It’s hard to know where to start with the constant revelations on the Senator Mike Duffy file yesterday, because they were coming pretty fast and furious, but the biggest news was that he “voluntarily” left caucus because he had become a distraction. One adds the quotation marks around “voluntary” because word is that the other members of the Conservative Senate caucus were signing a petition to have him ousted, so the writing may have been on the wall. He still wants back in, once everything is sorted and he is somehow vindicated, but considering how he and his lawyers refused to cooperate with the Deloitte auditors, and the fact that he was allegedly making that deal with Nigel Wright in order to make his expenses outrage go away, well, the desire to see his name cleared doesn’t seem to have been top of mind the past few months.
But this is the point where we have to back up and start with the first revelation of the day, where we found out that Duffy was claiming expenses for “Senate business” during the 2011 election – you know, when Parliament has been dissolved and there is no Senate business to conduct. And lo, it was matched up to his campaign events. “Senate business” indeed. How long before this too becomes a “clerical error” with yet another pained admission that people know he would never cheat the taxpayer? Of course, the NDP are crowing because they apparently raised the alarm about senators – including Duffy – campaigning during the last election, which was of course ridiculous because it’s like they somehow expect Senators, who are members of their respective political parties, to sit on their hands. Now, if Duffy was improperly claiming per diems while campaigning, that is a problem that needs to be dealt with. If he was simply campaigning, as other Senators do, that’s a ridiculous gripe. One might as well gripe that MPs fundraise outside of a writ period, because it amounts to pretty much the same thing. In fact, they should be grateful that our Senators don’t spend two thirds of their time fundraising for their re-election campaigns like they do in the States – but that’s an aside.
The Duffy issue doesn’t end there, though. There was more confusion around the $90,000 cheque as the story continued to change, where one minute it was a personal cheque to help out a friend in financial difficulty, to no, Duffy took out a loan from the Royal Bank, to no, the cheque was written but held in trust by Duffy’s lawyer while Duffy got the loan, to the fact that the apparent bank loan was a surprise to the PMO – but of course, nobody’s produced a paper trail, and this is largely coming from unnamed sources, so nobody knows what to actually believe here – including Duffy’s claims of financial difficulty, as there seems to be little indication of that. The Prime Minister still apparently has confidence in Wright, which also doesn’t make a lot of sense if this transaction happened without Harper’s knowledge, despite it being on the wrong side of a whole lot of rules and done at least in part in order to make the situation go away (which, I will remind you, was apparently how it was being treated by Duffy and his lawyer as they ceased cooperating with the Deloitte audit once that repayment had been made). And to top it all off, there are now allegations that Duffy was trying to influence the CRTC to find in favour of granting SunTV the mandatory carriage it’s been demanding. One now wonders what tomorrow’s revelation is going to be.
Add to all of that, Senator Patrick Brazeau broke his silence yesterday, and said that he’s fighting the order to repay expenses because he met all of the criteria Deloitte set out for primary residence, and the fact that he only spent ten percent of his time there is immaterial because there is no rule about how much time one has to spend there. Err, aside from common sense. He also is challenging the Senate Board of Internal Economy to hold an open meeting to air their criteria for making their finding against him, because all of that has been done behind closed doors. Brazeau seems to feel that he will be vindicated in this, and with his unrelated court case involving the domestic incident in February, where he was charged with assault and sexual assault.
Still confused? Here is a handy Q&A guide, as well as a timeline of the current whole Senate expense mess to date.
Elsewhere, Thomas Mulcair made the brief statement that he had spoken to the police over an incident when the mayor of Laval offered him an envelope of cash, back when he was a Quebec MNA in 1994. The question of course – and posed by Peter Van Loan – is why Mulcair has been silent all this time.
Liberal MP Denis Coderre at long last announced that he will be running for the mayor of Montreal, and that he resigns as an MP on June 2nd, which marks 16 years in that position. Of course, his launch was marked by protests and arrests, but the big question of course becomes just what will happen in the by-election to replace his seat, which both the Liberals and NDP will be vying for, as will the Bloc (though leader Daniel Paillé won’t be contesting the seat even though he is currently without one).
Peter Van Loan served notice that he’s moving to extend Commons sitting hours to midnight starting next week in order to push through the last of the must-pass bills before the House rises for the summer – but also gives hints that they may rise earlier than the possible five weeks they are scheduled to before the summer recess begins, and more clues that a summer cabinet shuffle and possible prorogation are in the works.
Colin Horgan writes about Lockheed-Martin’s F-35 sales pitch to journalists as they take them to the production and testing facilities.
And because it wasn’t a busy enough news day yesterday, there now come allegations that there is a video out there of Toronto mayor Rob Ford smoking crack, while calling Justin Trudeau a “fag.” So yeah, this could be very interesting tomorrow.