Guilty?

                                                   http://www.hilltimes.com/

Mike Duffy is not a sympathetic figure. And the media, taking its cue from the Harper spin machine, has worked very hard to make him less sympathetic. But, Michael Harris writes, there's a big difference between being a pariah and being guilty. Once the Duffy trial moved out of the media and into the court room, things changed:

When the venue shifted from a prime minister’s public vendetta to close scrutiny of the evidence in court, [Donald] Bayne showed why he said he was surprised when the Crown laid charges against his client in the first place. Over and over again, Bayne zeroed in on the Senate Administrative Rules to show that what Duffy did was permitted — and in some cases, required — under the system in place from 2008 to 2012, the period of Duffy’s alleged criminal liability.

In his surgical cross-examination of Mark Audcent, the Law Clerk of the Senate, Bayne proved beyond any known concept of reasonable doubt that Duffy was largely operating within the Red Chamber’s rules.

Take Duffy’s much-pilloried expense claims for housing. Bayne got Audcent to confirm that the Senate does not provide guidance or criteria for, or definitions of, a primary or a secondary residence. That was the same conclusion reached in two independent audits, one by Deloitte and the other by KPMG.

Did Duffy lie, cheat or misrepresent when he signed a declaration saying that he was a resident of P.E.I.? Turns out he didn’t. In order to become a senator he was obliged to designate his P.E.I. property as his primary residence. The PMO and the PCO knew that — because they both pre-vetted Duffy’s appointment.

As Audcent also testified, there was no definition of how much time a senator has to spend in his provincial residence and no prohibition against designating a cottage as his primary residence.

Bayne was equally sure-footed in showing that Duffy’s travel expenses on behalf of the party were not merely permissible, but that partisan activities were in fact an “inherent” part of a senator’s parliamentary functions. The Law Clerk of the Senate agreed.

Bayne went further. He got Audcent to confirm that there was no definition of partisan activities to guide senators and that he wasn’t aware of any limitations on such partisan work, beyond campaigning in a writ period or during a nomination.

It became clear that the Duffy Trial was a show trial. And instead of pilloring Duffy, the trial gave us an insider's look at the Senate, the PMO and the former Prime Minister of Canada. And the pile of rot just got higher and deeper.

Is Duffy guilty of breaking any laws? Mr. Justice Charles Vaillancourt will let us know after hearing closing arguments next week. But that decision is no longer the central issue. In fact, it never was the central issue.

Nothing To Do With Justice

                                                   http://www.macleans.ca/

The prosecution and defence have finished the heavy stuff. All that's left for them to do is the closing arguments. So what have we learned from the Duffy trial? Michael Harris writes:

Lots of public figures are symbolically burned in public. But not many are hoisted in effigy in the nation’s capital as money-grubbing scoundrels floating high above the Ottawa River like evil genies.

Not many are denounced by their own boss and his stooges before their day in court. Not many face guilt by editorial before the allegations against them have been tested in court.

The exercise was all about throwing Mike Duffy under the bus with more than the usual flourish:

Harper’s animus against Duffy is easy to understand; the former PM didn’t like anyone in particular, except the guy in the shaving mirror, and Duffy had committed the high-crime of temporary insubordination.

But what's really troubling is the number of people who walked away unscathed:

Why wasn’t Ray Novak there to explain why both he and Nigel Wright advised Senator Duffy not to co-operate with the Deloitte audit? And why did the Senate shut Duffy down when he wanted to go before the Senate audit committee or the Deloitte auditors to answer their questions and provide documentation?

What was Senator David Tkachuk thinking when he leaked information out of the Senate’s forensic audit to people who were being scrutinized? On April 16, 2013 Tkachuk told Duffy that auditors had discovered per diem claims for a ten-day period while the P.E.I. senator was on a cruise in Florida. The Deloitte audit itself was not officially released until 13 days later on April 29, 2013. Tkachuk was co-chair of the Internal Economy Board.

Finally, what business did Harper’s PMO have ordering and getting the removal of certain paragraphs from a Senate report? Here is how former Senate Clerk Gary O’Brien put it to the RCMP: “… Obviously it was, that was a political decision, that’s a political decision.” As for the PMO’s advice to Duffy to not co-operate with Deloitte, O’Brien found that to be “inappropriate” — and why wouldn’t he?

