Suspended senators targeted in federal budget

OTTAWA — The Harper Conservatives are looking to strip suspended Senators of their pensions months after three of their own were booted from the Senate.

The government intends to introduce legislation to prohibit suspended senators or MPs from accruing pensionable service, it announced in Tuesday’s budget.

READ MORE: Seven highlights from this year’s ‘boring’ budget

“Canadians expect that all parliamentarians will be held to the highest standards of accountability and that the integrity of our public office and institutions will be protected,” the government wrote in the 2014 budget.

“The actions of parliamentarians should be based on integrity, trust and respect for taxpayers’ dollars.”

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Late last year, Senators Pamela Wallin, Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau were suspended from the upper chamber, losing their paycheques, office resources and some benefits; they retained little but their titles — and the capacity to continue contributing to their lucrative pensions despite not being allowed to step foot in the chamber.

The three senators — who were all appointed on the advice of Prime Minister Stephen Harper — along with former Liberal Senator Mac Harb, were all at the centre of the Senate expense scandal that has dominated the political landscape for more than a year. Each was accused of collecting inappropriate expenses ranging from housing allowances to travel expenses. Those expenses are now all under police investigation.

So far, the RCMP have laid charges of fraud and breach of trust against Harb and Brazeau.

Harb resigned from the Senate in August, not long before Conservative leadership in the upper chamber moved to suspend his colleagues until the end of the Parliamentary session, scheduled to end in the fall of 2015.

While debate on the motions to suspend raged on for days and nights last fall, many questions swirled around the consequences of the move, one of which was whether Wallin, Duffy and Brazeau would be able to consider their suspended time as pensionable service.

The government was slow to provide an answer, but eventually admitted they would.

It is not yet clear whether this legislation would be applied retroactively to the trio of disgraced senators. Regardless of how the legislation is written, though, it is not likely to meet much opposition in the House of Commons.

The Senate, however, could hold up the bill. Each member of the upper chamber is currently having their expenses undergo a forensic audit by the federal auditor general, the results of which may trickle out through into the next federal election campaign in 2015.