Feds are withholding records on Duffy deal, opposition charges
OTTAWA — The federal access-to-information watchdog, already investigating complaints that the government’s central bureaucracy is withholding documents about the Senate scandal, is now being asked to widen its probe — again.
The request from the Liberals comes after months of the Privy Council Office saying it has no documents regarding Sen. Mike Duffy or the deal he struck over his housing expenses with Nigel Wright, the prime minister’s former chief of staff. The opposition parties are trying to find any kind of additional paper trail about that deal.
This week, the NDP pushed Prime Minister Stephen Harper on how much information was being blacked out from documents that have been publicly released. The Liberals started making similar complaints in the summer, and this month asked Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault to widen her office’s probe of the Privy Council Office for the second time.
Postmedia News has also filed complaints over the office’s handling of access-toinformation requests on the Senate spending affair.
The Privy Council Office has responded to multiple requests for documents by saying it either has none under its control — saying it’s a matter inside the Prime Minister’s Office, which isn’t subject to the Access to Information Act — or that the documents don’t exist.
In one case, Liberal MP Ralph Goodale asked for emails from former PMO legal adviser Benjamin Perrin, who court documents allege played a role in Wright’s deal with Duffy. The Privy Council Office told Goodale it didn’t have any of Perrin’s emails — weeks after telling the RCMP in December that it had archived Perrin’s email account after he left the PMO in April 2013.
On Tuesday, the government tabled answers to five written questions from opposition parties in the House of Commons, including two questions from the Liberals about whether the PCO would renew searches for documents after misplacing Perrin’s emails,and one question from the NDP about the Wright-Duffy deal. The government responded that the Privy Council Office wasn’t involved, had no documents and had followed the accessto-information law.