Since 1993, Raymond Lavigne has lived on the public payroll as a representative of the Canadian people, first as a Liberal MP and then as a senator.
Still, his $132,000 annual salary wasn’t enough for him in recent years, as he engaged in a fraudulent scheme to obtain at least $10,000 in undeserved travel reimbursements and hundreds of hours of free labour to clean up one of his properties.
Mr. Justice Robert Smith of the Ontario Superior Court pronounced two guilty verdicts on charges of fraud and breach of trust on Friday, saying that Mr. Lavigne’s behaviour “constituted a severe and marked departure from the standard expected of a senator.”
The RCMP investigator who built the case against Mr. Lavigne added that the verdict makes it clear that no one is above the law, including legislators.
“Every public officeholder has to be held accountable to a higher standard than the normal population,” Superintendent Stéphane Bonin told reporters.
Still, the controversy surrounding Mr. Lavigne is far from over. The Senate did suspend his travel and research budget, but it has yet to take any action in relation to his salary, which he has drawn during the trial.
The Senate will either revisit the matter when it comes back from a weeklong break on March 21, or after Mr. Lavigne is sentenced in May. Any move to throw Mr. Lavigne out of the Red Chamber is only expected to come after he exhausts all avenues to appeal his conviction.
Judge Smith meticulously laid out the two guilty verdicts, as well as an acquittal on a charge of obstruction of justice, in an 18-page document that he read out for more than one hour in an Ottawa courtroom.
He invoked “basic common sense” as he ruled that Mr. Lavigne had to be aware that he falsely claimed $10,120.50 in mileage for car trips made by two of his staffers. At most, Mr. Lavigne gave back a quarter of the reimbursement that he obtained to one of his employees, and nothing to the other.
Regarding the fact that Mr. Lavigne sent Senate staff to work on his land, Judge Smith said that Mr. Lavigne used parliamentary resources “for a purpose other than the public good.”
Mr. Lavigne faces a maximum sentence of 14 years in relation to his conviction. He did not comment as he walked out of the courtroom with his wife and a retired senator. His lawyer, Dominic St-Laurent, said he will look at the possibility of appealing the verdict.
A former Liberal MP who was appointed to the Senate by Jean Chrétien in 2002, Mr. Lavigne has few friends left in Parliament, where he will likely face an uphill battle if he fights to keep his seat.
“It’s good news for Canadians,” NDP MP Pat Martin said of the guilty verdicts. “Now I hope the Senate goes the next step and drop-kicks him out.”
Mr. Lavigne’s conviction is a rare occurrence in Parliament. In 2000, Michel Cogger quit the Senate after an influence-peddling conviction, for which he received an absolute discharge.
In the late 1980s, Saskatchewan Senator Hazen Argue faced criminal charges in relation to the use of his office budget, although the charges were dropped when it was clear he was terminally ill.
The case of Mr. Lavigne started in July, 2005, when his research assistant at the time, Daniel Côté, started cutting trees on the property belonging to Mr. Lavigne’s neighbour in Wakefield, Que.
Testifying at Mr. Lavigne’s trial in 2009, Geoffrey Faulkner said he heard “chain-sawing going on quite close to my property,” and decided to look into the matter. Mr. Faulkner said he quickly sent a complaint to the government.
“I decided to write to the Prime Minister and the Senate with regards to the unusual events, in particular to ask whether a staff member of Senator Lavigne was working on his land, cutting down my trees, on a working day?” Mr. Faulkner testified.
The letter led to a probe by the Senate, and another by the RCMP, which grew to include Mr. Lavigne’s travel claims. The police force laid its charges in 2007, after which Mr. Lavigne was thrown out of the Liberal caucus and suspended from legislative duties.
