OTTAWA – Senator Pamela Wallin added, deleted or changed more than 500 entries in her electronic calendar as an audit into her travel expenses was underway, according to a new report.
A Deloitte audit of Wallin’s expenses between Jan. 1, 2009 and Sept. 30, 2012 released Tuesday says the now-independent Saskatchewan senator charged thousands for flights on what she called Senate business.
But the report says around May 2013, Wallin and her staff altered her electronic calendar. By their count, auditors say Wallin added 83 calendar events, modified 34 and deleted 391.
Wallin has denied suggestions from the audit report that the changes were in any way intended to mislead the auditors.
In fact, Wallin said, she made the changes after she was told to clean up her calendar entries in order to expedite the audit process.
Conservative Senator David Tkachuk said Tuesday he advised Wallin, but in a letter included in the audit, said he told her to restrict herself to the information auditors asked for and that they needed to conduct their investigation.
The audit has been referred to the RCMP, and Global News has also learned it cost almost $127,000.
The audit says one of the events changed on Wallin’s calendar was on June 4, 2009.
Wallin flew to Toronto on an 8 p.m. flight from Ottawa and claimed to speak at the Institute of Corporate Directors Fellowship Awards that evening.
But further research revealed Wallin spoke at the event in 2008 – not in 2009, when the role was filled by former Newfoundland Premier Brian Tobin.
The audit says Wallin’s 2009 Microsoft Outlook calendar, obtained from the back-up taken in June 2013, contains a schedule for the awards at 7:30 pm, but not for the 8 p.m. flight.
But auditors obtained back-up calendars from December 2011 and 2012 that contained entries for the flight, but not the 7:30 p.m. awards.
“This indicates that the 2009 calendar was amended to add the ICD entry, and to delete the 8 pm flight, sometime in 2013,” the audit says.
Wallin told auditors she was mistaken in the year that she spoke, and may have attended the awards later in the evening.
The claims are part of $121,000 flagged by auditors as inappropriate, which the Senate internal economy ordered Wallin to pay back Tuesday. There are also some $20,000 in claims to go over expense by expense.
Wallin has already repaid more than $38,000 and has said she will repay the rest – totalling more than $82,000 – despite calling the Deloitte report “flawed and unfair.”
Other examples of altered calendars in the report include:
– June 9, 2009: Wallin flew to Toronto for meetings with an adviser to the World Bank and one with an official from the New York City Marketing and Development Corporation. But according to the audit, Internet research showed Wallin attended the convocation at the University of Guelph. The audit says the calendar was amended to add the meeting entry and to delete the Guelph convocation entry sometime in 2013;
– June 18, 2009: Flight to Toronto to attend the True Patriot Love Foundation and Tribute Dinner. But the audit says Wallin’s flight didn’t arrive until eight hours after the launch, which actually happened at lunch. Her 2011 and 2012 back-up calendars indicate the event was marked with “regrets.” “Based on the entry marked ‘Regrets,’ and the time of the flight that the Senator took that day, it does not appear that she attended this launch. Senator Wallin subsequently agreed that she likely did not attend,” the audit says.
Wallin made a public statement Monday about her expenses.
“I was advised part way through the process that I should only include information relevant to the actual expenses being claimed,” she said. “So we formatted our calendar accordingly and added as much additional information as we had regarding the claims, without irrelevant, private or personal information included.”
She said Tkachuk informed her about the preliminary results of the first period of the audit.
Tkachuk disputed that claim Tuesday, saying he never gave her a preliminary report because there wasn’t one, and any mistakes she might have made were hers and hers alone.
“If she did something wrong, no one told her to do it. Certainly not me,” Tkachuk said. “I was chair of the audit committee. I was trying to move the process along.”
Tkachuk stepped down as chairman of the Senate board of internal economy in June citing illness.
With a file from The Canadian Press
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