Heather Latter
Northwestern Ontario’s lone senator supported last week’s motion to suspend fellow senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin, and Patrick Brazeau.
“I felt we treated them fairly,” Lynn Beyak said Saturday from her home in Dryden.
“We have the disciplinary function as a senate, within our own parliamentary rules and the Constitution, to discipline our own,” she explained.
“It’s not about the courts or due process—they’ll have all that in the courts.
“But if we find misuse of tax dollars, we have that ability and we took it,” Beyak added.
“It was clear to us that they hadn’t used taxpayers dollars wisely and that’s what the motion said.”
Beyak, who was appointed to the upper chamber by Prime Minister Stephen Harper earlier this year, said she voted in favour of the suspensions because it was the right thing to do.
She stressed that gross negligence with taxpayers’ dollars is a serious issue and that by claiming an expense they had not incurred, the trio was robbing the taxpayer.
Beyak added she would have preferred that her colleagues’ benefits also were stripped, but ultimately supported the motion with their health benefits included.
Still, she admitted it was difficult having to disciple one of her own.
“We all have compassion at heart and you want to think the best of people,” she remarked.
“But when the evidence is right in front of you, it’s difficult to do that.”
Beyak also is in favour of reforming the Senate.
“Personally I hope we keep it,” she said, noting she belonged to the Reform Party with Preston Manning, which lobbied for a “Triple E” Senate—effective, equal, and elected.
“Elected, [though] not the way we elect MPs. I don’t see that as a good idea,” Beyak explained.
“But Alberta has had a process for a couple of decades where they put in almost a pool of people—journalists, nurses, lawyers, doctors—anyone can apply, run for office, and if they win, their name goes into a pool.
“And Stephen Harper has [named] three of them from that pool,” she noted.
“So there’s no reason each province couldn’t find their own way to put forth names, let the people elect, and then it doesn’t matter if they are Liberal, Conservative, NDP—the people have spoken.”
Beyak also cited the Senate Reform Act, which Prime Minister Harper has put before the Supreme Court in an effort to make the upper chamber more democratic, accountable, and representative of Canadians.
She noted it calls for nine-year terms and elections.
“And I think that would go a long way to reform it [the Senate],” she remarked.
“Abolishing it a few years before the 150th anniversary of Confederation I feel is opening up a huge national, nasty debate where Quebec will always want to defend its interests—and it should,” Beyak said.
“When Confederation happened, it was Quebec and Ontario, and the Senate was created with that equality and that voice to the region,” she explained.
“And we have that still through the Senate. We do veto bills from time to time; send [those] back to the House that aren’t good for our region.”
Beyak cited, for instance, something that may work in Nova Scotia but wouldn’t be good for Northwestern Ontario.
“I believe it [the Senate] has a purpose but it definitely needs an overhaul,” she stressed.
“There’s a lot of things we could do differently and better, and I think there’s a majority of senators that feel that way.”
