Legal loopholes - Bruce Carson, Nigel Wright, and Elections Canada

Elections Canada declined to recommend the RCMP investigate and prosecute electoral fraud cases in both 2008 and 2011 elections because, in the *opinion* of Elections Canada, the perps were unsuccessful in their attempt to sway the election results. They were crap at it so no harm no foul.

Yesterday Bruce Carson was acquitted of influence peddling under Section 121 of the Criminal Code - which prohibits anyone from using their influence with the government to obtain benefits for themselves or someone else - because although he approached Indian and Northern Affairs government officials to help set his girlfriend up with a 20% fee to sell water purification systems to First Nations, he approached the wrong people. He was crap at influence peddling so again, no harm, no foul.


This also partly explains I suppose why the RCMP never charged Nigel Wright, who shares lawyer Patrick McCann with Carson, with paying Mike Duffy off with a $90,000 cheque to "make this whole thing go away". It didn't go away, Nigel was crap at making it go away, so again - no harm, no foul.   

Canadian law apparently requires certain standards of felony competence from white collar perps before it is willing to take them seriously. If you can't be arsed to attain a bare minimum of professionalism in your chosen felony, Canadian law just isn't interested.  

This must piss off bank robbers no end. Busted at 4am surrounded by their safe-cracking tools and cops and blaring bank alarms does display a certain wont of proficiency at their chosen profession, yet Canadian law does not offer them the same consideration shown to those who attempt to undermine our elections, take personal advantage of their positions of influence, or buy off political cronies.

Bruce Carson still faces charges of influence peddling and being "the secret sauce" that enabled tarsands/extractive industry lobby group EPIC, according to their own presser, to successfully rewrite government regulations thatwere holding up tar their permits. 
According to the RCMP ITO, Carson allegedly lobbied Nigel Wright and Wayne Wouters, Clerk of the Privy Council, on behalf of EPIC for a salary of $10,000 a month. 

We await the court's decision on whether he was crap at that too.
.

Nigel Wright & Linda Frum in the Republican wayback machine

In a week that has featured ...

1) Nigel Wright let off the hook by the RCMP for bribing sitting legislator Senator Mike Duffy in spite of weeks of PMO discussions involving over a dozen senior party officials re buying Duffy's silence,    and 

2) Senator Linda Frum making the most idiotic and widely-mocked attack on Elections Canada over the Fair Elections Act to date, ie  that it is a conflict of interest for Elections Canada to both administer the vote during elections and encourage people to vote between elections, 

... it is fitting that Jay Watts III should dig up a piece of Canadian history that includes both Frum and Wright, as blogged by Brian Busby in a brilliant pair of blogposts that really should be savoured in their own right.

Seems in 1984, a rightwing Republican foundation confirmed it was funding several start-up campus publications in Canada among its 69 across North America. The Institute of Educational Affairs was set up by Irving Kristol, godfather of the US neoconservative movement, his fellow founding PNACer William Bennett, and William Simon, Reaganite, Richard Nixon's treasury secretary and board director of Halliburton Canada. It bankrolled : 

~ University of Toronto Magazine, founded by Nigel Wright - already working in Muldoon's PMO - and his friend and classmate Tony "Gazebo" Clement, and
~ McGill Magazine and editor Linda Frum, daughter of CBC's Barbara Frum and sister to David "Axis of Evil" Frum
~ Libertas at Queens, run by the son of the CEO at the Bank of Montreal. 
The original Canadian University Press article says 7 other clones of Libertas appeared across Canadian campuses that month, including articles of *unusual access* for campus papers - like an interview with George Bush.

Nigel Wright told the Montreal Gazette at the time that he had "no misgivings about applying for and accepting money from the Republican foundation".

The only advice he could recall receiving from the foundation was a circular "suggesting we publish nothing to do with the John Birch Society."

 Right-wing paper covertly funded from US , also published as Republicans fund Ontario & Quebec right wing newspaper :

"We were happy to have help and advice from the Americans," said Nigel Wright. 

In 1982 the IEA and American Spectator, a prominent conservative newspaper, held a seminar for college students interested in starting or maintaining conservative newspapers. More than 40 students attended to hear speakers such as the Spectator's R. Emett Tyrell Jr lecture on taste and strategy. 

