Wherein John Ibbitson Explores the Darkness that Lurks Within Stephen Harper

Yeah, That's Shifty, Just Below the Second H

Let's be blunt. John Ibbitson is probably the most prominent journalist in Canada totally in the bag for Stephen Harper.  Note that I used the word "journalist," a noun that eliminates most of the hydrophobic scribes at PostMedia.

When it comes to Harper you can trust Ibbitson never to put the boot in. Which is why excerpts of Ibbitson's new Harper biography, "Stephen Harper, The Making of a Prime Minister," serve as a powerful yardstick for considering Harper's fiercely concealed role in the Wright-Duffy scandal.

There are disagreeable aspects to Stephen Harper’s personality. He is prone to mood swings. He can fly off the handle. He goes into funks, sometimes for long periods. He is suspicious of others. The public is aware of these traits mostly through what’s written and reported in the media. In public, Harper is almost invariably calm, measured, and careful in what he says and how he says it. Yet none of us, watching him, have any difficulty believing that this closed, repressed personality is capable of lashing out from time to time. We all get the vibe. His personality also comes out in the tactics that the Conservative Party uses against its enemies, both perceived and real – which are, in a word, ruthless.

As with most of us, Harper’s character flaws are the reverse side of his character strengths: One would not exist without the other. He has been Prime Minister for a decade not despite these qualities but because of them.

...He can descend into rages, sometimes over trivial things, at other times during moments of crisis. A former aide to Harper recalls a time during the 2004 election campaign when things suddenly started to go very badly for the Conservatives, for reasons we’ll examine later. Harper was on the campaign bus, in Quebec, leading a conference call with senior campaign staff back at headquarters in Ottawa. “He was very, very angry,” the former aide recalls. “It was: ‘We are fucking going to do this, and you are fucking going to do that and I want to see this fucking thing done right now.’ And then he paused and asked: ‘And why does nothing happen around here unless I say ‘fuck’? ”

Harper’s temper manifests itself in different ways. Some days, he just gets up on the wrong side of the bed. Other times, he flies off the handle when confronted with bad news. That’s when the decibel level goes through the roof and the f-bombs start flying. Harper’s reaction when he was told in April, 2008, that the RCMP had raided Conservative Party headquarters in connection with the in-and-out affair, carrying out boxes of material past the TV cameras, was wondrous to behold.

...Another of Harper’s less attractive qualities is a perceived lack of loyalty toward others. One-time political adviser Tom Flanagan points out that Harper has betrayed or estranged many in the conservative movement who were at one time senior to him – Joe Clark, Jim Hawkes, Brian Mulroney, Preston Manning. This, Flanagan believes, is the product of Harper’s need to dominate whatever environment he is in. “I think he has this very strong instinct to be in charge,” he said. “He really wants to be the alpha figure, and he’s achieved that. So part of that is to dispose of anyone who might be considered to be a rival in some sense or another.”

Flanagan also asserts that “there is a huge streak of paranoia in Stephen. And he attracts people who have a paranoid streak. And if you don’t have one to begin with, you develop it, because you’re constantly hearing theories.” At its root, “looking back, there’s a visceral reluctance to trust the motives of other people,” Flanagan concludes. “He often overcomes his initial suspicions and will sign on to other people’s ideas. But the initial response is always one of suspicion.” Flanagan believes Harper is prone to depression. “He can be suspicious, secretive, and vindictive, prone to sudden eruptions of white-hot rage over meaningless trivia,” he wrote in 2014, “at other times falling into week-long depressions in which he is incapable of making decisions.”

...Some leaders like to micro-manage; others prefer to delegate. Each approach has its strengths and weaknesses. But Harper’s determination to grasp all of the levers, and even the widgets, of the federal government is matched by an equal determination to control the flow – or rather, the trickle – of information coming out of the government. Bureaucrats are prohibited from speaking to reporters. Scientists are prohibited from releasing the results of their research. Ambassadors have been ordered to obtain permission from the Centre before representing Canada in meetings. (The mantra from the PMO, as diplomats bitterly put it, is: Do nothing without instructions. Do not expect instructions.) Access to Information requests are routinely held up for so long that by the time the information is released, it’s no longer of any use, and the pages are mostly blacked out in any case.

Although they are in fact separate issues, this general air of secretiveness gets mixed up with the Conservatives’ willingness to demonize opponents. In fact, the Tories don’t have opponents; they have enemies. The Leader of the Liberal Party is an enemy. Judges who strike down their legislation are enemies. Union leaders are enemies. Authors and other artists who criticize the Conservatives are enemies. Journalists who cast a more-than-occasional critical eye on the government are enemies. And toward his enemies Stephen Harper bars no holds.

The Conservatives’ autocracy, secretiveness, and cruelty, critics accuse, debase politics to a level that threatens the very foundations of Canadian democracy. “Hardly anything in this world hints of Putinism more than Harperism,” columnist Ralph Surette of the Halifax Chronicle Herald opined.

...From his boyhood in Leaside, Harper learned not to trust those beyond the inner circle of family and close friends. That circle is not much larger today. Relations with those outside the wall can be cordial, but they are rarely based on implicit trust, an emotional resource that Harper invests in only a very few. And his encyclopedic memory includes not only the history of maritime border disputes, or who starred in what film; it also includes every act by every person who has slighted, offended, or betrayed him. Such acts are never forgotten and only rarely forgiven. Stephen Harper holds grudges.

He has never successfully cultivated the social skill of pretending to connect. He has difficulty feigning interest. His associates talk of him sometimes simply turning his back and walking away from them while they are in mid-sentence. He rarely displays much ability or desire to be collegial, or even polite. This tendency toward abruptness gets worse when he is tired or under stress.

