Where do you live?
It’s an easy question for almost everyone who doesn’t serve in Canada’s Senate.
P.E.I. Senator and Ottawa resident Mike Duffy was acquitted of 31 charges this past week related to fraud and abusing the public trust. Nothing criminal was going on – just senator stuff.
Yes, Duffy listed a summer cottage as his primary residence, but nothing in the Senate rules requires a senator to spend a certain number days at their house. We’d like to believe the omission is an oversight, but that’s hard to accept from a government body specializing in oversight.
The legal grey area seems like a purposeful fog created by legislators who expect taxpayers to supplement their sizable salaries with free trips.
Duffy was legally allowed to lie about where he lived and file piles of expense reports because he was just doing what comes naturally to senators and following the advice of more senior politicians.
According to the judge, it was former prime minister Stephen Harper who told Duffy where he would claim to live and members of Harper’s office who later tried to buy their way out of trouble by forcing Duffy to accept a payment of $90,000.
But as far as Duffy’s responsibility for the mess was concerned, it was all legal. Because the Senate operates in an environment where there are no rules. Of course anyone who was not part of the political culture in Canada during the Harper reign would recognize Duffy’s behaviour as wrong and unethical. He certainly knew where he actually lived. Society long ago stopped accepting “He told me to do it” as an excuse for immoral behaviour.
But there’s the law and then there’s justice, and the two are rarely the same.
While Duffy was doing his victory dance, most Canadians were just shaking their heads at the absurdity of it all.
We sure hope our current prime minister will favour a higher ethical standard.
The Canadian Senate needs rules and oversight far more than Canada needs the Senate. If our senators don’t like it, they can always go home – if they know where their real home is.
