Duffy name-drops and takes aim
Senator testifies he argued against representing P.E.I., but says Harper insisted
OTTAWA— Sen. Mike Duffy took the witness stand in his own defence Tuesday and literally held court: dropping high-profile names, telling folksy tales and taking dead aim at his Conservative benefactor Stephen Harper.
It was Harper, said Duffy, who persuaded the veteran broadcaster to sit as a Conservative senator from Prince Edward Island over Duffy’s objections he should instead be named an independent from Ontario so “local Tories” in P.E.I. wouldn’t be angered. “I wasn’t a Tory,” Duffy said.
“He said ‘They’ll get over it,’ ” Duffy testified, dropping his voice to mimic Harper’s.
In December 2008, amid the “socalled coalition crisis,” Duffy said Harper chose him and fellow former journalist Pamela Wallin among a new batch of senators to “broaden the pool of accessible voters” and to “provide third-party validation” of Harper’s bid to win a majority in 2011.
“A lot of people had suspicions about Mr. Harper; they didn’t trust him; they thought he had a hidden agenda,” Duffy said.
But it was Harper himself who, upon learning Duffy owned a cottage in P.E.I., told Duffy he was “fully qualified” to sit as a senator for P.E.I. even as Duffy tried to resist. Duffy said he believed in Harper’s plan for Senate reform and term limits of nine or 10 years, but Harper wouldn’t hear of him sitting as an independent from Ontario, where there was only one vacancy.
“He told me in his assessment I was fully qualified (for the Senate seat). All I was doing was speeding up my retirement plan, in retiring from CTV and moving back to P.E.I. I was going to the Senate and going back to P.E.I., and I would continue to work for P.E.I. in the Senate while living on the island, at 10 Friendly Lane.”
Duffy has pleaded not guilty to filing fraudulent housing and travel expense claims related to claiming P.E.I. was his primary residence and his longtime Ottawa suburban home as his secondary residence. He also faces charges related to alleged misuse of other Senate office funds.
It was the performance of his life as Duffy tried to show he had never any criminal intent to commit fraud, breach of trust or accept a bribery payment — 31 charges that have tainted his reputation and could cost the now 69-year-old jail time if convicted. Duffy said he spent Senate resources only “on Senate public business” and was led to believe by Conservative Senate leaders that any partisan activity outside an election or nomination period met that definition. For nearly four hours, the senator — calling himself “the Ol’ Duff” — adopted the mantle of a plain-speaking, hard-working islander who didn’t finish high school, never ran an office or hired staff, but was bitten by the political bug early in life.
It was vintage “Ol’ Duff” yarn-spinning. The judge, Charles Vaillancourt, stopped taking notes while reporters could barely keep up, and Crown prosecutors objected — in vain — to the lack of “relevance” of Duffy’s monologues to the fraud charges. Duffy told the court Harper named partisan friends such as Irving Gerstein, Doug Finley and Carolyn Stewart Olsen to the Senate from where they did party work. He testified that Finley — now deceased — was Harper’s political operations director who campaigned in 2011 while in the Senate and kept an office in party headquarters though “his name wasn’t on the org chart. They’re careful about these things.”
At one break, Duffy said: “I’m sorry to be so long-winded.”