Sen. Duffy was forced out of the Conservative Parliamentary caucus after the disclosure last week that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) former chief of staff Nigel Wright, who resigned his own post for his part in the Senate expense scandal, personally gave Sen. Duffy $90,000 to repay all the living and per diem expenses that he had claimed since Mr. Harper named him to the Senate in January, 2009.
The gift, under investigation by federal ethics commissioner Mary Dawson and also under scrutiny by Senate Ethics Officer Lyse Ricard, allowed Sen. Duffy to withdraw from participation in an outside audit of his expense claims, which also covered expense claims by Senator Mac Harb, a Liberal who resigned from his caucus after the audit’s findings, and Senator Patrick Brazeau, another Conservative Senator whose expenses were challenged, but was forced out of his caucus after police charged him with assault and sexual assault after arresting him at a Gatineau, Que., home.
While the Senate has demanded Sen. Brazeau and Sen. Harb to repay thousands of dollars in allegedly ineligible expense claims centering on claims of primary residences more than 100 kilometres from Parliament Hill, the $90,000 gift from Mr. Wright, in the form of a cheque from his personal bank account, it allowed Sen. Duffy to evade any kind of judgment or questioning by the independent Deloitte audit by repaying all of his expenses before the audit was complete.
Senate Government Leader Senator Marjory LeBreton went so far as to praise Sen. Duffy and exclude him from any fallout over the Deloitte findings.
But among the facts the Deloitte audit included were dates during the 2011 federal election campaign, which indicated Sen. Duffy may have claimed per diem expenses from the Senate while he was also paid expenses by nine Conservative candidates he stumped for or helped out with fundraising during the March 25 to May 2 campaign.
Conservative MP Scott Armstrong (Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, N.S,), one of the nine candidates, told The Hill Times on Tuesday that Mr. Duffy appeared at two campaign events in his electoral district as part of a “secondary tour” of prominent Conservatives who lent support to candidates while Mr. Harper and his national campaign were visiting other areas.
Mr. Armstrong described Mr. Duffy’s campaign appearances in an interview following a caucus meeting on Tuesday that was briefly open to the news media when Mr. Harper delivered a speech that indirectly criticized Senator Duffy and in which he also, without naming him, said he was also “upset” with Mr. Wright’s $90,000 gift to Sen. Duffy. Mr. Wright last week said Mr. Harper had been unaware of the “means” by which Sen. Duffy was able to pay off his expenses.
Mr. Armstrong said although he had asked Sen. Duffy—a legendary figure in Atlantic Canada—to come to his riding, it was the Conservative Party that organized the visit.
“We have a secondary tour, and he was coming through as part of a secondary tour,” Mr. Armstrong said, adding that Sen. Duffy had been friends with a former Progressive Conservative MP who represented the district when Sen. Duffy was beginning his career as a broadcast journalist.
“I had talked to him before the election about coming to visit,” Mr. Armstrong said. “The party was helping to arrange a tour for several ridings, I had talked to Mike before about coming to my riding.”
“You have to have the coordination of the campaign, you wouldn’t want to step on somebody else’s message that day, for example, if they were doing some sort of announcement about the platform or something else,” Mr. Armstrong said.
Mr. Armstrong said that under federal election law, he and the other Conservative candidates who Sen. Duffy helped had to be scrupulous about paying Sen. Duffy’s expenses, and then reporting the payments to Elections Canada.
Sen. Duffy charged a total of $2,062 in expenses to the nine candidates he helped out, including Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.), who won a bitter election fight against former Liberal Cabinet minister Joe Volpe, who launched complaints with Elections Canada about alleged dirty tricks, including harassing phone calls to Liberal supporters.
“When someone comes and speaks during a period of a writ, Elections Canada has rules that say if you have someone to speak, a senator or a Members of Parliament, or a cabinet minister who is campaigning on your behalf, you have to account for their expenses, that’s an elections Canada rule,” Mr. Armstrong said.
