Section 16 (1) of the Parliament of Canada Act states that “no member of the Senate shall receive or agree to receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, for services rendered … in relation to any bill, proceeding, contract, claim, controversy, charge, accusation, arrest or other matter before the Senate or the House of Commons or a committee of either House. Moreover, Section 16 (3) makes “every person who gives, offers or promises to any member of the Senate” such compensation liable to imprisonment for up to one year.
Section 121 (1) of the Criminal Code states that anyone who “gives, offers or agrees to give or offer” to an official or “being an official, demands, accepts or offers or agrees to accept” any “loan, reward, advantage or benefit of any kind” in return for “cooperation, assistance, exercise of influence or an act or omission” in connection with “any matter of business relating to the government,” is guilty of an offence punishable by up to five years in jail.
Translation: paying a Senator under the table, for any reason, under any circumstances, is serious business. But when the recipient is under investigation by a Senate committee, when the purpose of the payment is to relieve him of responsibility for the expenses for which he is at that moment being audited, and when his benefactor is the most senior unelected official in the government, “serious” does not begin to describe it.
It is impossible to believe that Nigel Wright, a man with two law degrees and substantial experience of both politics and business, could have been unaware of the dangers — political and legal, to his party and to himself — involved in such a transaction. Whether in fact it broke any laws, it crosses all sorts of ethical red lines that, as a matter of prudence if nothing else, anyone with any sense would wish to avoid.
Yet, if we are to believe the (latest) story we are being told, in “a moment of weakness,” Wright gave in to Mike Duffy’s pleas — either out of pity for his impoverished state or a desire to spare the taxpayer or both — and wrote him a personal cheque for $90,000. The story, on its own, is preposterous. There is no evidence Duffy was hard up for money, and if he were, there were a dozen other, better, simpler remedies than having Wright pay him out of his own funds.
Moreover, the payment gives every appearance of having been part of a deal: Duffy’s refusal, shortly after, to co-operate with the Senate’s auditors, and the subsequent alteration of the committee’s report to eliminate references to Duffy having violated “very clear” rules with regard to his expenses, were both publicly premised on the notion that having repaid the false claims, he had, as it were, expiated his guilt. Which would be nonsense even if it were true.
This is what has elevated a low-level running scandal into a government-shaking crisis. There are obviously more important issues before the nation than a few senators padding their expenses. But the moment something becomes a big deal is when someone tries to conceal it — whether as a matter of stated policy, as is the case with members’ expenses in both Houses of Parliament, or via clandestine agreements such as we are told was struck between Duffy and Wright: a deal that, on its face, looks a lot like hush money.
Which brings us back to Wright. I’ve said the “innocent” explanation makes no sense. (A “moment of weakness” in February, that lasts into May?) But is the not so innocent explanation any more plausible? Even if his sense of ethics were so lax, is it plausible he would be so stupid? That he would risk his own reputation for Duffy’s? Does anyone believe, assuming the answer is no, that this was all his own work? That from that day until the story broke last week, neither the prime minister nor anyone else in the government knew? Never mind Wright. Are we to believe that Duffy told no one?
Since the scandal surfaced, pundits have been full of advice to the prime minister on how he should “handle” it — as if it were something that had happened to him, and not by him, or at any rate of him. Much of what they recommend would be welcome, if adopted: the prime minister should make a clean breast of it, call an independent inquiry, be more open and transparent, in all transform his government’s approach to politics.
But if there were any likelihood of that, we would not be here. People who have made the kinds of compromises, moral and otherwise, that this government has made over the years; who have learned to justify to themselves the kinds of behaviour that are this government’s signature; whose first instinct in this, as in previous episodes, is not to clap their hands to their faces crying “my God, what have we become?” but to think of every possible way to spin and dissemble their way out of it; who have grown so spectacularly deluded as to publicly suggest, in the words of Calgary Centre MP Joan Crockatt, that the current wave of resignations shows how high their ethical standards are — such people are not capable of altering course in the way suggested. That is not who they are.
So no, Wright’s resignation is not the beginning of the government’s moral reclamation. It is simply the next act in the tragedy.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Andrew Coyne
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