Regardless of your opinion of Duffy, the trial had nothing to do with Justice.

They've Read Leo Strauss

                                                http://www.buzzquotes.com/

Stephen Harper has become a law unto himself. The evidence, Michael Harris writes, is incontrovertible:

The evidence from the near past is damning enough: Found in contempt of Parliament; breaking his own elections law; sending unconstitutional legislation to the Supreme Court; passing retroactive laws to make the illegal legal; publicly attacking the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court; forcing out Canada’s Nuclear Safety Commissioner for following the statute governing her agency; dumping the Parliamentary Budget Officer for correcting the government’s false program costings; usurping some of the constitutional functions of the Governor-General; and passing legislation to punish political enemies such as unions and environmentalists.

But on the day that Chris Woodcock testified, Harper's disregard for the rules was on full display:

Only a leader with a sense of narcissistic exceptionalism could send a senior PMO staffer (and now campaign worker), to engage in a conversation with a sworn witness during a recess at a criminal trial. After all, Harper and his own office are smack in the middle of this evidentiary mud bath. What’s next, a visit to the judge’s chambers?

No appearance of witness tampering here. It's not a problem for a man and an office which lacks a conscience. Consider Woodcock's performance on the stand:

Woodcock inadvertently gave Canadians an insight into the blank-screen amorality at the heart of Harper’s political operation. He admitted to being ethically uncomfortable about “locking in” the Deloitte audit as part of the plan to contain the Duffy expense scandal. But when Bayne asked him if he’d said anything about those ethical misgivings, he replied no. Why would he?

Woodcock said he didn’t have the slightest problem with crafting those political lies known in Harperland as “communications lines” to make it appear that Duffy was repaying the money. This is a say-anything-do-anything crowd. Don’t forget, Nigel Wright himself divided lies into good and bad “misrepresentations”.

To them, there are clearly important and unimportant deceptions. How are Canadians to trust people like that?

Some lies are perfectly acceptable. Obviously, they've read Leo Strauss and taken his advice. And that's why they have to be turfed.

Under His Thumb?

                                                   http://www.banklawyersblog.com/.

Given evidence which emerged last week at the Duffy trial, the NDP's Charlie Angus has written to RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson, asking why Nigel Wright was not charged with offering a bribe. Could it be that the Commissioner is under Mr. Harper's thumb? Given the record, Michael Harris writes, it's beginning to look like the entire force may be acting as Mr. Harper's private security detail:

The hallmark of the Harper era has been an attempt by the government to take ownership of all federal human assets in a degrading and political way. Civil servants have been used as props in fake TV news items. The justice department has drafted a string of unconstitutional legislation reflecting the CPC’s ideological agenda. Federal scientists have been muzzled like unruly dogs.

But one of the most disturbing elements of this tyrannical capture of every aspect of the machinery of government is the increasingly partisan behaviour of the RCMP. The Force has been used against

Harper’s political enemies, often without a shred of real misconduct on the table.
Helena Guergis was harassed for three months by a seven-member team of Mounties who found absolutely no truth to the criminal (and defamatory) allegations laid out in a letter written for the PM by Novak to the Commissioner of the RCMP.

The Force has never explained why that investigation got off the ground when all of the allegations were not only spurious but originated with highly dubious sources. In fact, Ethics Commissioner Mary Dawson directly called the source of the allegations against Guergis and decided on the spot there was no grounds for an investigation.

Bill Casey, the former Conservative MP and now Liberal candidate was thrown out of caucus because he would not agree to changes in the Atlantic Accord made unilaterally by the Harper government. Casey wasn’t just being grumpy. He had consulted with officials in the department of justice and they provided him with written opinions that the agreement had in fact been altered.

In a personal meeting with Casey, Harper dismissed the legal opinions with the view that the words meant what he, the PM, said they meant. Either Casey voted for the budget or he was out. When Casey chose to run as an Independent, he was faced with an RCMP investigation alleging that he had stolen funds from his former Electoral District Association.

As with Guergis, it was an entirely baseless accusation. But neither the government nor the RCMP showed the slightest remorse, even though Casey the victorious Independent MP raised the matter in the House of Commons and demanded an apology. He is still waiting for it.

