PM ignored the evidence on Del Mastro
Critics of the prime minister say his judgment is poor, pointing to a long list of accused fraudsters and expense chisellers whom he has placed in high office.
The suggestion is Stephen Harper is not good at taking the measure of would-be senators or spymasters, missing their character flaws, and they end up disappointing him by cheating on expenses or taking kickbacks.
Certainly, Harper could not be expected to know Don Meredtih would eventually be accused of having a sexual relationship with a teenager. But the Dean Del Mastro story is different. It’s hard to believe the PM didn’t know his parliamentary secretary was guilty.
On June 6, 2012, Glen McGregor and I published a story based on court documents that laid out the details of the violations Del Mastro was convicted of this week. Elections Canada had evidence he had exceeded his 2008 election limit by paying for political calls with a $21,000 personal cheque.
When the prime minister was asked about it in the House of Commons a week later, he spoke up for Del Mastro, saying “Mr. Speaker, as we all know, the honourable member for Peterborough has submitted all of his information to Elections Canada … The member of Parliament not only won that election but has since won a subse- quent election. He serves his constituents and this House honourably, and I think we all should treat each other with a little more consideration than that.”
I would like to know what steps Harper took between our story and his statement to satisfy himself that investigators were wrong.
At the time, Del Mastro was daily fielding queries in the Commons about phone calls that had sent opposition supporters to the wrong polling stations in the 2011 election. He was likely having regular, tense meetings with Harper’s most senior people, including organizer Jenni Byrne and party lawyer Arthur Hamilton.
When Del Mastro was accused of having personally cheated, Harper kept him by his side. Why? The evidence for his guilt was strong. And the party and the Prime Minister’s Office surely had more information than was publicly available.
The slow-motion train wreck that concluded with Del Mastro’s perp walk in shackles raises questions about both the ethics and the savvy of Harper’s palace guard.
The prime minister let Del Mastro go after Elections Canada and Frank Hall, the witness whose testimony eventually sent him to jail. Del Mastro attacked Hall in the House, an abuse of parliamentary privilege.
Hamilton attacked Hall’s credibility in an unrelated court proceeding, making what I believe to be false accusations against him.
These are the people who have since overhauled our election law.
In the midst of the robocalls scandal, the Conservatives promised to strengthen Elections Canada. But when Tim Uppal, then the minister of democratic reform, brought the bill to a closed-door caucus meeting, MPs, including Del Mastro, spoke against it and Uppal’s bill was never tabled.
Pierre Poilievre, who took the job of attacking Elections Canada from Del Mastro, eventually tabled a new bill that stripped Elections Canada of its investigative powers and introduced many regulatory changes whose impact is only becoming clear as we approach the election.
For instance, Del Mastro was convicted of exceeding a $92,567 spending limit. Under the new law, the byelection to replace him (which will be cancelled when the real election starts) will have a limit of $508,000.
There is good reason to be nervous about the conduct of the election this fall.
Harper, who has not commented on Del Mastro’s sentencing, could give Canadians comfort by making it clear that he won’t defend cheaters in the future.
These are the people who have since overhauled our election law