With Harper finally — finally! — back in the House for the first time since the whole ClusterDuff affair really exploded, it was shaping up to be an incredibly tense day. Thomas Mulcair stood without script or mini-lectern before him, and asked short, pointed questions about the Nigel Wright/Mike Duffy exchange. Harper stood and delivered his usual points about how he learned the about the issue at the same time as everyone else, and that he accepted Wright’s resignation — his tone getting all the more exasperated. When it was his turn, Trudeau asked a longer question with more of a preamble, asking for information and documentation related to the exchange. Harper insisted that they were cooperating with the investigations from the Ethics officers of both chambers. For his final question, Trudeau asked if everyone involved, including Harper himself, would testify under oath in public about what he knew. Harper repeated his answer, and threw in a gratuitous slam about Trudeau trying to pit regions against one another.
Tag Archives: Nigel Wright
Roundup: Depressed over the ClusterDuff affair
Oh dear. The Conservative caucus is apparently terribly depressed over the damage done to their brand by the whole ClusterDuff affair, and the way it’s been handled. But as they demonstrated yesterday, it seems that they have decided to go on the offensive rather than to run with the tone of contrition that was struck at the end of last week.
QP: James Moore goes on the attack
Despite being back in the country, Stephen Harper remained out of the House for QP — not that his absence was enough for Thomas Mulcair to change his script, as he read questions designed to be asked of the Prime Minister. James Moore, the designated back-up PM du jour, insisted that the Prime Minister was demonstrating accountability (despite not being at QP, which is the prime moment of accountability every day), that the NDP should get on board with Senate “reform,” and by the way, your MPs aren’t paying their taxes. Mulcair moved onto questions on CSIS not passing along information on Jeffrey Delisle to the RCMP while he passed along classified intelligence, but Vic Toews rebutted by saying that the media story made the wrong conclusions, and by the way, your MPs aren’t paying their taxes. Justin Trudeau was up next for the Liberals, and brought up the fact that they would be moving a motion in the Ethics Committee to study the Wright/Duffy affair, and would the government have their MPs in that committee vote to support the motion so that the air can be cleared. Moore rebutted with the non-sequitur of Trudeau’s comments on the Senate — taking it all out of context, of course. Trudeau then brought up the Federal Court ruling around misleading robocalls, not that Moore changed his answer of attacking Trudeau.
Roundup: Back to answer questions – or not
The House is back today, and so is QP, but it remains to be seen if Stephen Harper will deign to make an appearance or not. He rarely shows up on a Monday unless he has travel or other duties later in the week. But when he does show up, whether it’s today or Tuesday, there will finally be an opportunity for him to start answering questions in the House about the whole Clusterduff affair. Meanwhile, Senator Marjorie Lebreton continues to insist that there wasn’t any document trail between Nigel Wright and Senator Mike Duffy, and that she doesn’t really run things in the Senate. That said, she is considering allowing the Internal Economy committee hearings into the Duffy audit to be held in public – were it to actually be her call as opposed to the committee’s – but it should be noted that any testimony made in public then falls under privilege. In other words, it can’t be used by police. Sure, it can guide them as to where to look and come up with their own evidence, but it is a consideration that should be made. Oh, and a former RCMP superintendent says that it certainly looks like there are grounds for criminal charges with the whole expenses issue, and that breach of trust – which is an indictable offence (and would be grounds for automatic dismissal from the Senate) is likely the route that the RMCP would take.
Roundup: Inconsistent timelines and poor vetting
The ClusterDuff continues to be the gift that keeps on giving, the more we look into it. The big question raised yesterday was with regards to the timeline of what Harper knew when, which doesn’t add up to his established statements once you factor in when CTV’s Robert Fife started asking questions to the PMO, which should have raised flags to Harper that something was going on. (Global posts their own timeline of events here, while Maclean’s has an infographic to explain how everything fits together to date). As well, despite the PMO characterizing it as normal that they would be in communication with Commons and Senate committees in order to draft lines in response to their studies and reports, Liberal Senate leader James Cowan says those kinds of conversations are not normal. It would also seem to be a bit of a red flag about the PMO interfering into committee and Senate business. It also seems that Duffy and his lawyer were in the room at the time when then Internal Economy Committee voted to make the edits to his report that toned down the language (or “whitewashing” it, as it were), which also seems pretty peculiar.
