To the Editor:
Last week was another ethical scorcher for Conservatives as more damaging information came to light about the on-going police investigation that's reaching into the highest echelons of the Harper government.
Sworn RCMP documents make explicit allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust against Stephen Harper's former Chief of Staff, Nigel Wright, and former television high-roller, Mike Duffy, who was hand-picked by Mr. Harper to represent Prince Edward Island in the Senate even though he hadn't lived in that province for decades.
It's exactly one year ago this week that Duffy and Wright began to worry about news stories that questioned the Senator's residency and his associated expense claims. It didn't take long for the problem to spiral out of control. By February, Senate inquiries and a formal forensic audit were underway. The audit was being conducted by the respected Deloitte accounting firm.
Mr. Harper claims that on February 13 he gave Duffy a direct order to pay back to the Senate any expenses that he should not have collected. Duffy balked, saying that would be an admission of guilt on his part, and in any event, he didn't have the money. And this is where a strange cult-like mentality seems to take over within Mr. Harper's office (PMO).
Instead of just cutting Duffy loose to go mortgage his Ottawa home, or have his salary garnisheed, or whatever, to pay his debts like anyone else, Mr. Harper's staff went to extraordinary lengths to find $90,000 to "keep Duffy whole" and another $13,560 to pay his legal costs. Police documents allege they also tried to alter the course of Deloitte's audit and whitewash the Senate's official report on Duffy. And there was an elaborate PMO communications plan to mislead the public about what was going on.
RCMP materials reveal an elaborate cover-up, apparently led by Wright, but engaging a dozen or more senior PMO staffers, several more Senators and top Conservative Party brass. They seemed prepared to break every rule in the book to make Mr. Harper's "Duffy problem" go away. In the process, they dug a huge ethical hole for themselves. And why? Just to keep Stephen Harper's legendary temper from exploding? Like lemmings, they got themselves deeper and deeper into trouble.
This past week, the hot item was PMO manipulation of Senator Irving Gerstein (the Conservative Party's chief bagman) to get him to work his back-channel contacts at the accounting firm to get a less negative result for Duffy.
The PMO should never have asked Gerstein to try to intervene in an audit. Gerstein should never have agreed to make the attempt. And his contact at Deloitte (a senior partner) should have told Gerstein to get stuffed, instead of trying to oblige. Why such senior business people would expose themselves to such legal and professional risk is inexplicable. They truly drank the kool-aid for Stephen Harper. And now, Mr. Harper is blocking Parliament from calling Senator Gerstein and his back-channel Deloitte contact to testify under oath about what they did and why. More stonewalling. The cover-up continues.
From the very beginning, Mr. Harper says he was totally unaware of all the corrupt scheming that was going on around him - involving every member of his most inner sanctum for more than three months - until the news media blew the whole plot wide open in May.
That doesn't seem very plausible. Hear no evil, see no evil for all that time? But assume for the moment it's true. Which is worse - a Prime Minister who knew what was going on and is thus totally complicit in all the wrong-doing, or a Prime Minister who is so negligent or incompetent or wilfully blind that he allows his office to be run by a gang with no moral compass and no respect for the rule of law?
Either way, it's all pretty awful.
Ralph Goodale, MP, Wascana, SK.
