MAKEUP ARTIST, INTERN AND TRAINER ON STAND
Court hears about what the suspended senator spent money on
Mike Duffy got taxpayers to fund three years’ worth of personaltraining sessions because he talked about seniors’ fitness and health with the trainer while he worked out, his trial heard Thursday.
This is the defence, to be clear — the explanation for why it was OK for him to get $9,150 worth of bills paid by a contractor whom he’d hired for writing and editing work.
Duffy is on trial on 31 counts of fraud, breach of trust and bribery, including for using that contractor to funnel Senate money into a “reserve pool” that he spent on things the government would not ordinarily have paid for.
Mike Croskery, the trainer, testified Thursday that he started working out with Duffy at his Kanata home in late 2007, after a chance meeting at a berry farm. Duffy, who has diabetes and heart disease, thought he could benefit from Croskery’s services and hired him, paying him with personal cheques while Duffy was still a journalist at CTV.
After Prime Minister Stephen Harper put him in the Senate in early 2009, Duffy’s personaltraining appointments trailed off. But then they resumed with a vengeance in 2010.
Croskery testified that Duffy instructed him to bill a company run by Duffy’s old friend, CTV cameraman and human-resources manager Gerry Donohue, about $3,000 a year for his services.
The invoices listed Croskery’s work as “consulting.”
“Did you continue providing fitness training to now-Senator Duffy after his appointment?” Crown prosecutor Jason Neubauer asked Croskery. “Yup,” Croskery answered. “Where did those sessions take place?” Neubauer asked.
“That would have been at his home,” Croskery said.
“Did the nature of the workouts change, the physical aspect of it, after he was appointed to the Senate?”
“No, I’d say they were pretty much consistent. There might have been some variations in intensity, but it was a pretty similar structure.”
A typical hour-long workout started with about 10 minutes on an exercise bike and some light stretching, then resistance training — working out with hand weights or stretchy rubber bands.
After Duffy went to the Senate, the two talked about aging and the importance of exercise in maintaining good health, Croskery testified.
There was some thought that Duffy might get the government to produce a book or pamphlet or CD or something about fitness for Canadian seniors, but it never seemed to get traction.
They discussed whether Baby Boomers will live as long as their parents have, for instance.
“You’re citing research to the senator as he’s exercising,” Neubauer put it to him.
“That’s right. Occasionally he would stop and write something on his computer. I don’t know what he was writing,” Croskery said.
Croskery billed Donohue once a year for six units of “consulting,” at $500 per unit.
In the second year, he added “Research the Age Wave.” In the third year, the price went up to $525 a unit. On an hourly basis,
There thought was that some Duffy might get the government to produce a book or pamphlet or CD or something about fitness for Canadian seniors, but it never seemed to get traction.
Croskery said, he’d charge the same for personal training as he would for discussing population health.
He now realizes that with Donohue billing $200 per hour for his “consulting,” his own $50 per hour base rate was way too low, he testified.
Croskery had never heard of Donohue before Duffy told him to send invoices to his company, first called Maple Ridge Media and later Ottawa ICF (for “insulated concrete forms,” a construction device). Croskery never met him. They might have exchanged an email, he said.
Under questioning from Duffy’s defence lawyer, Donald Bayne, Croskery said his career includes work for numerous Canadian national sports teams and pro sports franchises, plus occupational groups such as firefighters and paramedics.
He taught a class at Algonquin College once and produced a fitness guide for would-be firefighters in training there, and has published two weight-training manuals.
Through his MyoMax company, Croskery sells his expertise in devising fitness routines, not in demographics or health policy. For instance, although he and Duffy talked about Baby Boomers’ health, he wasn’t sure just how to define the Baby Boom generation.
Bayne has portrayed Donohue as a legitimate contractor doing real work for Duffy, some of which he just subcontracted out.
Judge Charles Vaillancourt also heard on Thursday from two other people the Crown says were paid fraudulently by money channelled through Donohue: a makeup artist and a one-time intern in Duffy’s Senate office who now works in the Prime Minister’s Office.
The makeup artist, Jacqueline Lambert, also did work for people such as then-finance minister Jim Flaherty on budget days — but she charged the Conservative party for it, not the taxpayer, she testified. The Crown alleges Duffy got her to charge Donohue for a makeup session before a TV appearance (she’d done his makeup for years as a freelancer for CTV, when he was on the air daily) after the Senate refused to pay for makeup for his official senatorial photo.
The intern, Ashley Cain, worked in Duffy’s office for a few months in 2010. She mostly did paperwork for a few hours a week, she testified: opening mail, sorting and digitizing business cards.
When Duffy’s assistant, Melanie Vos, took her on, they never talked about money and Cain didn’t expect to be paid, she testified.
But a couple of months in, Duffy and Vos were so pleased with her work that the senator let her know he’d try to find a way to get her some money. A little while later, the $500 cheque arrived in the mail from Maple Ridge Media.
“Would you have felt taken advantage of if Sen. Duffy hadn’t paid you the $500?” Neubauer asked her. “No,” Cain said. “What was in it for you to work for free?” he asked.
“The experience, really,” Cain said.
She went on to a job as an assistant working for the Conservative party and now works in the Prime Minister’s Office, dealing with letters from the public.
Duffy’s trial has heard from a Senate human-resources officer that volunteers in Senate offices are not paid and if a senator wants to convert a volunteer to a paid staffer, there’s a formal process that’s supposed to be followed.
Bayne has argued that volunteers are considered members of senators’ staffs and if Duffy wanted to start paying one, he could.