And, recently, we discovered that the Mounties had shredded documents from the gun registry, even though the Information Commissioner was conducting an active investigation which required access to those documents. The government's most recent omnibus budget bill contained a clause absolving the Mounties from any illegal activity.

If the national police force is the servant of the prime minister and not the servant of the people, we are in deep, deep trouble.

A Tangled Web

                                                https://twitter.com/russellbarth

That's what you get, Shakespeare wrote, when first you practice to deceive. One lie follows another. That's certainly what happened in the Prime Minister's Office. Michael Harris writes:

It is becoming increasingly obvious that NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair had it right: the CPC code of conduct is not taken from the Bible or some list of sacrosanct conservative principles. It’s taken from the Criminal Code. Canada has returned to the Mulroney era, when everything was okay unless it was illegal — notwithstanding Judge William Parker’s ruling in the Sinclair Stevens case. Even the appearance of conflict, the judge wrote, had to be avoided to maintain public trust in the system. Canadians now trust discount sushi more than they do Parliament under Harper.

And despite Wright’s vaunted reputation as an upright man, his defence of his actions in the Duffy affair displays the same ethical bankruptcy and dizzying sense of entitlement that emanated from the very heart of Stephen Harper’s office. This is David Dingwall’s chewing gum to the power of ten. When asked by Donald Bayne why he lied to the PM about his payout to Duffy, Wright said it wasn’t a “bad misrepresentation.” That euphemism could stop a charging rhino.

What it comes down to -- and Jack Layton warned us of this long ago -- is that you can't take Stephen Harper at his word:

Bottom line? Canadians can’t trust a single statement from a party that thinks perception is reality and actively promotes falsehoods when they are deemed to be in the government’s interest. And if you doubt that, consider the absurdity of the conflict between the testimony of Nigel Wright and the RCMP statement of former Harper PMO legal counsel Benjamin Perrin.

Mr. Harper keeps insisting that this election is about leadership. But a leader you can't trust is no leader. And a leader who insists that, when he does something it's legal, is merely the ghost of Richard Nixon. In the end, Nixon became entangled in his own web.

That May Count For Nothing

                                                http://www.morethings.com/

Nigel Wright, we are told, is a very intelligent and righteous man. He has put a lot of effort into establishing his reputation as such. But Donald Bayne, Mike Duffy's lawyer, has been shredding that reputation. Alan Freeman writes:

Nigel Wright cuts a curious figure. Ramrod-straight, athletically slim, he’s a quiet presence in the witness box — calm, never raising his voice, even when clearly irritated by Bayne’s persistent questioning. He seems thoughtful, even cerebral, as he recalls his actions in the winter of 2013 as the Duffy scandal exploded in the PMO.

Yet Wright’s actions at the time clearly demonstrate that he was single-minded — even ruthless — in doing the boss’s bidding and shutting the scandal down, using any means at his disposal.

Government resources, Conservative party funds, his own bank account — they were all interchangeable to Wright, all tools to to be used in carrying out Stephen Harper’s wish to see the Duffy problem disappear.

“I didn’t think that this was a distinction that was that significant,” Wright responded, when asked whether he saw any difference between Duffy paying back the money himself — the story the public initially was told — and being secretly reimbursed through the Conservative Party Fund.

It is Wright's inability to make distinctions which is so deeply troubling. One gets the impression that his ambition overtook his conscience. It's an old story. From Christopher Marlowe through Goethe down to Stephen Vincent Benet, it's about a man selling his soul and knowing what he was doing.

Most of the time the story ends tragically -- though in Benet's story, Jabez Stone had a good lawyer to get him off the hook. The irony is that Nigel Wright is supposed to be a very good lawyer. In the end, that may count for nothing.

Their World Is Changing

Harper Conservatives used to suffer from galloping certitude. They believed that they were paragons of virtue. Michael Harris writes:

Conservatives like to think they occupy the moral high-ground. There is the greenhorn Trudeau, the ideologically obsessed Mulcair, and somewhere on Mount Olympus, taking it all in with august superiority, are the transcendent Harper Conservatives.

But now, thanks in large part to the Duffy trial, the Conservatives now reside in the basement apartment of Canadian politics, exposed for their lying, cheating, and stunning abuses of power. And in any legitimate political system, that will have consequences.

