Mike Duffy and residency claims
At the trial, Mr. Duffy and his lawyer, Donald Bayne, are playing a game of pretend. They are pretending that Senate rules on residency are not clear. I read them and understood them perfectly and if my eight-year-old grandson were to read them, he would understand them, too. They’re that clear.
Though granted Eli is very clever for his age.
The forms Mr. Duffy filled out over his time as a Senator are replete with fudges and cross-outs, his attempt to alter things so he appeared to be in compliance with rules he circumvented and outright cheated on, allegedly.
There are other indicators he was up to shenanigans, for example he and his wife only got P.E.I. drivers licences after learning that to gain over $90,000 in residency funds they had to be able to show that their primary residence was in the province he represented, which it in fact was not.
Further, the former CTV journalist’s senate office staff tried to fast-track an application for a P.E.I. health card so he’d have it in time to submit to auditors. Thankfully, officials in P.E.I. brought that gambit to light.
Confused about forms? Not true. After all, he asserted his principal residence was a cottage he owns in Cavendish — inaccessible in winter — which he has never actually lived in. Claiming something that is false has nothing to do with being confused and everything to do with lying. Jakey, my seven-year-old grandson, would understand that.
An indicator of his deception is in the words of a resident of the community where Duffy’s cottage is, Morgan Eisenhaur, who told media: “We’ve never seen Mike Duffy here.” Mr. Duffy has not lived in P.E.I. since leaving well over 30 years ago.
Duffy wrongdoing accusations
The list of alleged wrongdoings by Mr. Duffy is long (33 charges in total) and includes:
– Accepting $90,000 from then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper chief of staff, Nigel Wright to repay the debt that he had incurred by making claims for money which he was not entitled to.
– Charging the Senate for travel and other expenses while on personal business or on business not for the Senate but the Conservative Party.
– Awarding contracts worth $64,916 to friend Gerald Donahue when no work by Mr. Donahue has ever been found to have been done (Mr. Donahue claims he did not receive the money in any case…so who did?).
– Fudging residency documents to his benefit.
Again, Senate residency rules are simpler than Mr. Duffy has let on and this entire affair is one of greed. The rules state that if your prime residence is over 100 kilometers from Ottawa, you get an annual payment to set up and maintain a residence in the nation’s capital to fulfill your senatorial duties. The residence he listed as his ‘new’ home? The Ottawa home he has owned and lived in for decades.
Journalists as Senators – bad idea
What could Duffy, and Pamela Wallin, have done to deserve $132,000 a year jobs that require little substantive work, which they keep until 75? Both the Conservatives and Liberals almost exclusively reward supporters with Senate seats but if Mr. Duffy was a responsible impartial journalist, how could the Conservatives have known that he was one of them?
They knew because of his bias. Over his decades with CTV, I questioned his impartiality and felt him a cheerleader for Brian Mulroney. He excelled at showing Conservatives in a positive light and Liberals in a negative one. The Canadian Broadcasting Standards Code twice cited him for failing to be “fair, balanced, or even-handed” for reports on Liberal politicians. In Duffy`s case receiving just two citations was a conservative number (pun intended) because he got away with others.
So, IMO, his bias got him into the Senate.
Here’s this: along with the money and a mountain of time the RCMP put into its investigation, the Canadian taxpayer is now paying for an expensive trial. Not surprisingly Mr. Duffy’s actions and the expense he’s caused Canada, along with the reason he was handed a Senate seat in the first place (see above), provide yet another argument for abolishing it. So on the plus side the movement to get rid of the Senate can only benefit from all of this.
The reality is Mike Duffy was not eligible to be a senator from P.E.I. because he had been living in Ottawa for so long. He could have been a senator from Ottawa, but thanks to all the politicos in line for payback in that city, they didn’t need a senator from Ottawa.
At any rate, given the lack of real function for Canada’s “chamber of sober second thought,” abolishing the Senate would be a cost-saving enterprise that would cost very little indeed.
Something both of my grandsons could understand.