"Don't print Klu Klux Klan literature," Tyrell advised. 

IEA Executive Director Phillip Marcus suggested: "If someone accuses you of being racist or sexist, accuse them back of McCarthy tactics." 

One person contacted who attended that conference but asked not to be identified said: "They told me that when I was ready to go ahead publishing, I shouldn't worry about the money. They said they'd take care of that."

From such smug little acorns are whole governments sprouted, along with their bent senators and chiefs of staff and covert bribes and Republican-style voter suppression bills.
.

Ap27 Update : While we don't know whether Linda Frum attended the 1982 RepucliCon newspaper start-up seminar that advised accusing opponents of McCarthy tactics, Jay Watts III discovered her doing exactly that in the Montreal Gazette in 1984.
.

A message from the RCMP

CBC : Nigel Wright won't face charges over $90K payment to Mike Duffy 

The RCMP has ended its probe into Nigel Wright... 

Wright said in a statement to CBC News that he believed his actions were in the public interest and lawful.

"My intention was to secure the repayment of taxpayer funds," Wright said through his lawyer, Peter Mantas. He added that the RCMP's "detailed and thorough investigation has now upheld my position."

Quite the most brazen in self-serving nonsense -- the Senate certainly had no difficulty garnisheeing Senator Patrick Brazeau's wages in order to "secure the repayment of taxpayer funds".

Presumably the RCMP could not show that Wright stood to personally benefit from paying off Duffy to shut him up, while Steve, on behalf of whom this charade was perpetrated, knew nothing at all about it .

Well played all round in the best democracy money can buy.  
. 

