains that the Senate was able to perform this useful function because its members were not as involved in partisan politics as were their colleagues in the House of Commons.

He then bemoans the fact that Prime Minister Harper has imposed the same ironclad, partisan discipline on his Conservative senators as he does on House members, thus effectively stripping the Red Chamber of that historic "sober second thought" function.

A house of entitlement and privilege

There is yet another view of the Senate's vocation that may be closest to reality.

The Canadian Senate, from this perspective, was meant to be neither a key feature of the federal system nor a legislative check on the House of Commons.

It was, mostly, designed to be Canada's answer to the British House of Lords.

Lacking a true aristocracy, those colonial wannabes, the fathers of Confederation, decided to create an ersatz one -- ergo, the fathers' insistence that all Senators must own at least $4,000 worth of property, a princely sum in 1867.

Neither women (not deemed "persons"), nor working-class renters, nor tenant farmers were welcome in the Senate that Sir John A. Macdonald and his colleagues created.

From its inception, Canada's upper house was essentially all about social class and privilege.

And it has not changed much in nearly 150 years.

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As prime minister, Mulcair could, for instance, repeal Harper's federal criminal code changes that are obnoxious to Quebec, and only proceed with future legislative initiatives that implicate Quebec (and other provinces') role on a cooperative, consultative basis.

In other words, if an NDP government were to set an entirely new and much more open tone in its dealings with Indigenous Canadian and with the provinces, that might make it easier for all concerned to go along with what would likely be a popular move: rolling up the Senate's red carpet for once and for all time.

As well, as it proceeded to abolish the Senate, a new government could also move to enlarge the House of Commons, by including added members who were elected proportionally.

An NDP government might even consider mandating a minimum number of Indigenous MPs, something the New Zealanders have done with some success.

In other words, Senate abolition could be linked both to a renewed spirit of federal cooperation (which fully includes First Nations) and a program of genuine democratic reform.

That could make it acceptable to all -- to use the currently all-too-fashionable term -- stakeholders

It may be a tall order, but it would sure beat the status quo.

FEFCHAK: Senate Issue Needs Change

July 26, 2015

RE: Harper announces moratorium on Senate appointments [ http://www.torontosun.com/2015/07/24/se ... -on-harper ], 24 July, 2015

I am sharing my feelings on our present Senate situation. I am not doing this to start a 'new controversy'; just expressing the way that I feel about it's existence and why Canadians should be very careful about getting rid of something that once had a purpose and role in protecting Canada and Canadians from the "democratic element ".

Regardless of the colour of the stripe that one might wear or represent, I believe we still need a Senate, so before anyone goes ahead to actually make the abolishing of the Senate a reality, it might be prudent to do some background research to investigate "Why the senate was established in the first place".

The Senate was created under the Constitution Act, in 1867, primarily to protect regional interests, but also to provide, what the real driver of Confederation, Sir George-Etienne Cartier, called a "power of resistance to impede and oppose the democratic element"

Hence the Senate, in Canada, is based on the House of Lords concept in England, and was explicitly designed to frustrate the actions of parliament ( the democratic element). In this regard, the biggest nightmare scenario was: the democratic election of a government that would nationalize resources. redistribute income, property, etc.

Yes, it is time to make a change, not to abolish the Senate institution, but purge those within the Upper Chamber and begin anew.

Who or what will take the place of what many are now campaigning to scuttle, no one knows. That is the question and that question needs an answer.

Why are the people of Canada paying for and accepting the Senate to continue, many might ask; for it seems to have no role to play in to-day's evolution and ideals of a majority government.

At one time, the Senate was the inner conscience and a refuge for sober second thoughts and compassion. Sadly of late, those principles have been put aside and abandoned. The integrity of what was once a respected and morale component of the Parliament of Canada, has all but disappeared. Government dominance in the Lower House and spending scandals have resulted in contaminating a once honourable place.

The present system of appointing individuals (selected by the Prime Ministers) has only resulted in "stacking the deck". per-se (in itself) and Canadians find themselves paying for two of the same. (alike) The authoritative tentacles are intertwined and commands are directed from the majority government in the lower house.

Yes, maintaining this regime is costly. However, when I look at the costs, surpassing $ 1 billion for hosting the 2010 G20 Summit ( which lasted about 72 hrs.), a comparison tells me the senate institution is a fair bargain.

The Red Chamber has fallen from grace. However, for the benefit and protection of Canadians, a phoenix must be reborn with a procedure to implement an elected Senate. What is needed, is a bold, and necessary method, to renovate what Canadians, at one time, had for their safety shield.

Members would have no political affiliation to adulterate their wisdom and decisions. For as I see it, politics only complicates and undermines the obligations and true purpose of the Senate's original existence. In essence, this would be the most difficult order and challenge to fulfil, as partisan affiliations are often disguised.

Or is this…... the conclusion that Canadians are seeking?

Through the power ambitions of the majority in the Lower House, the "real" purpose and responsibilities of the Red Chamber have become morphed, and now it is destined to evolve as a relic of history.

John Fefchak.
Virden, Man.
204 748 2521

6 independent senators form 'non-partisan' group

[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/indepen ... -1.3484900 ]

Move comes as Liberal government prepares to announce its 1st Senate appointments

By Susana Mas, CBC News Posted: Mar 10, 2016 12:50 PM ET| Last Updated: Mar 10, 2016 10:09 PM ET

Half a dozen senators say they are forming a working group to promote an "independent, non-partisan" Senate, days after two of them quit the Conservative caucus to sit as independents.

"Partisanship that has been blindly one-sided and lacked impartiality, has seriously eroded the credibility and reputation of the Senate," said senators Diane Bellemare, Jacques Demers, Elaine McCoy, Pierrette Ringuette, Michel Rivard and John Wallace in a joint statement on Thursday.

The creation of a non-partisan working group in the Senate comes as the Liberal government prepares to announce the first in a series of Senate appointments, with a total of 24 vacancies to fill.

"The objective is to promote a properly functioning independent, non-partisan Senate," the senators said.

The group of six acknowledge that the rules of the chamber — a place for sober second thought — do not formally allow the group to act as a recognized third party, but they hope to change that.

"This must change, as must all existing archaic rules and practices that support this type of partisanship in the Senate and which do not accommodate the requirement of an independent chamber of sober second thought," the senators said.

Advisory board to cost $1M per year

The new Liberal government created an advisory board to recommend "non-partisan" senators to the prime minister. [ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal ... -1.3410090 ]

NDP MP Erin Weir, whose party is in favour of abolishing the Senate, was critical of the costs associated with the government's decision to appoint an advisory board.

"The president of the Treasury Board admitted that the new advisory board for Senate appointments will cost $1 million every year and that its recommendations will be secret," Weir said during question period on Thursday.

Treasury Board President Scott Brison acknowledged the $1 million price tag, but suggested that a Senate free of expense scandals is worth the investment.

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[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/indepen ... -1.3484900 ]