Political interference at its most egregious

The Duffy trial’s smoking gun just blew up in Harper’s face

Define ‘audit’. Google it and you get this: “An official inspection of an individual’s or organization’s accounts, typically by an independent body.”

Note that last phrase, please, because it’s key to suspended Senator Mike Duffy’s defence. Audits are supposed to be free from interference. Their credibility relies on their impartiality, which is why they’re typically performed by outside experts, such as lawyers and accountants.

Apparently, the Prime Minister’s Office doesn’t use Google. Otherwise, how on earth could it have justified interfering in the 2013 report on auditing firm Deloitte’s investigation into Duffy’s expenses — and then passing off said report as the whole truth and nothing but?''''

According to RCMP documents filed at the disgraced senator’s trial, PMO staff didn’t want an audit to determine the legitimacy of Duffy’s spending habits — they wanted to use it as a tool to exonerate their embattled star Senate recruit. “A purpose of this is to put Mike in a different bucket and to prevent him from going squirrely in a bunch of weekend panel shows,” then-PMO Chief of Staff Nigel Wright emailed to his colleagues. The act of obtaining outside legal advice on Duffy’s residency issues was intended to “protect senator Duffy,” according to Senate staffer Chris Montgomery in another exchange.

What is the ethical litmus test for protecting the PM? Is it deciding to excise a report on an independent audit? Is it counselling a senator to lie? Is it cutting him a cheque for $90,000 to shut him up? Most importantly, how far up the chain of command did these plans go?

But since the audit didn’t paint Duffy in a flattering enough light, the report on it had to be, ahem, altered. This was apparently done by Conservative Senators David Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart Olsen, outside the normal Senate committee process. According to RCMP Cpl. Benoit Jolette, “the report, we’ve learned through the investigation, had made its way to the PMO, to their office, and, I guess, revisions, what they wanted to have written in the report, was done.”





READ MORE: http://www.ipolitics.ca/2015/05/07/the-duffy-trials-smoking-gun-just-blew-up-in-harpers-face/