The cover-up is the scandal — not the Senate

“The status quo is not acceptable and Canadians want the Senate to change … When distractions arise, as they inevitably will, we will deal with them firmly. The world we are in remains a deeply uncertain place. Canadians need us to protect them.” — Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressing the Conservative caucus Tuesday morning.

Mr. Prime Minister, you have got to be kidding.

Within two months, three senators appointed by Stephen Harper have resigned from the Conservative caucus. At issue are questionable expense claims totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars, double-dipping while campaigning for the Conservative Party, and sexual assault charges.

Harper’s chief of staff, Nigel Wright, quit over a secret personal payout of $90,000 to one of the senators, Mike Duffy. That payout put a stop to Duffy’s audit, preventing investigators from ever learning just how much he wallowed in the public trough.

Harper denies that he knew of the deal before it became public last week. Wright denies that he informed him of it. But Tuesday morning, CTV news reported that the deal was brokered by Benjamin Perrin, Harper’s legal advisor at the time. Perrin has since denied the report.

This isn’t about Senate reform. This isn’t a distraction. This isn’t about protecting anyone — except the people at the heart of this mess, whose resignations the government dragged out over the Victoria Day long weekend, hoping that Canadians would be too busy seeding their lawn or opening their cottages to pay attention.

This is about integrity. This is about transparency. This is about a problem that people in the Prime Minister’s Office tried to bury under a pile of money.

This is, increasingly, about a cover-up.

Governments are not always undone by their mistakes. Quite often, they are undone by attempts to hide them. From the conspiracy of Watergate to the revelations of Quebec’s Charbonneau Commission, politicians fall when it transpires that they have hidden the truth — or even when they simply appear to have turned a blind eye to it.

In his address to caucus, and the public, Harper had an opportunity to show leadership. He could have asked Duffy to resign, not from caucus, but from the Senate itself. He could have called for an independent inquiry into the matter. He could have announced that he was sending another member of cabinet to South America, and staying at home to deal with the mess himself.

Instead, Harper reminded Canadians about the Liberal sponsorship scandal. He listed all the good things the Tories have done to make the government more accountable. He made a plug for Senate reform, played the fear card on the world economy, and employed the kind of big-government language (“protecting Canadians”) that he derided when was head of the National Citizen’s Coalition.

He also reiterated a line from a speech in 2005: “Whoever wants to use a public office for their own benefit should make other plans, or better yet leave this room.” Which raises the question: Why has Duffy not “left the room”, even if it is in another building?

Interestingly, on the same morning, one member of the government did call for Duffy to quit: Heritage Minister James Moore. Another member of cabinet, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources Kellie Leitch, cryptically said “Duffy should do the right thing” — without answering the question of whether he should resign his seat.

Are these comments authorized by the PMO to pacify the base, or signs that the unofficial campaign to eventually replace Harper is accelerating? If the prime minister continues to take Canadians and his own MPs for fools, Tories may well start looking for a new captain to steer their ship before the 2015 election.

Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Tasha Kheiriddin