Party of One (41 page)

Fife’s story on Mac Harb spelled trouble for Patrick Brazeau. One of the people who watched the Harb report on television was Brazeau’s ex-wife. If what she was saying were true, Brazeau was not entitled to his annual $22,000 housing allowance either. That was because he did not live in Maniwaki outside the National Capital Region, but in a rented house in Gatineau with his girlfriend. The rules said that if a senator’s principal dwelling is at least 100 kilometres outside Ottawa, then he was entitled to the annual housing allowance. If not, he wasn’t. According to another CTV investigation, the only Brazeau living in the house in Maniwaki was the senator’s father.

The media stories kept coming. On December 3, 2012, Mike Duffy found himself in the sights of one of the best investigative journalists in the country, Glen McGregor. McGregor and his partner Stephen Maher had swept every major news prize for breaking the robocalls scandal in a series of compelling investigative pieces. Now the
Ottawa Citizen
was raising questions about Senator Mike Duffy’s living allowance for his house in Kanata, while claiming as his principal dwelling a cottage in Cavendish, Prince Edward Island.

Everyone in Ottawa, including Prime Minister Harper, knew that Duffy had lived in Ottawa for thirty years before his appointment to the Senate in 2008. (A well-placed source told me that Duffy wanted the prime minister to name him from Ontario, but that Harper insisted on PEI, telling Duffy his critics “would get over it.”) McGregor wondered how Duffy’s housing situation was different from Harb’s and Brazeau’s. Senator David Tkachuk, chair of the Internal Economy Committee, told McGregor that Duffy’s expenses were entirely within the rules, “When you travel to Ottawa, you get expensed for living in Ottawa. In his case he has a home here, so he would charge off whatever the daily rate was.”

The senator from PEI (or Ontario) was not amused. Duffy claimed that the story was a “smear”—vindictive payback for his lawsuit against
Frank Magazine
, where McGregor had worked before coming to Ottawa in 1998. After the magazine ran a story calling him “a fat-faced liar,” Duffy launched a libel action seeking $600,000. The case was reputedly settled out of court for $30,000.

Duffy went on private radio in Ottawa and talked about what he considered to be a personal attack from an old adversary. McGregor responded that his story was about Senate expenses, an issue of public interest, not a smear. He had worked in the “Hot Room,” the parliamentary press gallery in Centre Block, and he and Duffy had enjoyed conversations many times. There was even a rumour that after his lawsuit, Duffy became a source for the gossip magazine.

Senator Duffy was sufficiently bothered by McGregor’s story that he contacted the prime minister’s chief of staff to debunk it. On December 4, 2012, Nigel Wright responded via his private email to Duffy’s explanation: “I am told that you have complied with all the applicable rules and that there would be several senators with similar arrangements. I think that the Standing Committee might review those rules. This sure seems to be a smear. I don’t know whether this is actionable, my guess is that it is not. This reporter is usually careful that way.”

It was noteworthy that Wright used his private email to respond to Duffy. As Greg Weston, national affairs specialist at CBC, pointed out in a September 2, 2013, article, “the promised new era of accountability, is really the golden age of secrecy.”
¹
Less information, not more, is being released under the Harper government. MPs and senators are exempt from access to information laws, and political staff often conduct sensitive business verbally without notes, or through private email addresses. As for ministerial
business, a lot of that is done on the patio of the Metropolitan, a trendy bistro a stone’s throw from Parliament Hill.

The PMO was getting nervous about the tremors of scandal coming out of the Senate, and so was the Senate leadership. On December 6, 2012, the Senate Internal Economy Committee announced a plan. It would eventually audit all senators to determine if their declarations of primary and secondary residences were supported by the required documents.

The new year began with a deepening of the Senate expenses scandal. On January 3, 2013, the Senate moved beyond its internal review and hired outside auditor Deloitte to examine Senator Pamela Wallin’s travel expenses from April 2011 to September 2012. By early February, the Senate’s own investigation of residency claims was expanded to include all senators, who were asked to provide their health cards, driver’s licences, voting registration, and tax records as proof of where they lived.