Bruce Carson : "the secret sauce"

~~~updated below~~~

"You are the secret sauce," Doug Black, President of the Energy Policy Institute of Canada, wrote to EPIC co-founder and Harper's disgraced "fixer" Bruce Carson.

Bruce Carson, former PMO staffer, has banking records seized by RCMP 

According to CBC yesterday, an RCMP affidavit alleges Carson illegally lobbied many of his former government colleagues - including Nigel Wright and Wayne Wouters, Clerk of the Privy Council - on behalf of EPIC, an industry lobby group of 38 energy resource members including Shell, Suncor, Enbridge, EnCana, Imperial Oil, Cenovus, ConoccoPhillips and Canadian Natural Resources, for a salary of $10,000 a month. 

Black responded, "Excellent. Need Nigel on side."

Interestingly, Bruce Carson and Nigel Wright share the same lawyer, Patrick McCann. 
Doug Black was appointed to the Senate last year.

EPIC's mandate was to produce an industry-led national energy strategy, which they did in 2011, and by June 2013 the 100% industry-funded Alberta Energy Regulator was set up with yet another EPIC vice chair and energy lobbyist as chair - Gerard Protti, founder of CAPP.

The EPIC leadership line-up from 2011:

Doug Black – EPIC President 

David Emerson – Chair 

Bruce Carson – Vice Chair 

Elyse Allan – Vice Chair - CEO of GE Canada  

Gerard Protti – Vice Chair - VP of EnCana, founder of CAPP 

Daniel Gagnier – Vice Chair - VP of Alcan

There's another interesting relationship in that line-up as well.

When Carson appeared before the Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment, and Natural Resources in April 2010, in addition to plumping for building a pipeline to move oil from Alberta to BC - Enbridge and TransCanada Pipelines are both member orgs of EPIC - Carson also made a pitch for smart meters. 

Nine months later on Jan. 25 2011, BC Hydro gave the first contract for its smart meter program to Corix Utilities, which (is) was at the time half-owned by CAI Capital Management Ltd. 

As it happens, yet another EPIC founding chair, David Emerson, was previously made a senior advisor to CAI Capital Management and then the following day he was named CEO and board chair of B.C. Transmission Corp., which "plans, operates and maintains the province's publicly-owned electrical transmission system" for BC Hydro. 

(BC Transmission was privatized by the BC Libs in 2003 and then reabsorbed back into BC Hydro at massive public cost in 2010)

                        

h/t Joyce Miller at Watershed Sentinel back in 2011 for Corix research.

Photo at top from Canada Ministry of Environment webpage shows Carson attending a meeting with then Environment Minister Jim Prentice and US Secretary of Energy Steven Chu two months after leaving Harper's office. 

updates : Welcome, Gazetteers!
with thanks for your wonderful link to Tyee Will McMartin's piece on Emerson, smart meters, CAI, and Corix.

APTN : Senior Trudeau advisor linked to Bruce Carson's alleged illegal lobbying: RCMP document

That would be Liberal National Campaign Co-Chair Daniel Gagnier from our 2011 list above - president of EPIC since sometime in 2012 and still  going  strong.

Poor old EPIC. Seems every time they get a little publicity, their website goes offline. It's been down since last night so here's a screencap taken yesterday.

.

"A special committee that will have the right Senators on board"

Yesterday in the House, Stephen Harper publicly backed the Senate's decision not to hear testimony from Michael Runia, the Deloitte auditor who allegedly intervened in the audit into Mike Duffy’s expenses at the behest of ConFund Senator Irving Gerstein and the Prime Minister’s Office.

I doubt there's anyone left who imagines the Senate's decision on Wedneday was achieved independently of Steve's input and there's two excellent columns from Tim Harper and Murray Dobbin on that below.

But there's one email from Nigel Wright to PMO Manager of Parliamentary Affairs Patrick Rogers I haven't seen mentioned anywhere that really defines the PMO's control of the Senate. 
You will recall Rogers was the guy who got the call on Deloitte from Gerstein and reported "The Senator will call back once we have Deloitte locked in" and then correctly *predicted* their $500K audit on Duffy's residence would be a bust.

A few days after Nigel Wright's request to Senate Leader Marjory LeBreton in February that

"all unilateral action from that office cease before being cleared with me" 

and just before his remarks that 

"have to do this in a way that does not lead to the Chinese water torture of new facts in the public domain that the PM does not want..." 

is this blunt assumption of the PMO's right to have Senate committees appointed to do their bidding. Nigel Wright (page 26):

 "Patrick, we are going to need to manage the briefing of the Conservative Senators (including, hopefully Chair) of the Committee. If the Rules and Procedures committee doesn't have the right membership, then the Senate by motion should constitute a special committee that will have the right Senators on board."

So bearing that in mind ...

Tim Harper : Senate scandal: A cover-up in broad daylight

Conservatives circle the wagons to keep Michael Runia and Irving Gerstein silent, raising questions about how much damage the duo could do.

Murray Dobbin : Why Tories Are So Afraid of What Deloitte’s Runia Might Testify

