Conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
When Mike Duffy ended his career as a television journalist to become a Canadian senator in 2008, he probably didn’t expect his name to be lent to one of the craziest political scandals in Canadian history. The scandal, currently dogging the Conservative party in the middle of the country’s federal election, may not include the worst things a politician has ever done while in office, but after a length of time in the public eye (2012 onward) and number of twists and turns, the Duffy affair can claim a place in the pantheon of great political scandals.
Canadians are heading to the polls in a little over a month for a complicated federal election, with three parties all within single-digits of each other nationally. The progressive New Democratic Party has been holding a small but consistent lead in the polls, with both the center-left Liberals and incumbent right-wing Conservatives only a few points behind. As the Conservatives in Canada are trying to hang on to power, this long-running scandal has repeatedly made headlines during the campaign, putting Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper on the defensive.
Follow below the fold to read all the unbelievable details.
It started with a common political problem, a residency issue. Mike Duffy, a longtime television journalist in Ottawa, was appointed to the Canadian Senate by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper (there’s a process but basically the PM decides). Duffy was appointed as a senator from Prince Edward Island, where he had a second home, rather than from Ontario. There wasn’t much controversy about this at the time, as Duffy simply said that his second home was now his primary residence.
Fast forward four years, and a CTV report that neighbors of Conservative Quebec Sen. Patrick Brazeau was never at his father’s house in Quebec where he claimed he resided and in fact lived in Ottawa year-round. This isn’t really a problem in terms of being able to hold office (as American Sens. Richard Lugar and Pat Roberts have proved), but it is a problem if you’ve claimed thousands of dollars in travel and housing allowances from the government to travel to Ottawa and stay there while the Senate is in session.
These reports sparked an investigation that ensnared three more senators, including our subject, Duffy. Of the four senators, Liberal Sen. Mac Harb repaid the government and retired, while the other three Conservative senators were suspended from the Senate without pay. It’s important to note that a senator cannot be expelled from the body for misconduct unless convicted of a felony or an “infamous crime,” so until a conviction occurs, suspension is the harshest punishment available to the Senate.
The three suspended senators took very different paths in response. Pamela Wallin repaid the government and has so far not been charged with any crime. Patrick Brazeau interrupted this scandal with sexual assault charges, so he had already been suspended form the Senate when the order to repay the funds came down. Incredibly, (still) Sen. Brazeau now works as the day manager for a strip club in Ottawa called BareFax as he awaits trial.
Duffy didn’t feel like he had done anything wrong and didn’t want to pay back the approximately $90,000 he owed the government. So he and the prime minister’s office came up with a solution that sounded great until anyone spent five seconds thinking about it. The prime minister’s then-chief of staff, Nigel Wright, is a very wealthy man and solved the problem the way most wealthy men do, by writing a check. Wright personally gave Duffy the money so he could reimburse the government for the improperly claimed expenses.
Problem solved! Except you really, really cannot give a senator $90,000 to make his political problems go away. The money transfer was inevitably reported by CTV News and Wright was forced to resign. Duffy was charged with 31 counts of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery for the expenses and accepting the money from Wright (oddly Wright was never charged with bribing Duffy).
And if that weren't enough, the prime minister's office was also accused of interfering with a supposedly independent Senate report on Duffy's expenses. The two Conservative senators on the subcommittee made changes to the report in consultation with the staff from the PMO without telling the Liberal senator on the subcommittee. An email from Wright explains what he was thinking during this time period:
“A purpose of this is to put Mike in a different bucket and to prevent him from going squirrely in a bunch of weekend panel shows,” former PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright said in an e-mail to colleagues on Feb. 7, 2013.
Needless to say, Wright would have been better off hanging Duffy out to dry from the beginning.
Harper and the Tories have tried to distance themselves from Duffy, Wright, and the scandal as much as possible, and Duffy was forced out of the Conservative caucus, but Duffy has been anything but a loyal soldier. His lawyer has accused Harper of knowing about the payment from Wright to Duffy and that his office pressured Duffy to accept it. Duffy has insisted on dragging out his trial (that began in April) as long as possible. While it was originally set to end in June, it dragged into the start of the campaign until being adjourned on August 25 to after the election.
As one would expect, daily reports of the trial during the election campaign have been an anchor on the Conservatives as they try to somehow hang onto power. According to one poll, 69 percent of voters were following the trial closely and only 21 percent of voters believe Harper did not know about Wright’s check. The scandal also further feeds into the idea that it’s time for a change in government, as Harper has served as prime minister since 2006. With recent polling showing the Conservatives in third place, and even with fewer headlines now that the trial is suspended, the Duffy affair will not be forgotten when voters go to the polls in October.