It's getting really difficult to believe that the Harperites are the Party of Virtue. Nigel Wright may quote St. Mathew. But somehow it doesn't ring true:

My personal favourite was his claim to retroactive altruism, including a biblical reference to how one goes about playing the Good Samaritan. He gave the money to Duffy because he walked straight out of the Book of Matthew as a man living his faith. Yes, Nigel, the expurgated edition of Matthew 6 that goes something like this: “Let not the Left know what the Wright is doing, so that your giving will be in secret.”

A key part of the Cons’ narrative has always been that Wright forked over $90,000 to Duffy to spare Canadian taxpayers the expense. Where was that public-spirited concern when Wright was ready to use taxpayer-subsidized funds, $32,000 plus legal expenses, from the Conservative Party Fund, to make his Duffy problem go away?

Gifts -- real ones -- don't come with strings attached:

Wright’s depiction of that $90,000 cheque as a “gift” is patently absurd. Gifts don’t come with the advice to take it or face the consequences. The ‘or else’ in this case was frying Duffy in a Senate report, as opposed to going easy on him if he played ball with the PMO. The trouble is, Duffy didn’t think that he owed the money and still doesn’t. What’s more, neither Stephen Harper or Nigel Wright apparently did either. But judge for yourself: does this sound like a man grateful for the “gift” Wright kept insisting he accept?

Mr. Harper keeps repeating he knew nothing about what was going on -- although lots of other people did. His "media line" that Wright and Duffy kept everyone else out of the loop has been sunk. He and his followers may continue to insist they they are the Party of Virtue. But their world is changing.

One Man Is Responsible

                                                         http://www.cbc.ca/

It's clear from yesterday's testimony that Nigel Wright is a good soldier. He will do his best to ensure that, during the course of Mike Duffy's trial, Stephen Harper will remain -- literally and legally -- hidden away at the North Pole. Michael Harris writes:

Wright will defend both his class and his party. His class is Bay Street, his party is the boys in blue. He will do nothing heroic on behalf of the Canadian people, and he will do nothing to damage the prime minister for whom he once worked as a “wheel dog” — a coinage Stephen King fans will recognize.

That’s why on Day One of what could turn into a marathon stint on the stand, Wright revealed little more than his reflexive generosity as a public servant. The rich and well-connected have a way of turning everything they do into a virtue. Even their philanthropy is strategic. It remains to be seen how Wright’s philanthropy can be Duffy’s criminal act.

And that's the rub. Duffy has been charged with accepting a bribe. Wright calls his $90,000 cheque an act of charity. What is clear is that cheque was meant to buy Duffy's silence. However, when Stephen Harper appointed Mike Duffy to the Senate, he bought his mouth. It was a travelling mouth that journeyed from coast to coast to coast, whipping up support for individual Conservative MP's and the party in general.

But, when Duffy leaked emails to colleagues, it became clear that his silence couldn't be bought. It will be up to Donald Bayne to prove that Duffy is not guilty of criminal wrong doing. Or that someone else is. And, if that someone else is Wright, the trail leads directly back to the prime minister.

Regardless of the outcome, it's clear that the PMO was thoroughly infected by a culture of deceit. And one man is responsible for that.

So Far They Have Gotten Away Scot Free

                                                http://www.blueprintofwe.com/

The RCMP have charged Mike Duffy with thirty-one offences. But, Michael Harris writes, the PMO should be on trial, not Duffy:

It is the nagging doubt that Duffy’s day in court is a “show trial” that feeds the idea that the Senate itself is the real problem. The leadership in the Senate looks hypocritical, self-aggrandizing, and screamingly at odds with any known concept of equal justice.

For starters, both the Government Leader in the Senate and the Senate Speaker made Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s bad apple list.

And it's their connections to the PMO that really should leave a bad taste in citizens' mouths:

That rattling sound the attentive can hear from the Duffy trial is more bones in the Senate closet soon to be on display. The PMO was directly and intimately involved in undercutting the independence of a supposedly independent parliamentary institution, got Senate reports changed, and interfered in a forensic audit being done for the Senate by Deloitte.

When the Senate had a chance to show its independence and integrity, it slunk away from getting to the bottom of these gross, institutional invasions.

