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rfmcdonaldThe Globe and Mail's Clark Campbell wrote at length yesterday about the implication of Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth's passing statement about cold Camembert, for the Senate and for the Conservative government.
“Well, those breakfasts are pretty awful,” she told reporters. “If you want ice cold Camembert with broken crackers, have it.”
Broken crackers! Imagine! At a time when Stephen Harper’s government is hunkering down for a potential drip-drip-drip of revelations from Mike Duffy’s trial, this comment, be assured, was not among the PMO-approved talking points for Conservative senators.
Somehow, Senator Nancy Ruth accidentally summed up the Senate expenses scandal quite neatly: the problem, she seemed to be suggesting, is that the rigid rules don’t allow for senators to live in the style to which they’ve become entitled.
If that’s a little unfair to the senator (more on that later), her comments are undeniably off-message. It’s another drip from the leaky spigot of embarrassments that is the Senate, and it is Mr. Harper who will probably pay for the damage.
The cold Camembert has been served just before the trial of Mr. Duffy, the former Conservative who faces 31 charges and has been accused not only of claiming a second-house allowance for the Ottawa home where he’d live before his appointment, but also meal reimbursements for food he whipped up in the kitchen.
There’s Patrick Brazeau, the suspended senator on trial right now for sexual assault, who was suspended for alleged expense abuses. And Pamela Wallin, who is alleged in new court filings to have filed more than $25,000 in fraudulent expense claims. (Ms. Wallin has not yet been charged and the allegations haven’t been tested in court.)
Of course, there are many other senators now under the auditor-general’s scrutiny, many of them Liberals. One of those facing charges, former senator Mac Harb, is a Liberal, too. The Tories can hope to spread around the embarrassment.
