Tories resist Liberal call to grill auditor

Wait until RCMP probe ends, Conservative senators say

An attempt by Liberal senators to haul a key player before a committee to testify in the Sen. Mike Duffy affair is expected to fail Wednesday, as Conservatives in the upper chamber appear ready to use their majority to quash what they say is the wrong move at the wrong time.

A debate Tuesday over whether to call Michael Runia, a senior partner at the audit firm Deloitte, to the committee that oversaw an audit of Duffy’s expenses, ended without a vote. The RCMP allege there was political interference in the audit.

Conservative senators on the internal economy committee used their majority last week to prevent Runia from testifying. The same fate appears ready to befall this latest attempt.

The leader of the Liberals in the Senate suggested that trying to call Runia, the Conservative party’s auditor of record, as a witness was a first step, and that the next step might be to try to force Sen. Irving Gerstein, the Conservative party’s chief fundraiser, to testify as well before the internal economy committee about the role he and Runia might have played in attempts to interfere with Duffy’s audit.

“We’re not going to let it go,” Sen. James Cowan said outside the Senate chamber Tuesday. “I don’t know what they have to hide. We’re not going to drop it right here. We’ll keep at it.”

During what was, at times, an emotional debate Tuesday in the upper chamber, Tories suggested Runia could be called after the RCMP completes its investigation, and accused the Liberals of playing partisan games, while Liberals argued that not calling Runia made the Senate complicit in a political coverup, even invoking the Watergate scandal at one point.

Sen. Vern White suggested the Senate may want to call Runia and Gerstein before a committee at a future date, but both could be witnesses in the RCMP investigation of Duffy and Wright. He argued that the investigation should run its course.

“For us to start bringing in their potential witnesses in front of our committee, I think, is a mistake,” said White, Ottawa’s former police chief. “The timing is wrong right now.”

There is nothing in the most recent court filings from the RCMP to suggest that either Gerstein or Runia is under investigation. The government has been adamant that Duffy and Nigel Wright, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, are the only people under RCMP investigation.

“As far as we know, they are not under investigation,” Cowan said. “I can’t see why having them come and explain their actions would have any effect whatsoever.”

The latest RCMP court documents, released late last month, note that investigators have spoken with Gerstein and Runia about their involvement in an alleged scheme orchestrated in the Prime Minister’s Office to alter Duffy’s audit, and even try to have it stopped. According to emails quoted in the court document, Wright asked Gerstein to work — through Runia — to get the Deloitte auditors on Duffy’s file on board with the PMO’s plan to clear Duffy of any wrongdoing with his housing expenses.

The auditors on the file told the internal economy committee last week that Runia did call them, but that he received no confidential information about Duffy’s audit. Still, the auditors said they were concerned to see in the court document that the PMO and Gerstein knew the audit’s conclusions weeks before they were given to the Senate.

“I’m not suggesting that no one has questions for these people, I’m just saying the timing is wrong,” White told reporters on his way into the Senate. “There’s no panic for us to ask questions of these people.”

Conservative Sen. Larry Smith, one of the three executives of the internal economy committee, said the Senate would be reaching beyond its jurisdiction if it called Runia as a witness before the internal economy committee.

“The motion deals with something that is under investigation by the RCMP, and that’s where it belongs,” Smith said outside the Senate chamber Tuesday.

“It has nothing to do with us trying to hide or not deal with an issue. It’s an issue that’s under review by the RCMP.”

The Liberals delayed a vote until Wednesday, a move the Conservative Senate leader called a partisan tactic to keep the debate in the news another day.