Stephen Harper says he won’t be called to testify at Senator Mike Duffy’s criminal trial. Usually lawyers get to decide that, not prospective witnesses. Still, he’s probably right.
Harper also says the reason he won’t be called is that he doesn’t know anything about the alleged criminal matters now before the court. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The prime minister effectively created and then destroyed Duffy as a politician. He appointed him to the Senate, then ran him out of the Red Chamber on a rail — but not before turning him into a human cash register for the party, as a cursory glance through Duffy’s personal diaries will confirm.
Forget for a moment the question of Duffy’s ‘primary residence'; his real home was an Airbus in the days when his fame still opened all the right doors in Harperland, and he could drop into 24 Sussex for pizza with Laureen and Ezra Levant.
More than anyone else, Harper set in motion the chain of events that led to the Ottawa criminal court where this senator from somewhere will be judged. This is a political trial every bit as much as it is a serious criminal proceeding.
Duffy’s lawyer, Donald Bayne, read into the record a new wrinkle, yet to be laid down in testimony: Nigel Wright apparently told the RCMP that he advised the prime minister that Duffy’s housing allowance might be acceptable under the Senate’s rules.
“I was aware of the fact that I was pushing very hard to have a caucus member repay a significant amount of money to which he may have been legally entitled,” Wright told police. “I needed the PM to know this just in case it ever came up with someone else who wouldn’t repay, then you have to get kicked out of caucus, whatever, that we are basically forcing someone to repay money that they probably didn’t owe, and I wanted the prime minister to know that and be comfortable with that.”
So according to this, Stephen Harper knew and was comfortable with the distinct possibility that he was punishing an innocent man. If that’s so, the question becomes why the issue of legality ultimately didn’t matter in the dusting of Duffy.
The idea at the heart of Donald Bayne’s defence is that the whole thing was driven by the political calculus rolling around in the PM’s tactical brain: Duffy was wallowing in the public trough, and his expenses would offend the sensibilities of the Conservative base if the details became public.
If a cabinet minister could drown in a $16 glass of orange juice, a prime minister might be swamped completely by a senator in his caucus charging meals served in his own house to the public, fudging per diems and paying people to hand out money for dubious services. For this leader, perception is reality.
But that doesn’t change the fact that the senator is where he is today because of a decision to force the repayment of housing expenses Duffy may not have owed — however decrepit the rules that allowed them in the first place may be. Consider the freight train of improprieties the Auditor General has found in the spending records of other senators.
In fact, a strong case can be made that the whole housing expenses dilemma was created by the prime minister from the get-go. Sources say that at the time of his appointment to the Senate, Duffy had asked to be appointed from Ontario, where he had lived for decades. He was worried about blowback if he was appointed from Prince Edward Island, which was little more than the nostalgic homestead of his childhood days — though he did own a cottage and had family ties there. It was the prime minister who apparently insisted that Duffy be appointed from P.E.I., allegedly telling his appointee that his critics “would get over it.”
It calls to mind Harper’s attempt to place an ineligible candidate on the Supreme Court of Canada — after being cautioned by the Chief Justice that Marc Nadon did not qualify. Spurning the constitutional realities, Harper went forward with the appointment. The Supreme Court didn’t “get over it” and rejected Nadon. Harper went for Beverly McLachlin’s throat.
The PMO also vetted the appointment of Chuck Strahl as chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, only to see him resign in an obvious conflict of interest with his lobbying business less than a year into the job.
Even the Crown prosecutor said that Duffy probably didn’t qualify to be a senator from Prince Edward Island due to the fact that he is, and has been for a very long time, a resident of Ontario. Since the PMO vetted Duffy’s appointment, and the PM personally chose him, Stephen Harper can hardly claim that he didn’t know where Duffy lived, or what entitlements went with the appointment he offered.
It should also be remembered that the prime minister had the final say on whether to proceed with the secret deal to pay back housing expenses claimed by Duffy that the PM found so politically objectionable. The prime minister has never personally explained the basis for his endorsement of the initial plan to deal with his Duffy dilemma.
It’s important to note that when Harper gave Wright the green light to do that — a point in time when Duffy’s tab was $32,000 — Wright had arranged with Senator Irving Gerstein to use Conservative party funds to do so. Other senior PMO and Conservative players were aware of the arrangement and were OK with using party donations to subsidize expense excesses that the PM said his political base would find deplorable.
The record shows that less than an hour passed between Wright arranging all the elements of the original deal and his writing the now famous “good to go from the PM” email. In the interim, he met with the prime minister, to brief him on the arrangement and get his approval.
What was discussed at that February 22, 2013 meeting between Harper and his chief of staff? Is it plausible to suggest that Wright never mentioned how the expenses would be paid back — given the possibility that the story could leak and the PM would be left flat-footed if he didn’t know? Former Harper advisor Bruce Carson made a point of saying that, no matter how bad the news, the boss always had to know so that he would be prepared for anything.
At a public event at Lac-Megantic, the prime minister was specifically asked whether he knew at that time that party funds were going to be used to pay off Duffy’s expenses of $32,000. He was also asked when he first learned that party funds were involved in the proposed deal. The PM avoided a direct response to both questions.
Then the Duffygate universe imploded. The senator’s expenses expanded to $90,000 and he told Nigel Wright that he couldn’t afford to pay back the money. Wright ultimately made what he called a “gift” of the money to Duffy. CTV’s Bob Fife broke the story of the clandestine deal, and the prime minister began offering a series of highly dubious accounts of what had happened.
Nigel Wright swiftly went from enjoying the confidence of the prime minister to being a liar who was fired for deceiving his boss and the Canadian public. So why didn’t Harper fire all the others who knew about the disgraceful deal, and were even willing to enable it, but also did not tell him? And why did the PM say that no one else in his office knew when that was patently untrue? His own in-house lawyer was intimately involved in the negotiations with Duffy’s lawyer.
Mike Duffy is facing jail time, ejection from the Senate, financial ruin and permanent disgrace if he is found guilty of fraud and breach of trust. Everyone who can confirm the facts or any part of them in this case should be in court and under oath — and that includes the man who ordered Mike Duffy to repay the expenses in the first place.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris
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