Mac Harb

Friday July 15, 2016

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator Ð Friday July 15, 2016 Someone must be held accountable for spending accusations: Brazeau Spending in the upper chamber still needs to be cleaned up, Sen. Patrick Brazeau said Thursday as he promised to push for more changes when he makes his triumphant return to the Senate in the fall. Brazeau said someone has to be held accountable for the fact that he has spent the last three years of his life under what he describes as false allegations of misspending and wrongdoing. Brazeau summoned the media to his Ottawa office Thursday and spoke out publicly at a news conference for the first time since his long, difficult legal saga began more than three years ago. Brazeau has long insisted he did nothing wrong when he filed housing claims for a secondary home near Parliament Hill, noting he met the test the Senate now uses for verifying a primary residence. Independent auditors from Deloitte couldn't conclude he broke any rules because the rules themselves were so vague, he added. But the Senate rejected that finding and ordered Brazeau to repay about $49,000 in housing claims. Months later, in November 2013, Brazeau was suspended without pay in an emotional vote in the upper chamber. Some Conservative senators abstained, believing it unfair to treat Brazeau the same as fellow members Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy. Brazeau said he wants the whole thing to be "water under the bridge," but knows that may be impossible. "What happened in the Senate with me in particular ... was unjust and somebody needs to be held accountable," he said. "And I'm going to work darn hard to make sure that place gets cleaned up, because each time you hear senators saying, 'Oh, well, we changed these rules and we changed those rules' Ñ well, they haven't done enough and I'm going to start working on that right away." The rule changes, a key pressure point in the Senate, are at the heart of a dispute between one senator and the

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday July 15, 2016

Someone must be held accountable for spending accusations: Brazeau

Spending in the upper chamber still needs to be cleaned up, Sen. Patrick Brazeau said Thursday as he promised to push for more changes when he makes his triumphant return to the Senate in the fall.

Brazeau said someone has to be held accountable for the fact that he has spent the last three years of his life under what he describes as false allegations of misspending and wrongdoing.

Brazeau summoned the media to his Ottawa office Thursday and spoke out publicly at a news conference for the first time since his long, difficult legal saga began more than three years ago.

Brazeau has long insisted he did nothing wrong when he filed housing claims for a secondary home near Parliament Hill, noting he met the test the Senate now uses for verifying a primary residence.

Independent auditors from Deloitte couldn’t conclude he broke any rules because the rules themselves were so vague, he added. But the Senate rejected that finding and ordered Brazeau to repay about $49,000 in housing claims.

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Months later, in November 2013, Brazeau was suspended without pay in an emotional vote in the upper chamber. Some Conservative senators abstained, believing it unfair to treat Brazeau the same as fellow members Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy.

Brazeau said he wants the whole thing to be “water under the bridge,” but knows that may be impossible.

“What happened in the Senate with me in particular … was unjust and somebody needs to be held accountable,” he said.

“And I’m going to work darn hard to make sure that place gets cleaned up, because each time you hear senators saying, ‘Oh, well, we changed these rules and we changed those rules’ — well, they haven’t done enough and I’m going to start working on that right away.”

The rule changes, a key pressure point in the Senate, are at the heart of a dispute between one senator and the Senate committee that oversees spending. The committee has threatened to cut off Sen. John Wallace’s expense privileges if he doesn’t sign a declaration saying he is in compliance with Senate rules.(Source: Metro)

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Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Patrick Brazeau, Mac Harb charged by RCMP

Suspended Senator Patrick Brazeau and retired senator Mac Harb have been formally charged by the RCMP with one count each of fraud and breach of trust related to inappropriate Senate expense claims.

RCMP Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud announced the charges at a news conference at about 11:10 am ET Tuesday.

“The RCMP has proceeded to charge Mr. Brazeau and Mr. Harb with one count each of breach of trust and fraud under sections 122 and 380 of the Criminal Code, ” Michaud said. “Both  Mr. Brazeau and Mr. Harb will be appearing in court at a later date.”

The Mounties allege Brazeau and Harb defrauded taxpayers by claiming travel and living expenses to which they were not entitled.

Brazeau was suspended from the Senate in October along with onetime fellow Conservative Senators Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin. The three former Conservatives were suspended without pay following an outside audit of their expenses.

Harb, who was a Liberal senator until his spending came under scrutiny through an external audit, retired in August after paying back $231,000.

Both Brazeau and Harb, along with Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin, were subject to a lengthy Senate investigation of their expenses claims and living allowances.

A Senate committee determined each of the four had claimed tens of thousands of dollars in expenses that they were not entitled to.
The Senate then passed its files to the RCMP.

The charges expected Tuesday against Brazeau and Harb are the first to flow from the RCMP’s own lengthy investigation of the spending scandal, underway since May 2013. (Source: CBC News)

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Thursday, October 17, 2013

Thursday, October 17, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, October 17, 2013

Government wants to force providers to unbundle TV packages

The government’s plan to force content providers and distributors to unbundle cable and satellite TV packages and offer viewers a more à la carte way of choosing the channels they subscribe to might seem like a consumer-friendly move, but some experts say it could end up hurting consumers and the TV industry.

“It’s a horrible idea,” said Laura Martin, a senior analyst in the entertainment, cable and media division of the U.S.-based investment and asset management firm Needham and Company
Martin and her colleague Dan Medina wrote about the potential impact of the unbundling of television services in the U.S. in a July 2013 report titled The Future of TV. They  suggest in the report that unbundling would cost content owners and distributors about half their revenue and shrink the channel offerings available to U.S. consumers to “fewer than 20 channels.”

“Most entertainment cable channels generate about 50 per cent of their revenue from advertising and 50 per cent from subscription payments,” they write. “The reason there are subscriber payments at all is that there is zero ad revenue until a channel reaches at least 25 million homes. Any channel with less than a 25 per cent penetration of U.S. households (and recall that HBO — the best of  the best — only has 30 per cent penetration) would probably not survive in an à la carte world.” (Source: CBC News)

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Monday, August 19, 2013

Monday, August 19, 2013

The Hamilton Spectator – Monday, August 19, 2013

Endangered Species Not at Immediate Risk

A tree-dwelling animal with a teddy-bear-like face and rust-coloured fur has become the newest mammal species discovered by scientists.

The olinguito, the smallest known member of the raccoon family, lives in the cloud forests high in the Andes Mountains of Colombia and Ecuador, reported a team of scientists from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., which described it in the journal ZooKeys Thursday.

The animal has actually been displayed in museums and zoos over the past 100 years, but was mistakenly identified as a different, known species among its close relatives, the olingo.

“It’s been kind of hiding in plain sight for a long time,” Kristofer Helgen, curator of mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and lead author of the new report, told The Associated Press. (Source.)

Meanwhile, scandals involving Sens. Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy, Mac Harb and Pamela Wallin have cast a pall over the entire Senate and politicians in general.

Senators who have lived within the rules and shown respect for the public purse deserve to have their names cleared.

As it stands, cynics regard them all as scallywags enjoying a free ride on the public’s dime, while contributing little value to the Canadian body politic. (Source: Winnipeg Free Press)

FEEDBACK

This cartoon was featured in a gallery of Editorial Cartoons and attracted quite a number of comments on Yahoo! Canada News for August 2013. Here it is on Yahoo News’ Facebook page.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Friday, May 10, 2013By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, May 10, 2013

A weak Senate response to its expense scandal

Any Canadian hoping to see serious reforms or criminal charges in the wake of the Senate’s housing and expense scandal is sure to be disappointed by the Red Chamber’s tepid response.
The Senate’s standing committee on internal economy Thursday recommended no further penalty, beyond returning the money they took, for three senators who had made inappropriate housing allowance claims. The committee also recommended dispensing with the traditional honour system in handling accounts.

All told, this is the absolute minimum the Senate could do to salvage some shred of integrity. If Senators think this bit of contrition is enough they still haven’t got the message. This will only fuel demands for a fuller, more transparent public accounting of what they do with our money.

“The credibility of the Senate has been attacked and has been diminished,” said Liberal Senate Leader James Cowan, following the committee’s report. “None of this is good news.”

The committee reviewed detailed reports from the consultant Deloitte showing senators Patrick Brazeau, Mike Duffy and Mac Harb had each claimed thousands of dollars in public money to support secondary homes in Ottawa because their primary residence was supposedly more than 100 kilometres from Parliament Hill.

In fact, Harb and Duffy lived in Ottawa while Brazeau resided in nearby Gatineau. With exquisite precision, citing evidence such as cellphone records, the consultant found Brazeau spent only a fraction of his time at his supposed residence, in far away Maniwaki, Que. Likewise for Duffy’s stay at the Prince Edward Island home he claimed as his primary residence and Harb’s supposed home in Westmeath, more than 100 km northwest of Ottawa. (Source: Toronto Star)