Roundup: Playing Duffy’s game

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It didn’t take long, but the repudiations rolled in today of the story that Duffy wanted to be named an Ontario senator instead of a PEI senator. Senior anonymous Conservatives disputed that fact, though it is fairly well known that Duffy did have concerns about his residency, which is why Marjory LeBreton’s office had that political memo drafted to justify the appointment as constitutional – note that it was a political memo and not a legal one. When it was first reported on Tuesday that Duffy wanted to be appointed as an Ontario senator, it raised red flags with me as it was contrary to years of anecdotes about Duffy’s quest to be a PEI senator, right to the fact that he would check the pulse of an aging PEI senator every time he shook his hand, or the fact that he would play up his Islander heritage for his whole career. In other words, it sounded self-serving and likely out of the Duffy camp in order to try and deflect blame onto the Prime Minister – and that’s exactly the trap that the NDP fell into, when they again made an issue out of it in scrums and in QP. Yes, Harper bears responsibility for the appointment, and yes, if he was going to appoint Duffy as a PEI senator, he should have ensured that Duffy moved back there first (and likewise with Carolyn Stewart Olsen in New Brunswick), but we all know that the December 2008 appointments were made in a panic and the usual checks were left undone. It’s not a conspiracy, the way that the NDP keep trying to portray it. It was one cascading series of bad decisions and the associated damage control. Trying to paint it as nefarious rather than utterly incompetent isn’t really helpful, and it doesn’t make it any easier to make Harper’s judgement a ballot issue. Taking the nefarious angle plays into the narrative that Duffy has been trying to build for himself when he got caught out and tried painting himself as the poor victim in all of this, and I’m not sure that the NDP are doing themselves any favours by playing Duffy’s game for him.

Good reads:

  • The Duffy trial is on hold until Monday, when it moves into voir dire about the admissibility of a 2010 Senate audit as evidence. As well, the health of key witness Gerry Donahue is in question.
  • Gloria Galloway pens a lovely obituary for Speaker Nolin.
  • The Senate is looking to put a process in place for repaying any expenses found to be improper, to avoid future confusion like we’ve seen in the past couple of years.
  • Questions are being raised about the NDP providing parliamentary office space and resources to their staffer’s union (despite the fact that they technically weren’t unionized).
  • The Deschamps Report into military sexual misconduct is coming out tomorrow, and it’s going to be a doozy. Jason Kenney says the military’s response will be strong.
  • Using the magic of proper statistics, Liberal MP Ted Hsu demolishes the government’s talking points on TFSAs.

Odds and ends:

For some reason the Commons decided to mark Sir John A’s 200th birthday yesterday, when it was actually in January.

The Speaker says that Jason Kenney didn’t violate privilege by giving misleading answers about smart bombs in Syria, but that he was simply misinformed.

With the King of Jordan’s visit, Canada announced $120 million in aid to help them secure their borders and deal with the flood of refugees.