Freelance makeup artist Jacqueline Lambert testified she was hired to provide makeup for Duffy on two occasions after his Senate appointment: a March 2009 formal photo shoot and a May 2010 event billed by Duffy’s lawyer at a G8 youth summit.
Lambert says she also did makeup for Harper at that same event.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office said Thursday that no public money was used for Harper’s makeup.
“We have no knowledge of the invoice in question. We did not charge taxpayers for the PM’s preparation for this event and had no reason to believe anyone else would do so,” spokesman Stephen Lecce wrote in an email.
Lambert said she sent an invoice for an official photo shoot on March 5, 2009 invoice for $300 to Duffy’s office. She confirmed to Duffy’s lawyer that her fee would not have increased for having done makeup on both of them as it was a standard minimum charge.
She said she believes she sent an invoice for the May 2010 event as well, but her computer crashed and she was unable to recover it.
Duffy told her to invoice Maple Ridge Media, a company she didn’t know, she said.
But court has already heard the Senate disallowed the makeup services: a letter from the Senate administration to Duffy, dated April 9, 2009, says the invoice would not be processed because makeup services “is not an expenditure that is allowed” by Senate guidelines.
Maple Ridge Media was a company owned by a former Duffy colleague Gerald Donohue — a company the Crown alleges was used merely to funnel payments that otherwise would not have been approved by Senate officials.
The Crown lawyer introduced a copy of a May 25, 2010 Maple Ridge Media cheque for $300 to Lambert, which she said she understood “was for the job I did for Sen. Duffy and the prime minister.”
The cheque’s envelope introduced in court contains a handwritten message: “300 pm and mike G8 summit.”
Defence lawyer Donald Bayne, in cross-examination, drew out the fact that Lambert frequently made up MPs, senators and the prime minister in the course of her jobs for CTV, or if hired separately, especially on days of big events like the budget.
Bayne quizzed her about whether it would be a normal part of the politicians’ parliamentary functions — the buzzword under Senate rules for the legal authority to pay for services — especially when it involved television appearances, and Lambert agreed it would.
Bayne said it “wasn’t personal,” asking whether Duffy was getting the makeup for a wedding or a birthday or some other private event and Lambert said, “No.”
Asked whether Duffy asked for any money from the payment to be kicked back to him, Lambert said, “No.”
The Crown took up one more point with Lambert, highlighting the fact that the Conservative party paid when then-finance minister Jim Flaherty asked her to do his makeup.
“I’d be working for CTV, and I’d be on the Hill, and Minister Flaherty would ask for my services. Because I was already being paid, I’d use my discretion in what I charged his office.”
Neubauer, the assistant Crown attorney, asked to whom she sent the bill? She replied: “I believe it was the Conservative party.”
Duffy has pleaded not guilty to 31 charges, including fraud, breach of trust and bribery, related to living expenses, travel expenses, the contracts and a $90,000 payment he received from Nigel Wright, the former chief of staff to Harper.
Also testifying Thursday was a young woman who worked as an unpaid intern in Duffy’s Parliament Hill office who received a cheque for $500 despite never having signed a contract, she testified Thursday.
“I assumed it was for my work,” Ashley Cain said, when asked about the cheque she received in the mail from Maple Ridge Media, Inc., in May 2010.
That company and its successor, Ottawa ICF, was owned by Donohue, who worked at CTV with Duffy and, together with his companies, was awarded a total of $65,000 in contracts for speech writing and other editorial and research services.
The Crown argues that Duffy used these contracts to redirect payments from his office budget toward covering expenses — including makeup services, fitness training and the $500 to Cain — he would otherwise not be allowed to claim.
Cain, who now works as a correspondence writer in the Prime Minister’s Office, told the trial that she did not sign a contract or employment papers, obtain a security clearance, or expect any payment when she began doing some clerical work for Duffy in his office in 2010.
“It was based around my schedule,” said Cain, who at that time was a journalism student at Algonquin College in Ottawa.
She told the court she worked between two and four hours a week, for five or six months opening mail, acknowledging receipt of letters, and making electronic copies of business cards.
Although it was a volunteer position, Cain told the court the cheque was not entirely unexpected, because at one point, Duffy had broached the subject of compensation.
“He thought I was doing good work and he wanted to see if he could get me some money for it,” Cain told assistant Crown attorney Jason Neubauer.
Cain told the court that at that time, she had never heard of Donohue.
During his cross-examination, Bayne had Cain confirm that she was doing “real and genuine” office work related to parliamentary business and that the $500 for roughly 60 to 72 hours of work was a “very modest” payment.
Bayne also argued Duffy had received no benefit from giving her the money.
“There was no aspect of Sen. Duffy seeking some personal benefit from this $500. He didn’t ask you to cash it and give him half the money back . . . . There was no suggestion of any personal benefit to Sen. Duffy in paying you for the work you had done, right?” Bayne asked Cain.
She agreed.
Earlier Thursday, the Crown had questions for Sonia Makhlouf, the Senate human resources officer who had been on the stand all week, about hiring policies.
While Bayne had earlier argued that senators enjoy full discretion over who they hire to work in their offices and suggested this applied to making a volunteer a paid employee, Neubauer said the policies showed a certain amount of human resources paperwork was involved.
Makhlouf confirmed that even short-term employees received their pay cheques through the human resources directorate, with deductions for taxes, and that employees also had to obtain security clearance to work on Parliament Hill.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com/
Author: Tonda MacCharles
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