Wright broke ethics rules, report says
Former PMO chief of staff won’t face penalty for breach in Duffy expenses repayment
OTTAWA— Stephen Harper’s former top aide, Nigel Wright, was never charged with a criminal offence but his efforts to repay $90,000 for Mike Duffy’s Senate expenses were a breach of federal conflict rules, according to a new report.
More than a year after an Ontario criminal court acquitted Duffy in the Senate expenses affair, and four years after the federal Ethics and Conflict of Interest Commissioner began and suspended her investigation, Mary Dawson finally reported Thursday on Wright’s role.
She fingered Harper’s former chief of staff for ethical blame on two fronts — when he pressed the Conservative Party to repay Duffy’s bill, and when he decided to do so himself.
Dawson concluded Wright broke the rules for public-office holders, which prohibited him from making decisions that would further another person’s private interests — Duffy’s — and barred him from influencing the decisions of anyone else, such as the Conservative Party’s chief bagman Irving Gerstein, to further Duffy’s interests.
There is no penalty for violating those two sections of the act.
“The only sanction is the negative publicity resulting from the release of the examination report,” her office said in an email to the Star.
Her report is a politically difficult one for the Conservative Party as it struggles to move on from the Harper era, and a personally difficult one for Wright, now a London-based financier.
“My intention throughout was to ensure that the taxpayer was repaid for Sen. Duffy’s expenses. I have always believed, and still believe, that my effort to get those funds repaid was in the public interest. We’ll take the time to review and understand the report,” Wright said in a statement issued Thursday by his lawyers.
Wright was never charged for making a payment to Duffy, though Duffy was charged and acquitted of accepting a bribe. Dawson noted he was investigated by the RCMP for a possible violation of the Parliament of Canada Act. In the end, Wright was a witness for the Crown at Duffy’s criminal fraud trial. Dawson made clear she viewed the payment as wrong.
“The transfer of money by Mr. Wright to Senator Duffy, with express conditions attached and over Senator Duffy’s persistent objections, was serious enough to raise the question of charges being laid against Mr. Wright for giving compensation as prohibited under subsection 16(3) the Parliament of Canada Act. Although the issue of illegality was not pursued, I would consider such an act to be undoubtedly improper.”
New Democrat MP Charlie Angus, a leadership candidate and the former ethics critic, said the report shows “how cynical” the efforts of Wright and the Harper PMO were.
Mike Duffy declined to comment but his lawyer, Don Bayne, said Thursday he disagreed with a key premise of Dawson’s findings: that Wright acted to further Duffy’s private interests. “That wasn’t remotely the case,” Bayne said.
He pointed to the ruling of Justice Charles Vaillancourt in acquitting Duffy last April, saying it was “crass political manoeuvring” that drove Wright.
“It was for pure political motives to advance the party and its image in the public and to protect the thenprime minister and his government that this was done. None of this was for Sen. Duffy’s interests.” Dawson, however, concluded Wright’s payment let Duffy off the hook from having to repay expenses out of his own pocket.
She rejected, one by one, Wright’s arguments in his defence to her.
She said when Wright first tried to get the Conservative Party to pay off the senator’s debt — which the party was ready to do when the amount was believed to be $32,000 — he was using his influence as the prime minister’s top aide. When all of Duffy’s bills were added up it ran to more than $90,000 and the party balked.
Dawson rejected Wright’s defence that he was acting in a purely partisan capacity — beyond her reach — when he turned to former Sen. Irving Gerstein, chair of the Conservative Fund of Canada, to repay Duffy’s politically embarrassing expenses.
“I am of the opinion that in his communications with Sen. Gerstein, Mr. Wright used his position as chief of staff to the prime minister to seek to influence Sen. Gerstein and the Conservative Fund of Canada to reimburse Senator Duffy’s living expenses,” Dawson wrote.
When Wright, an independently wealthy investment banker trained as a lawyer, decided to use his own funds to transfer to Duffy’s lawyer the amount owed to pay off the debt, she said he “knew or ought to have known that he was improperly furthering Sen. Duffy’s private interests” because it took the burden off Duffy to use his own assets.
She said Wright explained that “he believed he was serving the government and the prime minister, not serving the private interests of Senator Duffy. He added that his duties included managing situations that could embarrass the government.”
Wright resigned in May 2013 when news of the payment first broke. He returned to work for Onex investment corporation, based in London, England.
Duffy pleaded not guilty to 31criminal fraud and breach of trust charges the RCMP laid against him in relation to those expenses. Last April, a judge cleared him of all charges.
The senator continues to sit as an independent.