Senator Mike Duffy, facing 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery, has been acquitted. A judge has ruled his actions were not criminal, but can anyone say — with a straight face — that they were ethical?
If senators think Duffy’s acquittal is grounds for a return to business as usual, they should think again. The tolerance for greedy slurping at the public trough is much diminished.
Ontario Court Justice Charles Vaillancourt’s verdicts delivered Thursday were correct. Guilt must be proved beyond reasonable doubt, and Duffy’s lawyer raised plenty of doubt that the senator committed criminal offences. The judge accepted the defence that Duffy acted in accordance with the Senate’s loosey-goosey accounting rules.
As satisfying as it would have been to see Duffy doing the perp walk in an orange jumpsuit, that would not have been right. He is not the disease, but only its most visible symptom.
“Senator Duffy has been subjected for the last two-and-a-half, three years, to more public humiliation than probably any Canadian in history,” said defence counsel Donald Bayne. If there is any unfairness, it is that others should have stood in the ridicule spotlight with Duffy. Prominent among them should have been members of the Prime Minister’s Office staff.
Vaillancourt was blistering in his condemnation of the PMO’s role in the expense scandal, including manipulating senators like pawns on a chessboard and trying to arrange a secret payment to cover the expenses Duffy was required to repay.
Although the election purged the system, another prime minister is in office with a majority. We hope the judge’s remarks are heeded, and that the PMO doesn’t again become — as it has too often in the past — the centre for devious schemes that have little to do with serving the public and everything to do with protecting the prime minister and the party.
Duffy should not go back into the Senate with head held high — a humble demeanour would be more appropriate. The judge found he did not act criminally, but that isn’t to say he acted honourably.
Yes, the Senate residency rules were fuzzy, but it is unmitigated greed to claim expenses for living in Ottawa when there was no doubt that was his primary residence and had been for years.
The judge said Duffy “believed reasonably” that his travels “were properly expensed as parliamentary functions.” Duffy flew about the country to attend Conservative party fundraisers and expensed these events as official Senate business. One of those trips took place in 2010, when Duffy attended a charity event on Vancouver Island organized by local Conservatives. That cost taxpayers more than $10,000. The event raised $1,500.
Reasonable? Not even close. When Duffy injected doses of Senate business into his personal and partisan travels, it was at homeopathic levels.
As Duffy was conniving to get into the Senate, it was probably not with the idea of reforming the red chamber. But he has achieved some modest reform nonetheless, although inadvertently. Since the expenses scandal broke, the rules have been tightened.
And the public is keeping a closer watch on senators, MPs, MLAs and others who bill the public for expenses. That has too long been a realm of lavish living, of rich entitlement, of disregard for taxpayers’ money. The voters’ patience with $16 glasses of orange juice, junkets abroad and politicking on the public dime is wearing thin.
If the Senate truly is the chamber of sober second thought, senators will think long and hard about what the Duffy trial revealed, and will act to clear the Senate of its air of entitlement.
Duffy’s trial is over, but the Senate’s trial continues.
