Stephen Harper’s culture of expediency has marked every single aspect of the ClusterDuff affair, from its genesis with the appointment of those senators in 2009, to the abrogation of due process that took place in the Senate tonight to their suspension without pay. Those appointments, made in haste and without proper due diligence, created the crisis of the independence of the Senate that we find ourselves in currently – but it was politically expedient for Harper to declare that he wasn’t going to appoint “unelected” senators until it became expedient for him to appoint a glut of them at once and strain the ability of the chamber to absorb them.
When those appointees started to prove that they had problems – in particular Senator Duffy and his status as a resident of PEI (remember again that it was expedient for Harper to fit Duffy into that seat rather than choosing an Islander for the position) – it became expedient for the PMO to try and do something about it. That expediency, as it turned out, was for Nigel Wright to have Duffy repay the money and stop cooperating and answering questions to the auditors, and when Duffy didn’t want to pay, for Wright to use his own resources to pay on Duffy’s behalf. It was all in the service of making it go away quickly. When Duffy didn’t keep his mouth shut, and it became known that Wright paid on his behalf, it became expedient for Harper to order him cut loose from the caucus – along with Senators Brazeau and Wallin – but the order of the day was to adopt the Deloitte audit reports on Duffy, Brazeau and Harb with no time to study them so that they would go away. That didn’t happen, more problems were found after a bit more careful digging, and things got forwarded to the RCMP.
Fall rolled around, and with new, more amateurish (and dare I say more pliable) leadership in the Senate, and suddenly expediency turned to the attempt to suspend these senators without pay, using made-up terms like “gross negligence” that have no basis in any of the rules of the Senate. Because what better way to say that they’ve been dealt with and washed their hands of the whole affair than to do it before the Conservative convention? But this time, expediency met ham-fisted amateurism with motions that did away with due process and were incomprehensible under the very rules of the Senate itself. Never mind that these senators didn’t get a proper chance to defend themselves – most especially Wallin, whose audit report was never actually tabled in the Senate chamber when it was sitting, nor adopted by the Senate as a whole. No, they needed to be seen to be punished, and due process is a bother, and it is not expedient.
It’s a sad day in Canadian politics when the centre of democracy can’t fulfil some of the most basic constitutional tenets, such as innocent until proven guilty, getting your day in court, and a fair process. Why deal with due process when expediency demands that you declare guilt and mete out punishment immediately, and any delay for the sake of process is surely sign that you are only trying to protect the alleged wrongdoers? Process? Who cares about process? We can make up the rules as we go along so long as it suits our current purposes! (Apparently nobody reminded the people at the centre of this farcical process that democracy is process).
Best of all, now that they have been suspended without pay, Harper can declare for the cameras that justice was done, that these Senators are facing the consequences of misusing taxpayer dollars, and oh by the way, there’s an ongoing RCMP investigation so I can’t comment on anything. Because that’s what this has done. The Liberals in the Senate were not keen to have this declared over with because it means they can’t continue to ask questions about just what happened, and consider it to be little more than participation in a cover-up. They’re not entirely wrong either, considering that the “we can’t comment” message is going to be the new standard response going forward.
Nobody is denying that there may have been wrongdoing – well, except for the three senators at the centre of this. And to their credit, there do appear to be grey areas within the rules that were exploited in one way or another, and part of that fault lies with the Senate’s financial controls – especially if Brazeau’s claims are to be believed. But with that ambiguity still in the air, without the due process of a chance for those senators to have their say, to properly dispute either the Deloitte audits or the decisions of the Internal Economy Committee, then it really taints the whole state of affairs with the element of banana republicanism that it reeks of. Arbitrary, made-up charges? Media show trials? Declaration of guilt and sentencing without a trial? Well done, Canada. Slow clap.
But hey – at least it was expedient.