The lunch (with Andrew Saxton Sr.) was but the cover story, and a transparent bit of nonsense it was. Christie Blatchford
No other business took place over six days, but taxpayers took care of the bill
It is the email, as my CBC colleague Kady O’Malley says, that all by its lonesome encapsulates the Mike Duffy criminal trial and the shameless racket that likely goes on more widely in Canadian politics. It was Feb. 1, 2014. The pride of P.E.I. had resigned in disgrace, amid a growing scandal over his expense claims, from the Conservative caucus the previous May. He sat as an independent until his fellow senators, some of them as grasping as Duffy, voted to give him the boot and bolt the barn door once he was out.
The former TV broadcaster sat down to write a note to Andrew Saxton Sr.
(When printed, as the Ottawa Citizen’s clever David Reevely noticed immediately, the email appears part form letter, part individualized pitch, so Saxton Sr. may not, shall we say, have been the only recipient of such a note.)
More than two years earlier, when Duffy was still riding as high as a former talking head could reasonably expect, Saxton had hosted a lunch-cum-business-round table for him at the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club at the request of his Conservative MP (for North Vancouver) son, Andrew Saxton Jr.
In fact, as Saxton Jr. testified Wednesday, the lunch was “initiated by Sen. Duffy, suggested by Sen. Duffy,” and its main purpose, he said, “was to give ideas to Sen. Duffy.”
Saxton Sr., who at 86 is still the first one in at his office, kindly picked up the $219.17 tab for the seven attendees (he and his son, Duffy and four business types: two lawyers, a banker and an accountant).
But by February 2014, Duffy’s expenses were firmly on the RCMP radar — on July 17 that year, he was charged with the 31 fraud, breach-of-trust and bribery offences for which he is now on trial — and he wrote Saxton Sr.
It was all at once plaintive, selfpitying and remarkably, nakedly full of B.S.
First, Duffy set the stage: He was stuck in Ottawa for the winter due to a recent triple bypass and “have been told no travel back to P.E.I. in the immediate future” — as if, otherwise, he’d be spending the winter there.
(Duffy, of course, had lived in the Ottawa area for four decades but, for purposes of his Senate appointment, claimed his cottage on the island as his “primary residence,” thus enabling him to file for “additional living expenses.”)
“In the meantime,” he wrote Saxton Sr., “the RCMP have been all over me, and despite their bluster have found nothing criminal.
“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.”
Then he began laying on the horse manure — this on a tough self-made man who came to Canada from Hungary as an orphan in 1947 and proceeded to build an empire that included founding the CTV affiliate, BCTV, Laurentide Financial and the Grouse Mountain Skyride.
Duffy waxed on about the “great luncheon at your club” two years before, lauded the old man for having explained the “discount” the U.S. gets for Canadian oil (Saxton Sr. described this as public information, “very common knowledge” and oft-discussed) and bragged that he’d talked with the PM directly about it.
“And it was all thanks to you,” Duffy wrote, “I thought it was one of the highlights of my (now interrupted) Senate career.”
What this was, of course, was a pre-emptive strike, the now 69-year-old trying to ingratiate himself with Saxton Sr., lest the Mounties come a knocking.
They did just that. Saxton Sr. was interviewed in his office on Feb. 20, 2014, and promptly handed over Duffy’s email.
Mike and Heather Duffy flew, in the usual business-class way of senators, from Ottawa to Vancouver on Dec. 30. They also both claimed per diems and taxis.
He billed the Senate, of course, and it appears, after a few questions, the Senate mostly paid. Under “purpose” on the travel claim he submitted, Duffy wrote “Senate business.”
But his diaries show that the Saxton lunch was the one and only event during the pair’s six-day visit to Vancouver; no wonder he was eager to shore it up with Saxton Sr.
Duffy’s son, Gavin, got married Dec. 14, 2011 in New York City; Duffy’s diaries are filled with excited mentions about the wedding.
Gavin and new wife Jane flew to Halifax Dec. 17.
Duffy and Heather joined them there Dec. 19, then flew back to Ottawa three days later. The newlyweds themselves arrived in Ottawa on Christmas Eve.
On Dec. 30, all four flew to Vancouver, where they spent New Year’s Eve and the days after together, with Duffy’s daughter, Miranda, and her husband and their two-year-old son, who all live there.
And, oh yes, for 90 minutes or so, Duffy disappeared for the lunch he’d engineered at the yacht club.
Andrew Saxton Jr. told Ontario court Judge Charles Vaillancourt that he thought the lunch had been arranged at least three weeks in advance.
According to Mike Duffy’s paperwork, now in evidence at the trial, he booked the Vancouver trip on Nov. 8, 2011.
It was a family trip, like the one to Halifax to see the newlyweds. The lunch was but the cover story, and a transparent bit of nonsense it was.
No wonder Saxton Sr. never bothered to answer Duffy’s email. A man like him probably felt soiled just receiving it.