.

Perrin Emails Found Behind Couch!

.

 "We are good to go from the PM once Ben [Perrin] has confirmation from [Mr. Duffy’s lawyer]" would seem to be a good place to start.

PMO recovers ex-legal adviser’s e-mails on Duffy affair

Senate scandal: Benjamin Perrin's PMO emails not deleted

.

Steve - the Accountability Firewall Guy

2006 Conservative Party Campaign Ad on Accountability

Interviewer : How is it that hundreds of millions of dollars go missing and no one's in jail?
Harper : Well, look who's in charge. I mean these guys can't even tell the difference between Wright and wrong. 

Interviewer : Ok, we've got a question ... "It's like you get to Ottawa and no one can touch you. How will you change that?"
Harper : You change the people in charge but you also have to change the system. The first thing I'll do is pass the Federal Accountability Act. It's a real plan to clean up government.

Now : Tory changes to accountability rules leave Harper blameless in Duffy affair

When the Conservatives first took power in 2006, Accountable Government: A Guide for Ministers and Secretaries of State said that ministers were responsible for “the actions of all officials under their management and direction, whether or not the ministers had prior knowledge.” ***

But a version of the guidelines from 2011 says: “Ministerial accountability to Parliament does not mean that a minister is presumed to have knowledge of every matter that occurs within his or her department or portfolio, nor that the minister is necessarily required to accept blame for every matter.”

Whew - lucky for Steve, huh? 
Six of his own closest staffers he hired himself - staffers we did not elect and who are not answerable to us - variously colluded in a plot the RCMP allege involved bribery, fraud, and breach of public trust, all while supposedly managing to keep Steve completely out of the loop about it. And according to the revised Accountability Act rules, that isn't his responsibility! 

Presumably this also explains Steve's new mantra in the House of Commons when questioned about the actions of any of those staffers : "There are only two people under investigation."

"Not actually a convicted felon" - it's the new standard for the Federal Accountability Act.


*** The Cons worked this first version to avoid accountability also.
In 2010 - back when parliamentary committees actually worked - the Ethics Committee was investigating  "allegations of systematic political interference by ministers' offices to block, delay, or obstruct the release of information to the public" by political staffers. 
[In those days it was still considered an anomaly to have hired shortpantsers running the government.]
i.e. A gov dept would authorize the release of a document to the public and a Con political staffer would be sent down to retrieve it before it could be released. 
When said staffers were summoned before committees as witnesses to be questioned about it, John Baird or Pierre Poilievre would show up in their place under the guise of "ministerial responsibility for staffers" and run interference on the staffer's behalf.
.

Senate scandal : the missing emails

Here's RCMP Cpl. Greg Horton explaining why he does not have access to the emails of Stephen Harper's personal PMO legal counsel Ben Perrin who handled the negotiations for the Duffy/Wright cheque deal with Duffy's lawyer Janice Payne:

I was advised that the e-mails of Benjamin Perrin were no longer available because he completed his tenure at the PMO in April 2013.

The emails were deleted mere weeks after they were written and a month before the Duffy deal went public because, as it happens, that's apparently standard practice for a departing employee.

How is that even credible?

Harper's dcomm Jason MacDonald explains : 

"Under the guidelines the Treasury Board has, the individual is required to distinguish between what should be considered a permanent document that should be preserved and what's a transitory document, as they call it, and can be deleted, and the onus is on the individual to make that distinction."

So it was up to Perrin to decide what to delete? Really?

Former HoC law clerk Rob Walsh :

"I just don't understand how any regime regarding documentation relating to an employee who is departing can leave it to the departing employee to decide which documents shall remain available to the employer and which shall not. I just don't understand it."

It seems quite mad really, as it could theoretically encourage the practice of hiring shortpantsers on the taxpayers' dime, after which all written evidence of whatever nefarious schemes they were asked to perpetrate could be erased. 

Law prof Amir Attaran has laid a complaint of professional misconduct with the law societies of BC and Ontario re Perrin and Payne, and also he raises this important point :

Horton writes that that the prime minister’s office waived solicitor-client privilege for those emails. That doesn’t mean that the prime minister has also waived privilege, Attaran points out. “The wording of the ITO is that PMO has waived privilege, not that the PM has.”
That may be relevant, he said, because Perrin may have had a “joint retainer,” meaning that he may have had both the office and the prime minister as his clients.