Nigel Wright was now watching developments closely as the first whiff of smoke from the Senate scandal wafted through the PMO. On February 5, 2013, Wright found out through national media reports that Senator Duffy had tried in December 2012 to apply for a fast-tracked health card in PEI. Coming as it did on the heels of the Senate’s decision to require proof of residency, it looked bad. The next day, Wright called Senator David Tkachuk for an assessment of the situation.

Tkachuk reported that Duffy had spent only sixty-two days in the last year in PEI, so there was a common-sense problem at the very least with claiming that his primary residence was the family cottage in Cavendish. The Duffys had purchased the property in 1998 and were considered non-resident owners, a categorization that meant paying 50 percent more property tax than residents. To qualify as residents, property owners were required to reside in the province for 183 consecutive days.

Locals claimed they rarely saw the senator, except at official municipal events or funding announcements. The man who could read a balance sheet could also see what was on the political horizon. Wright informed PMO staff in an email that he wasn’t optimistic about the outcome, even though Duffy had winterized his cottage after his appointment to the Senate: “. . . let this small group be under no illusion. I think this is going to end badly.”

As Wright had intuited, the sky continued to fall, but in an unexpected way. On February 7, 2013, Senator Brazeau, who was already under investigation for improper housing expenses, was arrested on domestic assault charges at 9:10 a.m. in response to a 911 call. In the hours before his arrest he ignored Justin Trudeau’s advice, issuing more than sixty tweets, many of them attacking CTV for a story the network had broadcast that night about his alleged expense improprieties.

As for the assault charges, court documents alleged Brazeau pushed the female victim violently enough to break the handrail of a staircase she was clutching, and touched her in a sexually aggressive way. Brazeau and his accuser had been arguing over Aboriginal issues the night of February 6, 2013, and the dispute continued the next morning. The physical confrontation allegedly occurred after Brazeau ordered her to leave his house.

It was a major blow to the prime minister’s judgment. He had appointed Brazeau to the Senate despite allegations of sexual harassment against him dating from his days as vice-chief and chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples (CAP). There were also stories about missed child support payments, accounts Brazeau dismissed as vicious rumours circulated by his enemies in the Aboriginal leadership.

Brazeau’s credentials for his Senate appointment were strictly political—he had helped Stephen Harper to power. One of the architects of Harper’s victory in the watershed election of 2006,
Tom Flanagan, thought that the Aboriginal reserve system was “anomalous and dysfunctional.” If government cut off federal cash to reserves, the reserve population would stop growing. So the better course for the federal government was to focus on Aboriginals who chose to live off-reserve. Flanagan’s ideas appeared in a book called
First Nations? Second Thoughts
, which was described as “racist, ethnocentric, and ill-thought out” by a reviewer in
Quill & Quire
.

But Stephen Harper was listening. Just seventy-two hours after the Kelowna Accord was agreed to by all stakeholders, the Martin government fell. With an election on, CAP wrote to each federal party and asked where they stood on the issue of federal support for off-reserve natives. Following Flanagan’s advice, Harper gave a detailed reply to CAP on how a government led by him would improve support to off-reserve Aboriginals.

It was music to the ears of CAP, as the congress represented eight hundred thousand off-reserve natives. Despite having signed on to Kelowna, CAP’s national chief, Dwight Dorey, and vice-chief, Patrick Brazeau, issued a letter supporting the Conservatives. Chief Dorey was in the Calgary ballroom when Stephen Harper celebrated his minority victory in the 2006 election. A few weeks later, Brazeau became the national chief of an organization that now had a stronger voice in Ottawa than the Assembly of First Nations.

Brazeau cemented his relationship with Harper in November 2006 when he spoke to a parliamentary committee that was discussing the Kelowna Accord. Paul Martin had put forward a private member’s bill asking the Harper government to honour the government’s financial obligations under Kelowna. Harper needed a credible Native leader to criticize the deal. Brazeau fit the bill. “Kelowna provided false hope for grassroots people— real people in real need—while enriching organizations and the aboriginal elite,” Brazeau told the committee.

The Harper government added $1.3 million to Brazeau’s budget at CAP and could now promise new approaches to Aboriginal issues with the full backing of his organization, avoiding the appearance of neglecting Native issues. No matter what he said in the election, Stephen Harper had no intention of honouring the letter, spirit, or cash component of the Kelowna Accord. Two years later, in December 2008, Patrick Brazeau became the fifteenth Aboriginal senator, a platform he used to continue his campaign against various First Nations leaders for what he claimed were their unaccountable fiscal ways.

