The trial where all becomes clear
Senator Duffy’s day in court has arrived
As the trial of Mike Duffy gets under way — scores of reporters packed into a defenceless Ottawa courtroom, the networks standing by outside with the satellite trucks and the makeup trailers, ancient Tory grandees rehearsing their lines in preparation for their moment on the witness stand, opposition party spokesmen available on a moment’s notice to wring their hands at the unseemliness of it all, and everyone lawyered up within an inch of their lives — it is important to remember that what we are embarked upon here is the search for truth.
Certainly that is all that Sen. Duffy has ever wanted: just to get “the whole story” out, “all the facts” he was prevented from sharing with the public that winter day two years ago when he claimed to have paid back all of his improperly obtained expenses, when in fact they had all been paid by Nigel Wright, the prime minister’s chief of staff. It will be shown, his lawyer assures us, that he did not want to take the money, that he was forced to participate in this “monstrous scheme” wherein he would be “made whole” for the expenses he had claimed on his house, his travel, his meals, his personal trainer and so on, in return for nothing more than his silence.
The Crown alleges Sen. Duffy took a bribe; Sen. Duffy says in fact he was the victim of extortion, threatened with the loss of his Senate seat if he did not agree.
Indeed, the Senator seems acutely aggrieved that he was ever asked to pay the money back, as he has always maintained that in filing for the impugned expenses, he was guilty of at worst a clerical error. Or rather, his assistant was.
For their part, senior members of the government no doubt just want the truth to come out. The several leading Conservative senators who certainly appeared, in that voluminous archive of emails the RCMP collected, to be scheming to erase any criticism of Sen. Duffy’s behaviour from a committee report, and to lean on the accountants conducting a forensic audit into his expenses to make a similarly exculpatory finding, will certainly be glad of the chance to tell their story at last.
The prime minister, on the other hand, will be crestfallen that he will in all likelihood not be called as a witness, inasmuch as this would have provided him with the first opportunity he has had to tell his side of the story — not counting the hundreds of questions he has avoided directly answering in the House or the dozens of press conferences he has never held.
Were he to have the honour of testifying under oath, however, I am confident he would clear up the many questions surrounding his own knowledge of the affair: what Mr. Wright could have meant in February of 2013 when he emailed the other participants in Operation Cluster-duff that the PM was “good to go” with their plan, at that time to have the party repay Sen. Duffy; or what Mr. Wright could have meant in May of that year when he told the prime minister’s spokesman that Mr. Harper knew, albeit “in broad terms only,” that he had personally repaid Mr. Duffy’s expenses; both of which remain a puzzle, since the prime minister has vehemently denied knowing one iota of either plan.
The prime minister might also then have the chance to explain why his initial response, when the story broke, was to say he had full confidence in his chief of staff; why he nevertheless agreed, a few days later, to accept his resignation; why that story changed, some weeks after that, to him having fired Mr. Wright; or why he later stopped saying that. He might even be able to explain why, when he repeatedly told Parliament that Mr. Wright acted alone, none of the more than a dozen party and PMO staff now known to have been in on the plan thought to inform him of his error.
Alas, it seems he will not be given that opportunity. Mr. Wright, however, will. Knowing him as I do (I remind readers, in the interest of full disclosure, that I am an old classmate of his), I feel certain he will be eager to explain why he did not simply do as the prime minister says he told him, and insist that Sen. Duffy pay the money back himself; why not only he, but so many of the senior Conservatives with whom he was in regular correspondence, seemed so preoccupied with the questionable expenses of a single senator; or why, if they were doing nothing wrong, they did not just declare openly what they were up to, rather than skulking about in secret.
What a relief it must be for him, and all of them, to finally say their piece. And when they have all had their time on the witness stand, what a glorious moment it will be, when we are at last able to compare their testimony and find that all of their stories — Mr. Wright’s, Sen. Duffy’s, the prime minister’s, the various other senators and lawyers and assorted hangers on — are all true.