...because his suspicion of the intentions of others is so overt, those who serve under him inhabit an environment of suspicion, and are, or become, suspicious as well – the culture of paranoia that Tom Flanagan observed when he worked for Stephen Harper. The reservoir of goodwill in the Prime Minister’s Office is shallow and quickly drained.

That said, if Harper is suspicious about the world around him, he has reason to be. As Joseph Heller famously said, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Harper sees himself as an outsider because he is an outsider. He is from the West, but most of the country lives near the Great Lakes or St. Lawrence River. He is from the suburbs, but the Laurentian elites generally live downtown. Harper is hostile toward these elites, and they are hostile toward him. He is contemptuous of progressive academics, and they reciprocate. He distrusts the judiciary, and the judiciary has vindicated that distrust by striking down parts of his law-and-order agenda. The gala-goers he derides spit out his name in the foyer at intermission. When Stephen Harper rejected the University of Toronto, when he rejected the life of a Tory political aide in Ottawa, when he embraced the West, he fled from the commanding heights of the Central Canadian academic, cultural, and political landscape. He is the embodiment of alienation. 

What comes through is that Ibbitson, while seeking to describe Harper's character, in actuality documents his psychopathy.  Ibbitson's "this is the way of great men" apology is fine if by great men he means the likes of Caligula. What he describes is more akin to a high-functioning psychopath.

Now, assuming that Ibbitson hasn't depicted Harper unfairly or inaccurately, how does this relate to the Wright-Duffy scandal and the already preposterous claim that Harper knew nothing despite what the documents indicate and despite the revelations that his entire staff of top aides were well and truly in on it?

Harper is this profound control freak determined "to grasp all of the levers and even the widgets" of government except, we're asked to believe, when it came to the blossoming scandal of Mike Duffy.  In this case, and this alone, Harper simply left it to his footmen to sort out.  In this one moment in time the cloud of suspicion, distrust and paranoia lifted off Harper's shoulders.  Harper was magically released from "his need to dominate whatever environment he is in."

Harper's smokescreen would be difficult, if not impossible, to accept even from an emotionally stable prime minister.  But emotionally stable is not Stephen Harper. He would have required sedation to the point of near unconsciousness to let Wright-Duffy, in its minutest details, escape his control.  And none of that happened, did it.

Ben Perrin Knows What Wright's "Good to Go" Email Meant

To Shifty Harper's former special counsel, when he received Nigel Wright's "good to go" email it meant only one thing - Stephen Harper had cleared Wright's payment to Mike Duffy.

Nigel Wright chose to dismiss the email, in a "the dog ate my homework" way, by saying Harper had merely approved the media lines (why the "n" in lines?), not Wright's under the table, cash for expenses payment.

Let's see. One of these explanations is quite convincing.  One of these explanations borders on the absurd and sounds utterly contrived. And the winner is - Benjamin Perrin.

Members of the PMO, including Wright, had come up with a five-point plan in Feb. 2013 that would see Duffy agree to a deal in which he would admit he had made an unintentional mistake and pledge to repay the expenses, at the time thought to be $32,000.

Part of that plan would see Duffy's expenses covered, not by the senator himself, and that he would be removed from an audit looking into his questionable claims.

"My understanding from that email is that the prime minister himself had approved of the five points that had been set out by Mr. Wright," Perrin said.

On Thursday, Perrin testified that Ray Novak, Harper's chief of staff, was told before and during a 2013 conference call that Wright would personally repay Duffy's expenses, contradicting claims by the Conservative campaign.

The trial, which began April 7 in the Ontario Court of Justice, resumed last Wednesday after breaking on June 18, the second hiatus of the high-profile trial. This third phase will continue until Aug. 28, and, with more time assuredly needed, break until it would resume again in mid-November.

So, to recap. Benjamin Perrin's evidence has Harper's principal secretary, Ray Novak, in on a meeting where Nigel and the magical 90-grand were discussed, taking Perrin but apparently not Novak by surprise.  Which draws the powerful inference that, as Harper's principal secretary and personal sockpuppet/valet, Novak would have told Harper everything and that "good to go" meant exactly what it sounds like - Harper's approval of the whole business.

Now It Makes Sense. It Was Magic.

Okay, it's not the mystery of the Sphinx but...  yesterday's testimony by former Harper special counsel Ben Perrin goes a long way to explaining why Duffy stands alone charged with bribery.

Bribery is a crime of giving and taking so, unless the giver or the taker is dead, there should be two people charged.  Except in this case.  Just the one, the Cavendish Cottager. It's the stuff of magic, a glimpse into the Dark Arts of the state police apparatus.

Presumably Wright might have been charged with giving the very bribe Duffy is charged with receiving - except that might have dragged in half of Harper's PMO as accessories.  Wright, Novak, Perrin, Van Hemmen, Woodcock - they all apparently knew about it.  They all facilitated the deal.  They all participated and, presumably, that includes Shifty Harper himself.  A classic conspiracy.

Think this isn't a political prosecution?

Way back when Wright was "cleared" I wrote that the state police agency had to take Wright off the hook because that took everyone else, including Harper, off the hook.  If Wright stood trial, he wasn't going to go down alone. He'd take the rest with him.

And so we have this travesty of an investigation leading to a travesty of a prosecution all revolving around a theory of money that magically transformed into a bribe once it reached Duffy's hands.  Voodoo Justice.

By the way, Shifty.  When your principal secretary valet knew (or as Salamander calls him your "cabin boy"), we know that you knew.  Claiming Novak didn't open an email is about as convincing as telling the teacher the dog ate your homework.

