Liberal corruption trials offer sad-sack defences

Premier Wynne’s testimony could be interesting

With a festive Labour Day 2017 in the books, Ontario Liberal corruption trial season can finally get underway. Next week in Toronto, former premier Dalton McGuinty’s chief of staff, David Livingston, and his deputy, Laura Miller, will answer to criminal breach of trust charges: they allegedly tried to arrange the deletion of damaging emails relating to the Liberals’ gas plant fiasco. And on Thursday in Sudbury, Pat Sorbara, current Premier Kathleen Wynne’s former deputy chief of staff, along with Nickel City Liberal bagman Gerry Lougheed, will answer to Election Act charges that essentially amount to bribery: they allegedly tried to coax prospective byelection candidate Andrew Olivier into standing down quietly with the promise of an appointment or job.

Two trials at once isn’t a great smell for any government. The prospect of Wynne testifying in Sudbury, along with Glenn Thibeault — the party’s preferred byelection candidate, and now the province’s Energy Minister — makes it even more pungent. And some of the sad-sack defences Liberal partisans are offering suggests it ought to be more than just two men and two women facing trial.

“Even if Livingston and Miller had tried to scrub the emails, they couldn’t have From left, David Livingston, Laura Miller and Patricia Sorbara because they’re backed up off site.” (Surely the breach of trust is in the attempt, not the successful completion.) “It can’t have been bribery, because Olivier had already been denied the nomination.” (So Lougheed and Sorbara were peddling him career opportunities for … no reason?) “It’s just politics.” (Do y’all not think you should do something about that?”)

In that sense, it’s reminiscent of the Mike Duffy affair: partisans hope we’ll read “not illegal” as “virtuous.” “The rules did not forbid Senator Duffy from calling his Prince Edward Island cottage his permanent residence, though it clearly

The Ontario trials are different in many other ways, of course — some of them quite interesting.

Duffy’s $8-million lawsuit against the government, his lawyer’s tales of a virtuous man “threatened, cajoled, arm-twisted and rebuked” until he finally “capitulated” in an Edwardian swoon, make him a popular villain. But the Clusterduff brought several people and institutions into more disrepute than Duffy himself: the Conservatives, for brushing away Duffy’s inquiries as to his eligibility to serve P.E.I. in the first place, then trying to cover up the fallout; every Senator who voted to expel Duffy from make him; the collective nightmare continues.

Some eyes widened last year when former British Columbia premier Christy Clark hired Miller, the alleged email-deletion conspirator, as her campaign chair. Innocent until proven guilty is a wonderful concept, but it doesn’t often hold much currency in politics. Could Clark really not find anyone qualified for the job who wasn’t facing criminal charges?

But the Sudbury case seems far more open and shut — if not legally then ethically. Olivier, bless his heart, recorded Sorbara flattering him and describing what rewards he might enjoy for stepping down quietly and not making a stink. (Perhaps the gentleman might enjoy a role in the constituency office? We have many commissions and committees!) I am not so naive as to be surprised this would be routine procedure in Ontario politics, but if it is, then Ontario politics should be in the dock in Sudbury along with Sorbara and Lougheed — and politicians ought to recognize that, as they seem to with Duffy.

Yet Wynne has said Sorbara will be welcomed back into the fold, should she be acquitted. “I have the deepest of respect for Pat Sorbara and I look forward to the opportunity to work with her again,” she said in July. Her testimony from the witness stand ought to be very, very interesting indeed.