Court of public opinion

Re: Duffy Cleared Of All Fraud, Bribery Charges, David Reevely, April 22.

The judge in the Duffy trial should put on his eyeglasses. The Harper administration was the only one to try to expose the abject waste of money by many senators. Finally now, hopefully, there is an awareness that the taxpayer should not be paying for senators’ $10,000 fitness consultations when many Aboriginal Canadians don’t have clean running water. Phil Fingrut, Toronto.

Mike Duffy may have avoided the legal penalties relating to his behaviour, however, he still stands to be judged by the public for his moral and ethical behaviour. No reasonable nor responsible adult would have deemed it appropriate to have incurred the myriad of personal expenses incurred by Duffy under the guise of appropriate Senate expenses or entitlements. The Senate’s gross mismanagement of the expense reporting process provided an open platform for abuse, and Duffy took full advantage of it.

Duffy may not have broken the law. However, in the court of public opinion, he does — by any reasonable standard — stand convicted of immoral and unethical behaviour and should be expelled from the Senate, along with others guilty of

There seems to be a contradiction here. The judge cleared Mike Duffy of breaching the rules because the rules were so poorly drafted that it could not be shown that he breached them. The judge then turned his wrath — and deservedly so — on the PMO. But the PMO has no rules, save those it makes up as it goes along. Lee Moller, North Vancouver, B. C.