Well, Oops After All....

"The Senate rules on housing allowances aren't clear, and the forms are confusing. I filled out the Senate forms in good faith and believed I was in compliance with the rules. Now it turns out I may have been mistaken. Rather than let this issue drag on, my wife and I have decided that the allowance associated with my house in Ottawa will be repaid."
Senator Mike Duffy

No admission of any possible opportunism here, of any kind of ethical lapse, of the lack of judgement of someone whose avariciousness simply drew him into an area of foggy comprehension of due entitlements. It should be well understood that the Senate rules and regulations are somehow geared to leading its honourable members off the well-trodden track of responsibility and onto the trainwreck of greed.

Fault must be ascribed where it is due. And it is certainly not due to fall on the shoulders of a man who in his journalistic life has been around the block more than once.

Who is familiar with politics and the ins and outs of diplomacy and the fundamentals of due representation, of the laws of the land and of human nature, but who nonetheless is so naive that he haplessly allowed himself to be swayed by the "Senate rules on housing allowances", which led him astray.

He certainly doesn't credit the bad publicity the Senate has been receiving as a result of the questionable activities that he and some of his colleagues have been indulging themselves in as  spurring him to the acknowledgement that his innocence of wrong-doing or the scent of having taking part in a completely legal but awkward entitlement claim reflects criminal intent on his part.

The good Senator has claimed over $42,000 in housing allowance in a two-year time-frame. To supplement his clearly inadequate six-figure Senate salary. Despite having lived in Ottawa for the past 30 years, despite ownership of an Ottawa property which in fact does represent his primary residence.

As a Senate representative of Prince Edward Island, he opted to claim a cottage there as his primary residence. Making himself eligible, under those foggy Senate housing rules, to claim for housing allowance subsidies.

Despite paying no income taxes there, nor being in possession of a provincial PEI health card both of which would verify his claimed status. All in the grubby interests of soaking the taxpayer a little more deeply for this man's entitled upkeep.