RCMP ‘found nothing criminal,’ Duffy said in email
Sen. Mike Duffy sent a woeful note to British Columbia business leader Andrew Saxton once he knew he was under criminal investigation — including for billing taxpayers for a trip to B.C. to share a yacht-club lunch with Saxton and spend four days with his own kids.
Two years after the January lunch with Saxton and his son, Conservative MP Andrew Saxton, Jr., plus a handful of bankers, lawyers and accountants, the police were rooting through the now-suspended senator’s travel records, looking for evidence that would ultimately lead to the 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery Duffy now faces.
“The RCMP have been all over me, and despite their bluster have found nothing criminal,” Duffy wrote to the elder Saxton by email. “I simply did as I was asked, and followed the Senate rules as they were then written. There are hundreds of emails which bear this out, and which would not be helpful to the PM if they were to come out. So I am hoping the entire thing will be declared ‘political’ and be allowed to slip away.”
No such luck. Both Saxtons testified Wednesday at Duffy’s trial, talking about that lunch — the main bit of business recorded in Duffy’s extensive diary to justify a $4,500 New Year’s trip to British Columbia at the very end of 2011, with wife Heather at his side.
The younger Saxton, the MP, appeared in person; his father testified over the phone from his Vancouver office, where the 86-year-old maintains an active property-development company. More than 60 years after coming to Canada, he also maintains a thick Hungarian accent and a crusty manner.
The Jan. 3 lunch at the private Royal Vancouver Yacht Club was Duffy’s idea, the younger Saxton testified, organized fairly hastily over Christmas. Getting ahold of people was difficult and ultimately they got four to come: two lawyers, a banker and an accountant, all friends of theirs.
Duffy was a “longtime acquaintance,” Saxton Sr. testified. He’d helped found the CTV affiliate in British Columbia and had known Duffy from his long career in broadcasting before Prime Minister Stephen Harper made him a senator.
The younger Saxton understood the lunch as a “pre-budget consultation,” a chance for Duffy to hear from a cross-section of British Columbians about the federal budget due later that winter.
The elder Saxton saw it as “bringing together friends to discuss current events.” Duffy’s presence was unusual but Saxton would often have lunch with the others.
They talked about “mainly current events, and in B.C. at that time the pipeline was quite the issue, the forefront. We’re all very acquainted with what goes on. … It was a general discussion about those matters,” he testified. Nobody took notes or anything. “It is a private club and it is a social club and you aren’t supposed to bring out work papers at a private club,” the younger Saxton said. But Duffy did write to Harper’s then-chief of staff, Nigel Wright, afterward, informing him that the men he met were concerned about pipeline politics, farm credit and policies toward small- and medium-sized businesses. Saxton couldn’t recall that anything in particular made it into the government’s budget that year, what with the thousands of budget ideas that come in.
Saxton Sr. put the bill on his tab at the club. He had it in his hand, he testified, and it was for $219.13, “including tax.” Duffy’s filing with the Senate claimed meal expenses for lunch that day anyway.
Duffy’s diary also includes a note about a $400 dinner with “Andrew Saxton et al” at a Keg restaurant. Both Saxtons testified they didn’t remember any such event.
“I don’t recall seeing him, apart from that lunch, on that visit,” Saxton Jr. testified. “I certainly don’t remember going to the Keg.”
His father allowed that the Keg is a restaurant he is aware of. He hasn’t been inside one in many years, he said.
Other than those outings, Duffy’s diary records a pleasant few days with his children, hanging out at son Gavin’s condo, shopping, getting a haircut. They rang in the new year together, apparently at the home of his daughter Miranda. He and Gavin had a “chat about ‘life,’ ” the diary says, and he read Bud the Spud to his grandson Colin.
He made daily claims to the Senate for meals and lodging, and was corrected by the Senate’s staff for claiming expenses on Jan. 1.
A note in the Senate file, apparently based on a conversation between a finance staffer and the senator, says that Duffy “had a number of meetings scheduled in Vancouver over the Christmas period. He indicated that the travel took place during that period as it is not possible for him when the Senate is sitting and it was the best opportunity to meet with all parties.”
Duffy’s email to the elder Saxton, besides complaining about the police investigation, included a fond reminiscence of the lunch — “I thought it was one of the highlights of my (now interrupted) Senate career” — complaints about his own poor health and his treatment by the prime minister.
“I am disappointed in the kind of ‘mob rule’ which seems to demand that anyone in disfavour with the media be tossed aside, no matter how spurious the charges,” he wrote.
Then he asked for Saxton to put him in touch with anybody who might be able to throw him any writing or editing work.
The elder Saxton never wrote back.
“I didn’t want to be involved,” he testified.