Even though the PMO dispatched Senator Irving Gerstein to ask a buddy at Deloitte if the audit could be stopped if Duffy paid back his disputed housing expenses, the Conservative majority on the Senate’s Internal Economy Committee didn’t act. They refused to demand testimony from Senator Gerstein or the insider he turned to at Deloitte, Michael Runia. To this day, no one can explain how the PMO got the Deloitte audit weeks before it was delivered to a Senate committee.

It's clear that the majority in our House of Sober Second Thought is owned lock, stock and barrel by the PMO. The people in that office are behind the Duffy story. And, so far, they have got away scot free.

Useful Scapegoats

                                                    http://www.dailykos.com/

There is much about Mike Duffy that makes the blood boil. His ego is as large as the man himself. And that ego is the source of his troubles. But, Michael Harris writes, Duffy's standard operating procedures have been the same procedures the Harper government has operated under from the very beginning:

Back in 2008, for example, then-minister of Intergovernmental Affairs Rona Ambrose went to Whitehorse to announce millions in mining training for aboriginals. But she was also the star attraction at a Conservative fundraising event at the Mountain View Golf Course that had been scheduled for weeks before the official business. Bottom line? Taxpayers subsidized CPC fundraising — period.

And they continue to do it, as evidenced by the track record of that Energizer Bunny of partisan politics, Jason Kenney. Back in 2014, when he was Employment minister, Kenney went on a coast-to-coast-to-coast road trip to advance “the skills shortage agenda” of the Harper government. By day, he was busy with his official duties, but by night he mixed duty with fundraising like rum and Coke. Guess who paid the freight for the partisan stuff?

If Stephen Harper were truly interested in cleaning up government, a lot of people and things would receive the same kind of public scrutiny Duffy is receiving. But that's not going to happen:

Of course, Harper is not big on getting to the bottom of things, especially his own messes. Despite repeated requests, he refused to call a public inquiry into robocalls — which remains a serious unsolved crime.

He didn’t call a public inquiry into the thousands of missing and murdered native women, though First Nations peoples and the Canadian people are demanding it.

He didn’t call a public inquiry into the shootings on Parliament Hill, though recently released reports show that many serious questions need to be answered before this government hands over Hill security to the Mounties who failed to get the job done that tragic day.

So it’s not remarkable that Stephen Harper has no interest in seeing parliamentarians scrutinized on their expenses; he and his colleagues are too busy helping themselves to public funds to advance the partisan agenda of the government and the Conservative Party of Canada. It’s doubtful that the government’s advertising spending — taxpayer-funded and largely partisan — could stand the test of an independent audit.

It's only when word leaks out about how those in the Harper Kingdom operate -- think  Patrick Brazeau, Bev Oda, Helena Geurgis -- that people get thrown under the bus. All the residents of the kingdom are useful scapegoats.

The Wright Thing

                                              
The Duffy trial is about to resume. The question hanging over the proceedings is: What will Nigel Wright say when he takes the stand? Michael Harris writes:

It is doubtful that Nigel Wright will endorse [Donald] Bayne’s argument that the demonizing of Duffy was a “fraud, a fiction and a lie.” But will he cover for the prime minister?

People who know Wright say he will not. For one thing, he’s a lawyer who understands the oath and, at the best of times, uses language like a man defusing a bomb. This is the worst of times, so Nigel will be checking his zipper twice before leaving the loo. For another, he’s a businessman who could be ruined by taking one for the team, because the truth might seep out elsewhere.

People who know Stephen Harper suspect that prime minister is in for a rough ride:

One iconic Conservative player (who once described the PM as a “lying weasel”) told me Harper might be able to survive Duffy’s acquittal — but not being caught telling a big lie. In that player’s opinion, Harper is in for a rude awakening. Under oath, with the right questions, and with a judge who will allow some latitude in Bayne’s questioning, the truth will come out. It’s one thing to be thrown under the bus. It’s quite another to crawl under it yourself — with your hand on the Bible.

Meanwhile, the Senate is doing its best to close the closet door:

Now, in a state of decorous pandemonium, the Senate is disgracing itself yet again — trying to use parliamentary privilege to keep information vital to Duffy’s defence secret. The Senate leadership is stepping on old men, women and children in a mad rush for the lifeboats. They are devising an escape for the forty or so other Duffys and Wallins and Brazeaus who will soon be thrashing around in the wider net cast by Auditor General Michael Ferguson and his $21 million audit.