Roundup: Suddenly everyone wants to talk
After days of people not talking about the whole ClusterDuff affair, suddenly there was plenty being said today. First, Aaron Wherry at Maclean’s got in touch with Senator Tkachuk of the Board of Internal Economy (who had been away after scheduled surgery), who insisted that he took no direction from Nigel Wright about scrubbing his audit report, and that they decided to tone down the language simply because he had paid the money back already. Tkachuk also praised the media for uncovering more of Senator Mike Duffy’s questionable spending, as it gives them more to work with. Outside, the CBC spoke with several Senators, most of whom were outraged by the situation, including Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth (3:55 on the clip), who said point blank that she believes that what Duffy did was fraud. Ouch. From the Senate, we learned that the RCMP had asked for documents related to the affair including copies of the Senate rules going back a decade. Later in the day, Duffy himself finally spoke with reporters – albeit somewhat fleetingly, saying that he wants an open inquiry and insisted that he wasn’t going to resign – sounding utterly dismissive at the very notion – but what was most interesting was the way he caught himself when asked what he believes Nigel Wright told the Prime Minister. “I have no idea,” he said and paused. “I would find…” And then caught himself. “I just don’t know.” But rather than answer other questions, he insisted that everyone wait for all to be revealed by the investigations. Given that more of his campaign expenses being billed to the Senate are being turned up, well, a lot more may be revealed than he counted on. Elsewhere in the Senate, Liberal Senator George Furey, who was in the minority when the Duffy report was edited and released, says that Tkachuk should step aside from the committee during the review of the Duffy audit, and that the executive of the committee – himself – recuse themselves to do away with hints of bias. The CBC, meanwhile, has acquired some of the letters between Duffy and Tkachuk around the audit. And in Colombia, Harper himself was actually answering more questions from the media, and apparently sounded a bit more contrite on the whole ClusterDuff situation, and admitted that maybe he should have acted sooner when he learned of the cheque from Wright.
QP: What Nigel Wright did was wrong
With Harper still away, now in Colombia, and Justin Trudeau on an Atlantic Canada mall food court tour, and Thomas Mulcair, well, elsewhere, it was only Elizabeth May as the sole party leader in the House. That left it up to David Christopherson to kick off QP on behalf of the NDP by shouting out his script about Senator Duffy’s primary residency. James Moore, the designated back-up PM du jour, assured him that new questions had been raised which was why the report was being re-evaluated. Christopherson and then Françoise Boivin tried to then press about the knowledge in the PMO of the payment from Nigel Wright to the Senator, of any documents, but Moore repeated the PM’s long-distance assurances that he didn’t know anything about the deal until it was in the media. Ralph Goodale was up next, asking why it took so long for the PM to act about the revelation of Wright’s involvement, and offer a reminder of the Criminal Code sanctions for such a payment. Moore simply repeated the official denial of knowledge of what happened.
Roundup: Chasing answers in Peru
It only took a week, a trip to Peru and a question from a foreign journalist before Stephen Harper finally said that he was sorry over the whole Nigel Wright/Mike Duffy affair. Well, he was sorry that Wright giving the cheque happened – we’re not quite sure yet if he’s sorry that he appointed Duffy to the Senate. (Video here). So, there’s that.
Meanwhile, back home, the NDP have decided to launch a new campaign, that they say will be part of the next election, about trying to abolish the Senate. Because you know, the constitution is something that can be changed on a whim, in particular because abolition would require the unanimous consent of the provinces. In other words, Mulcair is promising to do the impossible because he won’t have to follow through with it, and he can blame the provinces if he forms government. Yay using constitutional vandalism as though there were no consequences as a political tactic! Here’s a great post on the short-sighted ridiculousness for this kind of abolition rhetoric.
QP: A tacit admission that Wright was in the wrong
After Tuesday’s rather dismal performance by the opposition in trying to hold a government to account in the face of scandal, it remained to be seen if anything would be any better today. QP got underway as Thomas Mulcair stood to read a question about how asking the Senate Board of Internal Economy looking into the Duffy affair was tantamount to Paul Martin asking Jean Chrétien to investigate the sponsorship scandal. John Baird, once more the designated back-up PM du jour, said that he had indicated the audit was being referred to two independent bodies, but didn’t clarify or dispute Mulcair’s assertion that it was Internal Economy. Mulcair pressed for documents related to the affair, but Baird insisted that no documents existed to the best of his knowledge. Nathan Cullen tried once more to get answers, but got the very same carefully parsed answers. Justin Trudeau was up next and asked who gave the order for the Conservative majority on the Board of Internal Economy to whitewash the Duffy audit report — and offered to provide the original, damning audit. Baird consisted to insist that the audit found improper expenses, which were paid back, but it should be noted that the talking point that Wright did the honourable thing in writing the cheque had vanished, and there was no disputing that his resignation was accepted once the PM found out about the transaction.
Roundup: No answers but a few red herrings
They might as well not have bothered. Harper invited the media in to watch his caucus speech, and gave a bland non-statement about how he was very upset (said in a monotone), “Yay Accountability Act!” and hey, the Senate needs to be reformed – err, except that absolutely nothing about his “reform” plans would do anything about this situation. And so, Harper said nothing about Duffy, Wallin, Brazeau, Wright, or the $90,000 cheque, and because he took no questions, some reporters started shouting them out before they were herded out. And then he got on a plane for Peru, which was planned at least a month in advance, but don’t let that stop Mulcair or the conspiracy theorists from trying to claim that he engineered the Clusterduff explosions to go off just as the trip was planned – as though there were enough competence in the PMO to pull that one off. John Ivison ripped Harper over the failure of the speech, and points to the unhappiness on the backbench that these events transpired and Harper appears to be taking it out on them, rather than looking at the events that transpired in the Centre. Michael Den Tandt writes about how this was a train wreck, and that it broke faith with Harper’s base.