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: Stephen Harper
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.
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.
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.
Roundup: Shrapnel from the Clusterduff
The shrapnel from the Clusterduff explosion continues to ricochet around the capital as Parliament resumes today. Over in the PMO, the latest casualty is the former special council and legal advisor, Benjamin Perrin (who actually left in April to return to teaching law), who drafted the agreement between Nigel Wright and Senator Mike Duffy. But Perrin and Wright assert that Harper wasn’t told – because, plausible deniability, I guess. While the Senate is going to be seized with the audit reports and the proposed new rules, now that they’ve had the week to look them over, the House is going to be some kind of fun, as the NDP bray about ethics and accountability, and Harper, well, heads to Peru and then a Pacific summit (that was all pre-arranged long before any of this broke, before any of you start getting any ideas about this foreign travel being a little too convenient). The NDP have decided to ride the ethics train and demand that the RCMP look into the Nigel Wright/Mike Duffy affair, because they’re apparently not content to let the Conservatives continue to self-immolate. They also seem to be oblivious to the obvious Conservative counter-offensive about Thomas Mulcair’s decades of curious silence about the attempted bribery that he declined in 1994. (I’ve been told that the Liberals will stay out of this in QP, since they are content to let said self-immolation continue unaided – we shall see). Harper is going to have an emergency caucus meeting in the morning before he heads off to Peru (though apparently nobody told Finance Committee, who are still slated to meet early). The opening portion of said meeting will be open to the media, but he won’t take any questions, which could be a long and uncomfortable silence for all the journalists travelling with him if he decides to sequester himself.
Roundup: $3.1 billion in sloppy record keeping
The Auditor General released a report yesterday, and it was a bit of a doozy, at least with regards to the revelation that some $3.1 billion in anti-terror funding is not properly accounted for. Not that it’s actually been misspent, but the recordkeeping is a bit sloppy, and some of it was victim to a “whole of government approach,” according to Tony Clement. Among other issues the AG cited – that our search and rescue infrastructure is headed for total systems failure, that they need to crack down on EI overpayments, problems with expense claims by the Old Port of Montreal, and that there are problems with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as it is beset by conflict with other federal departments over documents. John Ivison says the report is like ‘manna’ for the NDP, and I can hardly wait for the number of times that Thomas Mulcair gets to say “failure of good public administration” over the next several days.
Roundup: From omnibus to minibus
At long last, the budget implementation bill was tabled yesterday, and at around 125 pages, it’s far less of the omnibus bills that the government was so fond of last year. Not that it’s too unexpected, given that the budget itself was a pretty thin document, and so Flaherty’s joke is that this one is a “minibus.” It does have a number of measures including the tariff changes, the attempt to revive the National Securities Regulator, integrating CIDA into Foreign Affairs, and taking things like Winterlude and Canada Day back from the National Capital Commission.
Roundup: Gross partisanship over a tragic incident
It was another day of gross partisanship yesterday as Stephen Harper decided to begin the day by, apropos of nothing while attending the funeral of Baroness Thatcher, calling out Justin Trudeau for not being equivocal enough in his condemnation of terrorism and saying that trying to understand the root causes – so as to prevent it – was somehow “rationalizing” or “excusing” it. And then, just before Question Period, one of his faithful backbenchers repeated the same point for the benefit of the House. Well, that went over well, and after Trudeau called him out over the politicisation, the NDP decided to pile on during the evening political shows and moaned that Trudeau didn’t focus enough on the victims and the first responders. No, seriously. Because apparently a tragic incident can’t escape the narrow partisanship on either side of the aisle. The various statements that were made are collected here. Susan Delacourt, meanwhile, has a fantastic blog post about where narrow partisanship and sarcasm meet over Twitter, and all reason is lost.