Five years ago thereabout, a thoroughly decent Canadian politician was stabbed in the back by an unethical television journalist. Two months and 13 days later the politician who won the election elevated that journalist to the Canadian Senate as a representative of the province in which he was born but in which he had not lived - other than as a summer visitor - for ~30 years.
Now it is a curiosity of the Canadian Constitution that Senators must reside in the province which they represent. And, as long as as that residence is >100 km from Ottawa they can claim as an expense the cost of their lodging in Ottawa.
And so our journalist-turned-Senator claimed for housing expenses, the house in which he had lived for so many years.
A small storm blew up last year about the expense accounts of Canadian Senators. An internal committee investigate became an external audit. All of a sudden four Senators were receiving unwelcome (at least from their perspective) attention. And, all of a sudden people noticed that funny old clause in the Constitution and wondered: was journalist-turned-Senator even legally appointed in the first place.
In the middle of the audit, journalist-turned-Senator announced - with some fanfare - that he had repaid some $90,000 in improperly billed expenses. What wasn't announced was that he then stopped cooperating with the auditors. Laughable claims were made that this was out of consideration for taxpayers and government MPs praised his "leadership".
The auditors wrote their report. It was noticed, however, that they were rather more lenient in their language as far as the case of journalist-turned-Senator was concerned. Questions were asked.
Had he still been a journalist, he would never have been satisfied with the report himself. And so it was, with some delicious irony, it must be said, that a journalist for his previous employer went a-digging.
Thus did we learn this week that the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff - a wealthy man - had gifted the journalist-turned-Senator $90,000 in the form of a personal cheque.
First, it was a gift. But Senators are not allowed to accept such gifts. Then it was to help out a "friend". Lots of Canadians would like friends with such deep pockets. Now, it has emerged that lawyers were involved. Was this "hush money"?
The shit has duly hit the fan.
Journalists were outraged. Even the normally docile Conservative friendly press have had harsh words to say. How could a man with the serious smarts of the Chief of Staff have done such a stupid thing, and how could he have expected to get away with it?
As Andrew Coyne wrote today:
...paying a Senator under the table, for any reason, under any
circumstances, is serious business. But when the recipient is under
investigation by a Senate committee, when the purpose of the payment is
to relieve him of responsibility for the expenses for which he is at
that moment being audited, and when his benefactor is the most senior
unelected official in the government, “serious” does not begin to
describe it.
Journalist-turned-Senator has been turfed out of his party, as has another whose audit was ongoing. The Chief of Staff has resigned; he had no choice, really.
The government will stonewall all questions and will, alas, survive. They were re-elected despite being found in contempt of Parliament. They crow about their transparency and accountability, but in reality they are a duplicitous bunch. The Nasty Party. This whole episode has been obfuscatory, one half-truth following another, and at no point has anyone admitted wrongdoing or taken responsibility. So much for accountability.
Schadenfreude does have its moment though. Journalist-turned-Senator is now so toxic that he hasn't a hope of being welcomed back to his party. He deserves the opprobrium. He displayed a shocking lack of ethical standards in his latter days as a journalist. He has shown no contrition whatsover in regards to the current scandal.
He deserves to be kicked out of the Senate at the very least on grounds of his appointment being unconstitutional. That finding would deservedly stick to the Prime Minister who appointed him.