The Henchman's Curse

Two of Stephen Harper's senate appointments have been shoved out of the Conservative caucus. The Senate was their reward for doing the Prime Minister's dirty work. But one of life's axioms is that what goes around comes around.

Patrick Brazeau helped Stephen Harper kill the Kelowna Accord. It was Brazeau, the deputy national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, who supported Harper during the 2006 election. The Assembly of First Nations backed Paul Martin and the Accord. Michael Harris writes:

It was the age-old battle over reserve and non-reserve aboriginals and the differing treatment they receive from the federal government. Harper got his first minority government in 2006 in part because Brazeau, then CAP’s deputy-national chief, helped kill the Kelowna Accord. Two years later, he was in the Senate.

Mike Duffy also performed an essential service for Harper during the 2008 election. Lawrence Martin reminds his readers that:

Duffy has been a favourite of the PM’s. He was viewed as having done the Conservatives a great favour in the 2008 election. At the end of the campaign, when momentum could have tilted either way, Liberal leader Stephane Dion stumbled in responding to a CTV question he couldn’t understand. The CTV reporter promised Dion he wouldn’t run the clip — but Duffy turned around and made a major story of it. The Conservatives later acknowledged it really swung votes their way in the final days. It wasn’t much later that Duffy was named a senator.

Stephen Harper would not be where he is today without the assistance of Brazeau and Duffy. But henchmen come with their own baggage. Mr. Harper operates on the assumption that he exercises complete control over his minions. The problem is that minions eventually screw up. And men like Brazeau and Duffy screw up big time.

Henchmen are their own curse.

Appalling and Disappointing

The travails of Patrick Brazeau and Mike Duffy have once again led to calls for reform or abolition of the Senate. The argument is that the Senate has always been a House of Patronage, not a House of Sober Second Thought. The two aforementioned senators appear to prove the first proposition. But Tasha Kheirriddin asks some important questions, which appear to be getting lost in the nasty details:

First, shouldn’t someone in the government have known about them? Second, if they did, why did the prime minister proceed with the nomination? Third, if they didn’t know, why didn’t they? How much due diligence is actually done on Senate nominations?

For, as disturbing as the allegations against Brazeau and Duffy are, there is a real question about the man who appointed  them. Brazeau appealed to the prime minister because he liked to use that magic word -- accountability. Brazeau's called for accountability on the subject of reserve finances. Accountability -- the very issue which Mr. Harper and the Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Auditor General have argued about for five years.

No one appeared interested in red flags which were all over Brazeau's record. Keirriddin writes:

Allegations of sexual harassment and alcohol abuse, failure to pay child support and an audit launched by Health Canada into expense claims by his previous employer — these are not the things one wants to see on senatorial resumes. 

And Brazeau had a habit of saying things which were less than politic. After Canadian Press reporter Jennifer Ditchburn reported that Brazeau had the worst attendance record in the Senate, Brazeau called her a "bitch." Perhaps, becaue the Harperites treat their opponents with such contempt, they didn't see that as an issue.

Then there is the case of Mike Duffy, who constantly refers to his Island roots. Surely, the fact that his primary residence was not there was a non issue.

The Harper motto is, "Saying makes it so." The problem is that, as neat as it sounds, it's patently untrue. And a man who believes it is not to be trusted -- in both small and large matters. In Mr. Harper's own words, his judgement is "appalling and disappointing."