Of Alchemists and the Apparent Obstruction of Justice.

Where's Vic's Other Hand?

At this point, it wouldn't matter if Duffy went to the gallows. Hank Paulson, Commissioner or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, has some explaining to do.

Just on email evidence alone, the Duffy case is emerging as a political prosecution.  A stench fell over the RCMP investigation right from the start when Paulson sent an email to all his senior officers absolutely forbidding contact with MPs and Senators without his (Vic Toews') express approval.

...the commissioner said that meetings or lunches with parliamentarians "can have unintended and/or negative consequences for the organization and the government. Therefore, should you or your staff receive such requests, I am directing that you advise my office and the chief strategic policy and planning officer."

...Toews's office did not respond to a request to explain the new policy. Paulson's office, however, confirmed that it was co-managed with the minister's office.

Some recipient of that email thought it ought to be leaked - to the CBC. It was conclusive of nothing but it did raise a few eyebrows.  Then followed the investigations - of Duffy, Wallin, Harb, Brazeau.  When it came to Duffy it showed that the mounties always do get their man - but just the one.  Cash comes out of the ether - innocent enough - until it reaches Duffy's hands and then it becomes a bribe.  Who says alchemy isn't real? Why it was positively Biblical, in the Immaculate Conception sense.  A bribe with only one criminal, Duffy. There you have it - an Immaculate Investigation followed by an Immaculate Prosecution of an Immaculate Offence. 

It takes a curious mind, perhaps bordering on the unhinged, to abuse logic this badly, to stand it on its head.  And where do we see that today?  In a prime minister who "rejects the premise" of the facts that just keep mounting up, pointing an ever bigger finger right at him. I remember reading about a fellow who was trapped in an underground bunker as enemy troops moved in who rejected the premise of what was happening in favour of magical thinking, imagining divisions of soldiers that no longer existed would come to his rescue and miraculously turn the tables just in the nick of time.  His senior commanders also had to stand by his side, anxiously eyeing the exits as they wondered when he would finally end it.

Meanwhile, in a courtroom in Ottawa, Donald Bayne is just beginning to unpack email and documentary evidence of what really went on in Shifty Harper's underground bunker, the PMO, and it bears no resemblance to the fables spun by the prime minister.  He's got a stack of documents, about 800 in all, mainly generated by Harper's own General Staff, and he's using them to great effect to undermine the credibility of the government's witnesses, Harper's generals, to lay the foundation for impeaching the credibility of prominent generals yet to be called, and to steadily bolster his client's defence that it wasn't a bribe, it was a deal that was forced on the Cavendish Cottager.  It must be dispiriting to Harper's generals knowing that soon they too will have to run the gauntlet of their own words.

Bayne has only gotten into Nigel Wright and a bit of Novak and just a smattering of Perrin and already the PMO narrative is beginning to succumb to inconsistencies and contradictions even concealment of evidence and outright lies to apparently cooperative investigators - the very stuff of obstruction of justice.  Yet no one was charged - except Duffy. It's as though some power from above drew a cordon sanitaire around the PMO, the Tory Senate and the Conservative Party executive.

Seasoned investigators are trained to detect the faintest whiff of these things. Yet this carried the gut-wrenching stench of a tannery and somehow passed the investigatorial smell test.  How? How out of this steaming pile of offal could emerge the theory of the Immaculate Bribe, Precium Immaculata?

Why were none of these others not charged, if not for conspiracy then for obstruction of justice? With these characters you could stage a Wagnerian opera. These are not the sort of insignificant issues that lend themselves to forgetfulness. Not with that many people in on it, not with that mountain of emails. This was a major deal involving a bevy of very powerful, prominent individuals each acting in concert with the other.  If their stories don't match up seamlessly, chances are it's because some of them, perhaps all of them, are lying to manipulate investigators, to obstruct justice, to obtain a perverted judicial outcome.

The alchemists have failed.  Lead (Pb) and Gold (Au) are distinct elements on the Periodic Table. You can't turn one into another.  And if you "reject the premise" then people are going to have to conclude that you're either crazy or hopelessly bent.

The state police must be investigated this time. There has to be an enquiry into these shenanigans that goes straight to the top. It's overdue. It is time for Paulson and company to explain themselves, to answer tough questions with credible, verifiable answers. We need to know if Duffy was made a sacrificial goat and why the others were shielded behind such a flimsy, incredible "premise."

The Shadow of Steve Harper Hangs Over Doctored Duffy Audit Report

Nigel, I need to see you in my lair.

It sounds like damned near everyone in the Harper PMO was in on the plan to bail out cash-cow-senator Mike Duffy.  And that plan included corrupting the Senate audit process to "protect" the Cavendish Cottager.

The Senate administration had hired the auditing firm Deloitte to look into the expense claims of senators Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb, as well as those of Mr. Duffy. But the PMO and senior Conservative officials defended Mr. Duffy in the early stages of the controversy, in order to keep him quiet.

“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.

Mr. Wright’s e-mail, which went to PMO colleagues Chris Woodcock, Ray Novak, Andrew MacDougall and Joanne McNamara, added: “Mike is very pleased with this so it will give us a little bit of time if [Conservative senator David Tkachuk] can pull it off.”

In an e-mail on the same day, Chris Montgomery, a staffer in Conservative senator Marjory LeBreton’s office, told Mr. Wright a plan to get outside legal advice on Mr. Duffy’s residency issues was designed to “protect senator Duffy.”

The newly released documents reinforce the notion the PMO and the Conservative Party initially went to great lengths to contain the political damage flowing from expenses claimed by Mr. Duffy after his 2008 appointment to the Senate.

The Globe & Mail account mistakenly contends that Duffy became persona non grata with the Harper regime when it was discovered that Nigel Wright had coughed up $90-grand.  That's a red herring.  The Duffy-Harper split came following the leak of Duffy's ill-advised e-mail to as yet unidentified confidantes in which he boasted of the PMO bail out deal.  It was when that e-mail fell into the hands of CTV's Bob Fife that Duffy's usefulness to Harper crashed and burned.  No leak - no scandal - business as usual.  

According to the RCMP, a number of Conservative senators and PMO officials secretly discussed the confidential Deloitte audit when it was nearing completion on May 7, 2013. The following day, Mr. Tkachuk and his Conservative colleague, Carolyn Stewart Olsen, managed to delete key passages of the report by bypassing the normal Senate committee process.

“The report, we’ve learned through the investigation, had made its ways to the PMO, to their office, and, I guess, revisions, what they wanted to have written in the report, was done,” Corporal Jolette told Mr. O’Brien during their interview. “Throughout our investigation, like I said, we’ve learned that PMO has had a lot of communication with the diverse senators who were involved in these committees and sub-committees.”

Mr. O’Brien confirmed that he received a visit at his offices on May 8 from Mr. Tkachuk, before a Senate sub-committee held a formal discussion on the Deloitte audit.

“Senator Tkachuk came in here after 4 [p.m.], he wanted to look at this and he reviewed it and he said, ‘Carolyn and I would like two more changes,’” Mr. O’Brien told the RCMP.

Mr. O’Brien said the portions of the report that were deleted referred to Mr. Duffy’s travels between Ottawa and PEI and his “continued presence in Ottawa,” which raised questions about the legitimacy of his expense claims.

“That was a confidential report, I’m surprised it was shared so widely,” Mr. O’Brien added about the PMO’s involvement in the matter.

Now, through all this, you must believe that the greatest micro-manager in Canadian prime ministerial history knew virtually nothing about the chicanery going on in the adjacent office that bears his name, the Prime Minister's Office. What a load of bullshit.

Can Duffy Shred Nigel Wright's "Goody Two-Shoes" Routine?

Nigel Wright's 'gift' of $90K to senator Mike Duffy was a bribe when it was pocketed by Duffy but not when it was given by Wright.  Most of us are finding that pretty hard to square and it is.  The logic by which Duffy is culpable and Wright is not reflects how far the RCMP is prepared to bend over backwards to make some cherry-picked facts suit their narrative.

It sounds as though they're charging Duffy with extortion, not bribery.  Duffy strong-armed the money out of Wright's chequebook, they would have us believe.  But that's a different section of the Criminal Code of Canada.

Besides, why let Nigel Wright off the hook at all?  Oh, I see.  Charging Wright with bribery would have exposed others in the PMO to criminal jeopardy. Benjamin Perrin for starters and even Old Beelzebub himself, Stephen Harper. The rumours are that Wright made it well known around Ottawa that he wasn't going down alone on this so, take him off the hook and everybody's off the hook - except Ol' Duff.  Even out here on the wet coast you could hear the collective sigh of relief.

To get this to stand up at trial you have to keep Wright virginal, above reproach - just like Caesar's wife.  He was only trying to do the right thing.  Duffy was raising proper hell and so Wright did what he thought was the answer, handing over $90K.  No corrupt intent on the part of Mr. Wright, ergo no crime except for Duffy's.

I don't know how hard you have to struggle to keep the facts at bay but, in this case, it must be almost Herculean.  The Crown needs to keep this very simple. Duffy snarls, Wright cuts the cheque.  Nothing to see here, keep moving.

But there is more, a lot more and it goes to whether Nigel Wright's Goody Two-Shoes image is a highly self-serving scam.  There was a quid pro quo to this deal, one the RCMP chose not to notice.  Duffy got the money but on very clear terms dictated by the Prime Minister's Office.  These were terms plainly intended to benefit the Conservative Party if not the prime minister personally.

In emails, Wright called the brewing controversy, "our public agony," and spoke of Conservatives "circling the wagons."

One of the most revealing sets of internal emails filed in court involved the manipulation of a Senate committee, one drafting a report on Duffy's expenses in the spring of 2013.

PMO staffers set about ensuring the committee remove any negative language  from the report on Duffy, and at one point discussed how to get an independent audit firm to refrain from drawing any conclusions on Duffy's residency status...

"Do I need to call Marjory [LeBreton]?" Wright asked in an email.  "They think they're hurting Duffy, but they will end up hurting the prime minister instead."

Duffy was also coached by PMO staff on what to say to the media about the repayment of his expenses.

"It's a scenario, in Nigel Wright's own words, that was created for Sen. Duffy not because he had anything to hide or he'd made inappropriate claims, but because the PMO had decided they wanted to sweep a political embarrassment to their Tory bse under the rug," [defence counsel Don] Bayne said in 2013.

Oddly enough, what may save Duffy's hide (on the main charge, at least), is the very same email that sets these events in motion.  This whole business would likely have died a natural death at an early stage but for a stupid email Duffy sent to his 'confidantes' at the very time the deal was being put in place.

Duffy's email said the PMO was giving him the cash to clear his tab with the Senate.  It listed the conditions imposed - that he was to make no public statements and he was to stop cooperating with the Senate-appointed auditors. For doing this, the PMO would intervene to ensure the Senate audit report "went easy on" Duffy.

Nigel Wright wasn't trying to bail out an old pal.  Wright didn't even like Duffy. He didn't shell out the cash for his own benefit either.  You could conclude he was acting as an agent for a third party and it wasn't Benjamin Perrin either. Wright was creating a smokescreen for the party and, logic screams, for the very guy he was working for, Stephen Joseph Harper.  "Uncle Joe" Harper, Comrade Steve hisself.

