Harper's Perfect Storm

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Now that the RCMP has thrown the book at Mike Duffy, Stephen Harper finds himself at the centre of a perfect storm. It's a storm entirely of his own making. And, at last, Andrew Coyne writes, we will get some answers:

The biggest question to be answered remains: why? Not only why did Mr. Wright make the payment — which, remember, was not to “the taxpayer” but to Mr. Duffy, in secret and on condition that he remain silent about it — but why were so many other senior people in and around the government, as we learned from the trove of emails unearthed by the RCMP, so utterly transfixed with the task of paying Mr. Duffy’s falsely claimed expenses? Why not just leave him to face the consequences of his own actions?

The answer to that question may turn out to be sheer stupidity. But, given who Duffy claims to be -- someone who knows where the bodies are buried -- there are other questions which need to be answered -- questions that involve Stephen Harper:

What involvement or knowledge did the prime minister have, particularly with regard to the $90,000? In a sense, it does not matter: that so many people close to him were so ready to act in such an unethical fashion is damning enough in itself. But in a sense it is all that matters: partly because the prime minister has been so vehement in his denials of any foreknowledge, and partly because the set of circumstances required for this to be true seem so implausible.

Among other things, it requires us to believe not only that Mr. Wright and everyone else around the prime minister lied to him for months on end about how Mr. Duffy’s expenses were repaid, but that Mr. Wright lied to the others: that having told him at a meeting in February of 2013 that Mr. Duffy would repay his own expenses, he then told his fellow conspirators the prime minister was “good to go” with an earlier plan for the party to pay them; and that when Mr. Wright later told the prime minister’s former communications director, Andrew MacDougall, that “the PM knows, in broad terms only, that I personally assisted Duffy” he was lying then, too.

Unlike others who Mr. Harper has thrown under the bus, Duffy will not go quietly.  If he goes down, he may just take the prime minister with him. If that were to happen, justice would truly be done.

Oh, What A Tangled Web

Things are starting to get interesting -- and potentially nasty. John Ivison reports in The National Post that Mike Duffy is unhappy:

Mr. Duffy’s lawyers have barred him from speaking to the press but he has told friends that he feels he has been thrown under the bus and that the Conservative PR machine is out to destroy him.

Sources close to the now-Independent senator at the centre of the expenses scandal said Mr. Duffy was recruited to present a “kinder, softer” face to the Conservative Party in the run-up to the 2011 election. Friends say he was told that political appearances on the Senate tab were not only tolerated, they were expected by the Prime Minister.

Harper has no qualms about throwing people under the bus if they threaten his own political future. Ask Garth Turner. Ask Bill Casey. Ask Helena Geurgis. Ask Brian Mulroney. And, so far, the prime minister has been able to hear the thump under the wheels and move on.

But, if the Duffy case gets to court, Ivison reports that:

the senator’s lawyers will call Stephen Harper as a witness and grill the Prime Minister under oath, sources said.

That rotund but smiling face may now be haunting the prime minister's dreams:

Mr. Duffy’s case for the defence is likely to rest on public statements by Mr. Harper that show he was comfortable the senator satisfied all residency requirements (the RCMP alleges Mr. Duffy broke the law by claiming a primary residence in Prince Edward Island, when his primary residence was really in Ontario). Back in February, Mr. Harper told the House of Commons that all Conservative senators conformed with the Red Chamber’s residency requirements. “That’s the basis on which they were appointed to the Senate and those requirements have been clear for 150 years,” he said.

The prime minister wove this web. He now appears to be caught in it. If nothing else, the Senate scandal reveals that Stephen Harper is a poor judge of character. He may, indeed, discover that he misjudged the kinder, softer face of the senator from Kanata.

What Does Mike Duffy Know?

That's a legitimate question, Michael Harris writes. It's curious:

Mike Duffy is still a senator, but Nigel Wright is no longer the prime minister’s chief-of-staff.

One man tried to put out the fire; the other, who allegedly set it, is still toasting publicly-provided weenies in the flames.

In the past, when Harper wanted to dump someone, he did it quickly. Remember Rahim Jafer, Helena Geurgis and Garth Turner?  And there are mechanisms Harper could use to dump the Old Duffer:

If there is a finding of fraud, that is grounds for getting the boot from the Red Chamber.

The national police force’s own reputation rides on this crucially important investigation, likely to be conducted under Section 122 of the Criminal Code dealing with Breach of Trust.

And, as the Senate audit revealed, Duffy is not a resident of Prince Edward Island:

The rules don’t say you get appointed from the place where your heart is, or your summer cottage, or where your dog is buried. It is where you live, vote, pay your taxes, get your driver’s license and health card. For both Duffy and Wallin, it was rotten fish from the get-go. Even Patrick Brazeau was better qualified, under the criteria of appointment, for his calamitous Senate appointment.

Still Duffy remains in his seat. You have to wonder if Duffy is the J. Edgar Hoover of Canadian politics. It was Lyndon Johnson who once said of Hoover that it was better to have him "inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."

