Audit of Wallin’s travel expenses won’t be done before Senate breaks for summer

OTTAWA – An external audit into Sen. Pamela Wallin’s questioned travel expenses will not be completed until the end of July — smack in the middle of the summer when Parliament is not sitting.

Deloitte auditors had initially told the Senate’s internal economy committee that there’d be no problem completing the audit before the Senate breaks for the summer at the end of June.

But lead auditor Gary Timm said that’s no longer possible because they’ve been asked to extend their examination of Wallin’s expenses back another three months, to the date of her appointment in January 2009.

As well, Timm said auditors are awaiting information from an unidentified third party, which won’t be available until the end of this month.

Timm said the audit should be complete by mid-July but translation will take anotherseven to 10 days.

Eyebrows were first raised after an examination of Wallin’s travel expenses from September 2010 to Nov. 30, 2012, showed she had claimed only $29,423 in what’s deemed regular travel to and from her home province of Saskatchewan, while racking up another $321,000 in other travel elsewhere in Canada and abroad.

Timm and two other Deloitte auditors appeared before the internal economy committee on Thursday to explain the delay in completing the audit.

Ordinarily, the committee could not release the audit before tabling it in the Senate. Committee members are exploring ways it may be able to release the Wallin audit during the summer, when the Senate is not sitting.

Deloitte completed three other audits last month into the living expenses of senators Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb.

The committee was told Thursday that Brazeau and Harb were sent letters earlier this month demanding that they reimburse invalid expense claims of $48,745 and $231,649 respectively within 30 days. Both senators have vowed to fight the repayment orders in court.

Harb was initially ordered to repay $51,500, covering the two-year period of the audit, but his tab increased almost five times after Senate officials were subsequently asked to review his expenses dating back eight years.

Duffy paid back just over $90,000 in living expenses in March, without waiting for the audit results.

However, he’s become mired in even more controversy since it was discovered last month that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff, Nigel Wright, had personally givenDuffy $90,000 in order to repay his invalid expenses. Wright resigned shortly after news of the transaction broke.

That transaction is now the subject of investigation by House of Commons and Senate ethics officers, as well as the RCMP.

The internal economy committee was told Thursday that Duffy reimbursed the Senate with a personal cheque, written on a bank in his home province of Prince Edward Island.

Opposition MPs have been demanding to see Wright’s cheque to Duffy.