Perrin is mentioned over 30 times in the allegations of the RCMP affidavit, and while Horton states Perrin was not involved in Wright's decision to cut Duffy a cheque, these excerpts give an indication of what we might be missing in Perrin's missing emails :

Nigel Wright decided that he would personally cover the cost of reimbursing Senator Duffy. After back and forth negotiations between Janice Payne and Benjamin Perrin (legal counsel within the PMO) terms of the agreement were set.

Mr. Perrin became involved after the February 19, 2013, exchange when Senator Duffy asked for the name of a legal representative who his lawyer could communicate with. Thereinafter, Janice Payne and Benjamin Perrin communicated on this matter; Mr. Perrin was aware of Mr. Wright's personal decision to pay the money, but was in no way involved in the decision. 

Mr. Wright was not happy with Senator Duffy, and was no longer wishing to debate the matter. He told Senator Duffy that from that point on they will deal lawyer to lawyer on the matter (Payne and Perrin);

On February 21, Janice Payne sent an e-mail to Benjamin Perrin requesting media lines
On February 21, Janice Payne sent an e-mail to Benjamin Perrin with a list of 5 conditions or demands Benjamin Perrin followed up with an e-mail to Nigel Wright advising that Janice Payne wanted the agreement in writing, and stated, "I explained that was not happening. We aren't selling a car or settling a lawsuit here. She seemed to get it eventually."

On March 1, Janice Payne e-mailed Benjamin Perrin for an update on Senator Duffy being withdrawn from the Deloitte audit.

On March 5, Janice Payne e-mailed Benjamin Perrin and Arthur Hamilton (Conservative Party lawyer) seeking advice.

On March 20, after sending an e-mail to Benjamin Perrin and Arthur Hamilton about the Deloitte process, Janice Payne sent an e-mail to Senator Tkachuk seeking confirmation that the audit would be called off upon repayment.

On March 23, Janice Payne e-mailed Benjamin Perrin and stated: "Ben, yesterday we discussed the Senator sending a cheque to Deloitte with a letter explaining our position that the ongoing review should now be moot. I am preparing such a letter." She then sent Mr. Perrin a draft of the letter she intended to send to Deloitte, and solicited comments from Mr. Perrin and Nigel Wright.

Nigel Wright responded to Benjamin Perrin: think that this is perfectly fine (and I resist making minor suggestions since I would prefer to be able to answer, if necessary, that PMO did not write it)

In an earlier e-mail to Benjamin Perrin, Nigel Wright stated: think her approach works. I will send my cheque on Monday.

On March 24, Janice Payne sent an e-mail to Benjamin Perrin stating that Senator Duffy . .. asks for assurance that should any Senator seek his removal, the Gov 't leader in the Senate will urge her caucus to vote against such a motion

On March 26, Benjamin Perrin received an e-mail from Janice Payne's office stating "we have just sent the cheque to Senator Tkachuk by courier".

And then Mr. Perrin, along with all his emails, was gone.  Image from CTV.

.
Dec 2 Update : Well, wouldn't you know it? They'd just fallen down the back of the couch.
Dec 5 Update : ITO contains 24 references to PMO legal counsel, Benjamin Perrin, dating from the time Mr. Wright began arranging a plan to end the controversy over Sen. Duffy’s expenses until it was completed.
.

Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks #8

Please welcome Senator Irving Gerstein, chief Con bagman and in-and-out election scheme perp, to Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks for what the Mounties allege was his role in trying to kill off the Deloitte audit into the expenses of Mike Duffy.

At a Con Party meet earlier this month, Gerstein announced to the party faithful :

“First, I made it absolutely clear to Nigel Wright that the CFC [Conservative Fund Canada] would not pay for Senator Mike Duffy’s disputed expenses,” the Ontario senator said.
“And it never did.”

Having the Con Fund pay off Duffy's expenses had actually been the PMO plan all along; Nigel Wright paying them instead was merely a later variation on that plan when the amount was three times what they expected. 

More serious is the attempt out of the PMO to muscle the Senate into shutting down the Deloitte audit using "back channels", and to hide it from the public and the RCMP with the complicity of Senators Stewart Olsen, LeBreton, and Tkachuk, all of whom previously publicly stated they knew nothing about doing a deal with a number of PMO staffers to change an audit, whitewash their reports on it, and hide the Duffy money trail. 

PMO staffer Patrick Rogers on March 8, from the RCMP ITO : 

"Senator Gerstein has just called. He agrees with our understanding of the situation and his Deloitte contact 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."

Harper continued to deny in QP yesterday that he knew anything at all about the actions of all these people he personally hired for the PMO or appointed to the Senate. 
The RCMP ITO notes there is "no evidence to suggest that the Prime Minister was personally involved in the minutiae of those matters", and Nigel Wright has also said Harper was unaware of the specific details.

So what. That's what the six people in the PMO wrangling out those specific details were for.

