In February, randyfmcdonald and I wrote about just how useless the Senate of Canada is and the expenses scandal engulfing the Senate. At the time, the scandal was (by Canadian standards) bad enough, with various Senators claiming money they weren’t entitled to, and questions arising as to whether those Senators were even constitutionally qualified to hold their offices.
Since those articles were written, there have been some new developments. Senator Patrick Brazeau, who was kicked out of the Conservative Party caucus and then suspended from the Senate entirely, has been told he has to pay back $48,000 in improperly-claimed housing allowances and is refusing to do so. The same goes for Senator Mac Harb, who has quit the Liberal Party caucus and is vowing that he won’t pay back the $51,500 the Senate is telling him he owes. Senator Pamela Wallin is still facing an ongoing audit of her travel expenses, and she has “recused” herself from the Conservative caucus, whatever that means.
But the real big news all comes back to Mike Duffy. It wound up being determined, despite Duffy’s claims to the contrary and his refusal to cooperate with the auditors, that Duffy owed approximately $90,000 in improperly-claimed housing allowances. On April 19, 2013, Duffy told the press that he had repaid that $90,000 in March. As it turns out, that was only half true. Someone paid that money, but it wasn’t Mike Duffy.
So who was it? It was Nigel Wright, the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister. Wright is a multi-millionaire former Bay Street lawyer. He claimed that he gave Mr. Duffy a $90,000 “personal gift” because Duffy didn’t have the cash on hand. Of course he also appears to have told Duffy that the government would “go easy on him.” Of course this was all kept hush-hush at the time. On May 17, Duffy resigned from the Conservative Caucus. Also on May 17, Prime Minister Harper announced that he “stands by” Wright, and that Wright would not be resigning as Chief of Staff.
The Conservative line since the fact emerged that Wright had paid off Duffy’s enormous debt to the Senate has been that it was totally okay since it was a personal gift to Duffy from Wright, not taxpayer money and that Wright had no expectation of being repaid. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen more tone-deaf issue management from this government. No one has been concerned that Duffy was given taxpayer money to pay the tab off, or that Wright expected repayment. It’s that everyone knows you don’t give money for nothing, and everyone wants to know what the quid pro quo was. What did Duffy promise to get his mitts on that $90,000.
And oh how a few days change things. On May 19, it was announced that Wright has in fact resigned as Harper’s Chief of Staff. He continues to stand by his story that he never told Harper that he was giving Duffy a $90,000 “personal gift,” or that that was how Duffy had repaid the Senate. Of course given the track record so far, that may fall apart in a few days.
This is the first true corruption scandal to reach into the Prime Minister’s Office. Previous expenses scandals have caught, and destroyed, Cabinet Ministers, but never have they made their way into the Prime Minister’s inner circle, and never before has there been a reasonable suspicion that the Prime Minister was aware of, and condoned, the actions in question. So far through his six and a half years as Prime Minister, Harper has been the Teflon man. Will this be the thing that finally sticks?
