Conservative leader Stephen Harper merits mention in several emails released today in the trial of Senator Mike Duffy. While the emails don’t indicate exactly how much Harper knew of Duffy’s situation or of Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright paying $90,000 of Duffy’s questionable expenses, according to the emails he was informed of some aspects of the problem.
In testimony on Wednesday, Wright said that Harper did not know that Duffy hadn’t repaid the expenses with his own money.
Harper echoed those comments at a media availability Thursday, saying, “I was told Mr. Duffy was going to repay those expenses, he would explain his own story on that and that to my knowledge is exactly what he did until I found out otherwise. When I found out otherwise, I took steps to make sure the people that are responsible for that have been held accountable.”
READ MORE: Mike Duffy’s lawyer suggests Nigel Wright ‘deliberately deceived’ Canadians
Here are what the emails show us:
Stephen Harper was briefed by his staff on the Senate residency issue. The briefing reads in part, “Your office is working with Senate leadership to bring an end to concerns regarding the constitutional residency of some of our Senators.”
“Your office has worked with Senator Duffy on a plan for him to return money that he incorrectly collected when he declared his long time home in Kanata as a secondary residence for expenses,” it also said, before mentioning a plan to define Senate residency requirements in a way that would help advance the proposed solution for Duffy.
After that briefing note, Harper appears to have told Wright that he was of the view that ownership of property equates to residence for the purposes of the law in question.
Later that day, Wright emailed Senator Marjory LeBreton and offered to express Harper’s views on stop-overs to and from home to her verbally – an issue which related to now-suspended senator Pamela Wallin.
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Harper had comments about a report by the Senate Audit Subcommittee. “The PM mentioned to me that this report should say that all Senators are qualified to sit in the Senate on the basis of owning a residence,” wrote Chris Woodcock, a staffer in the Prime Minister’s Office at the time. Woodcock later wrote that he had rewritten the report extensively.
Harper knew, “in broad terms only”, that Wright personally assisted Duffy, wrote Wright on May 14, 2013. Later that evening, CTV reported that Duffy had made a “secret deal” with Wright. One day later, the PMO confirmed that Wright had paid Duffy’s expenses himself.
Harper was asked specifically about this email at a media event Thursday and whether he knew that Wright had written a cheque for Duffy. He replied, “He told me that on May the 15th, when I became aware that in fact Mr. Duffy had not repaid the expenses as I had requested, as Mr. Duffy had claimed he had done. When I found out that was not true, I made that immediately public.”
Read all the emails released at the Mike Duffy trial on August 13 below:
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