Party of One (49 page)

On the very day the Mounties announced their criminal probe, one of Wright’s lawyers called the RCMP to say that they would be sending information to investigators. The next day police received a letter in which Wright claimed he had been unaware of any fraudulent expense claims by the senator at the time he had given Duffy the $90,000. It was an answer to a question no one had yet asked him face to face. Had someone tipped off the prime minister’s former chief of staff about what the Mounties were looking into? Had they found incriminating documents?

From the outset of the crisis, the Harper government claimed that there was no paper trail in the case. The outcome of twentythree access-to-information requests by the media seemed to bear that out. The Privy Council Office, the prime minister’s department, responded in every case that not a single piece of paper, letter, or email dealing with the Wright/Duffy affair existed. Nearly six months would pass before a red-faced PCO was forced to change its story, raising serious questions about how high the cover-up of the secret payment went.

Unlike the PMO and his department, Wright was the model of proactive cooperation, telling investigators he was willing to meet with them and provide whatever information they required. On June 19, 2013, Wright’s lawyers, Patrick McCann and Peter Mantas, huddled with RCMP supterintendent Biage Carrese and Staff Sergeant Jean Francois Arbour to talk over a future interview with their client. The lawyers told the Mounties that Wright’s role in the PMO was to manage the Conservative caucus members and handle any matters that could cause embarrassment to the prime minister or the party.

Then came the bombshell. Wright’s lawyers said that the Conservative Party Fund, controlled by Senator Irving Gerstein, was initially going to repay Duffy’s improper expenses. But that changed when the amount owing soared from $32,000 to $90,000. The Fund quickly closed its coffers to Senator Duffy. Then, and only then, did the prime minister’s chief of staff decide to retire Duffy’s expenses with a $90,000 personal “gift.”

It was an odd piece of information. If the Conservative Party Fund was willing to pay back $32,000, why not $90,000? It certainly didn’t seem to be a matter of principle. Was it the sheer increase in the amount of money owing that changed Senator Gerstein’s mind, or the nature of the other $58,000 in claimed expenses? And there was another question. Why hadn’t other Conservative
senators with expense problems been bailed out? There were no “gifts” for Pamela Wallin or Patrick Brazeau—just invoices.

Wright’s lawyers explained that their client had personally covered the costs of the Duffy settlement because he thought that taxpayers should not be out the money, making it “the proper ethical decision.” It was a noble explanation even if it left another issue unexplained. Nigel Wright made it sound as if he were the only person who could make the public whole again. In fact, there was another person who could ensure that the taxpayers would get their money back and from whom a cheque made much more sense: Mike Duffy. Why hadn’t the senator who claimed the improper expenses paid them back, instead of depending on the kindness of Nigel Wright? He did, after all, raise the total amount at the bank. Or was there something more to the arrangement than remarkable generosity?

The lawyers told police that Wright had imposed two conditions on Senator Duffy in return for his very big plum: that the improper expenses be paid back immediately, and that the former TV star stop talking to the media about his expense problems. Through his lawyers, Wright denied that anyone had directed him to make the payment to Duffy, and insisted that the prime minister was not aware of the “means” of the secret arrangement.

But Wright provided a declaration, via his lawyers, that flatly contradicted Stephen Harper’s statement, on May 23, 2013, that the gift to Duffy “was a matter he [Wright] kept to himself until Wednesday, May 15.” According to Wright’s lawyers, several other unnamed people in the PMO knew about the deal with Duffy. The last thing McCann and Mantas told investigators in their meeting was that they “were not aware of any involvement this deal may have had regarding the altered Senate report draft.” It was an important point. CTV’s Robert Fife had reported the same two conditions that the lawyers told police Wright had attached
to the $90,000 gift to Duffy. But Fife had reported a third—that if the senator acknowledged his improper expenses and repaid them, then the Senate committee looking into senators’ expenses would go easy on Duffy.

