Maclean’s Guide to the Senate Scandal: Now with late-evening tweeting via @TheBrazman

News, features, transcripts, timelines, audio, recaps and so on

October 25, 2013

The Senate expenses scandal has taken its toll on some of Parliament Hill’s former celebrities. We’ve spent months chronicling the misadventures of famous names like Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin, whose stars have fallen in the wake of embarrassing audits into their travel bills and living expenses.

As we head into a new week, Sen. Patrick Brazeau appears ready to take on the Senate — at least to judge by a sample of tweets from his Twitter account on Sunday evening:
[tweet id="397188675597254656" url="https://twitter.com/TheBrazman/statuses/397188675597254656"]
[tweet id="397194810425344000" url="https://twitter.com/TheBrazman/statuses/397194810425344000"]
[tweet id="397200957823795203" url="https://twitter.com/TheBrazman/statuses/397200957823795203"]
Needless to say, we’ll be watching.

Maclean’s published two must-read profiles of Wallin and Duffy. We looked at their high-flying, partisan lives in the Red Chamber. We also trace the Prime Minister’s involvement in the ongoing scandal, and muse about the future of the institution. For good measure, Scott Feschuk lampoons Senate expense forms.

Before we get to that, here are the latest headlines:

And here is everything you need to know about an extraordinary couple of weeks in Canadian politics:

Jonathan Vance pleads guilty, gets conditional discharge

Politics Insider for Mar. 31: Beverly McLachlin keeps her Hong Kong job; CPC MPs land in hot water over Trudeau comments; Doug Ford moves to keep his mandate letters secret

Pope Francis apologizes for residential school abuses

Politics Insider for April 1: First Nations delegates make progress at the Vatican; Trudeau pushes for a G19; and a Wildrose battle

Click the photos below for more from our Senate file.

MIKE DUFFY: KING OF THE HILLJonathan Gatehouse

PAMELA WALLIN: THE HIGH-FLYING LIFEAnne Kingston

DUFFY AFFAIR: OCT. 25 RECAPAaron Wherry

ON DUFFY’S TRAILManisha Krishnan

WALLIN’S FLIGHTSNick Taylor-Vaisey

HIS OWN WORDS: DUFFY

HER OWN WORDS: WALLIN

HIS OWN WORDS: BRAZEAU

THE SENATE’S FUTUREEmmett Macfarlane

CHAMBER OF SECRETSJohn Geddes and Aaron Wherry

FESCHUK ON THE SENATEScott Feschuk

When the scandal exploded in the House of Commons, we followed the heated exchanges. If you missed it, you can still catch up.

About the Senate scandals

Stephen Harper rarely attends Question Period on Mondays, but Oct. 21, 2013 proved an exception to that general rule. The Prime Minister took questions on the Senate expenses scandal from deputy leaders on the NDP and Liberal benches, and the House warmed up for a string of raucous QPs to follow.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the House, focusing exclusively on the Wright-Duffy affair. On Tuesday, Harper passed off many of those questions to his parliamentary secretary, Paul Calandra. The next day, the PM changed tack, answering just about every question put to him. On Thursday, with Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau on a sojourn to Washington, D.C., Mulcair and Harper spent the better part of thirty minutes going toe-to-toe.

Throughout, Mulcair was fuelled by the testimony of Sen. Mike Duffy and Sen. Pamela Wallin, two former Conservative senators who’ve turned on their old colleagues. Harper was forced to react, bobbing and weaving and mostly sticking to his script. One slip on Thursday caught attention. Harper had formerly said Nigel Wright, his ex-chief of staff, had taken full responsibility for the cheque he gave to Duffy to cover improperly claimed expenses. The PM changed his tune slightly, repeating that Wright had told "very few" people about that decision. No word on how many is a few, and who the few were.

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