OTTAWA — In the six months after the Senate determined his primary residence was in Ottawa, Sen. Mike Duffy claimed expenses of more than $23,000 for travel to and from the province he represents in the red chamber.
During the same time period, from June 1 to Nov. 30, Duffy made no expense claims for his home in the nation’s capital, according to the most recent quarterly spending figures posted to the Senate’s website Monday.
According to the Senate, claiming for what’s called “regular” travel isn’t related to where a senator’s main residence is. It is simply meant to cover travel between the capital and the province or territory a senator represents. Duffy appears not to have broken any rules when he claimed costs for travelling between Ottawa and Prince Edward Island.
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]It’s unclear when the expenses were actually incurred; The expenses could have been incurred anytime between July and November; the quarterly expense reports only show the total amounts processed by the Senate during that time.
Between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30, Duffy expensed about $6,616 for “regular” travel. In the prior three months, Duffy’s expense claims totalled more than $16,000, according to the quarterly expense reports.
During the same six-month period in 2012, Duffy claimed about $33,000 in regular travel.
On Tuesday, the Senate said regular travel encompasses “all trips between a senator’s province/territory and the NCR (National Capital Region).” That’s a separate issue from the “provincial residence” that a senator identifies “for administrative purposes as his or her principal home within the province or territory for which he or she is appointed” to become eligible for a $22,000-a-year housing allowance to pay for accommodations while on Senate business in Ottawa.
A spokesman for government Senate leader Claude Carignan declined to comment on the newly posted spending figures, saying they couldn’t comment on numbers they haven’t seen.
Duffy stopped claiming a living expense after the Senate determined he had run afoul of housing rules, even though auditors found the rules about claiming expenses for a secondary residence in Ottawa to be ambiguous. In the most recent expense figures, neither he nor Sen. Patrick Brazeau, who was also found in violation of Senate rules, expensed a dollar for housing in the capital region.
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]On Nov. 5, Duffy, Brazeau and Sen. Pamela Wallin were stripped of all but their titles over charges of “gross negligence” in the use of their expense accounts. They were suspended without pay and lost their offices, their staff and the ability to file expense claims with the Senate.
Wallin made deep cuts to her travel spending in the three months after her travel expenses chastised in an audit made public in mid-August.
Wallin’s regular travel spending — for trips between Ottawa and Saskatchewan — declined to just under $6,300 between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30 from the $20,925 noted in the prior quarter, a decrease of about 70 per cent. Her other travel spending declined to $872.04 — a drop of about 93 per cent from the almost $12,500 claimed between June 1 and August 31.
One year ago, Wallin claimed $7,312.36 in regular spending and almost $43,500 in other travel between Sept. 1 and Nov. 30, 2012.
The recent change in Wallin’s spending came after a critical audit of her travel spending, that included recommendations that she be grounded from travelling without the Senate’s consent. Those recommendations weren’t formally adopted before the Senate voted for her suspension.
Wallin, Brazeau and Duffy are under investigation by the RCMP, along with former Liberal senator Mac Harb over allegations of breach of trust and fraud. (Harb was not reimbursed for any claims during the quarter; he resigned in late August after repaying about $231,000 in housing claims.)
[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]Duffy faces separate allegations related to a $90,000 payment from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright that covered the repayment of his questionable housing claims, and tens of thousands in contracts awarded through his office to an old friend for what the Mounties allege was little or no work.
None of the allegations has been tested in court, nor have any charges been laid.
