National Post (National Edition)
Duffy trial true dog and mule show
Suspended senator alleged to bill puppy trip
And so, in Week 5, did the dog-and-pony show that is the Mike Duffy trial turn to actual dogs, ponies and even a mule.
For two days, there has been much evidence about the provenance of the Duffy family dogs (there were two, both Kerry Blue Terriers, one named Ceilidh, who died tragically young of cancer, the other Chloe) and where Mike and Heather Duffy did or did not encounter the breeder, Barbara Thompson (twice at horse shows in P.E.I. and New Brunswick, where her daughter was barrel racing and where once, Thompson agreed without any explanation, she was riding a mule), from whom they acquired Chloe.
The suspended senator is alleged by prosecutors to have attended a dog show in July of 2010 in Peterborough, Ont., to arrange for the puppy, a trip he later billed to the public purse and whose purpose he described as meeting “local officials on the broadcast business.”
Duffy’s lawyer, Don Bayne, said in his opening statement “there was no dog bought at Peterborough, nor any dog arranged to be bought,” and Wednesday, Thompson appeared to bolster that contention, saying she didn’t attend the Peterborough show in 2010, which is where prosecutors alleged the Duffys may have met her.
Mind you, Thompson had great difficulty fixing dates, even years, and time spans, once merrily agreeing with Bayne, for instance, that her dog, Charmaine, was either in heat or about to be bred on Sept. 18, 2010, when the Duffys saw Thompson at one of the horse shows, and that Chloe was born Oct. 23.
That would render Charmaine’s pregnancy a maximum of 35 days, compared to the average gestation period of 61 days, a record-setter if not perhaps the canine version of a virgin birth.
But enough of that: The evidence of the dog witnesses hasn’t begun to resolve the key question, though they have been very folksy, with Thompson taking the court’s call in her car, parked by a train station or track somewhere in New Brunswick, such that the court was able to hear the lonely sound of the train’s horn as it approached, and the one the day before bidding a cheery, “Bye everybody!” as she hung up.
But in fact, the dog-and-pony nature of the trial was best illustrated after the dog-andpony witnesses.
This was when John Duncan, the Conservative Member of Parliament from Vancouver Island North and now the party whip, came to testify about a June 22, 2009, event Duffy attended in Courtney.
This is another of the disputed trips Duffy took and billed to the Senate, which the prosecutors allege were improper and which Bayne says were merely a mix of public with partisan work, and thus, under the Senate’s brilliantly murky rules, A-OK.
Now, Duncan was a solid witness who gave his evidence in a straightforward manner (presumably he has no dog) and seemed altogether a decent fellow.
The event in question was an electoral district association dinner (the modern name for what used to be called constituency associations for political parties) and it was, so far as Duncan was concerned, a nakedly partisan business: He asked the suspended P.E.I. senator if he could come at a Conservative caucus meeting; its purpose was to raise the association’s profile and raise money (though Duncan says they have since realized such dinners are lousy fundraisers) and the only people who were invited to come, he said, were Conservative supporters or party members.
But it was Bayne’s portrayal of Duffy, during his crossexamination — he painted the 68-year-old former broadcaster as the hero of the Conservative Party, riding hither and yon to save it — that was over the top.
Duncan agreed, certainly, that Duffy was popular, was “the senator that people wanted to meet” because they’d “watched Mr. Duffy on his show” for years, but resisted both Bayne’s efforts to turn him into the party’s white knight and his invitations to describe what Duffy was doing on Vancouver Island as “public” or Parliamentary business.
As Duncan put it once, “Yeah, they’re all public policy issues, and they were talked about in partisan terms, which is how these functions go.”
The cross did give Bayne the opportunity to produce one of his favourite props — a picture of Duffy and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, together announcing the rollout of the government’s “economic action plan” in Cambridge, Ont.
“I’m showing you a photo,” he said. “Were you aware that Prime Minister Harper, among all his ministers and senators, selected Senator Duffy” for the rollout duty?
“No,” replied Duncan, “I wasn’t.”
It isn’t the first time that Bayne has shown a florid touch.
When the journalist and author Mark Bourrie testified weeks ago, for instance — he received a $500 cheque from a Duffy crony for having done some online troll control for him — Bayne asked to see some of the Wikipedia documents he’d brought along and then, asked by Ontario Court Judge Charles Vaillancourt if he wanted to file them as an exhibit, declined and thundered, “Nobody deserves this kind of material in the public record!” and described the contents as “scurrilous” and “savage.”
Prosecutor Jason Neubauer argued Wednesday that the documents, which he said are striking “by the absence of anything that could be described as vile or scurrilous,” should be made an exhibit because “that portrayal was inaccurate.”
At the time, even the judge wondered aloud if perhaps Bayne hadn’t been indulging in “some theatrics” and said of the material, in a temporary ruling, “I did not find it dripping with the evil Mr. Bayne suggests.”
Just as Canada expects other nations to prevent their citizens from harming Canadians, we too are obliged to deny Canadian extremists the ability to kill and terrorize people of other countries.
Michel Coulombe, CSIS director There was no dog bought ... nor any dog arranged to be bought