The Perps with Perks Virtual Boxed Set ... with perp bios .. to be continued...
.

Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks #7

Welcome, Con chief counsel Arthur Hamilton, to Perps with Perks for your part in the Senate scandal - Wrighting a cheque to Mike Duffy's lawyer -  "CON FUNDS $13,560" - while Duffy was under investigation to pay off his legal bills and shut him up so as not to arouse the Wrath of Cons.
"Cheque(s)" actually because we haven't yet seen the other Hamilton cheque stub Duffy mentioned last week, along with all the other paperwork the PMO assured CBC doesn't exist.

About that CON FUND mentioned on Hamilton's cheque - flashback to 2011 re the Cons' in-and-out scheme when Hamilton was counsel for that too.

"There were six people in charge of the Conservative Fund. Four are now charged. Nigel Wright is the fifth, and while two of them were rewarded with plush Senate seats, he's the chief of staff to the Prime Minister."

Previously, Hamilton is best known to us for ignoring Elections Canada entreaties to look into Con election fraud events perped in the days just prior to the last election, taking months to set up interviews with witnesses in Elections Canada's Guelph robocall investigation, and pre-empting the witnesses' lawyers when they finally got underway under his supervision.
To quote federal court judge Richard Mosley in the legal challenge alleging widespread voter suppression in the last federal election, the Cons, represented by Hamilton, "engaged in trench warfare in an effort to prevent this case from coming to a hearing on the merits."

Yesterday we heard Steve on the radio saying he'd "dismissed" Nigel Wright. 
What a long ways we've come from the Con story in May when "good Samaritan" Wright was only trying to protect taxpayers by writing a cheque for his good ole buddy Duffy. Steve was "very clear" he knew nothing at all about it and "immediately made this information public" after CTV had already reported it. Heh. 
Steve then "accepted Wright's resignation with regret".
Now Steve says he fired Wright and "a few" people in the PMO were in the know - 13 according to Robert Fife. 

So it seems the Con Party chief counsel Arthur Hamilton was in on it from the very beginning, unless of course Hamilton had no idea why he was writing the cheque to Duffy out of the Con Fund.
Maybe, like Steve, no one ever tells him anything either. 
.
Previous Perps with Perks with bios.

Mon evening update : Thinking about Steve's recent indignant law and order rhetoric re Duffy - presumably for the benefit of his base prior to their annual national convention next week. The delicious irony here is now he has to explain to them why their party donations were used to pay off the legal bills Duffy incurred due to PMO-directed Senate investigations against him.
.

Happy Shut-the-Fuck-Up-13 Day

At his last Con caucus meeting and presser five months ago, Harper so disliked the grilling he got from media about Nigel Wright's cheque to Senator Mike Duffy and what Steve knew about it - see above - that today he decided to allow only cameras into his pre-throne speech caucus meeting without the accompanying annoying reporters.

The press gallery rebelled, responding that if reporters weren't to be allowed in, then cameras and photographers wouldn't attend either.
No one was surprised when Sun Media broke ranks and bravely stepped into the breach with a:

Sun News Exclusive : Harper addresses Tory caucus

"Our Sun News cameras were allowed in. You will not see that video anywhere else."

But no worries, Steve sent out the whole speech at 140 characters a pop from the safety of twitter so as not to be entirely left out of Speech from the Throne Day, now affectionately known on twitter as # STFU13 or Shut the Fuck Up Day 

Dear Governor General David Johnston :
After you give Harper's speech, don't forget to wash your hands afterwards and put the seat back down.

5pm Update : Conflack Fred DeLorey :

"You won’t believe what the Press Gallery just did in Ottawa.Some media decided to boycott an important speech by our Prime Minister – one where he laid out his vision for our country, before today’s Speech from the Throne."

Yes, this speech was so important Steve didn't want any reporters there.
.

It's a small small small Con world

Top Conservative party operative says she didn’t know of plan to cover Duffy expense tab, reads the headline. 

Nor did she speak to Nigel Wright or Senator Gerstein about it apparently.

That top party op is Pierre Poilievre's ex, Jenni Byrne - Conservative Party director of political operations, national Con campaign director during the 2011 election, and Steve's once and perhaps future director of issues management in the PMO.

But then when you read the article, it turns out to be the Con Party spokesy Fred DeLorey answering all the reporter's questions on Byrne's behalf by email. Nothing directly from Byrne and no follow-up questions.

Mr. DeLorey, you may recall, also initially denied that the Cons were behind the January robocall pushpoll in Saskatchewan regarding electoral riding redistricting, while Poilievre, who once founded a robocall company of his own, said they were done by Chase Research. Eventually Chase Research was outed for having done the calls on behalf of the Cons as an affiliate of RackNine, the company used by Pierre Poutine to make the election fraud robocalls in Guelph.