Harper's record on appointments does not show a high regard for the law:

Bruce Carson, hired as a convicted man. Arthur Porter, put in front of the country’s deepest secrets as head of SIRC, now under arrest for fraud. Nathan Jacobson, photographed between Harper and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, awaiting extradition to the U.S. for $43 million worth of admitted money laundering. The PM’s parliamentary secretary under investigation by Elections Canada and under no obligation to step aside. Harper Senate appointee Patrick Brazeau up on assault and sexual assault charges. Duffy back in the news with more expense problems as outlined by Tim Naumetz in the Hill Times — and the ever-present odour of corruption from the ‘in-and-out’ affair, mingling with the deeper stench of the robocalls scandal. Through it all, one man has been at the helm — Stephen Harper.

You have to wonder what Duffy has on the man at the helm.

A Culture Of Entitlement

Following the news that Pamela Wallin has resigned from the Conservative caucus, Andrew Coyne takes a hard look at the Mike Duffy fiasco:

So Duffy’s behaviour is not the issue. The issue is the culture that enabled it. The Tories may find it expedient to disown him now, but it wasn’t five minutes ago they were cheering him to the rafters, inviting him to campaign in their ridings and defending him in public, long after his misconduct was known. Expelling him from caucus at this late date changes nothing. The time to discipline him was when when he was first caught out, not after every alternative had been exhausted. Indeed, he should never have been appointed, if for no other reason than that he was legally ineligible: to be the senator from PEI, you have to be from PEI.

The Harperites went to great lengths to protect Duffy. They offered Patrick Brazeau no such protection. The question -- the elephant in the room -- is Why?

The revelations of recent days suggest one reason: because of the sorts of things the auditors were likely to uncover, had they been allowed to do their work. And, perhaps, because of the many other rocks that might be overturned as a result: for example, Duffy’s alleged lobbying on behalf of Sun News. (Who was the “Conservative insider with connections to the CRTC” Duffy is reported to have approached? What could possibly have led him to believe his efforts to influence a quasi-judicial tribunal would be fruitful? Did he do this entirely on his own? Unprompted? Unpaid?)

Duffy was a Conservative Party operative on the public payroll. He wasn't the first. And the problem certainly extends to senators  from other parties. But this party -- this government  -- came to office railing against the corruption in the House of Sober Second Thought and in government in general. Rather than insisting on accountability, the Harperites have hopped on the bandwagon. Michael Harris  reminded us of the numbers last week: "By October 2015, 62 per cent of the 105-member Senate will have been appointed by Stephen Harper."

And Harris simply stated the obvious this week. Mike Duffy may be gone. But Stephen Harper is the one who should be roasted. It is he who drives the current culture of entitlement.

Time To Ditch The Duffer

Tom Walkom writes that when it comes to residency, Senate rules are unambiguous:

The constitution act is crystal clear on this. It says a senator must be at least 30 years old, own $4,000 worth of real estate in the province he represents and be “resident in the province for which he is appointed.”

And, try as he might, the Artful Dodger can't dodge certain facts:

As the Senate’s own internal economy committee found, Duffy does not hold a P.E.I. health card. He does not pay income tax to P.E.I. He spends only 30 per cent of his time in the province. How then can he be resident in P.E.I.?

And if he’s not resident in P.E.I., he cannot be a senator from that province. Indeed, the constitution act specifies that if a senator is found not to live in the province he was appointed to represent, his seat is deemed vacant.

The Senate has always been a home for political partisans. But, under Stephen Harper, the Senate has become the last defense against the will of the House of Commons. Micheal Harris reminds his readers that it was the Senate which enforced Harper's denial of climate change. It was the Senate which killed

by stealth Bill C-311 after the House of Commons had passed the climate change bill. And this under a prime minister who once promised that he would never allow an unelected Senate to go against the will of the majority of Members of Parliament.

Walkom puts the case succinctly:

Mike Duffy came from P.E.I. It is a heritage of which he is justly proud. He vacations on the island. But he doesn’t really live there any more. And because of that, he cannot — by law — represent P.E.I. in the Senate.

A Nation Of Men, Not Laws

Last Wednesday, Stephen Harper made a Sherman statement about those he has appointed to the Senate:

“All senators conform to the residency requirements. That is the basis on which they are appointed to the Senate and those requirements have been clear for 150 years,” 

That's a bit puzzling. As Tom Walkom writes in The Toronto Star:

That puts someone like Sen. Mike Duffy in a bizarre position. Duffy has acknowledged that he doesn’t live in Prince Edward Island, the province he was appointed to represent. That’s why he’s repaying more than $42,000 in housing allowances that he received to defray the costs of his suburban Ottawa home (which, Duffy admits, is where he actually does live.

All the rules require, says Marjory LeBreton,  is that a senator own property in a  province. By that logic, any absentee landowner can be a senator.  Lebreton's statement is a broadside against what an adviser to George W. Bush called  "the reality based community." The truth is what I say it is:

In effect, as Conservative Senate leader Marjory LeBreton explained to reporters Thursday, senators are deemed to live wherever they say they live — at least for the purpose of collecting their $132,300 sessional salaries.

No one is accusing any senators of fraud. But this government is most certainly accusing E.I recipients of  that crime. And, when they discover that fraud, rest assured that the offenders will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Oh, the privileges of power. You get to make the rules, then declare who is breaking them.

We live in a nation of men, not laws.