Duffy lawyer flogging the dead horse of Senate entitlement
OTTAWA Mike Duffy, the suspended senator now on trial here on fraud, breach of trust and bribery charges, is fighting like a mad dog for his job — oh, his reputation and name too, of course, but also the job he’d coveted for so long.
This was so well- known on Parliament Hill, where Duffy worked as a broadcaster for years, that when in his maiden speech in the Red Chamber he said, “It is not a position I sought,” people reportedly fell about laughing.
Now, the trial itself is threatening to become a one- witness affair. Duffy’s lawyer, Donald Bayne, spent a second consecutive day cross- examining the former Senate law clerk, Mark Audcent, who was less than an hour in his examination- in- chief.
( Audcent might have much to spill, but his dealings with senators, including Duffy, are protected by solicitor- client privilege, so his evidence is of a general nature.)
In Bayne’s effort to show the Senate was a lawless place with such an absence of rules that his client couldn’t possibly have broken any, Thursday he presented Audcent with all manner of irrelevant acts ( the Immigration & Refugee Protection Act, the Highway Traffic Act, the Adoption Acts of two provinces) and regulations to show that when governments want to define terms such as “principal residence,” they can and do.
The Senate didn’t was the inference, so it must mean that chaos is supposed to reign and that senators have a licence to bill.
So flayed to ribbons is this particular horse already that at one point, even Ontario Court Judge Charles Vaillancourt was pleading for mercy.
Bayne had misspoken and suggested tantalizingly that he was about finished.
“You said, ‘ That ends ...,’” the judge asked hopefully. “What does that end?”
Alas, Bayne explained, “That ends the living expenses part.” ( some of Duffy’s charges relate to such claims).
He then moved onto the travel expenses section ( some charges relate to this area) and there, on Friday, he will pick up again.
So then, the trial stalled at the continued desecration of the dead horse that is the Senate’s lack of rules, let us move over to what has been characterized at trial as Duffy’s “diary,” though it’s more like a calendar with notes.
The diary, with few deletions, is an exhibit at trial.
Even a quick perusal immediately raises the question of why on Earth anyone would want to be a senator, let alone why Duffy wanted it so badly.
The diary describes, in detail that is occasionally funny and often ghastly, the life of a political partisan — endless meals out with a succession of people you either want something from or who want something from you ( thus what a wise young reporter calls “the greasy transactional feel” of official Ottawa), ribboncuttings, and the watching brief that a man of Duffy’s age and frail health ( he is 68, with a history of heart problems among others) keeps on funerals, visitations and the like. Oh, it paid well enough. In 2008, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Duffy’s appointment, the annual salary was $ 130,000 a year, plus an office and research budget of about $ 150,000, $ 20,000 in allowable living expenses for those, like Duffy, “who come to Ottawa to carry out parliamentary functions” from their provinces of appointment ( Duffy mostly came to Ottawa from his suburban Ottawa home) and 64 points worth of business- class travel ( one domestic return fare cost a senator a point).
But if the nuts and bolts of the job weren’t taxing — the Senate actually was in session only an average 78.5 days a year for the four years 2008- 2012 — the tedium of the rest of it was staggering. Bayne made much, or tried to, of how much Duffy was valued and used, in the service of the Conservative party and government both, by Harper.
As evidence, he produced two photographs of the two men together, one signed by the PM and inscribed, “To Duff, a great journalist and a great senator. Thanks for being one of my best, hardest- working appointments ever!”
Now, the PM appointed Duffy ( and the under- investigation Pamela Wallin and the criminally charged Patrick Brazeau, who popped into the trial Thursday, his own trial on charges of sexual assault and assault on hiatus) and must shoulder the responsibility for all that.
But the flowery language on the picture, taken at the government’s rollout of its “economic action plan” in 2009, is evidence of absolutely squat.
This is how politicians talk to one another in their greasy transactional world. It’s not so different, either, from how lawyers talk.
Take, for instance, what Bayne said about Audcent Wednesday, shortly before he began his lengthy cross- examination.
He and prosecutor Mark Holmes were arguing about whether Bayne could ask Audcent questions about documents he had no part in writing or may know little about. Holmes said there would be better- informed witnesses; Bayne wanted to ask Audcent about every Senate policy.
And when Holmes pointed out Audcent was the law clerk, not say, the Senate director of finance, Bayne sniffed, “Really? He’s obviously a wonderful, honest and decent man.”
Not five minutes later, Audcent took the witness stand again, and Bayne’s first question to him was, “Mr. Audcent, we’ve never met or talked, correct?”
The point is, there’s a lot of compulsive, knee- jerk, meaningless flattery and fellatio that goes on in this town, as the PM’s inscription about Duffy and Bayne’s description of a man he’d never met illustrate.