She's one of Stephen Harper's closest and longest associates, and one of the few people on Parliament Hill who can walk into his office ANYTIME she wants.
And now Senator Carolyn Stewart-Olsen is promising to pay back wrongly claimed expenses?
A Conservative senator with close ties to Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pledging to return money she says she should not have claimed as living expenses while she owned property in Ottawa.
Records show that Stewart Olsen claimed $63,594 in travel and living allowances during her first 19 months in the Senate. It is unclear how much she claimed in living costs because specific breakdowns were not made public until September 2010.
Living expenses reviewed by The Huffington Post Canada, from September 2010 to May 2011, however, suggest Stewart Olsen claimed per diem on days the Senate did not sit, no committee or caucus meetings were held and she had no Senate-related business in Ottawa.
But wait. Now I'm confused eh?
Wasn't she one of the two Senators who was accused of trying to clean-up Mike Duffy's wrongly claimed expenses?
Sources have laid out how Stewart Olsen put forward a motion at the larger, closed-door internal economy committee to remove some of the most pointed language in its report on Duffy. The Liberals did not support that final report.
Oh no. The poor thing. No wonder she was so conflicted.
"It was pretty obvious there were politics involved, but you're making decisions on (a senator's) life, so you have to be very careful," she said in response to a question about political discussions with PMO. "I can't remember specific instances, but I'm sure if somebody said anything to me, I would say, yeah, it's not really much fun to sit in judgment of the people you work with."
And having to conceal that horrible scandal from her close confidant and buddy Stephen Harper must have torn her apart eh?
Gawd. What bad timing. As if Great Transparency Leader didn't have enough to worry about.
Conservative Senator Leo Housakos solicited tens of thousands of dollars' worth of questionable construction industry donations for a Quebec provincial party immediately prior to his appointment to the upper house in 2008, according to one of the star witnesses at the Quebec inquiry into municipal and provincial corruption.
Lino Zambito, a construction company owner who was one of the first to tell Quebec's Charbonneau commission about the elaborate kickback schemes set up between municipal and provincial politicians, engineers and construction bosses, now tells CBC News that he also gave money to Leo Housakos, who, Zambito says, approached him for a $30,000 political donation in the fall of 2008.
Because his judgement is already being questioned, for many good reasons.
And trust me, the LAST person he needs to get dragged into the Senate scandal is Lino Zambito...
"They all say 'Ah us, we took cheques, they're legal,'" said Zambito, adding he believes fundraisers were well aware of the system: "No one's going to make me believe they didn't know what was happening."
"It's scratch my back, I'll scratch yours," Zambito said.
Because he knows how the political system works eh? And he's telling it ALL to the Charbonneau commission.
Oh well, I give up. This Senate scandal is just too complicated. I've got
So I'm just going to have to be patient and hope that the police can explain it to me...slowly.
So I can enjoy every last moment.
In the meantime, if you don't mind, I'm going to go for a long bike ride. Enjoy the clean fresh air.
While blasting this song in my ears...
OK...OK...I know I keep playing the same song over and over again.
But I just can help it eh?
The impending fall of the Con regime IS something to celebrate.
Woohoo !!!!
And this Senate scandal can only get
Click here to recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers.
A collaborator of harpo's doing something unethical or illegal?
ReplyDeletePERISH THE THOUGHT!!!!
Olsen, Wallin, Duffy, Brazeau, Boisvenu, Carson, Porter, Jacobson .... they are all symptoms of the disease known as Harperitis. Sure you can treat the symptoms (send them all to jail) but you have to treat the root cause. As you would expect, the root cause of Harperitis is Harper. You need to make Harper pay back the salaries, benefits and expenses of all these people he foisted on us, then lock him away in jail and throw away the key. Question is will Mulcair and Trudeau work together to accomplish this ?
ReplyDeleteIt seems as though every day we are finding out about even more ways that the taxpayer has been funding the various “expanded roles in the party” that Harper & Associates has designed to foster its continuing success while enhancing the simple comforts of its loyal staff members and aspiring young and old novitiates.
ReplyDeleteIt is no surprise to me that there are more "interesting events" for the slimers. Harper's judgement isn't all that great. How do we know? Just look at his appointments to the senate. In his hurry to control government, he didn't do his work and choose people who certainly have questionable ethics.
ReplyDeleteMost likely what will become his undoing is not his policies or how he governed, but the senators who he appointed. Turner got burned over Trudeau sr.'s appointments prior to leaving office. Now the cons will be burned by the federal liberals and/or the NDP come time for a debate. This will be entertaining.