OTTAWA — After nine days of impassioned arguments and with the jobs and incomes of three senators on the line, Conservative leadership in the Senate successfully limited debate on the suspension motions to six more hours, setting the stage for a final vote Tuesday.
Conservative Senators Hugh Segal, Nancy Ruth and John Wallace voted against their leadership’s motion; Tory Senators Don Plett and Don Meredith abstained.
Their former Tory colleague – and one of three senators at the heart of the spending scandal – Pamela Wallin also abstained from the vote.
Prior to Monday night’s vote, Wallace argued that cutting off debate would not afford the three senators at the heart of the spending scandal the opportunity to adequately defend themselves.
Limiting debate “would be a serious and significant shortcoming of natural justice,” Wallace told his colleagues.
Although Senators Pamela Wallin, Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau without pay are all accused of inappropriately collecting expenses, the three situations are unique: Wallin’s questionable expenses deal mostly with travel, Duffy’s involve questions of residency and double-dipping and Brazeau has been asked to repay housing allowances he collected.
Watch: It looks like Senate will vote tomorrow on whether to suspend Brazeau, Wallin & Duffy. Mike Le Couteur reports.
The Senate will probably vote Tuesday on the motion to suspend the three senators. If the Conservative majority in the upper chamber passes it, their former Tory colleagues will be suspended without pay or access to Senate resources, but will be allowed some medical benefits and life insurance.
And even though the Conservatives introduced one motion to handle all three senators, there was still talk Monday of splitting that into three separate votes.
“We want to have three separate votes for three separate senators,” Government leader in the Senate Claude Carignan said on his way into the chamber Monday. He wouldn’t say why this step wasn’t taken at the get-go.
“These guys are making up the rules as they go along,” said Liberal Senate leader James Cowan. “I understand that they’ve got problems in their caucus, but this seems a very strange way to do it.”
Cowan: Conservatives in Senate “making up the rules as they go along”
For more than two weeks, the Senate has debated whether to suspend the three senators, all the while getting tangled in procedural wrangling.
Nonetheless, Cowan characterized the move to shut down debate as a “rush to judgement.”
He stressed that he does not support the actions of the three senators in question and that all three should face sanctions.
“But all Canadians are entitled to due process,” he said. “We can’t allow judgement and the rule of law to be overruled by politics.”
Brazeau was expected to take the floor of the Senate Monday after announcing on Twitter Sunday night that he intended to push to have his suspension motion brought to an open-door committee.
But by Monday evening, Brazeau hadn’t shown up. His office did send out an open letter, however, in which he defended himself and warned his colleagues that “if this can happen to me, it can happen to you.
“I recommend you have a lawyer examine all claims you submit before you submit them,” he wrote, arguing all of his housing allowance claims complied with Senate policy. “The rules may change without your knowledge and you may find yourself being kicked out of caucus, being suspended without pay, and being scapegoated in the media as some kind of entitled ‘fatcat.’”
Many observers are also waiting to see whether Duffy will show up and drop another series of explosive revelations.
Even if the suspension motion passes, the Conservatives likely won’t be able to close the file on the Senate scandal: Questions continue to swirl around funds the Prime Minister’s Office and Conservative party gave Duffy – the now-infamous $90,000 from the prime minister’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, and $13,560 from Conservative party lawyer Arthur Hamilton.
Read more: At some point Nigel Wright will reveal what he knows, says Kenney
The Prime Minister’s Office has said the Conservative party paid Duffy’s legal fees on the assurance they were related to the audit of his questionable expenses. The Conservative senator in charge of the party’s fundraising, however, has blamed Wright for requesting the party pay Duffy’s legal fees.
In a speech at the closing ceremonies of the Conservative convention in Calgary on Saturday, Senator Irving Gerstein said he told Wright the Conservative Fund of Canada wouldn’t pay for Duffy’s “disputed” expenses. But at Wright’s request, the party committed to pay a maximum of $12,000 plus HST because Duffy was a member of the Conservative caucus at the time.
Since Duffy revealed the second cheque during a speech to the Senate last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has repeatedly said there is nothing nefarious about a political party covering the legal fees of one of its caucus members.
The RCMP has alleged in court documents that the Conservative party was initially willing to pay for $32,000 in Duffy’s expenses from the Conservative fund Gerstein controls, but backed off when the tab ballooned to $90,000.
Watch: Opposition questions Tories over Gerstein’s comments during Question Period Monday
Harper has vehemently denied any knowledge of the deal between Wright and Duffy, saying he believed the beleaguered senator repaid his questionable housing allowances using his own money.
Debate around the motions has revealed some division within the Conservative caucus, with a handful of senators and MPs speaking out against the motions.
Their primary concern is whether the three senators are being afforded due process, considering the upper chamber asked the RCMP to investigate the matter. The three senators have not yet been charged with anything.
Read: Patrick Brazeau’s Nov. 4 letter to MPs and Senators
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