The Auditor General was making the media rounds yesterday, largely combating the cheap outrage journalism about the supposed spending issues of his office (which wasn’t a story but hey), and confirmed that about 30 senators would be facing some kind of repayment, fewer than 10 serious enough to merit being forwarded to the RCMP – but of course, ten became the headline number when he said it would be fewer, and the number of five to eight has been suggested by other media outlets, which seems more in line with what he claims. The total number of senators examined was 117 current and former, and it certainly sounds like the majority of cases will be fairly minor in terms of repayments. The Senate announced that they are retaining former Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie as the independent arbiter on expenses, so that they have a process by which to dispute the AG’s findings if they so choose, and that may be necessary considering the complaints emerging about the lack of knowledge on the part of auditors as to parliamentary functions. This raises the question of fairness – is it fair that these senators will have a process in place, whereas Senators Duffy, Brazeau and Wallin did not, and were suspended without any kind of due process? The answer of course is that no, it’s probably not fair, but this was a fairly consuming crisis at the time, and they were sacrificed on the altar of expediency. Politics is messy business, particularly when you were high-profile appointments and had become a political liability. I’m not sure that it should be reason to forgo having a process going forward, but if all three are found guilty on the charges laid by the RCMP, then will it really matter in the end?

Good reads:

• NDP MPs have been told to repay their satellite office expenses by July 1^st, or they’ll be denied any other expense claims.
• The Senate Speaker says the sections of the internal audit they don’t want to release to the courts is because of personal information.
• The government reversed a long-standing position and said that they are going to consult about having people voluntarily enhance their CPP contributions.
• With the CANSEC trade show in town, there is speculation the Conservatives may announce some new procurement projects.
• Diane Finley went to committee to suggest that the former Liberal government deliberately let the shipbuilding industry languish, and was accused of trying to score political points.
• The new lobbyists’ Code of Conduct is going to be tougher, and will eliminate the problematic “friend” category.
• Michael Chong’s bill is getting a rough ride at Senate committee – not that you’d hear any criticism about it on broadcast media.
• Pundit’s Guide writes about the almost unprecedented number of “open” seats in the coming election.

Odds and ends:

Robert Hiltz writes an excellent takedown of the cheap outrage of the AG spending, while the Ottawa Citizen looks at the team-building exercises at FunHaven.

Neither Leona Aglukkaq nor her officials could give actual figures to emissions targets before committee.

Here’s an outside analysis of the recent spate of political ads.