Win or lose, Mike Duffy has left his mark on the Senate

[Oscar]

Win or lose, Mike Duffy has left his mark on the Senate

[ http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/ ... the-senate ]

March 27, 2015

The RCMP investigation into Mike Duffy and other senators has cost the force close to $1 million.

On Jan. 29, 2014, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau walked into room 160-S of the Centre Block – a bright, artificially lit room adorned with aboriginal art – and met with his 32 senators. “The Senate is broken and needs to be fixed,” he flatly told them.

Minutes later, Trudeau emerged to inform stunned reporters that he had just turfed those 32 senators from the Liberal caucus.

It was an unprecedented move – particularly for a party that had fallen to third place in the House of Commons but had retained some political punch in part because of its robust Senate presence.

Yet such has been the fallout from the Mike Duffy affair that even the Liberals hastened to put distance between themselves and the red chamber.

Win or lose his criminal trial, Duffy has caused huge ripple effects on the Senate, starting with the suspension of two other senators without pay, the hasty retirement of a third, and a full auditor general probe, still underway, into Senate spending habits.

Here’s a glance at the fallout to-date:

1. Bookkeeping upgrades

In the wake of the misspending allegations against Duffy, the Senate has taken a hard look at itself. Senators reviewed spending rules, set limits on international travel, ordered regular training for senators and staff on filing expense claims, and killed the so-called honour code for senators that said they were presumed to “act on their personal honour … unless and until the Senate or the internal economy committee determines otherwise.”

2. Transparency boost

Despite protestations that the Senate was more transparent than the House of Commons – its members already had to post quarterly expense reports, and the committee overseeing internal spending often met in public (unlike the Commons Board of Internal Economy) – Duffy’s case raised doubts about those efforts: He had publicly expensed housing claims for years before being questioned by reporters, even though senators could have challenged him at any time.

So senators began posting more detailed expense reports on their own accord in 2013. Conservatives Linda Frum and Bob Runciman, for instance, posted their expenses to their personal websites, using a reporting template created by fellow Conservative Sen. Doug Black, who had been posting his expenses long before the Senate scandal broke. The rest of the Senate and even MPs soon followed.

3. A sprawling audit

Federal Auditor General Michael Ferguson plunged in. In June, he is expected to release the results of a deep probe into Senate spending. Ferguson’s teams have been allowed access to every spending corner in the upper chamber, right down to expenses for postage, phone calls and Christmas cards.

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[Oscar]

Mike Duffy trial finally makes key players explain Senate expenses affair

[ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mike-du ... -1.3018487 ]

Courtroom expected to out-do question period as a place for answers

By Chris Hall, CBC News Posted: Apr 02, 2015 5:00 AM ET| Last Updated: Apr 02, 2015 7:45 AM ET

Mike Duffy will swap the Senate for an Ottawa courtroom on Tuesday, when his trial on fraud and bribery opens in what is likely to be the most extensively-covered, heavily-chronicled political event before the fall election.

For the next two weeks in particular the trial will be the only show in town as Parliament adjourns for Easter.

That should guarantee that reporters who normally devour the ins and outs of politics will be consumed by the ups and downs of Duffy, the affable former journalist turned hard-edged partisan.

The suspended senator is accused of billing taxpayers for expenses he was not entitled to claim, including appearances at partisan political events across the country and meals eaten in the Ottawa-area home he had owned for years.

He's also accused of accepting a bribe in the form of a $90,000 cheque from the prime minister's former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, to repay those expenses, and of hiring a friend and former colleague as a consultant who, RCMP investigators say, did little of the work required under the contracts.

Duffy denies doing anything wrong, most memorably from the floor of the Senate in late 2013

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[Oscar]

The Duffy trial: The alleged bribe that nobody gave

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DAVID REEVELY Published on: April 2, 2015 Last Updated: April 2, 2015 1:13 PM EDT

Mike Duffy goes on trial next week, facing charges of accepting a bribe that nobody is charged with giving him.

It’s a weird part of the case against the suspended Conservative senator, and for some it’s evidence that the prosecution is a politically motivated fiasco: How can Nigel Wright, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, walk away when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police say they have clear evidence he gave Duffy $90,000 to pay back expenses charged to the Senate once they’d become a major political problem?

Last April, when the Mounties said they would not charge Wright, Duff Conacher of gadfly activist group Democracy Watch said the group was considering a private prosecution, an unusual but legally legitimate way of pressing charges that Crown prosecutors won’t. That’s still the plan, Conacher said this week.

“I think they should have charged them both,” he said of Duffy and Wright.

Duffy has always denied wrongdoing and promises a vigorous defence in his trial. Wright’s lawyer, Peter Mantas, said Wright had nothing new to say about the issue.

The RCMP investigated Wright on bribery charges. In November 2013, to get a search warrant, the lead investigator in the Duffy case swore to a judge that he believed Wright offered Duffy a bribe; gave him a reward, advantage or benefit in violation of the law; and committed a breach of the public trust by doing it.

The following April, the RCMP announced they were dropping that part of the investigation. “Upon completion of the investigation, we have concluded that the evidence gathered does not support criminal charges against Mr. Wright,” Cpl. Lucy Shorey said at the time. Three months later, they laid the charges against Duffy: Three counts related to the Wright payment, in addition to 28 others related to travel and housing expenses Duffy billed and $65,000 in contracts for a friend.

The Mounties don’t have to explain the decision not to charge Wright, and they haven’t.

The reasons may come out, if only indirectly, in Duffy’s trial, where Wright is expected to testify. (Not facing charges himself will free Wright to speak more openly in court.)

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[Oscar]

Mike Duffy trial resumes Monday with a fight over the powers of Parliament

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DAVID REEVELY Published on: May 31, 2015 Last Updated: May 31, 2015 5:14 PM EDT

Suspended Sen. Mike Duffy’s criminal trial resumes Monday — not with testimony about how the ex-broadcaster treated public money, but with arguments about the independence and powers of Parliament.

It’s an unexpected diversion from the 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery Duffy faces over expenses he filed after Prime Minister Stephen Harper put him in the Senate in 2009 — not to mention money he accepted from Harper’s chief of staff as part of an apparent effort to smother the related scandal in 2013. But it may turn out to be much more important.

The question is how much power the Senate — or the House of Commons, or a provincial legislature — has to say no when someone accused of a crime demands a copy of an internal report that might help his or her case. Duffy’s lawyers want a document prepared by Senate internal auditor Jill Anne Joseph about senators’ residency and expense claims, one that’s never been made public but that prompted the Senate to toughen its requirements for proving that senators live where they say they live.

(Among the charges Duffy faces are several to do with his claim that his cottage in Prince Edward Island, the province Harper appointed him to represent, was his “primary residence,” rather than the Kanata house he’d lived in for years before.)

The Senate says that report is protected by “privilege,” the Senate’s right as a legislative body not to have its business nosed around in by the courts.

Poppycock, says Duffy lawyer Peter Doody, a litigator who’s represented prime ministers. Privilege is for things like how the Senate passes legislation, not for internal human-resources problems. And anyway, the Senate’s already given prosecutors lots of similar material — the only thing different about this one is that now it’s the defence asking for it.

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