Two days after meeting with the RCMP, one of Wright’s lawyers, Peter Mantas, provided investigators with a letter in which his client gave the names of the four people, three of them in the PMO, who were told about the $90,000 deal: David van Hemmen, Nigel Wright’s executive assistant; Benjamin Perrin, the prime minister’s legal counsel; Chris Woodcock, the director of issues management; and Senator Irving Gerstein. There was also an interesting enclosure. Attached to the letter was a copy of the CIBC bank draft that NDP MP Megan Leslie had wanted to see. It was made out to Senator’s Duffy’s employment lawyer, Janice Payne, in the amount of $90,172.24 and dated March 25, 2013.

The investigation was now at the prime minister’s door and the police had possible fraud and breach of trust on their minds. In making requests for additional documents, investigators made public the names of the three PMO staffers and the senator who knew about the deal. The public was reminded once again of the lack of truth in what the prime minister had repeatedly said, and indeed said again on June 5, 2013: “It was Mr. Wright who made the decision to take his personal funds and give those to Mr. Duffy. Those were his decisions. They were not communicated to me or to members of my staff.”

Meanwhile, the Wright/Duffy scandal ended another career in the Senate leadership. On July 4, her seventy-third birthday, Marjory LeBreton announced she was stepping down from her post as government house leader in the Senate. Coincidentally, it was the same day the first batch of RCMP court documents regarding Mike Duffy were unsealed and became public. Just a few months earlier, LeBreton had insisted that Senator Duffy’s expenses did not rise to
the level of a police matter and that the whole scandal was the result of over-hyped stories from the national media. It was an open secret in Ottawa that the PMO was disenchanted with the performance of top Tories in the Senate, including LeBreton. That became blatantly obvious when the prime minister announced in the wake of LeBreton’s “retirement” that the government house leader in the Senate would no longer have a seat in the Harper cabinet.

Harper’s anger toward the Senate was hypocritical. The Conservative majority in the Upper Chamber may have created an embarrassing situation, but it took operatives from the PMO to turn it into a police matter. Harper was now paying the price in the media, even with his base. As the PMO lurched from one version of the facts to another, even the pro-Conservative
Globe and Mail
ridiculed the amateurish cover-up by people with a reputation for tight political control. “It’s getting awkward to watch,” wrote columnist Tabatha Southey. “It’s like the whole exquisitely polite country is trapped at karaoke night with the guy who thinks his version of ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ is rocking your world.” The Conservative Party had been willing to pay $32,000, but decided to be “tough on crime over $90,000.”

The prime minister was beginning to look shifty. The sensational details laid out in the sworn RCMP affidavit blew out his story that no one but Nigel Wright knew about the secret deal with Duffy. Just hours before the Conservative leader was to attend a major fundraiser for his Calgary Southwest constituency association, Harper had to change his story, telling reporters, “When I answered questions about this in the House of Commons, I answered to the best of my knowledge.”

The real question was, had the prime minister made his best effort to find out? The answer was clearly “no” as far as the political opposition was concerned. Harper’s constant revisionism looked more like wilful blindness than the truth. “It’s really depressing to
see the prime minister of Canada acting like the piano player in the bordello, saying he didn’t know what was going on upstairs,” NDP PM Nathan Cullen said.

Judging by an Ipsos Reid poll published in July 2013, NDP MP Charlie Angus wasn’t the only one who thought Harper was lying. Only 13 percent believed that the prime minister didn’t know about Wright’s payment to Duffy. A whopping 70 percent of respondents also disapproved of the prime minister’s handling of the scandal—a head-in-the-sand combination of evasion, halftruths, and confabulations.

And now there was a new accusation against the PMO. On July 17, 2013, CTV’s Ottawa bureau chief, Robert Fife, reported that the February 20 email sent by Senator Duffy to unspecified recipients—the document that broke the Wright/Duffy affair wide open—was being withheld from the police by the PMO. In another example of passive cooperation, the PMO responded by saying that investigators had not yet asked for the document.

