Tory who stood up to PMO bullies has left the building
It is no wonder Wright wrote an internal email to PMO colleagues declaring ‘Sen. LeBreton agrees that Chris might not be fully on board.’ And it’s probably
no wonder Montgomery is no longer here.
It speaks volumes about Conservative ethics in 2013 that ground was all but being cleared on Nov. 21 for a monument to a previously unknown party operative named Chris Montgomery.
Montgomery is the guy who tried to stand up to the bullies in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office and their Senate operatives as they sought to put a lid on the Mike Duffy affair.
For that, Montgomery, then the director of parliamentary affairs for Sen. Marjory LeBreton, was exposed in emails from Harper’s office as “the problem,” the man who couldn’t understand the meaning of “circle the wagons,” a rogue who was choosing political high ground over political expediency.
It was as if Diogenes could turn off his lamp. The honest man had been found.
Of course, this being Ottawa, there is no happy ending. Montgomery finally relented to the PMO jackboots and has left Ottawa for a new job in Calgary.
We don’t know why, or how, Montgomery was finally made to cave, but he was in the process of turning his back on 11 years of Conservative politics and heading to a new job at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers when he was interviewed by the RCMP.
The 80 pages of affidavits released on Nov. 20 take us on two journeys, both rich with internal emails that offered an unprecedented entree into the damage control underway in Harper’s office as the Duffy scandal became a political problem.
One track takes us to the centre of the negotiations between Duffy and Wright and the ever-expanding number of Harper’s staff privy to the details of the deal.
The other track takes us to the whitewashing of a Senate report on Duffy, an attempt to derail an independent audit and the powerful control Harper’s office had over its senators.
It is not clear how much the prime minister knew about this extraordinary strong- arming.
It should be no surprise that the PMO sought to control its senators, but it is a surprise that Harper would rise in the Commons only days ago to plead otherwise.
“The Senate, as we all know, is an independent body,” Harper said Oct. 29, sparking gales of laughter from opposition benches.
Montgomery was trying to make it thus, clearly irritating those playing the grand game of deception.
On May 8, the day major changes were made to the Duffy Senate report, Sen. Carolyn Stewart Olsen, a former Harper communications aide, lamented ruefully, in an email to Patrick Rogers in the PMO, that she had been too optimistic about the ease with which a report could be whitewashed because “Montgomery says we, as senators, should not compromise ourselves.”
Rogers forwarded it to Wright, calling it “unbelievable.” A minute later, Rogers told Stewart Olsen: “This is the direction. You are not compromising yourself.
You’re fulfilling commitments that were made,” which was a reference to a deal struck between Wright and Duffy over the $ 90,000 expense repayment.
When the initial report was found to be critical of Duffy — contrary to the deal — Harper’s office demanded it be changed.
The changes were delivered through Stewart Olsen, who immediately bought in “100 per cent,” according to PMO staffer Rogers, but the RCMP says there appeared to be a temporary impasse when Montgomery told Stewart Olsen, LeBreton, Rogers and Chris Woodcock of the PMO that the Senate was compromising itself in capitulating to the will of Harper’s office.
According to his testimony to police, he told Rogers and Woodcock that they should not be involved in the Senate audit and reports regarding Duffy, and that he had never, in seven years in the Senate, seen the PMO attend meetings and insist on the wording of a Senate report.
He argued that senators make the final decision on how their reports are worded.
In February, Rogers came to Montgomery to suggest a special Senate rules committee be held to declare Duffy and Pamela Wallin as residents in their respective provinces. A snap of the finger to make it go away, in other words. Montgomery told him that wouldn’t work.
He refused a request from Wright to deal with Duffy during the Deloitte audit because he refused to get involved in an independent process.
Sen. David Tkachuk came to Montgomery to discuss the possibility of shutting down the Deloitte audit of Duffy. Montgomery told him he couldn’t do that.
It is no wonder Wright wrote an internal email to PMO colleagues declaring “Sen. LeBreton agrees that Chris might not be fully on board.”
And it’s probably no wonder Montgomery is no longer here.