Imagine there was a rule in our justice system where a convicted criminal could avoid a jail term by simply refusing to show up at prison. This would no doubt strike most people as a ridiculous loophole.

Yet just such a loophole exists in our Parliament with respect to Senator and MP pensions.

It was exploited by former Liberal Senator Raymond Lavigne, who after filing fraudulent expense claims was convicted of fraud and breach of trust in March 2011.

Had Lavigne been a sitting Senator at the time of his conviction, he would have lost his generous taxpayer-funded pension. However, because Lavigne resigned his Senate seat right before being convicted, he has continued to collect his annual pension of more than $79,000, much to the outrage of many Canadians.

To try to fix this, in 2013 New Brunswick MP John Williamson introduced a private members bill, C-518, the Protecting Taxpayers from Convicted Politicians Act, which would strip the taxpayer-funded pension from politicians convicted of certain crimes, regardless of when or if they resign.

In its original form, C-518 was quite broad. Based on a similar law enacted in Nova Scotia, the bill would have applied to any crime that carried a maximum two year jail term.

But as it proceeded through the Commons, the bill was watered down. Some MPs objected to the notion they could lose their pension for a crime completely unrelated to their political duties, such as reckless driving. So ultimately it became a list of 24 specific offences – things like fraud, bribery and breach of trust.

In February of this year, the bill was finally passed in the Commons by an overwhelming majority of 257 to 13. In a Parliament where the partisan divide is particularly striking, the near-unanimous level of support across all the major parties was evidence of a rare cross-party consensus.

Then earlier this week, the Senate effectively killed it. Right before leaving town for summer vacation.

Senators don’t see it that way, of course. They have a ready-made excuse: they merely introduced some amendments that they think will improve the bill!

But it’s awfully pointless to improve a bill that never becomes law at all. Senators all knew that because amended bills must be sent back to the Commons, which has already risen in advance of a fall election, the effective result would be to kill the bill and protect Senators facing charges. They went ahead and did it anyway.

The timing is most unfortunate for Canadian taxpayers. Former Liberal Senator Mac Harb’s fraud trial begins in August; he is currently collecting an annual parliamentary pension of approximately $122,000.

The Senate’s decision which could be seen as an effort to circle the wagons and protect Harb (and possibly others: recall that the expenses of up to 30 other current and former Senators are being reviewed by the RCMP following the Auditor General’s report) means that he will now be collecting for life, whether he’s convicted of fraud or not.

You would have thought that with public faith in the Senate at all time-low, Senators would have leapt at the opportunity to demonstrate to the public that they’re looking out for our best interests.

But you would be wrong. When faced with a choice between protecting the interests of Canadian taxpayers, and protecting their fellow Senators, the Senate chose the latter.

With any luck, a future government will bring back Bill C-518 and try again. But that’s cold comfort for Canadians in the meantime stuck paying the pensions of politicians who have been convicted of ripping them off.

- Wudrick is the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation