We should care which home is primary for Senators, Barbara Yaffe.

Yaffe thinks  "The rotund parliamentarian (Duffy) is being splattered, unfairly, by all the tomatoes now being tossed at the Senate."

Her reasoning misses the point as to why we want Senators representing regions across Canada and why primary residency must be a reality, not a technicality based on property ownership.

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But surely the significant point here is that Duffy is obliged to maintain two residences because of his Senate job. Who cares which one is primary and which is secondary?

I care. Yaffee should care. All Canadians should care. Senators are supposed to be appointed from all regions of Canada because there are many regional differences in issues, concerns, priorities. No one who looks from the outside can grasp this as well as someone who has, for a significant amount of time, been personally exposed to a region’s issues and has personally had to deal with them. It is equally important that such a person be currently exposed on a personal level to that area’s particular nature.

Another important reason a Senator should be an actual resident involved in a specific region’s issues is that when people want to contact a Senator concerning regional issues, they can be assured that the Senator contacted has a true understanding of those issues and will consider the problem from a regional perspective, not just a national one.

I wonder if Yaffee knows her argument is weak because she tries to defend Duffy by a very transparent fallacy of logic, one which she herself clearly shows she understands is indeed a fallacy. After telling readers that we shouldn’t let our feelings for Brazeau colour our assessment of Duffy since the issues those two Senators are involved in are different, she goes on to defend Duffy by dragging in a red herring of her own:

(At least Duffy lives in Canada; remember senator Andy Thompson, expelled in 1997 for poor attendance because he was living in Mexico?)

After that bit of nonsense, Yaffee tries to drive home her misunderstand that the primary/secondary residency issue is simply to give our poor, cash-strapped Senators a break:

In any event, the housing expense regulations need updating. They should stipulate that senators can be eligible for reimbursement of Ottawa housing costs when they also keep a home — as they must — more than 100 kilometres away in the province they represent.

By that logic, we taxpayers should pay for vacation homes outside the NCR for any Senator who wants to pass off as a technicality the stipulation that a Senator must reside in the region he or she represents. There are more than a couple of Senators, as the history of that Chamber has proven, who will gladly take advantage of tax dollars to quickly pay off a second home while at the same time reducing to an empty gesture regional representation as it was intended through insisting on primary residency when the rules of Senate appointments were passed.

Yaffee’s parting defence of Duffy – more finger pointing:

Brazeau and Harb’s claims are more questionable given they are Ontario senators. Indeed, Brazeau has cited his father’s residence near Ottawa as one of his properties.

No, all claims where there is doubt as to whether or not the Senator is lying about primary residency are equally questionable because all amount to fraudulent claims in order to profit from taxpayers money. You, me, and even Barbara Yaffee would not be absolved of fraud charges by saying “Who cares which one is primary and which is secondary?” if we lied about where we lived to benefit from tax breaks, health care insurance, or false expense claims. Take Duffy as an example, since that is who Yaffee is saying is being “splattered, unfairly.”

By Duffy’s own assertions, he has an Ontario health card because he would prefer to receive the better health care available in that province (wouldn’t we all like to have that choice?), but he claims he is entitled to 30,000.00 plus a year because his real place of residence is P.E.I. That means he’s either committing health care insurance fraud, or he’s defrauding taxpayers over false claims of primary residency.

How can anyone, even Senators themselves, be expected to take the Senate seriously when a simple issue such as the importance of actual primary residency is treated merely as an opportunity to pad Senators’ pay, or worse, to lie their way into a Senate appointment? Who really wants such Senators making decisions that affect the very people they are lying to and stealing from?