Senate shits the bed, goes back to sleep

Last night's CBC At Issue panel, Nov.28 2013 on the Senate blocking a witness and the PMO continuing to run the Senate. Former Harper supporter Andrew Coyne is beyond disgusted. 

Mansbridge : The government blocks a key witness [Michael Runia, Managing Partner at Deloitte] from appearing before a senate committee to answer questions about whether he had tried to massage or even question the firm's audit of Mike Duffy's expenses.

Andrew Coyne : It's incredible. Step back from this. This is the auditing firm Deloitte that does the audits for the Conservative fundraising arm; they are also the recipient of millions of dollars in federal contracts. They are given this contract to investigate Mike Duffy's expenses by the Tory-dominated committee and there's all kinds of interference reported in the RCMP doc where they're calling them up to ask them how it's going; they're trying to influence it; Duffy's not talking to them et cetera.
At the centre of it is this fellow Michael Runia, who was the point man, the contact with Senator [Irving] Gerstein. We hear during today's testimony from the three auditors involved in the audit, he was in fact making these very inappropriate phone calls - they had to cut him off.

Just when you think ok that's the next step -clearly they'll call him as the next witness - they have a vote and vote not to call him. It's staggering. You cannot believe they would be that brazen about it."

No?  It was the last act on the last day in office before retirement for Gerald Comeau, Con chair of the Senate's internal economy committee, a position he was hastily shoehorned into following the departure of the former disgraced chair, David Tkachuk. Comeau shepherded his little Senate flock into voting against a motion to even hear from Gerstein's contact at Deloitte, longtime Con supporter and Deloitte partner Michael Runia.

Flashback to early March ...

PMO Manager of Parliamentary Affairs Patrick Rogers on March 8, as per the RCMP ITO: 

"Senator Gerstein has just called. He agrees with our understanding of the situation and his Deloitte contact [Runia] agrees. The stage we 're at now is waiting for the Senator's contact to get the actual Deloitte auditor on the file to agree. The Senator will call back once we have Deloitte locked in."

Then, 13 days later on March 21, Patrick Rogers makes a prediction weeks before the Deloitte audit is sent to the Senate [bold : mine]: 

"Deloitte can 't reach a conclusion on residency because lawyer has not provided them anything. This is despite their attempts use "public information" about residency. Their report will state that lawyer did not provide information when requested. They were asked to complete the work by the end of March and plan to.

I would propose that the Senator [Duffy] continue to not engage with Deloitte. I believe that we should make arrangements for repayment knowing that Deloitte will not say one way or another on his residency. If asked following the report why he did not participate with Deloitte the Senator [Duffy] can say because he had already made the decision to repay the money and as he said at the time, he looked forward to moving on. It is then up to our esteemed Senators on the committee and our Senate leadership to move on.

And voilà - everything Patrick Rogers predicted before the Deloitte report was tabled came true and the "esteemed senators" are indeed desperately trying to "move on", including refusing to hear witnesses in the Senate, after first having Writewashed the Deloitte audit.

Mansbridge : We should mention that in the end, nothing was done to the Audit. There was no inappropriate ... the ethical wall wasn't breached.

Coyne, somewhat snidely : So Deloitte says.

Exactly.


It was Steve's PMO legal counsel Benjamin Perrin who asked Senator Irving Gerstein to work his contacts at Deloitte over the audit. Perrin returned to his job teaching law at UBC in April after all his emails in the PMO were erased, according to the RCMP.

PMO staffer Patrick "This is epic. Montgomery is the Problem" Rogers has since been removed from the immediate line of fire to Heritage Minister Shelly Glover's office.

Senator Irving Gerstein is still sitting in the Senate and is still in charge of the Conservative Fund Canada. When questioned about his bagman's leading role in all this, Steve - the Accountability Firewall Guy continues to refuse to say his name out loud in Parliament. 

