Put a helmet on it

Honestly, I don’t know what makes me angrier, Pamela Wallin’s “honest mistakes” and the rest of the Honourable Senate’s bull-pucky, or idiots who cycle without a helmet. Seriously, both of those issues irritate me, big time.

Let me start with the ilk of Senator Wallin. In the big scheme of things, aren’t Senators supposed to be the people we trust above all else? In Canada, bad press has become the order of the day for the federal government, the provincial g o v e r n m e n t , health care, the RCMP, big business and organized religion. When I was in Grade 10, my civics teacher extolled the merits of the Honourable Canadian Senate. He made it all sound like we were in good hands because senators were there to give wise council and smooth over the rough spots in a piece of legislation. Canadian senators were people we should have aspired to become—honest, hardworking and praiseworthy. I remember Mr. LaFleur telling us we could look at the Canadian Senate as the “chamber of sober, second thought”.

Fifty years later, what’s “sobering” and giving a lot of us “second thought” about the integrity of our Senate is the people like Wallin, Duffy and Brazeau (to name a few) who are the creepy strangers at our front door. Senators are supposedly appointed because of their wisdom, experience, high moral and ethical principles to examine or revise legislation or to investigate national issues or represent minority interests. We trust them to act as the watchdogs for the rest of us. Turns out we shouldn’t let them over the threshold and if they do gain access we might just have to sic the dogs on them. Our confidence in our esteemed Senate has been batted about, daily, in the news.

On Thursday last week, Peter Mansbridge interviewed Senator Wallin. Wallin was asked if she was sorry for her actions and sorry for the grief she has caused the Canadian people. Her answer was to avoid answering the question by rambling on about what she thought she was bringing to the Senate table/chamber and how much she did in her career as a journalist. She did do her job as a journalist. She was paid well to do her job as a journalist and she was respected for her work. Who knows, she may have done her job as a senator but, isn’t that what she should have done? She was paid to be a senator. But, when it came to “cooking the books”, I know there isn’t a section in the job description about “how to slip one by”.

During the interview Wallin stated she’s submitted and signed off on all of the expense documents in question. Mansbridge asked, somewhat facetiously, if her claims somehow slipped through the system. Part of her response went something like this, “…you have a failsafe in there, which supposedly is the Senate finance system, that’s supposed to check that.”

It sounded to me as if Wallin was sorry for the grief she caused herself and firmly places the blame on the Senate finance system. She went on to state, “You know, I didn’t have travel claims rejected.” Seriously Pammy, is that the test of truth? Your travel claims, which you completed and submitted for payment, weren’t rejected so they must have been “the truth”. That’s living on the edge of morality. It’s a “let’s see if this floats” attitude the ordinary, everyday people of this country have to endure and we end up paying your flabby-arsed freight. Yup, this is one time when I’ll mention how I paid my taxes and it’s my tax money you sucked up on the other side of your expense sheet.

As the interview progressed, with regard to her travel claims, Wallin stated, “But this whole question of going to Saskatchewan directly. They have two categories of travel: regular and other. Your regular travel is when you go home (at least she had a residence in Saskatchewan). But, they want you to get on a plane and get directly there. And no stops don’t, you know, don’t pass Go, don’t collect you $200, just go home. That isn’t how I operate.” No kidding. “If I have a day like a Friday where I can go to Halifax or Edmonton or Toronto and do a speech or do an event, I will do that on the way home. I am still going home. That doesn’t count as travel to my home. It counts as “other.” So the numbers in this category are large. They’re large for people who say, “why isn’t she going to Saskatchewan?” Well, I was. I was there 168 days last year. So, I got there somehow. I just did it, sometimes, not directly.”

Well, isn’t it too bad we can’t make her life a bit more straightforward. Silly us for asking her to spend a bit of time separating her “regular and other” travel out on those finance forms. Anyone who has filled out any kind of government paperwork/form knows it is never straightforward and the rest of us have to take time to get it right. Wah, wah, wah! “There are no direct flights out of Ottawa.” Not for you or for anyone else, Ms Wallin. “Anybody who tries to fly to Saskatchewan or leave Saskatchewan knows how difficult it is. It’s not a province that’s really well served.” Not well served by you or the transportation industry, it seems.

As a journalist, Wallin was an aggressive interrogator. She would never have let this kind of pissypants responding get past her by without a smack down. Mansbridge, being the kind of gentleman, journalist he is, let Senator Wallin have all the rope she needed. He should have saved the rope and handed her a bicycle helmet. I figure by the time Wallin repays all of money she has misappropriated, she’ll be looking at a bicycle as a means of transportation.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca