“Every person I have talked to has a different version of events, and a different version of what should be done. So, I don’t think there’s an organized split, but some people are certainly questioning the tactics,” said a top Conservative source who spoke to The Hill Times on condition of anonymity last week.
In interviews with The Hill Times, other top Conservative sources said that Mr. Harper was receiving bad advice because of the lack of veteran political strategists in his office.
“Everybody needs experienced advisers. Everybody needs people who will ask you the questions that you don’t necessarily want to be asked. Everybody needs to be challenged a bit. It makes you think better. I think it makes you operate better. It makes you more reflective,” said one senior Conservative who spoke to The Hill Times on condition of anonymity.
“Every office, particularly where big decisions are being made, needs some grey heads around who have lots of experience who don’t overreact to issues, who when people are losing their heads keep theirs, who calm things down when things get hectic.”
The source said that it was a mistake from the start that the PMO dealt with this issue as it had nothing to do with the executive, or Cabinet’s authority.
The source said that this was a Senate issue and Mr. Harper should have let the Upper Chamber handle it and Sen. Marjory LeBreton who was the then-government Senate leader, should have advised the PMO not to get involved.
“It would’ve been a lot better for the government and the Prime Minister’s office if the [Senate] Leader’s Office had made it clear to people that this was not something that should be dealt with outside the Senate. This was an internal Senate, an internal Parliamentary matter and should have been dealt with by the appropriate authorities in the Senate,” said the Conservative.
Other critics said that Mr. Harper should have simply said that the issue is being investigated by the RCMP so he has no comment.
Last week, former Conservative MP Brent Rathgeber (Edmonton-St. Albert, Alta.), who left the party caucus in the spring because of how the PMO dealt with his private member’s bill on transparency surrounding salaries, told reporters that the strategy to handle the scandal has been a “very poor” one.
“I think the strategy from crisis management from PMO has been a disaster from day one. I think they should have gotten part of the story. They had to have known that it was going to come out and why they’re taking death by a thousand cuts, I’m not certain,” Mr. Rathgeber said in a scrum last Thursday. “So I mean I can’t criticize or speculate as to what the strategy is, but the only answer I can give to you, I think it’s a very poor strategy they can leave at this point.”
New revelations came out in an 80-page court document, sworn to by RCMP Corporal Greg Horton who is investigating Mr. Wright and suspended P.E.I. Senator Duffy. Cpl. Horton is asking the court to give him the authority to demand documents from people he believes were involved or had knowledge of the events, also known as a production order. In the affidavit outlining his case to receive the production order, Cpl. Horton has alleged that the $90,000 payment by Mr. Wright amounted to bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The allegations have not been proven in court, and no one has been charged.
Cpl. Horton pointed out in the papers that there was a significant amount of communication on this issue that went on within the PMO and also between Conservative Senators LeBreton (Ontario), David Tkachuk (Saskatchewan) and Carolyn Stewart Olsen (New Brunswick) and Sen. Duffy. Now the RCMP is seeking all the emails exchanged between them from Jan. 1 and May 13.
Cpl. Horton in the affidavit said that during his investigation, he did not come across any direct evidence that the Prime Minister Harper was “personally involved in the minutiae of those matters.”
Cpl. Horton, however, described three instances that seem to suggest that Mr. Harper was peripherally aware of some aspects of the arrangement between Mr. Duffy and Mr. Wright.
For example, on May 14, Mr. Wright wrote in an email: “The PM knows, in broad terms only, that I personally assisted Duffy when I was getting him to agree to repay the expenses.”
The affidavit gave opposition parties new ammunition to pester Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) on this issue for weeks to come in the daily Question Period. When asked about it last Thursday at a press conference in Lac Mégantic, Que., announcing $95-million in aid after a freight train carrying oil crashed there in the summer, Mr. Harper avoided answering specific questions about whether Mr. Wright asked him for his approval of the repayment plan or when he knew the Conservative Party was intending to pay Sen. Duffy’s ineligible housing costs when it was thought to be $32,000.
“It’s important to note that the inappropriate actions here were undertaken by Mr. Wright at his own initiative and obviously Mr. Duffy, who deliberately lied to the public about those things,” he responded. “It is Mr. Wright and Mr. Duffy who are under investigation and who are being held responsible for their actions. And that is what is appropriate in this case.”
Cpl. Horton’s affidavit outlines in chronological order how the deal was struck between Mr. Wright and Sen. Duffy and what the media strategy would be both in explaining the repayment, and how to address what would come out in an eventual forensic examination that auditing firm Deloitte was undertaking at the time as well as the Senate Internal Economy Committee’s report on Sen. Duffy and the three other Senators being investigated—former Conservatives Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau and former Liberal Mac Harb.
According to the affidavit, Sen. Duffy told Mr. Wright he didn’t believe he did anything wrong and would only repay the ineligible housing allowances under five conditions. The conditions included confirmation that Sen. Duffy would not be subject to further Deloitte review, that there would be a written acknowledgement he meets and always has met the residency requirements to be a Senator from P.E.I., that all the expenses, including his legal fees, would be repaid by the party, that if rules were changed in the future he would be eligible to make housing claims, and that the PMO would ensure it would “take all reasonable efforts to ensure that members of the Conservative caucus, if they speak on this matter, do so in a fashion that is consistent with the agreed media lines.”
In emails between Mr. Wright and other PMO officials, they outlined what those media lines would be. The strategy also included working with the Internal Economy sub-committee on its own report on the issue and attempting to get Deloitte’s auditors on board to say certain things in its report.
In an email to Sen. Stewart Olsen, Mr. Wright said, “As for strategy, I am extremely frustrated that we seem to be unable to get either the subcommittee or Deloitte to the point where it is agreed that the Deloitte examination of Duffy’s secondary residence claim is completed by the combination of (i) Deloitte determining the amount of expenses incurred by reason of the claim of secondary residence, and (ii) Mike agreeing to repay that amount. Once we know that repayment will permit the subcommittee and Deloitte to state that the matter is resolved, then the repayment will follow forthwith. Somehow, despite agreement to this in advance from you, Marjory [LeBreton] and David [Tkachuk] no one on the Senate side is delivering.”
In response, Sen. Stewart Olsen emailed: “Confidentially, both Marj and David are telling each other the audit will not be pulled. … I think the only way to do this is to tell Deloitte that we are satisfied with the repayment and end the audit. The non-partisan nature of the committee is a problem as is the Clerk who seems to have his own agenda. Mind you it is a good agenda. He wants to clean up the place. In fairness Chris [Woodcock] did talk to me about revisions but said he was talking to Dave so I left it. Checked with Dave later to see if they had spoken and was he ok with revisions and he said yes. I don’t envy you your job.”
According to the affidavit, Toronto Conservative Sen. Irving Gerstein, head of the Conservative Party Fund, contacted an official at the auditing firm Deloitte to try to encourage him to drop Mr. Duffy from the audit. PMO staffer Patrick Rogers in an email on March 8 said “Senator Gerstein has just called. He agrees with our understanding of the situation and his Deloitte contact agrees. The stage we’re at now is waiting for the Senator’s contact to get the actual Deloitte auditor on the file to agree. The Senator will call back once we have Deloitte locked in.”
Deloitte denies that its audit of Senate expenses was influenced by Sen. Gerstein.
When news broke that it was Mr. Wright who repaid Sen. Duffy’s expenses, Sen. Duffy continued to tell media that he paid it himself using a line of credit through RBC. Mr. Woodcock emailed him to ask if his quote was taken out of context and Sen. Duffy replied: “Yes. Because I did not know until Ray Novak told me that Nigel [had] given the money. I was told I would be made whole. I said I did not want to know the name of the donor because I did not want to be behold[en] to anyone. I negotiated the loan and Heather [his wife] cosigned. I wrote the cheque and some time later a credit appeared in my account.”
Ray Novak, Mr. Harper’s current chief of staff, in response to an email from Mr. Woodcock wrote, “Yes, we need to discuss this. His lying really is tiresome.”
Some of Conservative caucus members have openly disagreed with the Prime Minister and the Senate leadership on how to handle the Senate expense scandal. Some of the Conservatives who have disagreed openly include Conservative MPs Peter Goldring (Edmonton East, Alta.) and Peter Kent (Thornhill, Ont.) and Conservative Senators Hugh Segal (Kingston, Ont.), Don Plett (Landmark, Man.) and Don Meredith (Ontario) when it came to suspending the Senators without pay.
A third source told The Hill Times that when the Conservatives first won the election in 2006, there were a few very “strong and experienced” staffers and they didn’t care if Mr. Harper liked their advice, or not, but they offered him their candid advice. Now, the source said it’s unclear whether staffers are offering Mr. Harper their frank advice and disagree with him when it’s needed.
“When more than one senior staffers go in and disagrees with the Prime Minister, it makes the boss think twice [about important crisis management decisions]. You have to be brave and not care about your job. Now, I don’t know if it’s happening,” said the source.
Another source told The Hill Times three weeks ago that some Conservative MPs who won by narrow margins in the last federal election could be concerned by the possibility that they could lose their seats in the next federal election either just because of this issue or because of a combination of other issues that have already happened or could happen between now and the next election.
“For MPs in a lot of parts of the country, they could face the prospect of losing. So, when you face the prospect of losing, you start to think how do I survive?”
But Conservative MP Ryan Leef (Yukon) who won the last federal election by a margin of only 132 votes said that it’s highly unlikely that this issue will affect his re-election chances in the next election. He argued that constituents in his riding understand the difference between Senate and the House so they won’t judge his party based on what happened on the Senate side.
“This isn’t my issue, it’s a Senate issue. I have my own accountability and my own budgetary responsibilities as a Member of Parliament. People are smart enough to know the difference between the Senate and the House of Commons, and the Senate will be judged the way they deal with things and I’ll be judged the way I deal with things. I’m not concerned about that at all,” said Mr. Leef.
As for how the Prime Minister or the PMO handled this issue, Mr. Leef said that he’s satisfied.
“Hindsight is always 20/20 and there’s always the arm chair quarterbacks and arm chair critics who think that they would resolve a situation better than anybody else but they are not in that position. Our Prime Minister has done a great job of it in face of criticism by people who are not offering any solutions to it.”
Meanwhile, CTV Parliament Hill bureau chief Bob Fife, who first broke the story that Mr. Wright made the $90,000 payment on behalf of Mr. Duffy, said last week that this scandal could create serious difficulties for the Harper government.
“If Nigel Wright is charged, it is going to be a very serious issue for the Prime Minister to hang on. There’ll be a lot of people within the Conservative Party who’ll be saying, ‘Wait a minute here, you picked this guy. He ran this operation out of your office. You may not have known [about it],’ the RCMP are very clear he did not know about it. This operation was run out of your office, you have to take some responsibility for that,” Mr. Fife said on CTV’s Power Play last week.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: ABBAS RANA
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