Tory whip takes stand in Duffy trial

Witnesses help determine if trips personal, partisan or Senate business

If Mike Duffy met with veterans or local politicians on a partisan fundraising swing through British Columbia and Yukon, one of the local members of Parliament he went out there to support didn’t know about it, the MP testified at Duffy’s criminal trial on Wednesday.

The suspended senator is charged with 31 counts of fraud, breach of trust and bribery. Some of the charges have to do with allegations he spent money from his Senate budget on trips that were really personal, or really for the benefit of his Conservative party.

So what did he actually do on these trips, and was that enough to justify them as legitimate Senate business? Put another way, was Duffy’s fig leaf big enough? That’s what this stage of the trial is about.

One trip was right after Parliament broke for the summer in 2009, when Duffy had been a senator for about six months and was still seen as a great get for the Tories, a popular draw at party events because of his fame as a former broadcaster. It began with an appearance at a Conservative fundraiser on Vancouver Island, for local MP John Duncan, and carried on through ridings in the B.C. interior and Yukon.

Duffy’s diary, entered as evidence in the trial, notes the trip to Comox, B.C. Before appearing at the $60-a-plate fundraiser, the diary has this entry: “Meet vets reps on pension bridging & local Mayors.”

“I know all the mayors quite well. I had none of them inform me they’d had a meeting with Sen. Duffy. I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m just completely unaware,” Duncan testified.

Normal practice, when a Conservative politician goes around doing politics in another Conservative’s territory, is to let him know, said Duncan, who is the Tories’ chief whip.

“Certainly with our colleagues, if we’re going into their constituency or their riding for any kind of function, it’s anticipated that we will inform them that we’re going to be present and invite them. (That) would be the appropriate thing to do in most circumstances,” he said. If you don’t do that, you can expect to hear about it, he said.

The event, which Duncan said was absolutely a partisan Conservative affair organized by the local riding association, had about 100 people attend. Duffy was an in-demand party celebrity, and people really wanted to come hear him speak. The local Conservatives paid for the room, fronted the meals and put Duffy up in his hotel. They’d offered to fly Duffy and his wife, Heather, from Vancouver to Comox but ultimately did not pay that bill, for reasons Duncan wasn’t sure he’d ever heard.

Under cross-examination from Duffy’s defence lawyer, Donald Bayne, Duncan agreed Duffy was trumpeted as a senator in come-ons for the fundraiser and he spoke about public issues. Veterans’ pensions were a major public issue in 2009 and a particularly big deal in Comox, which has a big airbase. And local officials were lobbying federal politicians hard about the infrastructure money the government was spreading around to try to stimulate the battered economy at the time.

There were, doubtless, veterans at the fundraiser, and there might have been municipal politicians, Duncan said, and Duffy talked about those issues in his speech.

“Sen. Duffy’s son is with the RCMP, so he had some strong opinions on the pension issue. And there was lots of questions about whether or not there would be an election coming up that fall. The rest would be largely revolving around the economy,” Duncan recalled.

Just how far a senator can go into pure partisan politics on a trip for which he’s billing taxpayers is an important question for Judge Charles Vaillancourt.

The Senate’s rules say “partisan activities” are an inherent part of a senator’s job, though Senate officials have already testified that that’s based on the fact most senators are members of parties and go to caucus meetings and so on.

The actual written rules are vague about what’s not allowed, though: the language says senators aren’t to charge the Senate for things “such as” election campaigns and nomination campaigns. They also aren’t allowed to give money to their parties out of their public budgets. In practice, the rules have been interpreted to mean they can’t charge the Senate for travel to party fundraisers, but as Bayne has shown, that’s not plainly written down anywhere.

Duncan’s testimony on Wednesday afternoon followed telephone appearances by two other witnesses.

One was Ezra Levant, the conservative firecracker, who joined the list of people who’ve testified they did work for Duffy that he told them to bill to a company the Crown alleges served as a slush fund for payments Duffy didn’t want to send through the regular Senate paperwork process (in this case, a pair of $2,000 speeches).

The other was Barb Thompson, a New Brunswick dog breeder from whom the Duffys have bought two Kerry blue terrier puppies over the years. She said she understood they bought the second dog from her after going on a trip to a major dog show in Peterborough to check out others. Crown prosecutors allege Duffy billed that trip to the Senate because he had a coffee there with then-MP Dean Del Mastro.