Unless you have been living in a cave, or just chosen to be completely out of touch with the news in Canada, and you live in Canada, you will have heard of the on-going saga that is the Mike Duffy trial. Duffy faces 31 charges, some of which are pretty serious: fraudulent expenses, bribery, breach of trust etc.
The short version of the story is, Senator Mike Duffy claimed expenses associated with travelling on partisan affairs (i.e. he was out at Conservative party election campaigns) and per diems for housing which, by most reasonable people, appear to be incorrect, if not illegal. He asked the Senate, and by extension, the tax payers to foot the bill.
His sordid housing story leads back to his appointment as a Senator from Prince Edward Island. A small detour on this. The Senate rules on housing are a bit vague. It goes something like this. If a senator owns $4000 worth of property in the province, they are deemed to be a "resident" and therefore eligible to be appointed to the Senate of Canada as a representative of the Province. I am sure there is a bit more detail to that, but that was what Prime Minister Stephen Harper used for residency requirements when he appointed Mr. Duffy as a Senator from PEI. Canada has a provincial quota based Senate, so the Prime Minister of the day can appoint people from the appropriate Province (or Territory) to fill in the vacancies for that province. Duffy fit the hole for PEI. He owns a cottage in Cavendish, PEI. Except, owning a summer cottage that one may or may not use for a week or two a year doesn't quite pass muster as far as residency goes. It might meet the letter of the law, but I doubt anyone buys it. Duffy spent most of the past 40 or so years in Ottawa, as a journalist in case anyone is wondering how burnished his Islander credentials are.
Back to the trial. So far, we have heard from various people in the Prime Minister's Office. The star witness for the Crown is Nigel Wright, the business man (and then chief of staff of the Prime Minister) who decided to pay back the taxpayers Duffy's inaccurate or incorrect expenses. Mr. Wright is apparently a man of good character, someone who is above reproach. And yet, inexplicably, he thought it made sense to pay off $90,000 of Mike Duffy's inappropriate expenses and casually forgot to mention to his boss, the Prime Minister that he had done so. Instead, somehow, they all cooked up this story that Duffy had taken out a mortgage on his house in Ottawa and paid off the expenses. So, Mr. Wright was doing right by the taxpayers. And participating in a lie. And somehow failing in his duty to his boss. Oh, did he mention that he didn't tell anyone else he worked with? Like his assistant Ray Novak. Who just so happens to be the Prime Minister's current chief of staff. Conveniently forgot.
The Prime Minister himself has said various contradictory statements both inside and outside the House. At first, he was surprised that someone else had paid Duffy's expenses. He had apparently told Duffy he had to pay his own bills. He was full of praise for his chief of staff for doing the right thing and selflessly ensuring the taxpayer wasn't dinged for errant mistakes made by a Senator. When no one bought that story, he accepted his chief of staff's resignation. He then blamed Nigel for lying to him. For misleading him. For deliberately hiding the truth. Bad Nigel. But he had the good sense to resign. Then Nigel was fired. Nigel didn't resign after all. You see, he was such a bad person that the PM had to fire him. So, it went from being good Nigel to bad Nigel to horrid Nigel.
Along the way, there have been so many other people involved. Senators from the Conservative party who are a majority on various Senate committees tried to doctor independent audits to take Duffy's name out of it (he paid his bills, nothing more to see here right?), called up Deloitte and asked them to change findings in reports etc.
The Prime Minister's legal advisor at the time, a now tenured professor at UBC, apparently disagreed with much of what Mr. Wright has said. Ben Perrin told the trial that he disagreed on Duffy meeting the residency requirements, and a whole slew of other things. But he stuck around and did the legal work to verify that the t's were crossed and i's dotted in the agreement between Duffy and Wright regarding the secret payment Wright made. And now he is free to be more honest because his livelihood does not depend on the PM. Tenure is a wonderful thing isn't it?
The Conservative party is hiding the PM's current chief of Staff on a bus or plane somewhere, and sticking to its lines: bad Duffy and horrid Nigel. The rest of the actors in and around the PMO who were emailed/cc'ed etc have an excellent defence: your honour, I-did-not-read-my-emails. Your honour, I-was-in-the-room,-but-I-was-not-paying-attention-to-the-discussions. Your honour, 'we-are-good-to-go-from-the-Prime-Minister' means-that-the-Prime-Minister-is-good-to-go-get-some-frozen-yoghurt-from-the-new-shop-down-the-street,-not-that-he-approved-the-repayment-of-Mr. Duffy's-payments-by-Nigel-Wright. Why does your honour not trust me when I say that???
At the end of the day, the case is about a bad Senator paying back the tax payer for illegal expenses he filed. R is trying to nail Duffy for illegal expenses, breach of trust etc. And, these people are Crown witnesses. The R stands for Regina in case anyone is wondering.
I have no idea why the RCMP have not had a case against all these witnesses in addition to Duffy. The whole lot of them need to be tried, and if they still have wildly divergent stories and nonsense defences like, I-get-about-1000-emails-a-day-and-didn't-read-the-one-you-referred-to-until-2-months-later-when-shit-hit-the-fan, then we need to figure out what a way of finding them in contempt of court or of just being plain stupid. I don't know what is worse, that Duffy may get away with trying to cheat Canadians or that the Crown is using questionably characters, liars and cheats as witnesses in the hopes of convicting a fraudulent Senator.
I hope Canadians vote in the upcoming election and that politicians, civil servants, partisan activists, whatever, at least live within the rules of the land rather than just make a mockery of our democracy, our government and our courts. I can't wait to see what the judge will find in this trial and what else the public will find out about the people they elected.
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