Here is a simple fact that bears consideration: Mike Duffy is still a senator, but Nigel Wright is no longer the prime minister’s chief-of-staff.
One man tried to put out the fire; the other, who allegedly set it, is still toasting publicly-provided weenies in the flames.
What is so strange about this is that Stephen Harper controlled the destiny of both men. Why did he dump one and leave the other to challenge the government to a public inquiry into this matter? Why is Harper losing the game of political chicken with Mike Duffy? Why is he turning Thomas Mulcair into a man who suddenly looks prime ministerial?
Duffy still shows up for work. The unemployed Nigel Wright goes running at 4 a.m. to avoid the press. The PM tries to blow it all off as a distraction. A classic case of, “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” Not this time.
Despite the PM’s evasions, the question stubbornly persists: Who is the guilty party here and what is the real crime? Under Mulcair’s sang-froid grilling in the House, Harper had the air of Richard Nixon giving the thumbs-up as Liar in Chief as he boarded the presidential helicopter for the last time.
Could it be that Harper, eyes popping as his pulse weakens, is twitching in a mouse-trap of his own making? Could it be that Mike Duffy only did what the PMO asked him to do — pass the Kentucky Fried Chicken barrel for the party at fundraising events across Canada, while working on the Senate’s dime? Does Duffy have proof his marching orders came from the PMO — including possibly damning details in the matter of the $90,000 gift from Harper’s former chief-of-staff?
Every major institution has a fundraising arm. It just might be that Harper decided that the Senate should provide that service for the Conservative Party of Canada. On the Senate side, his best fundraising bets were high-profile former media players like Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin.
It’s not as if Harper hasn’t abused the Senate in the past. In fact, his record on that score is a dead skunk in the middle of the road, stinking to high heaven.
This is the PM who used the Senate to kill a piece of legislation passed by the House of Commons.
This is the PM who used the Senate to make war on anyone he suspected was not marching to his authoritarian drum, whether it was the environmental movement, a charity, or a not-for-profit group.
The screeds of Senator Nicole Eaton, the great philanthropist, will go down in parliamentary history as lurid replicas of McCarthyism. If the former Trudeau Go-Go girl wants financial transparency, the Department of Finance would be a better place to begin her crusade than Greenpeace.
Stephen Harper also plucked appointments he said he’d never make out of the Senate to run as candidates in a federal election. When they lost, he put them right back in the Senate, fresh from their rejection by the Canadian people.
Stephen Harper is not the Martin Luther of Upper Chamber reform, as he risibly presents himself, but the champion of funny business as usual. His time in office has been the high-water mark of partisan manipulation of this crisis-ridden, bedevilled institution. He is full of double talk and newspeak. He is disgracing conservatism.
Why else is Mike Duffy still in the Senate and Wright on the run at 4 a.m.? Conservative senators have told their opposite numbers that the Duffy scandal is killing them. They said that to Liberal Senator Wilbert Moore. Conservative MPs have also said that they are profoundly depressed by the damage Duffy is causing to the Conservative party. And it isn’t because there is no way to oust the senator from Kanata.
There are actually a few ways — depending on what, if anything, the RCMP does. If there is a finding of fraud, that is grounds for getting the boot from the Red Chamber.
The national police force’s own reputation rides on this crucially important investigation, likely to be conducted under Section 122 of the Criminal Code dealing with Breach of Trust.
At least one former RCMP superintendent is worried about political interference and said so to Maclean’s. Why shouldn’t Garry Clement worry? The Harper government recently declared that all RCMP communications have to be cleared through the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews.
Fellas. Come on. Why not just send it directly to the PMO, where it will end up anyway?
But beyond the police option of sweeping the Senate clean, Duffy could be dismissed because his appointment is not constitutional. He, like Wallin, is not a resident of the province from which he was appointed.
The rules don’t say you get appointed from the place where your heart is, or your summer cottage, or where your dog is buried. It is where you live, vote, pay your taxes, get your driver’s license and health card. For both Duffy and Wallin, it was rotten fish from the get-go. Even Patrick Brazeau was better qualified, under the criteria of appointment, for his calamitous Senate appointment.
The simplest way, (the path never followed when the PM is caught confabulating) is for Stephen Harper to ask for Mike Duffy’s resignation. If he did that, the Tory majority in the Senate would have no choice but to follow the lead of the man who appointed Duffy to his post in the first place.
Still, the PMO may have underestimated Duffy. It is not known by many people, but Duffy has stood up to the PMO in the past. There have been times when he has not done what he was told. Consider this: After the arrest of Rahim Jaffer for possession of cocaine, Stephen Harper turned on Jaffer’s wife, former Conservative cabinet minister Helena Guergis.
On the basis of seedy (and ultimately false) rumours, Guergis became a pariah. No good Tory was supposed to support her in any way. Senator Duffy, to his credit, defied that prohibition. He apparently didn’t like the way Guergis had been flicked out of cabinet and caucus by prime ministerial fiat.
Accordingly, and against the wishes of the PMO, and following a personal code that has been often been breathtakingly generous, Duffy spoke at an Helena Guergis fundraiser after Jaffer’s arrest. Which is just to say we are all a little better than our worst detractors think. Mike Duffy is more complicated, and better, than today’s headlines. And he is one more thing that Stephen Harper should remember: a consummate survivor. Network television is like angle worms in a jar. Duffy survived in that world, near the peak, for decades.
So what, as William Burroughs might have put it, is on the end of the fork? Ultimately, it is about prime ministerial judgement, not Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau or Nigel Wright.
As prime minister, Stephen Harper has exercised about as much judgment as Justin Bieber behind the wheel of his white Ferrari.
Bruce Carson, hired as a convicted man. Arthur Porter, put in front of the country’s deepest secrets as head of SIRC, now under arrest for fraud. Nathan Jacobson, photographed between Harper and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, awaiting extradition to the U.S. for $43 million worth of admitted money laundering. The PM’s parliamentary secretary under investigation by Elections Canada and under no obligation to step aside. Harper Senate appointee Patrick Brazeau up on assault and sexual assault charges. Duffy back in the news with more expense problems as outlined by Tim Naumetz in the Hill Times — and the ever-present odour of corruption from the ‘in-and-out’ affair, mingling with the deeper stench of the robocalls scandal. Through it all, one man has been at the helm — Stephen Harper.
Harper has decided to sit back and do nothing. That will be harder to do now that the CBC has an email from Duffy petitioning the PMO to get ministerial perks beyond his Senate status to reward him for his extra work for the party. And how can the two Conservative senators who edited the Duffy audit in their colleague’s favour — David Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart-Olsen — now reverse themselves? How can they restore the very things they took out of the report with a straight face? How can Marjory LeBreton continue to lead the government in the Senate after insisting there was no need for the police to investigate Duffy, and then whistle for the Mounties?
The prime minister insists that he knows nothing about the Duffy matter and that the Senate, the Conflict of Interest commissioner and the RCMP are looking into the matter. The more accurate observation is that Stephen Harper doesn’t have the slightest intention of helping anyone get to the bottom of what happened here. Nor does he appear to have any serious problem with anything that has happened, except to the extent it has vexed or discomfited him.
Former prime minister Paul Martin called a public inquiry into the ad sponsorship scandal. Knowing the likely consequences, that took great integrity. Self-interest is a stranger to integrity. Now you know why there will be no inquiry into those public figures wallowing like hippos in the rich mud of the Senate.
The wild card? Mike Duffy just might have one big story to break before he’s done.
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