Last week at the Senator Mike Duffy trial, the first evidence emerged of just how deep the corruption goes in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
The evidence included an email from former PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright that outlined a plan to announce the expense cases of Mac Harb, Patrick Brazeau and Duffy were being referred to an external auditor. Simultaneously, they would also issue a separate release stating they were seeking external legal advice on the definition of primary residency.
“A purpose of this is to put Mike in a different bucket and to prevent him from going squirrelly in a bunch of weekend panel shows,” Wright wrote in the email.
The prosecution also introduced an interview between the RCMP and Jill Anne Joseph, Senate director of internal audit. Joseph told investigators that Conservative senators Carolyn Stewart Olson and David Tkachuk had sought to alter an auditor’s report on the Duffy matter.
Joseph told the RCMP, “the report, to my mind, was becoming very scant” as Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen “sort of insisted with the Senate clerk” that changes be made.
Those changes included deleting the conclusion that Duffy’s living arrangements in Ottawa did not support his declaration of primary and secondary residence according to Joseph.
Joseph also said Stewart Olsen’s objective with respect to a separate still-unreleased Senate report on senators’ residency qualifications “was not to get to the truth of the matters and deal with them the way I wanted to deal with them.”
Duffy’s defence lawyer, Donald Bayne, is seeking the release of the residency report, but the Senate is hiding behind parliamentary privilege to prevent it becoming public. No doubt Duffy is not alone in not being qualified to sit in the Senate in the first place.
And there is the rub. This Prime Minister Stephen Harper campaigned on accountability. His office and his government have none. He promised he would never appoint a senator, then appointed more than any other prime minister before him. And he appointed some of them, particularly media stars Duffy and Pamela Wallin to do Conservative Party work, not Senate work.
This whole affair proves hubris has reached new heights in the PMO under Harper. The prime minister is likely well enough insulated as to have deniability in terms of criminal responsibility where the threshold is beyond a reasonable doubt. Chances are that deniability might even stand up in civil court where the threshold is on the balance of probabilities.
In the court of public opinion, however, the threshold is basically that perception is reality. Despite the best efforts of loyal subjects such as Wright, Stewart Olson and Tkachuk, this scandal simply does not pass the smell test. The rot goes right to the top.
People think I am partisan and I will not deny it, but I am not nearly as partisan as people may think. I believe hubris must be punished. I believe, for example, that what happened to the Liberals in 2006, 2008 and 2011 was completely deserved.
What happened in Alberta two weeks ago to the Progressive Conservatives was also completely deserved, and a long time coming.
Governments get tired and old and, unfortunately, it seems, the old adage that power corrupts, seems to be hold true.
What is truly shocking to me is that the polls still show the Conservatives holding at about a third support. The most common defence is that the most important thing is that the economy is in good shape.
Even if that were true—which it’s not unless you live in Saskatchewan or have been guzzling Conservative Kool-Aid—would that make it okay to practice poor ethics as in the case of the Senate?
Would that make it okay to try to cheat your way into office? Remember robocalls, the in-and-out scandal, Peter Panashue and Dean del Mastro?
Would that make it okay to trample all over the Charter of Rights and Freedoms with Bill-C51?
Would that make it okay to undermine our democracy with the unFair Elections Act?
Would that make it okay to endanger all but a handful of Canada’s waterways by stripping the Navigable Waters Protection Act.
Would that make it okay to handicap future governments from making evidence-based decisions by hindering their ability to collect reliable demographic data (long-form census)?
Would that make it okay to spend $750 million in advertising on what is essentially Conservative propaganda?
I could go on for pages, but the main point is that there are other important issues besides the economy, and again, the Conservative record on the economy is lousy despite what they say about it themselves.
The Liberals needed to be punished, but Canadians did not deserve a decade of Harper.
