Might be difficult to recover from mess
RCMP document spawning constellation of mini-scandals
Since Tuesday, when the RCMP dumped an 81-page bag of burning refuse on the steps of the Prime Minister’s Office, journalists and opposition MPs have sensibly focused on a question that could undo the prime minister: What did he know about the secret $90,000 payment from his chief of staff to Sen. Mike Duffy?
It’s an excellent question, but even if Stephen Harper is judged by the public to have answered it truthfully, the Information to Obtain a Production Order filed by Cpl. Greg Horton is so rich in disturbing information about the modus operandi of the people around Harper that it seems unlikely this government will ever recover.
The ITO is spawning a constellation of mini-scandals, putting the PMO on the defensive for the foreseeable future, making Harper more vulnerable to his enemies, shaking the confidence of his friends and putting a gleam in the eyes of those who would like his job.
The people on Harper’s team must do their best to manage the widening fallout with the full knowledge that the boss will throw team members under the bus for doing what they seem to have expected he wanted them to do.
The RCMP documents have revealed the Harper team’s hard-edged, furtive approach to governing, which may shake the confidence of remaining team members in the wisdom of the office culture, and lead them to spend more time pondering how they can cover themselves and less time thinking about what the boss might like them to do in a given situation.
The process will be further complicated by the fact there are a handful of key players now on the bus who may, at some point, have to go under it.
At the top of the list is Sen. Carolyn Stewart Olsen, long one of Harper’s closest confidantes.
Like many members of Harper’s palace guard, Stewart Olsen didn’t have a career in politics before she went to work for Harper. He has brought her far, and she is fiercely loyal to him.
She sat on the three-member steering committee that handled the audits of Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau. The emails show she was the main point of contact for the PMO as they exerted influence over senators to get them to whitewash the subcommittee’s discoveries to avoid finding fault with Duffy, who was threatening to blow up the $90,000 deal.
Stewart Olsen was, in the words of an email from PMO staffer Patrick Rogers, making changes to the report in “fulfilment of her commitment to Nigel (Wright) and our building,” putting the wishes of the Prime Minister’s Office ahead of her duty to act independently.
In June, though, when she was interviewed by two Mounties, she told them “no one gave her direction or orders to change the Senate report. There was no communication, influence or direction by anyone in the PMO to make any changes ... no conversation between her and Mr. Wright or anyone in the PMO.”
Troublingly, Horton concludes that her “version of events to police was incomplete, and not consistent with the facts.”
It is reasonable to wonder if her failure to help police with a criminal investigation will eventually lead to a separate but related investigation.
As a paranoid journalist, I often worry that improper influence is exerted over audits. It is dismaying to find reason to be paranoid.
Like Duffy, Stewart Olsen was a longtime Ottawa resident who designated another home as her primary residence and collected per diems while she was in Ottawa. Unlike Duffy, who didn’t sit on the committee, she has not been suspended without pay.
The report that Stewart Olsen whitewashed at the behest of the PMO was based on an audit from Deloitte Canada. The emails released by the RCMP show that at first the PMO hoped that Deloitte would kill the Duffy audit if he paid back his disputed expenses. Later, the PMO hoped the auditors would stop short of concluding that Duffy’s primary residence was in Ottawa, which they did.
PMO staffers expressed their hopes for the audit to Sen. Irving Gerstein, the chair of the Conservative Fund, who was close to Mike Runia, a managing partner at Deloitte and the auditor of the party’s books. Runia gave a presentation at the recent Conservative convention in Calgary.
Wright asked Gerstein to “work through senior contacts at Deloitte.”
Rogers wrote in one email that Gerstein “agrees with our understanding of the situation and his Deloitte contact agrees. The stage we’re at now is waiting for the senator’s contact to get the actual Deloitte auditor on the file to agree. The senator will call back once we have Deloitte locked in.”
It is shocking that the PMO asked a fundraiser to approach an audit firm that the government and the party employ to ask about a supposedly independent audit.
As a paranoid journalist, I often worry that improper influence is exerted over audits. It is dismaying to find reason to be paranoid.
On Thursday, Deloitte’s auditors are being called before the Senate committee to explain what happened. Gerstein has yet to face questions.
The burning bag of refuse will not be disposed of easily.