Mike Duffy visited PMO days after housing claims referred to auditors, documents show

OTTAWA — Just days after his housing claims were sent to auditors for review, Sen. Mike Duffy paid a visit to the building that houses the Prime Minister’s Office, which includes the office of Stephen Harper and his then-chief of staff Nigel Wright.

The day after Duffy visited the Langevin Block, two top Conservative senators visited the same room Duffy had been in. One was Sen. David Tkachuk, the chairman of the committee overseeing the audit of Duffy’s expenses; the other was Sen. Irving Gerstein, the head of the Conservative party’s war chest.

Duffy’s almost 50-minute visit to a room in the building on Monday, Feb. 11, came on the heels of a Senate decision Friday Feb. 8 to refer his housing claims to independent auditor Deloitte. Hours after Duffy visited the Langevin Block, party leaders in the Senate released a joint statement saying that any senator found to have broken the upper chamber’s spending rules should repay every cent plus interest.

It was not known who Duffy met with on the Monday. But Tkachuk confirmed that his own visit in the same room — believed to be a meeting room — the next day was with Wright, the top PMO staffer who later resigned after giving Duffy about $90,000 to help him pay back his housing expenses. The RCMP are investigating that transaction.

Tkachuk’s and Gerstein’s Tuesday visits were followed by a brief talk Wednesday between Duffy and the prime minister. That chat, which took place in the Conservative caucus room right after a caucus meeting, saw Duffy unsuccessfully plead his case against having to repay any of his housing claims.

Visitor logs for the Langevin Block, released to Postmedia News using the access-to-information law, add to the timeline of events on the Duffy affair already in the public domain, and show Duffy inside the PMO building in the days before he publicly announced on Feb. 22 that he would repay his improper housing expenses.

These are also the only times that the names of  Tkachuk, then chairman of the Senate’s internal economy committee, and Gerstein, who heads the Conservative Fund of Canada, appear in the February visitor logs for the Langevin building, which is across the street from Parliament Hill. Outside of the two days in February, none of the three men appear as visitors to the Prime Minister’s Office in the visitor logs on any other days from January to April.

A spokesman for Harper said the prime minister “did not participate in any of these meetings.” Carl Vallee declined to say who used that room on Feb. 11 and Feb. 12, nor did he say what occupies the room.

Gerstein has not commented publicly since being named in a RCMP court document alleging he was one of four people who knew about Wright’s plans to pay off Duffy’s expenses. Gerstein did not respond to requests for comment made Tuesday to his Ottawa office. Wright’s lawyer declined comment.

Duffy also declined to comment Tuesday. “It would be inappropriate of me to comment while these matters are being examined by the RCMP,” he said in an email.

Three days before Duffy visited the PMO, Tkachuk’s committee publicly announced that Duffy’s housing expense claims, along with those of senators Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb, had been referred to outside auditors from Deloitte for review. The review ended with Brazeau having his salary clawed back to pay off about $49,000 in wrongful expenses, Harb repaying the Senate about $231,000 and resigning his seat, Duffy being ousted from the Conservative caucus, and the RCMP investigating all three over allegations of breach of trust.

RCMP investigators are also seeing if there are grounds for a criminal investigation of Duffy for a charge of frauds on the government, over allegations that the payment was part of an alleged plan to have the Senate committee go easy on Duffy in its final report, a charge Tkachuk and Sen. Carolyn Stewart Olsen, the second Conservative on the three-member committee executive, have denied.

No charges have been laid in these investigations.

But in mid-February, the housing issue was quickly becoming a political problem for the Harper government. Tkachuk said he went to brief Wright on Feb. 12 about the audit process, adding no discussion was held about Wright paying off Duffy’s expense claims.

“I don’t know anything about the personal exchange of funds between Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy. I was never part of a conspiracy to that effect,” Tkachuk said Tuesday.

Tkachuk went by himself to Langevin, records show, and the Saskatchewan senator said he couldn’t recall if anyone else was in the meeting room with him and Wright. Briefing the prime minister’s chief of staff about what was happening in the Senate “would not be an unusual thing for me to contemplate” doing, Tkachuk said.

Tkachuk has previously said he communicated with Wright during the audit process, but said the Feb. 12 meeting was the only face-to-face meeting he had with Wright during Duffy’s spending audit.

“That’s the only time we ever met,” Tkachuk said. “We had phone conversations, but just updating stuff. This was a political problem and he was interested.”

Tkachuk said he has spoken with RCMP investigators. Along with Tkachuk, the RCMP have also interviewed Stewart Olsen, Sen. George Furey, the lone Liberal on the internal economy committee’s executive, and Sen. Marjory LeBreton, the former government leader in the Senate.

Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Jordan Press