OTTAWA—Canada’s Senate is facing an unprecedented crisis of confidence as a spending controversy deepens, the prime minister mutes his defence of one big spender and details of a Quebec senator’s alleged brutal assault spill into view.

On Tuesday, the images of Senator Dennis Patterson fleeing from a television cameraman best captured the crisis now gripping the upper chamber as Senate leaders struggle to contain the controversy around spending and residency.

Patterson, who represents Nunavut in the Senate, has faced questions that his actual home is in Vancouver. The Constitution requires that Senators reside in the province or territory they represent.

In the Commons, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was drawn into the fray. Harper, perhaps sensing growing public anger on the issue, backed away from his earlier defence of Pamela Wallin, his own Senate appointee facing an outside audit of her travel bills.

The prime minister was mum on a media report that Wallin has repaid the government thousands of dollars in questionable travel expenses. He was pressed by the NDP to provide details on the report that Wallin has moved to address possible problems in her travel costs, which totalled $350,000 in the past two years.

“There has not been one word yet, formally, from him (Harper) on how much money has been repaid or on which senators are currently under investigation,” NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said in the Commons.

Harper said the Senate is conducting a wide-ranging probe of expenses but declined to provide details on specific senators.

“We have been very clear, as has the Senate and all senators,” he said, without mentioning Wallin by name.

“They are reviewing all of their expenses to ensure not only that the expenses are appropriate but the rules in the future for governing such expenses are appropriate,” he said.

Those comments are a marked change from a few weeks ago when he offered a staunch defence of Wallin’s spending, saying he had personally reviewed her expense reports and saw nothing wrong.

But on Monday, CTV reported that Wallin had repaid “substantial” funds prior to an audit by Deloitte of her travel expenses that was launched in early January.

Wallin herself declined to confirm Tuesday whether she had repaid any expense cash, saying only that she is assisting the Senate budget committee with their ongoing review.

“I’m committed to making sure that all of my expenses are appropriate,” she said in a statement.

Her Senate colleague Mike Duffy has already pledged to repay living expenses he says he may have improperly collected since he was named to the Senate in 2008.

On the very day that senators were on the defensive, disturbing new details were revealed about the alleged crime that prompted Senator Patrick Brazeau to be tossed from the Conservative caucus and put on leave from the Senate.

Brazeau has pleaded not guilty to charges of assault and sexual assault. A police search warrant provided more details into his Feb. 7 arrest, alleging he spit in the face of the victim, punched her arm and pushed her down the stairs hard enough to break a railing.

Taken together, University of Toronto professor and historian Michael Bliss said it adds up to make for the most serious crisis faced by the Senate in recent memory.

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“Every day that this goes on the reputation of the place gets worse and worse,” Bliss told CTV’s Power Play Tuesday.

“This is a classic case of Canadians discovering that senators have no clothes . . . They’ve turned themselves into our daily comic relief segment of politics,” Bliss said.

Under the glare of publicity, Senate behaviour deemed acceptable a year or even a few months ago is “now being deemed unacceptable.

“I think that’s entirely a good thing,” Bliss said.

Liberal Senate Leader James Cowan insisted Tuesday that the Senate is capable of policing itself, saying that senators who improperly claim expenses could face sanctions.

“The auditors were appropriately called in to deal with these issues and the reports will be made public and if there is further action that is required . . . that action will be taken,” Cowan told reporters Tuesday.

“If there are issues with individuals and those individuals have done something wrong, then they should pay the consequences.”

Senator Marjory LeBreton, the Conservative leader in the upper chamber, pleaded for time to let ongoing expense probes run their course.

“Please let the process work. We committed to the process. We committed to make it public,” she told reporters.

But NDP MP Charlie Angus said the Senate is keeping Canadians in the dark, noting that while Duffy has offered to repay his living expenses, the Senate is refusing to say how much he may have improperly collected.

“Senators are telling taxpayers it is none of their damned business what Mike Duffy took,” he said in the Commons.

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