This was the email leaked to CTV's Bob Fife.  It's the match that sparked the wildfire that brings us to where we are today.  What makes that email so critical are its contents - it described the deal that transpired - and when the email was sent - back when the parties thought they could keep a lid on the deal. This didn't come out after the fact.  It wasn't contrived after the fact to suit anyone's narrative.  It conforms to the known events.  That could make it the "magic bullet" when it comes to assessing credibility and resolving contradictions and inconsistencies.

Duffy's story, as we know it, comports with the magic bullet email.  Wright's story doesn't even though his emails also seem to corroborate some of Duffy's statements.

How this will play out in court is unclear but one thing is inescapable - there's been an awful lot of very high-level, Hall of Fame-grade Turd Polishing at both the political and investigatory levels to contrive this result.

Because You Really Can't Tell the Players Without a Programme

The Duffy trial is just about a week away.  It seems like forever since the scandal broke plunging Harper's PMO and the Senate into a fearful rout.

To get you back up to speed on the scandal and all the players, National Post has published a dandy primer on the Who's Who of the witnesses expected to be called at trial.

There's a big bag full of names some of which, by the time this trial is over, you'll probably hope never to hear again.

Duffy's Sting

It's a tale with two scripts.  One is the story presented by Stephen Harper, his PMO, the RCMP and others.  The other is the account presented by disgraced senator Mike Duffy.  At least one side isn't telling the truth.

Who to believe?  We'll have to wait until all the evidence is in but I figure the truth has come, quite inadvertently, from senator Duffy.

There is one piece of evidence, the unintended disclosure of which, set this whole business in motion.  It's an e-mail - candid, descriptive and, most importantly, contemporaneous with the events.  When Duffy circulated the e-mail to his confidantes he believed, quite mistakenly, that they would hold it in confidence.  That's what confidantes do, isn't it?  Only somehow it wound up in the hands of CTV reporter, Bob Fife, and the rest is history.

The e-mail describes the events that we now know occured.  Duffy, perhaps boastfully, wrote that a deal was in place to make his Senate expenses problem go away.  He described four elements.  He would be given the money to cover his Senate tab.  He was to use that money to cut his own cheque for repayment. In exchange he was to say nothing further publicly and he was to stop co-operating with the audit team appointed by the Senate. He added that, as part of the deal he was also promised that the Senate audit report would "go easy on me."

It was a deal intended to continue Duffy's role as fundraiser for the Harper Conservatives.  Get Duffy off the hook and get him back out on the road where he was worth his considerable weight in campaign cheques.  The guy was an engine for the Tories.  They would point him in the right direction and hand him a ticket.  He'd show up, press the flesh, and collect the money.

It was because Duffy spent so much time on the road, fundraising for the Prince of Darkness, that he narrowly failed to meet the residency requirement that landed him in hot water in the first place.  He couldn't be in Prince Edward Island when he was in Calgary or Moncton or Nunavit.  Without being in PEI for the requisite number of days he wasn't entitled to claim a living expense allowance.

Back to the scandal.  The timing of that ill-fated e-mail is everything.  It happened contemporaneously with the events described.  Duffy said the Senate audit report would go easy on him and it subsequently did when it was laundered by Tory senators Carolyn Stewart-Olsen and David Tkachuk.

It's this promise, allegedly with Harper's knowledge, that constitutes the bribery that the RCMP, so conservatively chooses to ignore.  That was Harper or his very closest aides promising to intervene with, corrupt if you like, the Senate audit process to procure a favourable result for the Senator from Prince Edward Island.  When it comes to that the only conclusion is that the RCMP is choosing to look the other way.  Why?  That's easy.  Where does it lead?

The RCMP has to ignore the audit fixing element for it to justify not charging the principals to the deal - Nigel Wright, Benjamin Perrin, perhaps Harper himself. They've already said that Duffy is to be condemned for accepting a bribe but the people plainly involved in offering and facilitating that bribe - two of them lawyers - are not culpable of any criminal wrongdoing.

A bribe is many things but it's not unilateral.  It requires an offer or demand and acceptance, and the transmission of the bribe from one person, the giver, to another person, the recipient.

It's quite believable that Duffy did resist repaying the housing allowance.  He felt the party was responsible for keeping him on the non-stop. cross-Canada fundraising campaign that prevented him from logging enough days in PEI to meet the requirements.  Long before the expense issue even arose a mutual friend would tell me he worried about the strain that Duffy's party exertions might be taking on the senator's wonky heart.

Wright, Perrin, Harper and others have already made statements that stand to be weighed against that all-important e-mail, the one that wound up in Fife's hands. They tell a considerably different story, that doesn't match Duffy's account.  As I recall it, Perrin, Harper's personal in-house lawyer, at one point said he wasn't involved at all and yet it seems it was Perrin who effected the delivery of Wright's cheque to Duffy's then solicitor.

The Conservatives clearly hope the Duffy trial will put an end to this matter.  It might be just the beginning.

Rumours Swirl Around Harper's Head

Interesting opinion/speculation piece from Harry Stirling in this morning's Times Colonist.

Now there is some speculation that, due to the abrupt resignation of Baird, coupled with Adams’ defection, Harper himself might increasingly find his own leadership questioned by normally loyal party members. Even one of the Conservatives’ former MPs, Albertan Myron Thompson, expressed his concern over the prime minister’s lack of commitment to the “values we had back in 1993.”

Adding to the uncertainty swirling around the issue of Harper’s future prospects, there are rumours that this month, Harper might indicate his intention to step down as leader and supposedly is considering calling a leadership vote by early spring to prepare for the coming election.

