Joan Bryden, The Canadian Press
OTTAWA - Mac Harb and Patrick Brazeau, two central figures in the ongoing Senate expenses controversy, have been charged with fraud and breach of trust — the first charges to emanate from the scandal roiling the upper chamber, but likely not the last.
Harb, a former Liberal senator who resigned from the upper house last summer, and Brazeau, a former Conservative senator who was suspended from the Senate last fall, face one count each of fraud and breach of trust in relation to their travel and living expense claims, the RCMP said Tuesday.
The Mounties continue to investigate allegedly fraudulent expenses claimed by suspended senators Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin.
They are also investigating Nigel Wright, who was Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff when he personally gave Duffy $90,000 to reimburse the Senate for disputed living expenses.
Assistant commissioner Gilles Michaud, the commanding officer of the RCMP’s national division, said each case is unique and the time taken to complete each investigation depends on a variety of factors.
“National division has undertaken these files with diligence and professionalism,” Michaud told a packed news conference in Ottawa.
“I can assure you that we continue our work on other significant files. RCMP investigators continue to explore multiple leads, to ascertain all the facts and collect the evidence in support of these facts.”
Given the explosive political nature of the investigations, Michaud took pains to emphasize that his division was created in 2013 specifically to carry out “sensitive investigations into significant threats to Canada’s political, economic and social integrity.”
“Canadians expect the RCMP to be exhaustive and unbiased in our investigations.”
During the course of its investigation of Harb, the RCMP at one point alleged in court documents that the former senator had engaged in mortgage fraud. However, Michaud said the force ultimately concluded the evidence did not support those allegations.
Tuesday’s charges stem from allegations that Harb declared two largely unused country homes as his primary residences, allowing him to claim a Senate housing allowance and living expenses for his supposedly secondary residence in Ottawa — where he had lived for years prior to his 2003 appointment to the Senate and where he continued to spend most of his time.
Although he has always denied any wrongdoing, Harb repaid the Senate $231,649.07 — the sum total of his living-related expenses.
The Mounties allege that Brazeau fraudulently claimed his father’s home in Maniwaki, Que., as his primary residence, although he was rarely seen there and lived primarily just across the river from Ottawa in Gatineau, Que.
Both men maintain they did nothing wrong but were tripped up by ambiguous Senate rules.
An independent audit of their expense claims last spring found that Harb spent 62 per cent of his time in Ottawa while Brazeau spent 81 per cent of his time in the national capital. Nevertheless, the auditors said Senate rules on primary residences lacked clarity and, therefore, they could not determine whether either senator had broken the rules.
Notwithstanding the auditors’ conclusion, the Senate’s internal economy committee declared the rules to be “amply clear” and “unambiguous” and demanded that the senators repay their disputed expense claims.
Harb complied but Brazeau refused to reimburse the $48,000 he was asked to pay back, prompting the Senate to garnishee his salary.
However, he was subsequently suspended without pay from the Senate last fall, along with Duffy and Wallin.
In a separate legal imbroglio, Brazeau is facing charges of assault and sexual assault, which were laid after an incident at his home last February.
Last September, Wallin paid back her dubious travel claims. She said she repaid $100,600 plus interest on top of $38,000 that she’d already repaid.
Duffy’s case has mushroomed into an investigation into alleged fraud, bribery and breach of trust involving Wright.
RCMP documents filed in court have suggested that Wright orchestrated a scheme in which Duffy agreed to repay his expenses on condition that he be reimbursed, that a Senate report on his conduct be whitewashed and that an independent audit would not question his right to sit as a senator for P.E.I., although he lived primarily in Ottawa.
In a statement issued by his lawyer the day those documents were released last October, Wright insisted his intentions were noble and that he did nothing to break the law.
“My intention was always to secure repayment of funds owed to taxpayers,” Wright said. “I acted within the scope of my duties and remain confident that my actions were lawful.”
The documents suggest more than a dozen others, including staffers in the Prime Minister’s Office, at least four Conservative senators and Conservative party officials, were involved in the deal. Harper maintains he knew nothing about it until news of the deal leaked out last May.
NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus called on Harper and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau to “come clean” on any other senators who’ve made improper expense claims. He said it would be “astonishing” if the two leaders hadn’t been given a heads up on other potential problems among their respective Senate caucuses.
Trudeau, perhaps anticipating more problems, last week booted all 32 senators from the Liberal caucus in a bid to reduce partisanship in the upper house and return it to its original purpose as an independent chamber of sober second thought.
Angus also called on auditor general Michael Ferguson, who is conducting a comprehensive audit of each senator’s expenses, to publicly disclose the names of anyone found to have made improper claims and turn them over to the RCMP.
“If people were misappropriating money, those people need to be named because if an ordinary Canadian did this, an ordinary Canadian would be charged,” Angus said.
“I don’t think the august people in the so-called upper chamber should be getting a free pass just because they’ve thrown two of them to the lions.”
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