The RCMP had not decided where Nigel Wright fit within their investigation. Was he a witness or a suspect? On July 18, 2013, Wright was interviewed under caution by Superintendent Carrese and Corporal Greg Horton. While Wright was answering questions, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) was making a statement of its own. The scandal had angered the CTF’s 84,000 supporters, and 65 percent of them now wanted the Senate abolished. Senator Duffy became the symbol of their wrath and the affair moved into its circus phase. The CTF hoisted a giant hot-air balloon of Mike Duffy two-and-a-half stories high into the summer sky off Victoria Island.
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The senator was carrying a briefcase bulging with twenty-dollar bills—taxpayers’ money. When the wind blew in the right direction, the effigy of Duffy twisted eerily toward Parliament Hill.

By July 24, 2013, RCMP investigators officially asked for information from the PMO. Press secretary Julie Vaux confirmed that the Mounties had indeed made a formal request for information. Harper’s official story was modified again. He no longer said that no one else in the PMO knew of Wright’s secret payment to Duffy, only that the lone villain of the piece was Nigel Wright. “This file was handled by Nigel Wright and he has taken sole responsibility,” Vaux said.

If anyone were looking for a sign of Stephen Harper’s anger at the Senate, his new minister for democratic reform provided them one on July 31, 2013. Pierre Poilievre unveiled the federal government’s position for the Supreme Court reference on Senate reform. In keeping with Harper’s unilateral approach in constitutional affairs, Ottawa asserted the right to make changes to the Senate without consulting the provinces.

But the claim that sent a shiver down the spine of sitting senators was Ottawa’s position that it needed the support of only seven provinces representing 50 percent of the population to abolish the Upper Chamber of sober second thought. Within a month, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia sided with the federal government.
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On August 26, Liberal senator Mac Harb briefly diverted the spotlight from the Wright/Duffy affair with his surprise resignation from the Senate. It was a dramatic about-face for a man who had insisted that his disputed housing allowance was in order and who had commenced a legal action against the Senate. He not only dropped the litigation but also repaid $231,649.07 in ineligible expenses. Harb predicted that the ongoing review by the auditor general would confirm that many other senators shared his understanding of the rule and had made similar expense claims. One of the “bad apples” was no longer in the
barrel. The question now was whether Harb’s resignation and repayment would end his troubles. They would not.

By late summer, the RCMP had still not interviewed Senator Mike Duffy, but documents filed into court showed that investigators had been busily looking into the affairs of the senator from Prince Edward Island. (In fact, though no one knew it, the police had begun investigating Duffy back in early March.) The documents were published in the
National Post
on August 9, 2013, and alleged that Duffy had charged the Senate for travel and daily expenses while he had in fact been campaigning for the Conservatives in farflung parts of the country. Corporal Greg Horton, who was now in charge of the investigation, wrote, “I believe that Senator Duffy has demonstrated a pattern of filing fraudulent expense  claims.”

All told, the police alleged that Duffy charged the Senate for expenses while campaigning for three defeated candidates and eight elected MPs between April 12 and April 21, 2011. The senator also allegedly double-dipped by sending bills to each campaign—bills that were then submitted to Elections Canada as election expenses. A report from FINTRAC (Canada’s independent financial intelligence unit reporting to the minister of finance) also revealed to investigators that Duffy changed the address on his personal bank account to his address in PEI on December 10, 2012—mere days after the Senate announced it was conducting an audit of housing claims.

Instead of fading away, the Senate expenses scandal settled in like a low-pressure zone over the Harper government. The headlines just kept coming. On September 14, Senator Pamela Wallin repaid the Senate nearly $114,000 for rejected expense claims, stressing that she had done nothing wrong. How strange it must have seemed for the woman who had introduced Stephen Harper when he made the keynote address at the party convention in 2011 to be fighting to keep her place in the Senate.

Two days after Senator Wallin wrote the cheque to repay expenses she still believed were legitimate, the RCMP sat down with one of the most powerful men in the Senate, Irving Gerstein, chair of the Conservative Party Fund. Under Senator Gerstein, the Conservative Party of Canada had built the most successful fund-raising operation of any political party in the country. Every weeknight, the party’s phone banks call people who have shown an interest in contributing, or who have given money to the Conservative Party in the past. The operation isn’t just to raise money. It’s also about keeping a visceral connection to the base— about seeking political intelligence, the mood of Conservative Party supporters, and the issues they care about.