Video: Senators address the ongoing suspension debate as they arrive for a rare Friday sitting
TORONTO – The Senate is taking the unusual step of sitting on a Friday to continue debate over the Harper government’s bid to suspend three former Conservative senators without pay.
The debate over the future of Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau has dragged on for three days.
The upper chamber is scheduled to resume debate today, even though it does not normally sit on Friday.
Yesterday, a staunch Conservative said he cannot support his government’s move to suspend three senators without pay, as it could set a dangerous precedent and deny the senators’ fundamental rights to due process.
Conservative Senator Don Plett, a former president of the Conservative Party of Canada, passionately voiced his concerns of the precedent the upper chamber could set if it passes these motions. For that, he said, he could not support his government’s motion without any amendments.
The debate got personal yesterday with a war of words between Duffy and Marjory LeBreton, the former government leader in the Senate.
LeBreton, a key player in the versions of events both Wallin and Duffy presented this week, took the floor Thursday in an attempt to negate the explosive version of events Duffy shared.
Duffy had said the prime minister, during a private meeting with his chief of staff and the senator, ordered Duffy repay the housing allowances the Senate ruled he’d collected inappropriately.
“The story Sen. Duffy spun in this place was not based on fact,” LeBreton said.
Duffy said he did not want to pay the $90,000 because doing so could be interpreted as an admission of guilt – a verdict he steadfastly denies.
The Senate will have to vote on that amendment before voting on whether to suspend Wallin, Brazeau and Duffy.
Wallin read from a statement Wednesday, claiming her reputation, decades in the making, is in tatters all because of personal and political vendettas involving confidantes of the prime minister.
Wallin, who left the Conservative caucus in May, accused former colleagues Senators Carolyn Stewart Olsen and LeBreton of leaking information about her to the media.
“(Carolyn Stewart Olsen) and Marjory LeBreton could not abide the fact that I was outspoken in caucus, or critical of their leadership – or that my level of activity brought me into the public eye and once garnered the praise of the prime minister,” Wallin read. “They resented that – they resented me being an activist senator.”
Wallin was the last of three senators to have the opportunity to defend her job and reputation. She indicated she will be speaking again Friday.
Duffy and Brazeau spoke Tuesday, when the Senate launched its debate on the potential suspensions of the three senators in question.
-with files from Amy Minsky and The Canadian Press
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