Alberta Sen. Daryl Fridhandler is declining to explain why he accepted a directorship with a federally funded beer vending company while continuing to collect his $184,800-a-year Senate salary.Fridhandler, a longtime Liberal organizer appointed to the Senate last August, disclosed in an ethics filing that he joined the board of Dispension Industries Inc. of Dartmouth, N.S., a maker of automated beer vending machines.Blacklock's Reporter says the company’s website identifies him as a “corporate lawyer, Senator, Government of Canada.”Neither Fridhandler nor his office would say how much he is being paid for the role or whether he would recuse himself from votes on federal funding for agencies that have supported the company. .Since 2020, Dispension Industries has received $1,833,858 in federal grants from the Department of Industry, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and the National Research Council.One subsidy included $139,941 in 2022 for a “pilot project at Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles during the 2022 Major League Baseball All Star Game and Home Run Derby.”Federal records say the funding was meant to help Dispension improve its technology to a commercial-ready state.Fridhandler, who previously worked as a partner at Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer LLP in Calgary, has donated $119,959 to Liberal parties at the federal and provincial level..He also co-chaired Alberta campaigns for former Liberal leaders Paul Martin and Michael Ignatieff. At the time of his Senate appointment, the Prime Minister’s Office called him a “businessman with over 40 years of legal experience.”Senate rules do not prevent members from sitting on corporate boards or holding investments, as long as the Ethics Office is informed. Several other Liberal appointees have reported lucrative private-sector ties during their time in office.Among them, former Ontario senator Sarabjit Marwah declined to say in 2022 whether he kept an office at Scotiabank or used a company email address after his Senate appointment.Marwah had worked at the bank’s Toronto headquarters for 35 years. In 2019, ex-Québec senator André Pratte resigned after it was revealed he maintained an office at Power Corporation and discussed federal business with executives.“It saddens me,” Pratte wrote at the time.