For her part, Jenni Byrne denied the Cons had anything to do with the Guelph robocall election fraud, issuing an email to say that the Cons ran "a clean and ethical campaign", notwithstanding they had to fire Patrick Muttart from their election war room after he sent Jenni Byrne's close friend SunNews CEO Kory Teneycke that bogus Iggy war photo.

But back to the article. 
Commenters below it point out the obvious - the unlikelihood of the Con Party director of political operations knowing nothing about a PMO/Con Party plan to bribe a sitting senator causing them headaches for his silence. 
Three comments are the angry rebuttals of one commenter, William Donaldson.  
While he has every right to his defence of Ms Byrne, is this the same Bill Donaldson who was Pierre Poilievre's first campaign manager and Nepean-Carleton EDA president back in 2006 under Manager of Political Operations for Ontario, Jenni Byrne? [fourth link down marked DOC]

It's a small small small Con world. 
Pull on any Duffy/Senate/election fraud thread and the same names come up over and over again.
.

Pierre Poilievre, Minister for Democratic Reform

Who really thinks Skippy's appointment to Democratic Reform is about democratic reform? Ha!

Poilievre's appointment is about a coming battle over election reform and robocalls. It's been sixteen months since the Cons promised to bring in a bill addressing Mayrand's proposed reforms to prevent a repeat of last election's robocon fiasco.  The Cons have yet to consult Mayrand on it and he's been making public noises about their obstruction of his election fraud investigation as well.
Meanwhile the 2014 spring deadline past which reforms can't be implemented in time for the next election approaches...

Skippy's new job will be to attack Mayrand.
.
Thursday July8th Update :
 Glen McGregor : Poilievre brings robocalls expertise to new job

2014 Update : You have to admit I called it.
.

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 ...


.

Hello? Budget Senate and Audit Rentals?

 G&M : "The Conservative Party of Canada initially planned to repay Senator Mike Duffy’s improperly-claimed expenses from their taxpayer-subsidized war chest but balked after learning the debt owed was nearly three times higher."

Apparently $32,000 in taxpayer and donor war chest funds to whitewash the audit and shut Duffy up was an ok deal, but $90,000 - not.
Thank goodness for Nigel Wright and his cheque - stepping up just in time to save the Senate the embarrassment of clawing back Duffy's wages like they are doing with Brazeau's.
.
Noon update : Upon closer reading of RCMP Corporal Greg Horton's Information to Obtain, linked at "deal" in the post, I realize for the first time that this entire ridiculous saga - from Duffy becoming a PEI "resident" on the day he was announced to the Senate and his subsequent bogus expense claims through to the Stewart Olsen/Tkachuk Senate whitewash and Nigel Wright's cheque deal - this whole mess was predicated entirely on Duffy's mistaken notion that not being a resident of PEI would preclude him from being a senator. What a fucking prat.

Meanwhile, Paul Wells notes a prior in the Con record of buying inconvenient people off -a “binding agreement” for $50K with Harper in the loop to ditch unwanted Con candidate Alan Riddell in 2006.

But there's an earlier precedent still : Alliance MP Jim Hart stepped aside for Stockwell Day in Okanagan-Coquihalla in 2000, also for $50K, originally to be split 50/50 between the Party and the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. Hart had to sue for payment and signed the non-disclosure. Pushed to the Left and Loving It, a blog I really miss, quotes the relevant passages on this one from Preston Manning's book.
. 

Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks #6

Bunch up everyone to make room for Steve's latest Perp with Perks, Saulie Zajdel.

Arrested today and facing five counts of corruption, breach of trust, and fraud from 2006 to 2011 in the anti-corruption sweep that also bagged the mayor of Montreal, Zajdel is better known to us as the guy who was put on the public payroll as a "cultural liaison" by Heritage Min James Moore for an alleged $60G's to act as the Cons' shadow pretend MP in Irving Cotler's riding after he lost to him in the 2011 election.  

Here's Steve campaigning for Zajdel three days before Election Day.

Here's Nick Kouvalis from Campaign Research defending their        "reprehensible" calls made into the riding on Steve and Zajdel's behalf implying Cotler would not run.

After his election loss to Cotler, Zajdel gave speeches in the Mount Royal riding, such as one advertised as : “How the Federal Government Relates to Israel.” 

A 2011 election campaign vid uploaded by Zajdel, along with the tagline :

"Let us thank our prime minister Stephen Harper for how he supports the land of Israel, he is its strongest advocate of any leader in the world."

Steve and Saulie in happier times in a photo op featuring brown paper bags - a prop usually avoided by the Cons after Brian Mulroney.
Mulroney spoke at a $600-a-plate fundraiser for Dean Del Mastro, another Perp with Perks, this past May. [h/t Toe at Bread 'n Roses]

Brown bag photo h/t : Robert Jensen2 via Holly Stick in comments.
And to Canadian Cynic for the nudge.

Previous Perps editions with bios.
.