NDP, Liberals bombard Harper on Senate scandal during question period

The House of Commons took on the aura of an inquisition Tuesday as Stephen Harper was grilled for the first time in Parliament about the role his office played in the Senate spending scandal.

Eschewing the histrionics and partisan broadsides that normally dominate question period, Opposition leaders posed short, sharp, relentless queries about when the prime minister learned his chief of staff had personally footed the $90,000 bill for Sen. Mike Duffy’s invalid expense claims.

The onslaught elicited no new information as Harper stuck resolutely to his story that Wright acted on his own, without informing the prime minister or anyone else in his office.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair showed off his skill as a lawyer, peppering Harper with 14 pointed questions:

“When did the prime minister first speak with Nigel Wright about Mike Duffy’s expenses?” he asked.

“How many times did he speak with Nigel Wright in the week preceding his resignation?”

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau followed suit.

“Will the prime minister commit to releasing all records, emails, documents and correspondence relating to any arrangement between Mr. Wright and Mr. Duffy?” Trudeau asked.

“Will the prime minister commit to having everyone involved in this affair, including himself, testify about their involvement in a public forum, under oath?”

Harper committed to nothing and offered little new information.

He insisted he first learned on May 15 that Wright had cut a personal cheque to pay for Duffy’s invalid expense claims.

“Until the morning of May 15, when Mr. Wright informed me that he had written a personal cheque to Mr. Duffy so that he could repay his expenses, it had been my understanding that Mr. Duffy had paid from his own personal resources,” Harper told the Commons.

He added that there was no legal agreement between Wright and Duffy, “to my knowledge.”

Opposition leaders weren’t buying it.

Mulcair pointed out that Duffy ceased co-operating with external auditors who were examining his expenses as soon as the $90,000 was paid and that he sent an email suggesting he “stayed silent on the orders of the Prime Minister’s Office.”

“Who told Mike Duffy to remain silent?” Mulcair demanded.

“These are not matters I am privy to,” replied Harper. “This is an email from Mike Duffy, who is no longer a member of our caucus and certainly never conveyed that information to me.”

Mulcair further noted that the Conservative majority on the Senate’s internal economy committee “whitewashed” its report on the audit of Duffy’s expenses, deleting references that the rules on housing allowances are clear and unambiguous..

He pointed out that Sen. Carolyn Stewart Olsen, Harper’s former press secretary, moved the motion to delete the damning paragraph from the Duffy report — although the same paragraph featured prominently in the committee’s reports on two other senators’ expenses claims.

Harper insisted he had no conversation with Stewart Olsen about Duffy’s expenses and maintained his office had nothing to do with the Senate committee’s report.

“It is the author of its own report. That report mirrors the recommendations of an independent audit,” the prime minister maintained.

Harper’s version of events was dismissed as implausible.

“This is what the prime minister would have Canadians believe,” said Trudeau. “The chief of staff walks into the Prime Minister’s Office Wednesday morning, looks him in the eye and said that, unbeknownst to him, he had secretly paid a sitting legislator $90,000 to obstruct an audit.

“If that were true, the prime minister should have fired Nigel Wright on the spot. Instead, he spent five days defending him and calling him honourable (before accepting Wright’s resignation).”

Trudeau also noted that the first news report about Wright’s involvement surfaced on the evening of May 14 and included a statement from the PMO assuring Canadians that no public funds had been used to repay Duffy’s claims.

“Is the prime minister not aware, so completely, about what is going on in his own office that he did not know the night before when the news broke?”

Down the hallway during question period in the Senate, the opposition was grilling the government on a related topic.

Liberal Senate leader James Cowan — also a lawyer — wondered why a report on Duffy was edited to remove references to “clear” and “unambiguous” rules on residence expenses, while the words stayed in reports about two other senators, Mac Harb and Patrick Brazeau.

Sen. David Tkachuk, the Conservative chairman of the committee studying the expense debacle, said it’s because Duffy repaid the $90,000 he owed.

“How can the fact of Sen. Duffy’s repayment affect your opinion or the committee’s opinion as to the clarity or lack of clarity or the unambiguity or ambiguity of the language? said Cowan.

“The two are completely unrelated. What’s the connection here? What am I missing?”

Tkachuk bristled at the implication of a whitewash.

“You know what, you have a narrative, and you insist on that narrative. The narrative is wrong,” he fumed.

“Sen. Duffy said he may have been mistaken, and he delivered a cheque, which is exactly what you and Sen. (Marjory) LeBreton asked us to do, which was to collect the money with interest.”

Tuesday’s grilling took place shortly before the start of a meeting of the secretive Senate committee studying Duffy’s expenses, a meeting that Conservatives on the committee agreed to hold in public.

Liberals in the Senate — as well as Duffy himself — have been lobbying for the committee to open the meeting. They’ve also suggested that Tkachuk should step down as chairman of the committee.

Tkachuk has disclosed that he discussed the review of Duffy’s expenses with Wright, who resigned five days after his involvement in the affair came to light.

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