{"id":74133,"date":"2017-03-12T08:05:32","date_gmt":"2017-03-12T08:05:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/sharon-carstairs-loses-appeal-to-have-80k-legal-fees-covered-by-senate.html"},"modified":"2017-03-12T08:05:32","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T08:05:32","slug":"sharon-carstairs-loses-appeal-to-have-80k-legal-fees-covered-by-senate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/sharon-carstairs-loses-appeal-to-have-80k-legal-fees-covered-by-senate.html","title":{"rendered":"Sharon Carstairs loses appeal to have $80K legal fees covered by Senate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A former Manitoba senator will have to pay her own legal fees after a Senate committee denied her appeal for reimbursement.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"><strong>Sharon Carstairs asks Senate to reimburse legal fees after expenses scandal<\/strong><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sharon Carstairs said she racked up\u00a0$82,023.10\u00a0in legal fees after getting caught up in the senate scandal<\/p>\n<p> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/RSSPoster_PRO\/cache\/de1b6_sharon-carstairs.jpg\" alt=\"Sharon Carstairs\" width=\"100%\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure-caption\">Retired Manitoba Liberal senator Sharon Carstairs wanted to be paid back for over $80,000 in legal fees she incurred after being caught up in the Senate expenses scandal. (CBC News)<\/p>\n<p>Carstairs made her appeal\u00a0March 2 to the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration. The committee, which is chaired by Senator\u00a0Leo Hausakos,\u00a0reserved its decision for March 9.<\/p>\n<p>The 18-member committee discussed the appeal for 16 minutes on Thursday with only\u00a0rookie, independent senator\u00a0Frances\u00a0Lankin\u00a0asking\u00a0questions about the process.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, the committee decided to uphold the previous decision not to reimburse Carstairs for more than $80,000\u00a0in legal fees.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>CBC News reached out to Carstairs, but she was not immediately available for comment.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Auditor: Not enough time spent in\u00a0Manitoba<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>In June 2015, Auditor General Michael Ferguson reported Carstairs made $7,528 in ineligible expense claims for her secondary residence and travel she took after she retired in 2011.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p>The audit stated that Carstairs didn&#8217;t spend enough time in Manitoba to make secondary residence expense claims, which Carstairs has always disputed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Carstairs\u00a0said there were no rules for the number of days a senator needed to spend in their home province in order to make expense claims. She also maintained that her post-retirement claims were legitimate in order to finish up Senate business and close her Winnipeg office.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\">Former Manitoba senators Sharon Carstairs and Rod Zimmer under scrutiny<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\">Sharon Carstairs, Terry Stratton, Don Plett to fight senate expense woes<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\">Sharon Carstairs retiring from Senate<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Carstairs refused to pay the money back or take part in binding arbitration with former Supreme Court justice Ian Binnie.<\/p>\n<p>The Senate referred Carstairs&#8217;\u00a0file, along with eight others, to the RCMP in 2015. The RCMP announced it would not pursue criminal charges against Carstairs last August.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p \/>\n<p>Article source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/sharon-carstairs-loses-appeal-to-have-80k-legal-fees-covered-by-senate-1.4019867?cmp=rss<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A former Manitoba senator will have to pay her own legal fees after a Senate committee denied her appeal for reimbursement. Sharon Carstairs asks Senate to reimburse legal fees after expenses scandal Sharon Carstairs said she racked up\u00a0$82,023.10\u00a0in legal fees after getting caught up in the senate scandal Retired Manitoba Liberal senator Sharon Carstairs wanted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74134,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-74133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}