Senate seeks to be stricken from Duffy suit
OTTAWA • Lawyers for the Senate warned of dire consequences for Canada’s democracy Wednesday as they laid out their case for why Sen. Mike Duffy shouldn’t be allowed to sue the upper chamber over his dramatic and protracted suspension without pay five years ago.
Allowing Duffy to target the Senate with his $7.8-million lawsuit would obliterate the protective walls aimed at keeping the courts and Parliament separate, they argued. They cited parliamentary privilege — a centuries-old right designed to protect legislators from legal consequence in the course of doing their jobs.
Senate lawyer Maxime Faille told the court that while parliamentary privilege may appear arcane, it cannot be taken for granted when looking at “recent events around the globe, near and far.”
Chipping away at that right could potentially unleash a flood of cases that would result in an unprecedented tearing down of the separation of powers between the government and the courts, Faille said.
The portion of the lawsuit against the Senate hinges on Duffy’s arguments that senators acted unconstitutionally and violated his charter rights when they suspended him without pay in 2013 over expense claims.
Faille said the Senate, like the House of Commons, has the right to discipline its members free from judicial review, even if their actions appear repugnant.
“The Senate may be wrong, the Senate may be incorrect, but that is a matter for the Senate to determine,” he said.
“If we are to sort of crack open this exception — but if they really did it for a really harebrained reason — then we have eviscerated parliamentary privilege and the courts would be sitting in regular review of (parliamentary) discipline actions.”
If the court agrees, Duffy’s suit would proceed only against the federal government over the actions of the RCMP during the investigation.
Unlike Duffy’s high-profile criminal trial, the arguments made in the first of two days of hearings on the Senate’s request happened in a sparse courtroom. Federal lawyers representing the government and RCMP sat on one side of the room. Duffy sat opposite.
He is seeking damages from the Senate and RCMP in the wake of the highprofile investigation and suspension surrounding his expense claims, an explosive political scandal that plagued then prime minister Stephen Harper’s government, culminating in Duffy’s acquittal on 31 charges in April 2016.