While such a rumour might simply be intended to rally the troops around the prime minister at a difficult time or might merely be the product of wishful thinking, the period ahead could be just as unpredictable as recent weeks with totally unforeseeable implications for all parties.

Hard to tell if there's anything to Stirling's speculation.  I spoke with my best Ottawa Tory pal the other night.  He's been waiting to tell me something but he said he can't yet.  

One thing I have been told is that evidence that will be adduced in the Duffy trial will leave no doubt that Harper, quite deliberately and repeatedly, lied in the House about his involvement in the Wright-Duffy affair.  Seemingly, for Stephen Harper, the Duffy trial will be "brutal."

It's Nearly "Duffy Time" Again

We're just over two months away from the start of the trial of senator Mike Duffy.  It's scheduled to open April 7 and continue to May 12, when it will adjourn to be completed from June 1 to 19.  That's 41 court days in all.

With trial prep, motions and 41 days in court, that adds up to one huge legal bill for a guy who, rumour has it, is somewhat impecunious.

I'm guessing those will be the longest 41 days in the political career of Stephen Joseph Harper.  It could turn into an ordeal for a lot of the players including the PMO types and the Tory Senate leadership.

The known facts raise far more questions than they answer.  People are going to be examined and cross-examined on a number of those issues, some of which go uncomfortably close to the prime minister himself.

I'm surprised this has gone on as long as it has and I'll be even more surprised if the trial proceeds in April.   I thought this might be settled with a quiet plea bargain deal - no time/conditional sentence/various charges withdrawn - over the Christmas break.  Anything, just make it go away soon to put as much distance as possible between Duffy and the next election.

That hasn't happened and I'll spend some time over the next couple of weeks to see if I can find out why.

Tell Us Why, Nigel

The prime minister says he didn't know.  Nigel Wright says the prime minister didn't know.

Wright didn't tell Harper.  Perrin didn't tell Harper.  Woodcock and van Hemmen didn't tell Harper either.   Harper's top and most trusted advisors didn't tell the prime minister, the very person they were hand-selected to work for, anything about the $90K under-the-table-cash deal between Wright and senator Mike Duffy.

Why didn't even one of them tell their prime minister about something this potentially explosive?

Did it simply slip their minds, all their minds?  That might be plausible if Harper had surrounded himself with mental defectives but these guys were A-List talent.

As RCMP cpl. Greg Horton avers, there were dozens, perhaps hundreds of e-mails written pertaining to the Wright-Duffy-Harper scandal.   This was on a lot of people's minds.  It occupied a lot of their time.  They were communicating among themselves.  They were communicating with top Tory senators.  They were communicating with top officials of the Conservative Party.   They were communicating with Duffy and with Duffy's lawyer.

Recall that there was already a scandal simmering in the media before the under-the-table-cash scandal erupted in mid-May.  The Wright-Duffy-Harper scandal was born out of the original residence/housing expenses scandal.  That was the one where Duffy denied he owed a dime and said his status and expenses had been cleared from the outset.

The prime minister knew all about that scandal.  He and Nigel Wright specifically met with Duffy where the prime minister told Duffy it wasn't a question of whether his claims were legitimate.   The prime minister said that the Tory base were a bunch of bumpkins and would never accept the optics of Duffy's pre-cleared expense claims.

Harper never said the claims weren't valid.  Neither did the Tory Senate leadership.  Neither did Nigel Wright.   Not at first, they didn't.  Not for years, they didn't.  No, it was only once the story was spoonfed to the media and the optics changed that there was even a hint of impropriety on Duffy's part.  And that was the moment that Mike Duffy was thrown under the bus, when Harper said, "this doesn't look good, pay it all back."  That marks the starting point of the PMO scandal.

You might want to remember this the next time you hear Nigel Wright's patriotic plea that he only coughed up the money out of a noble concern that the lowly taxpayers should not be out of pocket.   That is unadulterated mouth-crap.  Nigel Do-Right didn't give a damn about Duffy's expenses until daylight began to shine on the prime minister.  He's already told the cops he considered Duffy's expenses valid right up to the point where they became a political problem.   That would appear to fix the point in the timeline at which Nigel Wright begins to lie his ass off.  Whatever he says about events after that point needs to be viewed with real skepticism.

The prime minister would have us believe that, despite the story being front and centre in the papers and on the evening network newscasts, the ultimate prime ministerial control freak simply handed it all off to his top aides and went on to other business, everything but this scandal that was slowly scorching his party and closing in on his three "celebrity" Senate appointees.

It was at this point that the PMO sprung into action, erecting the Wall of Plausible Deniability around their prime minister.  Henceforth Harper would be kept out of sight, shielded behind Nigel Wright; Wright's 2-i-C, David van Hemmen;  the PMO Director of Issues Management, Chris Woodcock;  and the PMO legal top gun, Harper's personal legal advisor, Benjamin Perrin.   If you were the prime minister and you got the waft of burning flesh from the flames of scandal licking at your feet, who better to surround yourself with?

Wright has identified this foursome as the group within the PMO that had knowledge of his Duffy payout.   Yet he's minimizing what they knew and the role they played in the under-the-table scheme.  Almost as quickly as the wall was raised and the deed was done, Festung Harper was dismantled.  Perrin, his work done, hightailed it back to Vancouver perhaps unwisely popping up just once to deny having had anything to do with the Duffy payoff.  Within days of the under-the-table-cash/PMO scandal hitting the airwaves, Wright resigned/was canned. Woodcock and van Hemmen eventually followed suit.  The prime minister's office was sanitized of every individual who could implicate the boss directly.