It will be fascinating to watch and listen when Nigel does the Wright Thing.

image: www.huffingtonpost.ca

He Needs Another Closet

                                               https://pilzylee.wordpress.com/

When it comes to shifting blame, Stephen Harper is a past master. Last week, in the House of Commons, he suggested that Mike Duffy made an inaccurate claim about his residency. Harper implied that the whole mess currently in front of the court was Duffy's own doing. Michael Harris writes:

Here is the constitutional truth about Duffy and the Senate. Both the Prime Minister and the Governor General have the obligation to assure that an appointee is eligible for an appointment to the Senate before they are elevated. The GG accepts the appointment on the advice of the PM, not the nominee. They not only blew it, they knowingly blew it — unless the PM is going for the Hans Christian Anderson Award for fairly tales; that he was the only guy in Ottawa who didn’t know where Mike Duffy — or Pamela Wallin for that matter — really lived.

But, as has happened so often in the past, Harper claims his hands are clean. That's why Harper needs to be called as a witness:

Which is why the Great Marketer has to be put under oath at Duffy’s trial. The Crown has already gainsaid the PM on the issue of Duffy’s constitutional eligibility for the Senate. The Crown has said that he probably wasn’t eligible for the appointment. Unless the Privy Council and the GG’s office are full of sycophantic dolts, they would have told the PM the same thing. So why was the appointment made? We need Harper’s evidence under oath in court — the one place where political marketers don’t have the last word. Well placed sources tell me that the PM knew well about the hazards of appointing Duffy from PEI, but said the critics “would get over it.”

However, Harper will not come to court willingly. He'll try very hard to find a constitutional closet to hide in.

Rotten At Its Core

                                                           http://world.edu/

Whether or not Mike Duffy is convicted of any of the thirty-one offences for which he has been charged, his trial will go down in Canadian history as the event which pulled back the veil on Ottawa's political culture at the beginning of the 21st Century. It is a culture which illustrates the ravages of rampant individualism. Andrew Coyne writes:

His driver’s licence may be from Ontario, his health card may be from Ontario, he may pay his taxes in Ontario, the house in Prince Edward Island he supposedly lives in may not even be winterized, but if he says he’s from P.E.I., he’s from P.E.I., and is entitled to claim a monthly allowance for expenses incurred “travelling” to and from the house in suburban Ottawa he has inhabited for many years. Because the rules don’t explicitly say that he can’t, and nobody else in the Senate’s apparently deserted corridors told him he couldn’t.

Because there are no rules, party business masquerades as public business:

But it is clear the senator spent relatively little time doing the people’s business, compared to the vast amounts of time he put in doing the party’s business, making speeches, attending fundraisers and the like, in cities and towns across the country, much of it on the public dime.

And the man who rode into town claiming that he would change the culture for the better, has simply taken it to a new level. He now insists that the rules are whatever he says they are. Duffy did his business:

with the express approval of his political bosses. When Stephen Harper signed his photo with a hearty shout-out to “one of my best, hardest-working appointments,” he wasn’t referring to the exacting scrutiny Sen. Duffy was giving his legislation in the chamber of sober second thought. One can imagine, then, the senator’s distaste for the kind of hypocrisy that would single him out for punishment.

Whether or not doing partisan work at public expense was against the Senate’s non-existent rules would seem to be a secondary question. If it isn’t, it should be; so far as the rules do allow it, it shows the problem is much worse than one errant senator. The habit of parties helping themselves to the public’s money is deeply ingrained, and one that none of them seems to feel the slightest shame over.

And, while Senators are feeding at the public trough, the government is waging its election campaign using public money for advertising:

It is instructive that even as we are discussing the improper use of taxpayer dollars for political purposes in the Senate, a similar controversy is unfolding, in another place: specifically, over the government’s use of public funds to pay for government advertising — a $7.5 million post-budget buy, 10 times as much in fiscal 2014, a half-billion over the last five years. Ostensibly, as government ministers maintain, straight-faced, this is to help Canadians take full advantage of the programs available.

Our politics is, quite simply, rotten at its core.

