Article content continued

Buth and she quickly worked out that the same system would work for them, Cicchini said, and used the pre-signed forms too, until, at last, two years ago, the Senate brought in an electronic form that, O the madness!, could not be signed off on in advance and in bulk.

But in the contest between an underling paid a maximum of $70,000 versus a senator who earns easily twice that (plus, of course, his or her various entitlements, such as business-class flights as he or she swans about the land, and a whopping office budget), between an actual worker with no job security (EAs get the job at a senator’s discretion and get three weeks’ notice if fired) versus an appointed partisan hack with all sorts of clout, who do you imagine holds the power?

Is an EA going to bring up with the boss the ethically tricky matter of pre-signing some expense accounts or is it far, far more likely that the notion comes from the senator and the EA, being a good soldier, merely adopts it?

Besides, even if there was a cabal of wicked, expense-account-fiddling EAs running Parliament Hill and coming up with cunning ways to screw the taxpayer to no personal benefit to them, let us not forget that it’s the senators who have to sign the bleeding forms, who “certify” that all the expenses they’re claiming are legit, and who thus arguably commit a fraud every single time they sign a blank form in advance.

In other words, if the lawyers are going to pursue this matter any further, God help us, then let them call to the witness stand Meighen and Buth and all senators and MPs for whom Diane Scharf used to work.

S—t rolls downhill, as they say in the army, and all of us know it.

But in the matter of blame-assignment, perhaps the trial should hear from some of those at the top of the Hill, too.

National Post

cblatchford@postmedia.com | Twitter: blatchkiki