So, look at the four who were instrumental in the under-the-table-cash deal - the chief of staff, the assistant chief of staff, the director of issues management, and the chief legal counsel - the Big Four - all in on it and not one mentioning a word of it to the prime minister and then, all four, at respectable intervals, scarpering off into the night.   If only there was musical accompaniment it might be a ballet, it was so plainly choreographed.   And yet Harper, supposedly, knew nothing until he read it in the funny papers.

Of course it wasn't just the Big Four who had knowledge of the affair or who played a role in it.  You have to throw in senators Marjory LeBreton, Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, Dave Tkachuk, and Irving Gerstein and toss in one or two officials of the Conservative Party including Arthur Hamilton.

So not only did Wright keep Harper in the dark, so too did van Hemmen, Woodcock, Perrin, LeBreton, Stewart-Olsen, Tkachuk, Gerstein and Hamilton not to mention every Tory that Duffy disclosed the scheme to - they all had to keep Harper completely in the dark.   Can you imagine that?  Listen, that's the very sort of thing that's known to happen all the time - in the alternate universe.

Nigel needs to tell us why he supposedly kept Harper in the dark.  Woodcock, van Hemmen, Perrin (especially Perrin), LeBreton, Stewart-Olsen, Tkachuk, Gerstein and Hamilton all need to tell us why they supposedly kept Harper in the dark. What was the protocol, the understanding?  Who said, "we do not discuss this with the prime minister"?   Because somebody in authority had to have said that or else Harper's lying, he knew.

So cpl. Horton, you've got a lot of work left to do.  You could start by asking these usual suspects to tell you "why."

No Prime Minister Deserves a Taxpayer-Funded, In-House Criminal Enterprise

Stephen Harper's greasy premiership relies on the notion that what goes on within his private, personal agency, the PMO, is not his responsibility.   This from Prime Minister Accountability & Transparency (tm).

"IT"
-  happened just down the hall from the prime minister's own office
-  entailed at least four top aides, people with whom he would meet several times each day
-  was transacted by his chief of staff and his personal legal advisor
-  transpired over the course of days, weeks,  months even
-  extended to at least four senior Tory senators
-  involved a scandal known to the prime minister, one in which he met with the principal, Duffy
-  resulted in some solution, the fact of which he was informed by his CoS
-  apparently led to the resignation and departure of his personal legal advisor weeks later
-  was regularly in the newspapers and TV news before the scandal itself actually broke

Sorry but if the prime minister didn't know it's because he chose not to know in circumstances as deliberate as they were inexcusable.  His top aides knew he didn't want to know.   Stephen Harper cannot plead in his defence that he didn't know when that was a pre-ordained result.  He cannot shirk direct and full responsibility for allowing his prime minister's office and its staff, accountable solely to himself, to become a taxpayer-funded, in-house criminal enterprise.

When this many people were involved - all his major aides in the PMO and four top Tory senators - they were his agents.   This is a clear case of agency.   The prime minister doesn't get the benefit of the doubt on this, not after the Bruce Carson scandal.  He knew about the Duffy issue, he knew it was a serious problem to his administration, and if he didn't know how Nigel Wright acted to solve it, that's only because he chose not to ask.

Bruce Carson taught us that Harper could not be trusted with something so easily corrupted as a prime minister's office.  Now he's shown what we get for ignoring that.

Another Duffy-Wright-Harper Morsel

Until mid-July, Chris Woodcock worked in the Harper PMO as Director of Issues Management.  One of the issues Woodcock became involved in managing was the Duffy-Wright-Harper under-the-table cash deal.   That came through loud and clear in an e-mail from Woodcock to Duffy.

In an email dated May 15, the morning after CTV News first reported that Wright and Duffy had come to a secret deal to help the senator repay his ineligible expenses, Woodcock asked Duffy: "Can you confirm whether you advised the Senate ethics officer of any loans/gifts involved in the March 25th repayment?"

"Trying to cover off all the angles," Woodcock wrote.

That's not quite like asking Duffy if he remembered to wipe the prints off the gun.  Not quite, but close.  It might even be enough to later persuade a Director of Issues Management that it might be best for all concerned if he didn't hang around the office any longer.

The CBC News story is also the first indication that Nigel Wright's lawyers may have been selective in the e-mails and documents they handed over to RCMP investigators.

The RCMP are looking for a chain of emails and documents that support Mike Duffy's allegations that the Senate expenses scandal reaches right into the Prime Minister's Office, CBC News has learned.

"The existence of such documentation may potentially be evidence of criminal wrongdoing by others," says Supt. Biage Carrese from the RCMP National Division in a Nov. 1 letter obtained by CBC News.

The Mounties are particularly interested in Duffy's claim that his initial story about repaying his disputed expenses by taking out an RBC loan was concocted by senior advisers to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"Emails from the PMO specifically relating to a script for Senator Duffy to follow in advance of obtaining funds from a RBC loan to repay the Receiver General" may be material to the RCMP's investigation, Carrese wrote.

It's not always easy to read between the lines of this Greek tragedy/farce but it seems notable that, while the RCMP has already recommended charges be laid against senator Pam Wallin, they're seemingly nowhere near that point with Duffy.  That may have something to do with just who is on the case, the 'sensitive investigation' section, a designation that should rightly raise eyebrows.  It almost certainly has something to do with the fact that they don't know how far this scandal reaches, who is implicated by "evidence of criminal wrongdoing by others."

Stephen Harper's Book of Fables - Logged and Chronicled

The closer Shifty Steve Harper gets to the political gallows, the better, the richer and more fulsome his memory becomes.  It all flows out in a progression of fables, each more obviously contrived than the last.

