Wrongly Claimed Expenses

Proactively seeking to head off judgement without first setting the stage as she saw it, Senator Pamela Wallin disclosed to reporters eager to hear what she had to say, that the Senate review whose particulars are set to be released on Wednesday is "flawed". Nonetheless Senator Wallin is prepared to discharge her legal obligations to repay all sums that are deemed to be owing to the public purse. None of which she ever meant to charge illicitly.

Sen. Pamela Wallin reads a statement in Ottawa on Monday August 12, 2013. Wallin calls an independent audit of nearly four years of travel claims "fundamentally flawed and unfair." THE CANADIAN PRESS/Patrick Doyle

She was, after all, a very involved, busy individual. As she pointed out, someone with her stellar news-making background from both sides of the two-way mirror, and as a former diplomat, current university chancellor before being invited to join the Senate of Canada she had great appeal to organizations and various social groups as a speaker. She was also invited to sit on the boards of many corporations. And she remained actively involved in political fund-raising.

With all those personas stuffed into one peripatetic body, even an orderly mind can sometimes become distracted. As hers certainly seemed to be, on occasion. With its confusion of where she was when, and on what particular occasion. In the chaos of demand and response, constant travel and speech writing she can hardly be faulted for the occasional lapse in accreditation, if not judgement. For she, like her colleagues is only human.

Pamela Wallin entered the Senate by appointment through Prime Minister Stephen Harper's selection process in 2009. Between January of that year and September of 2012 she claimed $532,509 in expenses, according to the recently completed audit. The conclusion reached by the auditors was that out of that sum $121,348 should be repaid, a further $20,978 falling into a questionably grey category.

As such it is likely the RCMP will be called in for an official investigation of those claims. Not very serendipitous from the Senator's perspective, given the potential for criminal charges being lodged eventually, and the possibility of a quite lugubrious sentencing outcome.  Senator Wallin can be forgiven for believing that someone has it in for her. Her plaintive complaints that regular audit information was leaked to the press a case in point.

Auditors have written that a portion of what they construed to represent inappropriate costs appeared to be linked to "partisan related activity such as fundraising". But the greater balance of those inappropriately-charged expenses appeared to be for flights revolving around personal business, including her work on corporate boards, and as chancellor at the University of Guelph; flights from a corporate event or meeting having nothing to do with Senate business.

"It is Senator Wallin's position that when she was appointed, she understood that her 'networking' with contacts was an important part of her role to ' ... be accessible and in touch with as many 'communities of interest' as possible to ensure that she would be an activist and effective senator. The steering committee determined that, while occasional exceptional occurrences for special events might be acceptable, the volume and pattern of the events listed would not qualify them as Senate business".

Senator Wallin affirmed her determination on appointment to the Senate to remain perfectly involved as an "activist senator", advocating for causes important to Canadians. Thus, constant commitment to travel widely, to give public speeches and to appear at specific events would seem to her to represent perfectly legitimate Senate expenses.

"I want to be absolutely clear: I never intended to seek nor sought reimbursement for travel expenses in any situation where I did not believe such a claim was proper. Where I made mistakes, I have, as you know, already repaid (sic) money back." Besides which, Senator Tkachuk, head of the Senate Expense Committee encouraged her to minimize the data she was providing to the Senate enquiry.

Withholding vital information from examiners legally tasked to investigate could be construed as a criminal offence. "Regarding Senator Wallin's claim that I said she was providing too much information to the auditors, I want to make it clear that I was referring only to the information in her calendar. In that regard, I was of the opinion that, in the interests of efficiency, she should restrict herself to the information ... that the auditor asked for and that they needed to conduct their investigation."

Everyone proffers what to them seems a perfectly reasonable explanation for misunderstanding leading to accusations that are unjustified. No wish to glorify oneself and one's position, no intent to burden the taxpayer with costs unrelated to government business but which would have the effect of supporting business entirely unrelated to taxpayer funding.

Things happen; they come back to bite us at the most unexpected, inconvenient and frustrating of all possible times. Because ... we're only human. Right?