The same Patrick Brazeau had now spent a night in jail after being charged with assault and sexual assault. Stephen Harper could only hope that his part in elevating Brazeau would not become part of the story. Though not yet convicted of anything, Brazeau was immediately removed from the Conservative caucus. A senior government official said that Harper had reacted strongly to the allegations of domestic abuse: “The prime minister was appalled and saddened when he heard the allegations and took immediate action.”

T
HE
WEEK
BEFORE
Valentine’s Day was not a time of hearts and flowers for Conservative senators. On the same day that Brazeau was charged, Senator Mike Duffy was informed that there was going to be an independent audit of his expenses by Deloitte, prompting him to call his lawyer. The Conservative Party’s star fundraiser was upset. He resented the fact that he was now going to be lumped in with Senators Harb and Brazeau. Duffy believed he had followed the rules and wanted to publicly defend himself on political talk shows. He emailed Senators Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen asking for a meeting. They forwarded his message to Nigel Wright in the PMO. “I have no interest in claiming expenses to which I am not entitled,” Duffy wrote. “Can we discuss this matter
before you issue any media release naming me, as I believe we can resolve this expense issue without the need of an audit.”

It can’t have been a happy day for Wright. In addition to investigations into Brazeau and Duffy, and Brazeau’s criminal charges, there were now questions being asked about Senator Wallin’s residency status.

Mike Duffy didn’t get his meeting. The next day, the Senate publicly announced that outside auditors from Deloitte would assess the residency claims and expenses of three senators: Brazeau, Harb, and Duffy. Deloitte asked for a meeting with Duffy and requested documents. On a separate front, the Senate was also seeking legal advice about Duffy’s residency status. That was a crucial turn of events. If it were to be found that Duffy was not a resident of Prince Edward Island, his Senate seat could be in jeopardy.

On February 11, 2013, the same day that Kathleen Wynne was sworn in as Ontario’s first female premier, a nervous, unhappy, and argumentative Mike Duffy had a fifty-minute mid-day meeting with Nigel Wright in room 204 of the Langevin Block. His visit was initially redacted from the visitors’ log. Duffy expressed his biggest fear to the prime minister’s chief of staff. If he didn’t claim a primary residence in PEI, he would not qualify to be a senator from that province. Wright assured him that his appointment was not in play. But he told Duffy that if he lived primarily in Ottawa, it would be morally wrong for him to claim a housing allowance. Unpalatable as Duffy found it, the bottom line from Wright was that the senator should pay back the money. Wright wrote in an email, “I met with Duff today. He will repay, with a couple of conditions. . . .” At the time of their meeting, the amount Duffy was believed to owe was $32,000.

Duffy’s version of the meeting with Wright was that it was the first time that the “fake scheme” to repay his housing expenses was broached. In return for meeting certain conditions, Duffy would
repay the expenses and stop talking to the media. A meeting was scheduled with the prime minister after the next caucus, “just the three of them,” according to Duffy.

As Nigel Wright set out to resolve the Duffy matter, party leaders in the Senate were making his task harder. They released a joint statement saying that any senator found to have broken Senate spending rules should repay every cent, with interest. When Patrick Rogers, manager of parliamentary affairs in the PMO, emailed Wright about the new development, Wright replied, “Can the leadership PLEASE coordinate every move with us before taking ANY steps?” He knew how unhappy Duffy would be about the statement.

That same evening at 5:05 p.m., Duffy emailed Wright on the chief of staff ’s personal account: “What does Marjory’s letter mean for our talks?” he asked. Eighteen minutes later, Wright replied via his PMO email account. He tried to reassure Duffy that their arrangement would not be affected: “I had no foreknowledge of it. When I learned of it I asked for all unilateral action from that office to cease before being cleared with me. I was not pleased. On its face, it does not make our task more complicated I think, although ‘with interest’ is new to me.” Among other things, Nigel Wright was making clear that the affairs of the Senate should be in the hands of the PMO, not the Senate leadership.