Defending life, liberty and security of pension
Duffy doesn’t seek millions for himself, he’s doing it for us
“If this action succeeds in bringing Charter protections to all who work on Parliament Hill, this will be my greatest contribution to public life.” — Senator Mike Duffy
Well I think we can all agree on that. And let there be no doubt: in suing the Senate of Canada and the Attorney General of Canada for $6.5 million in general damages, $1 million in punitive damages, and $300,000 in lost income, in addition to unspecified amounts in special damages, interest, and costs, the Senator from Wherever I Designate is not fighting for yet another great wad of dough from the taxpayer, in compensation for having been deprived of great wads of dough from the taxpayer when the Senate suspended him for taking great wads of dough from the taxpayer.
No, he is fighting for you and me. Well, you and me, if we were appointed to the Senate of Canada.
After his spectacular 2016 acquittal on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust, he is fighting for the rights we all enjoy: the right to be presumed innocent by a credulous judge, the right to a strangely inert Crown prosecutor (who failed to ask him, among other omissions, about the famous $90,000 cheque from Nigel Wright), and most of all, the right to claim tens of thousands from the public purse for personal trainers, “emergency” makeup artists, and travel of all kinds — notably “travel” to the Ottawa house he lived in for 38 years — on the grounds that the rules did not specifically prohibit it.
Sure, the “experts” say his chances are slim. Sure, the road ahead seems long and hard. But if it saves even one life appointee …
What is $8 million, after all — roughly 80 per cent of what Omar Khadr received for being imprisoned as a teenager and tortured for days on end — when one considers the “cruel and unusual punishment” to which, according to his statement of claim, Duffy was subjected, not to mention the deprivation of his right to “life, liberty and security of the person.” In case there is any confusion: both are references not to imprisonment or torture, but to the Senate decision to suspend him without pay.
He never asked to be made a senator. Well, he did, repeatedly, under both Liberal and Conservative governments. But the point remains: there but for a sense of shame go all of us. Each day as he takes his seat in the Senate he must relive the moment he was temporarily deprived of this basic right of citizenship, a six-figure sinecure until the age of 75, so long sought and so hard won. Not to mention the cost to his reputation, unblemished until then by even a hint of propriety.
And what is even that trauma compared to what he endured earlier, behind the scenes: blackmailed into accepting the $90,000, with the threat that if he did not take the money he had repeatedly demanded he would not get it. *
For months he was obliged to remain silent while the most senior figures in the Conservative government furiously attempted to whiten his good name: rewriting a Senate committee report, attempting to tamper with an outside audit, pretending to the public that Duffy repaid his expenses himself, all with a view to avoiding any suggestion he had knowingly done wrong.
To this day he must live with the stigma of being forced to publicly acknowledge he “may have made a mistake” in claiming his unwinterized cottage in P.E.I. as his principal residence, though to date he has been spared the stigma of having to repay any of it.
This is a moment for all Canadians to reflect. What has happened to us? What have we become that we should so cruelly mistreat this dedicated public servant? Not since Brian Mulroney was forced to pay taxes years late on the $300,000 in cash he had secretly taken from an international arms dealer and lied about under oath has there been such a travesty of justice.
As Duffy says, this is not about Duffy. Rather, it raises “questions which go to the heart of a democracy.” After all, if sitting legislators are to be forbidden from taking tens of thousands of dollars under the table from the prime minister’s chief of staff in return for colluding in a scheme to suppress a matter of some embarrassment to the government, namely their own questionable expense claims, it will be impossible to get good people to go into public life.
* Duffy’s claim that he was threatened with the loss of his Senate seat appears to be at best a misunderstanding, especially given the strenuous efforts by senior Conservatives, well documented in the email chains, to assure themselves that no such outcome was likely. As indeed it was not: the constitutional requirement is only that a senator be “resident” in the province he represents; the location of his “principal residence” is relevant only for purposes of claiming the housing allowance.