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Clue: It was the PMO in the Senate with a chequebook

Some prophetic words on corruption from the Angry Baird in 2006 ...  (h/t comments at The Tyee )

Now that the Cons' previous bullshit lines have been cleared out of the way, to wit :

a) Duffy was being 'honorable' and "showed leadership" in deciding to pay the money back all by himself because it was in his own words : "the right thing to do", and 

b)  "the Royal Bank helped me ... Nigel played no role" 

c) Wright was just 'helping out a friend' although Wright says they aren't friends

d) "protecting taxpayers" from Duffy's debts - as if garnishing wages is not the way this is being handled for Duffy's senate co-fraudster Patrick Brazeau  

e) Conservatives had nothing to do with the cheque, despite Senator Gerstein, head of the Conservative Fund, being willing to pay off $30K before finally balking at $90K

f) there was no "deal", although it turns out a condition attached to receiving the cheque was Duffy shutting up

g) nobody else in the PMO "knew" about the cheque, downgraded by Steve three days ago to nobody but Wright "made" the decision 

we are left with this :

According to RCMP Corporal Greg Horton's excellent summary :

On June 21, 2013 my office received a letter from Peter Mantas, which I have read, advising that Mr. Wright recalls that he told the following people that he would personally provide funds to repay Duffy’s claimed secondary residence expenses:
a. David van Hemmen (PMO)
b. Benjamin Perrin (PMO)
c. Chris Woodcock (PMO)
d. Senator Irving Gerstein

"Would" is future tense, seeming to indicate they were all advised before Wright wrote Duffy the cheque on March 26.

In his interview with Aaron Wherry from May 31, Senator David Tkachuk explained his chats with the PMO on what would become the Senate's whitewashed report on Duffy's expenses, released May 9 :

Tkachuk : I mean, you’ve got to remember I would have been having a number of discussions with Nigel, I had a few of them. He didn’t tell me to do anything, really. We discussed Mike and the situation that he was in. I mean, the Prime Minister’s Office was very concerned about this. They don’t like this scandal going on. It was hurting us politically.... 

Q: But just to be as categorical as possible, the decision to not write the report as harshly as the others…
A: It didn’t come from someone else giving us an order to do this. Let’s put it that way.
Q: Or any advice to that regard? 

A: Well, I got advice from all kinds of people. I’m not going to tell you who they are, but let’s put it this way: I talked to people in the PMO ....

Q: Did anyone in the Prime Minister’s Office ever suggest to you how the report should be written? 

A: Not really.
Q: What does that mean? 

A: Because when I ask for advice, people will give advice. I did ask for advice, I’m not denying that. But all I’m saying is, no one gave me any orders, no one came to my room and told me what to do.

Nigel Wright sent the cheque to Duffy's lawyer on March 26. 
In April, Tkachuk, head of the senate committee investigating Duffy, was both tipping Duffy off about Deloitte knowing he claimed expenses while on holiday in Florida on the one hand, while on the other being badgered by calls from Wright, asking "‘When is it going to be done? When is this thing over with?"
Or as Steve's Director of Communications Andrew MacDougall confirmed the Tkachuk-Wright pipeline on May 24 when questioned about it : 

“It is standard practice for our office to work with members of House and Senate committees to draft lines in response to committee studies and reports.”

On May 8, after weeks of such "line drafting", Tkachuk and Stewart Olsen had two of three passages critical of Duffy removed from their report; the third was expunged by the Senate's Con majority the following day.

Yet Steve still claims he personally knew nothing about the cheque - either from Wright or from the three advisers inside the Prime Minister's Office Wright told about it sometime before March 26 - until he heard about it on the news a minimum of seven weeks later on May 15.

Meanwhile, Tkachuk's replacement as chair of the Senate Internal Economy Committee,  Senator Gerald Comeau - the guy who as of July 2 was unable to confirm details on whether Duffy ever actually did repay that $90K he got from Nigel Wright - will be teaming up with Steve's buddy Stewart Olsen again behind closed doors in a 3-person committee charged with looking at Pamela Wallin's wayward Senate expenses.

Take it away, Steve ...


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