Stunner: PMO arranged two cheques for Duffy
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former top aide arranged not one but two cheques for Sen. Mike Duffy, to assist with the secret repaying of expenses, the embattled senator told a spellbound upper chamber Monday.
With the Senate in an unusual Monday sitting to discuss punishment for Duffy and two other senators over spending irregularities, Duffy charged that Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright — who had paid $90,000 toward Duffy’s housing expense claims — had also directed Conservative party lawyer Arthur Hamilton to have Duffy’s legal bills paid, amounting to a further $13,560.
“He (Wright) paid my lawyer’s legal fees,” Duffy told the chamber. “That’s right, the PMO had the Conservative Party’s lawyer, Arthur Hamilton, pay for my lawyer.”
Conservat ive party spokesman Cory Hann confirmed the payment. “At the time these legal expenses were incurred and paid, Mike Duffy was a member of the Conservative caucus. The Conservative Party sometimes assists members of caucus with legal expenses,” Hann said in an email.
Duffy, who resigned from caucus, told his fellow senators that Harper must have felt he had done no wrong if his office was willing to pay his legal tab.
“He would never had done it if he felt my expense claims were improper,” Duffy thundered. He said the “monstrous fraud” around his expenses “was the PMO’s creation from start to finish.”
He then tabled an email that he said had been sent to him by Wright on Dec. 4, 2012, which he said applied to his expense claims. “I am told you have complied with all the applicable rules and that there would be several Senators with similar arrangements,” the email, signed “Nigel,” says. Apparently referring to a media report about Duffy’s expenses, the email says, “This sure seems to be a smear.”
Wright, through his lawyer, declined to comment Monday night.
Duffy is at the centre of controversy around the $90,000 from Wright, at the time the prime minister’s top aide, which was meant to help pay back the Senate after he claimed a secondary housing allowance in the capital. At issue is an alleged coverup in which the PMO paid off Duffy so that he could in turn repay the disputed sum. A Conservative-dominated Senate audit committee allegedly would then whitewash Duffy’s behaviour and make the scandal disappear.
Other questions were also raised about some of Duffy’s other expenses. Duffy said Monday his expenses were in order but for minor adjustments; the discrepancies over more than four years came to only $437.35, he said.
“Wait until Canadians see the email trail in the hands of my lawyers, and I hope in the hands of the RCMP,” he said.
The RCMP is investigating the circumstances around the cheque. Harper has said he did not know his chief of staff had paid $90,000, and in a radio interview Monday, he toughened his language about Wright, whom he has always said resigned over the matter. In the interview, Harper said Wright had in fact been “dismissed.”
Contacted for comment, the PMO added no new information in response to Duffy’s latest bombshells, which rained down on the Senate even as the strain within Conservative ranks over the affair appeared to deepen.
Last week, the Conservative leadership in the Senate proposed motions to suspend Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau without pay, privileges or benefits over their spending, a plan backed publicly by Harper.
Duffy said Conservatives who are to gather for their upcoming convention this week in Calgary would be shocked if they knew how staffers in Harper’s office had acted toward him, explaining that they gave him a script about paying back his expenses by taking out a loan from the Royal Bank, “minutes” before he did television interviews to talk about repaying his expenses.
“That line was written by the PMO to deceive Canadians as to the real source of the $90,000,” said Duffy. “They have no moral compass.”
Monday morning, prior to Duffy’s speech, senators mulled privately what to do about the trio.
“Most Canadians probably think there should be some sanction. But they want it to happen after the process,” said Tory Sen. Hugh Segal, on his way into a meeting of Conservatives. “We all take a separate oath to Her Majesty to do our job loyally and honourably; the prime minister’s views are taken very seriously and they are important. But our oath to Her Majesty to do what’s right is actually more important than any other politician.”
On the weekend, the government’s Senate leader, Claude Carignan, who had introduced the original motions to suspend, told RadioCanada that his caucus might craft new plans Monday if there was consensus among party members. Those motions might involve somehow softening the punishment of Wallin and Brazeau, though not necessarily of Duffy.
Conservative Sen. Don Plett, a former president of the national party, said in Monday afternoon that there might still be amendments to the original motions. “I don’t think anybody was expecting what Mr. Duffy had to say.”
Asked whether there’s an appetite in Conservative caucus to go forward on the issue, Plett said: “Obviously this will be discussed.”
Liberals have been pushing to send the entire issue to a Senate committee so a detailed investigation can be undertaken on whether punishing the three senators may have legal implications for an ongoing RCMP investigation, or might otherwise violate the senators’ right to a fair hearing. However, one Liberal senator admitted it was unlikely his party has enough Conservative support to push the matter in that direction.
Instead, the question was whether the Conservative senators would force a vote on suspension this week. If such a vote happens, the earliest debate could end would be Thursday or Friday.
If the Conservatives propose something besides suspension without pay, it remains unclear how the Liberals will respond.
“There are a lot Conservative senators who are very concerned about the way the government proposes to do this, so I hope they’re going to have an opportunity (Monday) to try to persuade the government to change its mind,” said Sen. James Cowan, Liberal leader in the Senate. “I would hope that what they would say is, ‘We need to send this to a committee.’ ”
Meanwhile, the prime minister ‘s comment on a Halifax radio show Monday seemed at odds with his statement in May that Nigel Wright had resigned over the payment.
“I had a chief of staff who made an inappropriate payment to Mr. Duffy — he was dismissed,” Harper said in the interview aired Monday morning.
Cowan said the shift of vocabulary from the prime minister “raises question about what is the real situation, and we’ve been trying to get to that from the beginning. I’m sure the prime minister knows the difference between being dismissed and accepting a resignation.”