Senate Expense Scandal: Audit reveals more improper claims

New revelations of the senate corruption scandal involve thirty violated spending rules, nine have been referred to the police for investigation. Four others already facing charges including Conservative appointee Mike Duffy who's now on trial.- NDP's David Christopherson reeling off leaked highlights last week

After nearly two years combing through senators' expenses, the Auditor General has indeed found some questionable entries.

The full report is due out tomorrow.

And it will swell the ranks of senators facing allegations, including at least nine whose cases have been referred to the RCMP.  The CBC has confirmed that the total amount of improper Senate expenses the Auditor General has identified is $976,627.

The CBC's Chris Hall broke the story on the Auditor General's report last week. He is CBC's National Affairs Editor and he joined us from our studio in Ottawa.
 

"There used to be an expression maybe not so much in terms of the rules but in terms of  services for Senators 'What a Senator wants, a senator gets.' And that was kind of pervasive within the public service of the Senate that you accepted the word of the Senator.- ​Gordon Barnhart, a former clerk of the Senate

Gordon Barnhart, a former clerk of the Senate, says that when he tried calling out senators on seemingly-inappropriate expenses, he was often overruled. And, indeed, many senators facing allegations now insist that they were following the senate's established rules.

Which raises the question of whether it's the rules themselves that need a fix, or the code of ethics governing senators' behaviour.

For their thoughts on how the upper chamber should move forward, we were joined by:

• Ned Franks is a professor emeritus of political studies from Queens University and an expert on parliamentary government.  
• Antonia Maioni is a professor of Political Science at McGill University.  
• Stephen Azzi worked in the offices of several Members of Parliament in Ottawa in the 1990s. He is now an associate professor at Carleton University in the departments of Political Management. 
   

This segment was produced by The Current's Shannon Higgins, Sujata Berry and Ottawa Network Producer, Tom Jokinen.