Brazeau tweets about suicide attempt
OTTAWA— Quebec Sen. Patrick Brazeau shared a very personal message online Thursday afternoon as the political party leaders geared up for the first debate in the federal election campaign.
“Because of (Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s) ‘decisions,’ I tried to commit suicide. I failed,” Brazeau wrote on Twitter, before adding: “More in my book to come.”
Brazeau wrote a subsequent tweet accusing the Conservative Party of Canada of “doing everything to ensure I lose my job. #presumptionofinnoncence? We live in Canada right?”
Brazeau, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment the Star sent directly to him and also through his lawyers Thursday, also shared the same messages in French.
He had little to add in a response he gave to political news site iPolitics, but told them he had not yet lined up a publisher.
Stephen Lecce, a spokesman for the Conservative campaign, sent a statement by email Thursday expressing concern.
“It’s concerning, and we sincerely encourage Mr. Brazeau to seek the help he needs,” Lecce wrote after the campaign was asked for comment.
Debby Simms, a former policy adviser to Brazeau, said she would prefer the senator be the one to share more details about the suicide attempt he mentioned.
“That is his story to tell when he is ready to tell it. The main thing for those us who know and love him is that he is doing well and very much looking forward to the birth of his child and getting back to work,” Simms wrote in an email Thursday.
Simms did go into more detail about what Brazeau would have meant in his tweet accusing the Conservatives of doing whatever they could to get rid of him.
“Unfortunately, when it comes to the Senate, political leaders, and indeed the country as a whole, all seem to have forgotten the concept of the presumption of innocence. It is not a frill in our democracy, but the foundation of our very system of law,” wrote Simms, who worked for Brazeau when he was a senator.
“To see this fundamental concept shrugged off by so many shocks me to this day. When it comes to the Senate, Canadians are out for blood. They are not out for facts.”
Brazeau was dropped from the Conservative caucus Feb. 7, 2013, after he was arrested following an alleged altercation at a residence in Gatineau, Que.
His trial for assault and sexual assault, which began this March, is scheduled to resume in September, when Brazeau is expected to testify in his defence.
The Senate forced Brazeau on a leave of absence shortly after he was charged, and in November 2013 voted to suspend him without pay in response to the findings of an investigation by external auditors into travel and housing expenses he claimed. The RCMP charged him with breach of fraud and trust related to those expenses in February 2014.
That suspension ended Sunday when Parliament was dissolved to kick off the 78-day campaign leading up to the Oct. 19 election.
Brazeau can expect to begin receiving his salary again at the end of the month, but it will be reduced by 20 per cent as the Senate continues to recoup the $48,000 it says he claimed illegitimately.
He will also remain on leave of absence.
Brazeau, who had been national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, was named to the Senate on the advice of Harper in December, 2008.