Fable One

When the Wright-Duffy scandal unexpectedly broke in the media, Steve said his prize assets - his top drawer chief of staff, Nigel Wright - had merely done the Wright thing in getting his "most valuable" senator, Mike Duffy, the funds to make good his debt to the Senate and Canadian taxpayers.

That's Steve getting caught off-balance, taken by surprise before he can conjure up a suitable fantasy that his base, the faithful Conservative gullibillies will swallow.

Fable Two

A few days after exonerating Nigel Wright, Shifty Steve said the guy had to go (as though that was Steve's decision - laugh, giggle).  But Shifty assured Parliament and the Canadian people that Wright acted alone and that nobody else in the top tiers of his prime minister's office who could have, should have and would have tipped him off knew anything about Wright-Duffy.  They didn't know so how could he, Shifty Steve?

Shifty was quick to add that the transaction between Wright and Duffy was unacceptable or worse and had he any inkling of it, he would have reared up on his hind legs in righteous indignation and put an immediate end to it.

Fable Three

As the scandal refused to just go away and continued to close on him, Shifty recanted Fable Two and admitted that Wright-Duffy wasn't quite the secret he had said a few months earlier.  Shifty said there were a few people inside the PMO who knew of it but just not him.

Wait a minute, when Shifty rolled out Fable Two, he insisted that no one inside the PMO new anything about Wright-Duffy.  No one as in no one, nobody, no staffer. It was all Wright's doing and he kept it secret.  How could he make that claim unless he got all his little minions together and asked them?  Did he not ask them or did they just lie their asses off to the nation's ultimate control freak?  Of course there's a third possibility.  Shifty Steve may have been lying through his teeth from the get go and is still telling whatever lie seems necessary to fit the constantly emerging facts and yet still prevent the scandal from morphing into Wright-Duffy-Harper.

At times like this it can be very helpful to look at how a person has behaved in the past.   Hmm, let me see, let me see.  Oh, I know, what about that guy, Bruce Carson?  Yes, Bruce Carson,  the disbarred lawyer, convicted fraudster, ex-jailbird that Shifty personally admitted to the top tier of his prime minister's office.  The old geezer with the 22-year old 'former' escort girlfriend.  Shifty's most valuable fixer.

Ah, yes.  Bruce Carson.   The guy who longtime Tory operative, then RCMP commish, Bubbles Elliott, swept through the security vetting despite five fraud convictions, disbarment, jail time and two bankruptcies - that Bruce Carson.

As your humble scribe wrote in April, 2011:

Harper says he didn't know, he was let down, Privy Council procedures failed. Maybe that sort of bullshit is palatable in Red Deer or Moose Jaw but don't try to peddle it in Ottawa.  One of my Tory friends volunteered that there were repeated warnings given to Harper's staff.  Apparently everybody failed, everybody that is except Harper.

Does this sound familiar?  Discern any patterns yet?  This is Bruce Carson, Fable One.  Blame unnamed staffers and plead complete and total ignorance.  Claim that if you had only known, none of this ever would have happened.  You would have seen to that.  Just add water, stir, and wait for the scandal to magically disappear.

But it was in the Bruce Carson affair, perhaps we should call it Carson-Harper, that we saw how effortlessly Shifty moved on to Fable Two when his first pack of lies wasn't quite enough to kill off the scandal.  Within the month, Shifty's Fable One denial ran up on the rocks of reality and that's when Shifty Steve transitioned to Fable Two mode.

Suddenly Shifty came back with a straight face and said, well okay, he knew about some of Carson's criminal record, the fraud, the disbarment, the misappropriation, the jail time but he thought a stretch inside the Harper PMO would rehabilitate old Bruce.  Yeah, right.  Sending Carson to the PMO for rehab is sort of like sending a wayward girl to a brothel to mend her ways.

It was an audacious, bald-faced lie - and yet it worked.  The prime ministerial lap dogs, a.k.a. the parliamentary press gallery, went back to their labours of rewriting government press releases, Carson hightailed it to Calgary and the whole thing died just like the stench eventually departs the dung heap.  Shifty Steve didn't even have to make a ritual sacrifice of his top aides.

It must be pretty obvious that our prime minister is an inveterate liar who will say whatever he thinks he must to get himself out of a jam, tailoring his lies to conform to changing facts on the ground, confident that the media scribes are just too cowed to ever call "bullshit" on him.  It's something of an artform for Shifty Steve.  Wright-Duffy-Harper is an obvious carbon copy of Carson-Harper, only with one or two extra chapters.

If You Still Don't Get It

There are still some who don't get why the Duffy-Wright-Harper affair happened. Why would such powerful people expose themselves to such jeopardy?  Why was Duffy given such preferential, under-the-table treatment?

You can find the answer in an autographed photo of Duffy and Harper that graces the beleaguered senator's office.  It's all there in Harper's hand.

Harper writes, "To Mike, my most valuable Senator."

Most valuable.   Not my 'good' or 'close' or 'loyal' friend.  Not any of the salutations Harper inscribes on these things.  Most valuable, that's it.

Duffy campaigned like no one else.  He raised a pile of money, he swung a lot of votes.   During elections and in between he was in permanent campaign mode, flitting from one end of the country to the other.  I've heard it said that, in one 2-day period, he made appearances in 17-ridings.

That is the kind of person who is worth his weight in campaign contributions. That is the sort of person you want to preserve and, above all, control even if that takes inducements and threats.  Valuable enough that you make under-the-table payments, have Senate reports laundered, just about anything you think you can keep out of the public eye.

Valuable, sure, but if that person suddenly becomes radioactive, he can instantly be transformed into an unacceptable liability, someone who needs to be buried, quickly and quietly and never spoken of again.