The Revenge of Mike Duffy
Criminal charges facing the senator from P.E.I. may be beside the point. In attending court for the entire trial, Maclean’s learned a surprising, dark truth about R. v. Duffy.
It is hard to fathom that Sen. Mike Duffy’s aim during his 62-day trial, apart from defeating the manifold bribery, breach of trust and fraud charges laid against him by the RCMP, was anything other than to topple the man he took to be his true adversary in the courtroom—Stephen Harper, who throughout most of these proceedings remained prime minister.
Here was a topsy-turvy turn of events. Once, Michael Dennis Duffy had been the genie of Cavendish, P.E.I., the Conservative Party of Canada’s in-house raconteur, itinerant fundraiser, flag-bearer, circus performer. An upstart from the regions who’d made good in Ottawa, he had returned home to rain federal-government largesse like manna on his boyhood province.
Now here he was, confined, day after day, to courtroom 33 in the downtown Ottawa courthouse—embattled, all but undone, alone save for his wife, Heather, a handful of stalwart pals and his lawyer, the formidable Donald Bayne. On the docket, they called it R. v. Duffy. Really the Ol’ Duff was at war with the centralizing powerhouse of Harper and his “kids in short pants” at the Prime Minister’s Office. Perhaps no Ottawa clique has valued secrecy and control as dearly as Harper’s office, and no keyhole is more revealing of that gang’s capacity for scheming than the trial of Mike Duffy. If Duffy himself is hardly a sympathetic figure, neither were the PMO staffers who testified as witnesses for the Crown. Four months after Justin Trudeau’s Liberals swept the Tories from power promising “sunny ways,” the Duffy matter remains the best case study of how dark things can get.
“I wasn’t hired because I was teeth and hair,” Duffy told the court in December, making reference to the more superficial attributes associated with on-air TV personalities, of which he has few. “I was hired because I work long and hard, and broke stories. And that is the formula for my success in life. Do what the boss wants, work harder than everybody else. That’s been my mantra throughout. Because nothing I’ve done has come to me easily.”
His most recent boss had been Stephen Harper. Duffy had worked for him, hard, and Harper had cast him to the wolves—cast him out at the first opportunity.
His most recent boss had been Stephen Harper. Duffy had worked for him, hard, and Harper had cast him to the wolves—cast him out at the first opportunity.
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