“So when Senator Duffy came to my riding, we had to account for our share of his expenses, that involved, he stayed overnight in my riding, that involved hotel rooms, it involved a couple of meals, that’s where that money came from, he handed us the receipts, we accounted for them in Elections Canada returns, which is Elections Canada rules, we reimbursed those expenses and we claimed that as an Elections Expense,” Mr. Armstrong said.
“When Mike Duffy came to my riding he drove, I can’t remember if drove from P.E.I. but when Mike Duffy came to my riding he rented a car, remember he’s from Atlantic Canada, Quite frankly Mike is close by, he’s had a connection to riding. Mike Duffy and I have been friends for a while, he had been in my riding as a radio broadcaster back when of the previous Members of Parliament, Bob Coates,” said Mr. Armstrong.
Mr. Duffy claimed a cottage in Cavendish, P.E.I., as his primary residence, allowing him to charge up to $22,000 a year in a living allowance for a secondary residence he claimed within 100 kilometres of Parliament Hill, a house in the west end of Ottawa that he and his wife own. Although Mr. Duffy had produced a driver’s licence with a Cavendish address to the Senate audit, he did not have a P.E.I. health care and did not list his P.E.I. address on his income tax returns. The audit was unable to determine where he registered as a federal voter.
Sen. Duffy’s expense claims included $14,565 in per diems for meals and incidentals from April 1, 2011 to March 31, 2012, but the Deloitte report on his case said it was not clear whether the per diem amounts were solely for being on Senate business in Ottawa, or also for Senate business elsewhere, because the information is not included on Senate expense claims.
The Deloitte audit report says auditors, using phone and other records, located Sen. Duffy in Ottawa on Senate business for 201 days between April, 2011, to September, 2012, the period covered by the audit, and in Cavendish, P.E.I., at his declared primary residence for 164 days. The remaining days were a mix of undocumented activity in Ottawa, days before or after Senate sittings, and 42 days either undocumented or unknown.
Eight of the days outside Ottawa or Cavendish in 2011 at unknown locations with activity undocumented were from April 11 to May 11, which includes 20 days of the election campaign.
Elections Canada records show Sen. Duffy invoiced Mr. Armstrong $409.91 for his campaign work in Mr. Armstrong’s electoral district, and invoiced Mr. Oliver $169.45, as part of Sen. Duffy’s travel and expenses for campaigning or fundraising for Mr. Oliver and two other Toronto Conservative candidates—John Carmichael (Don Valley West, Ont.) and Wladyslaw Lizon (Mississauga-East Cooksville, Ont.).
Sen. Duffy also campaigned or raised funds in Nova Scotia for Conservative candidate Gregg Kerr (West Nova, N.S.), unsuccessful Nova Scotia candidate David Morse, who lost to Liberal MP Scott Brison (Kings-Hants, N.S.), and longtime Conservative MP Gerald Keddy (South Shore-St. Margaret’s, N.S.).
Mr. Keddy said Sen. Duffy delivered a speech at a fundraiser for Mr. Keddy’s campaign, but he did not know if the Conservative Party scheduled the appearance.
“I actually have no idea, my manager and official agent would have arranged it and it showed, it looks like $300 or something,” Mr. Keddy told The Hill Times.
Mr. Keddy’s expense report to Elections Canada, reviewed and accepted by the electoral agency, shows Sen. Duffy invoiced his campaign for $303.11.
All nine expense claims by Sen. Duffy were reported under a column headed “miscellaneous, including non-candidate travel.”
Sen. Duffy also campaigned for Conservative candidate in the New Brunswick riding of Miramachi, Tilly O’Neill Gordon, and New Brunswick Conservative MP Rodney Weston (Saint John, N.B.).
Conservative party spokesman Fred DeLorey did not respond to emailed questions about Sen. Duffy’s role in the last federal election campaign.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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