Conduct in Stephen Harper’s office is now the subject of a criminal investigation and not even the omnipotent Prime Minister’s Office has the power to control the timing of this latest dark chapter on Parliament Hill.
A police probe of the $90,000 Nigel Wright payment to Mike Duffy fits perfectly with the times in which we live, where the police blotter and politics have merged.
Ontario Provincial Police have launched a criminal investigation into illegally deleted emails by key Liberal political staff serving under former premier Dalton McGuinty, related to the $585-million scandal over cancelled power plants.
Next door in Quebec, the Charbonneau commission continues to hear of the web of corruption that has ensnared politicians, most notably the former mayor of Laval, Gilles Vaillancourt, who has been charged with gangsterism.
And, about an hour before we got confirmation of the RCMP probe here, Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair was peppered with questions by journalists seeking a link between massive drug arrests and Mayor Rob Ford.
Clearly serious matters all, but apparently they all pale in comparison to what the Conservative government in Ottawa feels is the biggest political crime.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair ran a stop sign at a security checkpoint Thursday.
To hear the Conservatives, led by Heritage Minister James Moore, go on the offensive with this nugget in the House of Commons, the conspicuously absent Mulcair had become the star of The Fast and The Furious, a man unfit to lead, a man with no respect for authority, a man who had placed himself above the law, a man with no regard for security or the men and whom who lay their lives on the line to protect democracy.
Conservatives carried Stop Mulcair signs into the Commons.
The Mulcair slow motion police chase next to the finely manicured lawn of the seat of government was captured by a CTV crew because this is Ottawa, the only place in the country where you can depart a hearing on senators ripping off taxpayers, walk out the door and watch a police cruiser trying to pull over the leader of her majesty’s loyal opposition.
This has happened before, of course, only the players have changed.
Three years ago, an impatient Ottawa-area Conservative MP, Pierre Poilievre, darted around a security checkpoint, leading NDP MP Pat Martin to say Poilievre should “be hanging his head in shame. He should throw a bag over his head on Parliament Hill for behaving like that. What an immature, arrogant, presumptuous thing to do.’’
Then-government House leader John Baird had a different take. “Let us focus on the priorities of the people of Canada and not these trivial matters,’’ he said at the time.
No such luck here in 2013.
In recent days the daily question period has been dominated by questions of the $90,000 cheque, Liberal and Conservative senators who have defrauded taxpayers, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s speaking fees, Mulcair’s 17-year-old meeting with Vaillancourt, a New Democrat who owes almost $60,000 in back taxes, a Conservative MP accused of billing taxpayers for teeth-whitening strips and two other Conservatives who are challenging an Elections Canada edict that they should be suspended from the Commons for election overspending.
Clearly, there are gradients of misconduct and improper behaviour on the Hill.
An RCMP investigation of the prime minister’s former chief of staff in gifting a disgraced senator $90,000 to pay back taxpayers tops anyone’s list.
Liberal Senator Mac Harb has been given 30 days to repay $231,649 in living expenses and mileage — or face an audit that goes back even further and will cost him even more.
Former Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau has also been given 30 days to repay $51,482 and former Conservative Senator Pam Wallin, who has already repaid some $38,000, is still being audited.
We can expect to know more about Wallin’s expenses by August.
Mulcair is probably guilty of arrogance and a lack of judgment, although his office is characterizing it as a “misunderstanding.”
That and the rest is largely fodder for some of the sorriest spectacles in this or any Parliament in recent memory, a sorry game of ethical charges and countercharges in which mud is merely being tossed from one side of the Commons then back again.
It’s hard to watch. No one should wonder why most Canadians don’t.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Tim Harper
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