He Should Be Next

                                                https://ca.news.yahoo.com/

Stephen Harper claims that he didn't know what was going on behind the scenes in the Duffy Affair. That claim has always been hard to stomach. Michael Harris writes that, as evidence emerges, it's clear that Harper has been fabricating a narrative:

Duffy’s lawyer, Donald Bayne, read into the record a new wrinkle, yet to be laid down in testimony: Nigel Wright apparently told the RCMP that he advised the prime minister that Duffy’s housing allowance might be acceptable under the Senate’s rules.

“I was aware of the fact that I was pushing very hard to have a caucus member repay a significant amount of money to which he may have been legally entitled,” Wright told police. “I needed the PM to know this just in case it ever came up with someone else who wouldn’t repay, then you have to get kicked out of caucus, whatever, that we are basically forcing someone to repay money that they probably didn’t owe, and I wanted the prime minister to know that and be comfortable with that.”

Obviously, Wright kept Harper informed. And, if Harper didn't know something, it was because he didn't want to know -- or because he thought the information was of no consequence. Duffy's province of residence was of no consequence to Mr. Harper:

Sources say that at the time of his appointment to the Senate, Duffy had asked to be appointed from Ontario, where he had lived for decades. He was worried about blowback if he was appointed from Prince Edward Island, which was little more than the nostalgic homestead of his childhood days — though he did own a cottage and had family ties there. It was the prime minister who apparently insisted that Duffy be appointed from P.E.I., allegedly telling his appointee that his critics “would get over it.”

For the prime minister, the rules have never had any import. Christopher Waddell, Harris' colleague at ipolitcs, wrote this week:

When cornered, the Harper government’s practice is to threaten, intimidate and eliminate — or, if all else fails, to simply ignore the institutions and individuals that try to get in its way. The evidence is so familiar that it scarcely requires repeating: Prime Minister Harper’s bizarre attack on the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, his snide criticisms of President Obama over the Keystone XL project, the baffling decision to kill the long-form census, the serial omnibus bills that have helped turn parliamentary oversight into a bad joke, the serial justice bills that give the middle finger to the Constitution, the throttling of witness testimony at parliamentary committees (read the transcripts on Bill C-51, if you have a strong stomach).

Mike Duffy may be on trial in an Ottawa court room this week. But the prime minister should be next on the docket.

And Now The Main Event

                                                        ppcpokertour.com/

Mike Duffy's trial starts today. You can bet that the Harper machine will try to keep the focus exclusively on Duffy. But, Lawrence Martin writes, political scandal has a habit of sweeping away many players as it rolls across the landscape -- and that includes governments:

Going all the way back to the 1950s, ethics has been a major player in the fate of our governments. A prime reason for the defeat of the Liberals in 1957 was the defiant invoking of closure by the Louis St. Laurent government in the TransCanada Pipeline debate. A series of scandals involving his Quebec ministers were instrumental in preventing Lester Pearson from ever winning a majority. In 1984, Pierre Trudeau saddled successor John Turner with a tawdry list of patronage appointments.

They hung over Mr. Turner like a dead skunk in his subsequent demolition at the hands of Brian Mulroney.The Mulroney government’s reputation was then damaged by ministerial scandals. Sleaze, real or imagined, tarred Mr. Mulroney’s own reputation, contributing to his decision to step down in 1993 when his popularity was below sea level. And we all know the impact of the sponsorship scandal on the Liberals of Mr. Chrétien and Paul Martin.

With those Liberals, it took time and a major scandal before Canadians made them pay a big price. With the Harper Conservatives, ethical issues, including the Prime Minister being found in contempt of Parliament, did not factor into the 2011 election result.

None of these scandals blew up and were over like a summer storm. They took time to develop. But eventually they brought the House down. And the accumulation of evidence suggesting Harperian abuse of power is now very long:

If you wanted to go into detail, you could fill an entire page of news print with the ethical transgressions of this government that have undermined the democratic process.

They’ve become so common they hardly make news any more. A recent example is Bill C-51, the new and widely condemned security legislation that interferes with Canadians’ privacy. What did the Conservatives do? They voted to block Canada’s privacy commissioner from testifying at committee hearings on the bill. It’s a small example of how petty and pathetically partisan they are.

The Duffy trial plays directly into that narrative. What's different now is that it has become the Main Event.