Duffy paid for unread research, court hears

OTTAWA— It was a tantalizing detail, a suggestion at the trial of Mike Duffy that could drag the Conservative Party of Canada into the fray.

The suspended senator’s fraud trial heard evidence that Duffy was surprised to learn a Conservative colleague in the Senate had signed him up with three others to split the $5,000 cost for polling research from what his lawyer suggested in court is a “Conservative polling firm.”

“What the heck is this?” Duffy said in an email to Elizabeth Brouse, a former employee of the firm who handled Duffy’s irritated queries, according to her testimony.

Duffy’s lawyer, Donald Bayne, asked Brouse if she was aware that MQO Research, whose parent company she said was “group M5,” was known as a “Conservative polling firm.” She replied no, at which Bayne ended his cross-examination without pursuing it further.

But Bayne did suggest to her that longtime Conservative political organizer Percy Mockler, named to the Senate by Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the same time as Duffy, was the one — not Duffy — behind the plan to split the “hefty” cost because it would be hard for one senator to foot the entire bill.

Week 2 of Duffy’s trial on 31 fraud, breach of trust and bribery charges ended with evidence of payments drawn on Duffy’s office research budget for services he either never bothered to avail of, or for which he never formally contracted, such as advice from a former press gallery colleague on how to fight Internet “trolls.”

Brouse testified that an unusual agreement her company made in March 2012 allowed the senators to split the subscription and the cost came about after Mockler met with a senior company official.

She identified the official as “Louis Leger, a managing partner of group M5, our parent company,” in its Moncton office.

Brouse testified she was assigned to close the deal and dealt with Mockler, who left her the impression the $5,000 cost of a subscription was too much for one senator’s budget, but could be financed by a group. She said the company normally allowed only single subscriptions, but in this case, MQO Research agreed to split the cost into $1,000 apiece among senators whose names Mockler provided.

Brouse said Duffy emailed her after she sent a welcome letter to his office introducing their monthly online, subscription-only publication that conducted polling on provincial and federal issues in the Atlantic provinces and did focus group research. Duffy emailed her back, she said, and “his inquiry was what the heck is this?”