Wider scandal likely to help Duffy’s case,
Auditor’s report could show that his use of public money was ‘normative conduct’
OTTAWA— Suspended Sen. Mike Duffy let slip his impassive mask of the past six weeks and grinned as he left an Ottawa courthouse Friday.
His trial has shifted gears just as the bigger Senate spending scandal on Parliament Hill did too. Asked if the outcome of one would affect the other, Duffy smiled but didn’t utter a word.
The two dramas are unfolding on different stages blocks apart, but it would be naive to think there won’t be some impact — in each direction.
The facts may be different but the rules that governed Senate spending claims are the same.
Duffy’s lawyer Don Bayne said Friday it’s “too early” to tell whether he’ll seek to introduce into evidence the auditor general’s report that found 30 of 105 senators reviewed had spending problems. But nobody doubts for a second that he won’t try.
For 21 delinquent senators identified by the auditor general, independent arbitration has been offered to settle disputed claims — a route that Bayne says “absolutely” should have been offered Duffy. For nine others, their files are now in the hands of the RCMP. An RCMP source says the Mounties will do their own analysis of the facts, not merely rely on the auditor general’s audit.
Bayne has already persuaded the Duffy trial judge to allow into evidence a damning December 2010 audit of the Senate. He’s fighting the Senate to get another internal audit in next week. It’s all part of the defence claim that Duffy was no criminal, that he was singled out despite being like many other senators, caught up by unclear rules that allowed broad discretion to spend as they saw fit, and who were reinforced in those decisions by a Senate administration who approved their claims.
The bombshell leaks of the auditor general Michael Ferguson’s report would seem to support Bayne’s argu- ment that Duffy was within the “normative conduct” that prevailed at the senate.
In the other direction, it seems clear rulings at the Duffy trial, still to be written by Judge Charles Vaillancourt, may change what happens to characters in the broader senate story.
Vaillancourt must decide what is legally countenanced by myriad Senate rules that authorized the use of Senate funds for “Senate business” or authorized housing expense payouts when a senator’s “primary residence” is more than 100 kilometres from Parliament Hill. He is looking at rules that authorized travel on the public dime, including for partisan business, and that granted discretion to senators to hand out contracts.
The RCMP’s sensitive and political investigative unit, within Ottawa’s “national division,” and Crown attorneys, will have to take a long hard look at whether to proceed in a whole new raft of cases — let alone the other two (retired Liberal senator Mac Harb and former Conservative senator Patrick Brazeau) where charges are already laid — if Duffy is acquitted.
Asenior police source conceded the Mounties are closely watching Vaillancourt’s rulings in Duffy and that it will impact other prosecution decisions. Harb’s trial has already been put off with the courtroom being of- fered to the Duffy trial, now running well behind schedule.
A prosecution source also conceded that the allocation of public resources, especially when other violent crime cases wait in the wings for judges, court time and prosecutors’ attention, play into their own decisions. Vaillancourt’s final ruling in the Duffy trial will not likely be released until early 2016, assuming the trial wraps up at the end of hearings, now scheduled up to Dec. 18.