Nigel Wright, Harper’s chief of staff, quit his post early Sunday morning amid questions about whether his secret $90,000 payment to Sen. Mike Duffy deliberately thwarted a probe into the former Conservative senator’s expenses.
Announcing his resignation, Wright took “sole responsibility” for the payment, revealed last week.
“I did not advise the Prime Minister of the means by which Sen. Duffy’s expenses were repaid, either before or after the fact,” Wright said.
But the resignation did little to quell an explosion of demands for more information about the secretive affair that has brought the scandal over improper spending by Conservative senators right into Harper’s office.
“The Prime Minister needs to tell us whether he thinks a secret cash deal to an embattled politician was OK,” NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus said Sunday in an interview.
“He needs to tell us whether or not there was a conspiracy cooked out of his office to obstruct and perhaps interfere with a Senate investigation into misspending of taxpayers’ money,” Angus said.
After receiving Wright’s cheque, Duffy repaid $90,000 to the government in March to cover questionable expense claims. He then refused to co-operate with an independent investigation into his expense filings ordered by the Senate. And earlier this month Conservative senators edited a final report on Duffy’s spending claims to delete wording that said there was no excuse for the way he filled out his expense claims.
Angus noted how the Conservatives initially defended the $90,000 payment. And even after it became public last week, Harper, through his spokesman, voiced his strong support for Wright.
“They would have known that this breaches all manner of ethical and potential legal issues,” Angus said.
“The Prime Minister should have been shocked. He should have been appalled. He should have said he was going to get to the bottom of this. He didn’t,” Angus said. “He’s on the hook now. Personally.”
Beginning Tuesday, when Parliament resumes, the Conservatives will confront a barrage of questions arising from investigations of spending by Duffy and other Conservative senators. Sen. Pamela Wallin left the Tory caucus just last Friday to await an audit of her spending claims.
Harper has not spoken publicly about Wright’s secret payment to Duffy, and a spokesman said the Prime Minister wasn’t aware of it at the time. Still, Harper is facing perhaps the most serious crisis since the Conservatives took power in 2006.
On Tuesday morning, he will meet in a private session with Conservative senators and MPs, who have been getting an earful from constituents about the scandal. The Prime Minister is expected to lay down the law about ethics breaches.
Then on Tuesday afternoon, Harper flies off to South America for high-level government meetings for the rest of the week.
Harper said Sunday he accepted Wright’s resignation with “great regret.
“I accept that Nigel believed he was acting in the public interest, but I understand the decision he has taken to resign. I want to thank Nigel for his tremendous contribution to our government over the past 2½ years,” Harper said in a statement.
But opposition MPs stepped up demands for an independent body to get to the bottom of the spending mess hanging over the Conservatives.
Liberal MP Bob Rae said Wright’s resignation does not clear up questions about the $90,000 cheque received by Duffy.
“It’s not actually legal for a senator to accept a payment which is going to have the effect of influencing what governments do and in this case, the payment received had a direct impact on the conduct of an audit into the activities of Sen. Duffy and other senators,” Rae told CBC-TV.
“And we know that Sen. Duffy’s audit was foreshortened, it was changed, because of the fact that he made this $90,000 payment and that he made this payment because Mr. Wright gave him the money to make the payment.”
The Liberals have said the Wright payment could become part of an RCMP probe of Senate expense practices if the Mounties decide to investigate.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said Wright’s quitting only makes it more urgent that Harper come forward with details about the whole affair.
“Did the Prime Minister promise Duffy he would fix the financial and legal mess created by false claims for a housing allowance? Why would the Prime Minister do such a thing? Does Duffy have anything he can hold over the PM?
“Did the Prime Minister ask his Chief of Staff to write the cheque,” May asked in a blog post . “Frankly, I can see no other reason why a smart person like Nigel Wright would do something so obviously wrong, unless he was directed to do so by the Prime Minister.”
Ray Novak, who had been Harper’s principal secretary, has been named permanent chief of staff. Novak has served with Harper from his days in opposition and is seen as a trusted confidant.
“He’s been around for a long time, has the full confidence of the PM, caucus, has been around every table for the last 12 years. He’s well placed,” a source told the Star.
Wright’s announcement capped days of revelations that rocked Harper’s administration. Duffy quit the Conservative caucus Thursday over the $90,000 payment and questions about whether he had double-dipped, collecting Senate expenses while campaigning for Conservative candidates in the last election.
Duffy had been at the centre of a Senate spending probe into whether he improperly collected living expenses for his suburban Ottawa home.
According to the report by the auditors, Duffy himself declared the expenses were inappropriate and repaid the cash, a move fellow Tories hailed as showing leadership.
Then last week it was revealed that Wright was behind the repayment.
Wright, a Bay Street millionaire, had written Duffy a personal cheque for $90,000 out of concern that the senator, who earns $132,000 a year, would be unable to repay the improperly claimed living expenses.
The Prime Minister’s Office and Tory MPs tried to paint Wright’s payment as honourable. But others, including former chiefs of staffs, said the payment — made while the audit of Duffy’s expenses was still ongoing — was inappropriate.
Conservatives in the Senate said last week they would have auditors take another look at Duffy’s expense filings in light of allegations he may have collected expenses from taxpayers while on the campaign trail. Liberal senators had been pressing for several weeks for a redo of the Duffy investigation.
As well, the NDP is calling for a commission of inquiry into the entire affair. The NDP also wants the Senate ethics officer to launch a probe. And federal ethics commissioner Mary Dawson is considering whether to conduct a separate investigation of Wright’s payment.
In his statement Sunday, Harper said his government would stay focused on “securing jobs and economic growth for Canada. This is the focus of all our efforts and attention.”
Yet that has proven impossible in recent weeks as the questions surrounding Wright’s mysterious payment to Duffy dominate the agenda in Ottawa. The uproar has reached such intensity that there is speculation that Harper might move to close down Parliament for the summer through prorogation, with MPs returning in September to a new Conservative agenda in a speech from the throne.
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Bruce Campion-Smith and Les Whittington
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