Catching Up With The Organ Grinder

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John Baird has quit. Eve and Dimitri have bolted. But, for Stephen Harper, this winter of discontent is going to turn into a very rough spring. Mike Duffy's trial is a little more than six weeks away. Michael Harris writes:

True, the suspended senator’s health could falter. True, the charges could be stayed, the trial might be postponed, or key witnesses could fight a subpoena to appear. But Duffy will never agree to walk away from this mess semi-corrupt. He will either be guilty or innocent, not trapped in some kind of reputational purgatory arranged by lawyers.

Harper and his acolytes have done their best to convict Duffy out of court. But the courts function differently than Harper's PMO:

The one thing Harper hates more than Justin Trudeau is evidence. And that is exactly what will be on offer once Duffy’s criminal trial begins. Depending on what is contained in those 800 emails between Janice Payne, Duffy’s employment lawyer, and Benjamin Perrin, then the PM’s in-house legal counsel, Duffy’s critics may discover that they were going after the monkey when it was really the organ grinder who was to blame all along.

Donald Bayne, Duffy's attorney, has pointed to the central problem behind the whole imbroglio:

“I am sure that I am not the only Canadian who will now wonder openly, how what was not a crime or bribe when Nigel Wright paid it on his own initiative, became however mysteriously, a crime or bribe when received by Mr. Duffy."

That's the question the organ grinder will be forced to answer.

The Bunker Buster

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The conventional wisdom these days seems to hold that Stephen Harper will never testify at Mike Duffy's trial. But Scott Reid, who used to be Paul Martin's director of communications, knows what kind of damage scandal can do to a prime minister's future. He writes that no one should underestimate the havoc Duffy can wreck on Harper:

Imagine all of this unfolding in public – again. Except this time with added rigour and filled-in details. Not leaked out in spastic bursts through media reports, but explored carefully and transparently according to the rules of court. Imagine Nigel Wright’s testimony – as he’s compelled under oath to describe what conversations he had, with whom, and when.

For Harper, this situation is a blazing bonfire of political risk. The best-case scenarios are nerve-fraying. What might happen in the worst of all worlds is the stuff of horror films. The government may want to believe they’ve put this behind them but as this week’s brief pre-trial appearance reminds us, it’s back. Mike Duffy, the good senator from Just-Make-It-Out-To-Cash, is fighting for his freedom – and he is pointed at this government like a loaded weapon.

Any trial is also bound to explore questions that have so far gone unanswered. What sort of deal was originally cut with Duffy for partisan versus Parliamentary service? Why were the Conservatives willing to quietly vanish his expenses when they were thought to be only $30,000? How does that square with later denunciations of his profligate ways? What lies behind that email reporting the prime minister to be ‘good to go’?

In the end, Reid speculates, Harper may decide to get out of town. If he left by Christmas, his party still might have enough time to rehabilitate itself. After all, Dalton McGuinty's departure allowed Kathleen Wynne to win the next election.

However you look at it, Duffy is a precision guided missile aimed straight at Harper's bunker -- the kind of weapon the Americans call a "bunker buster." In the end, Duffy may not just destroy the bunker. He may destroy the prime minister.