Senator David Tkachuk's suddenly refreshed memory
On Tuesday Senator David Tkachuk, the former chair of the powerful Senate Internal Economy Committee, penned an op-ed sharply contesting Mike Duffy's testimony that he'd advised the newly sworn-in senator to claim his Ottawa home as a secondary residence.
Never happened.
Further, he cleared the air about the infamous Deloitte audit. Just doing his fiduciary duty, as one does.
Ho-hum. "End of story," says the Senator.
Yet when the RCMP met with him in July, 2013, Tkachuk’s memory of all the events was ahem, hazy, to put it politely. Even though the events had happened just a few weeks earlier, Cpl Horton's report on Tkachuk's police interview (at p. 51) reads like a tête-á-tête with an amnesiac:
1. “He does not remember if Senator Duffy requested changes to the press release in February announcing the referral to Deloitte…”
In fact, email evidence entered at trial suggest that Duffy did indeed request changes through Nigel Wright. See emails #27 and 28, below.
2. “He does recall that there was… a letter from Senator Duffy’s lawyer… He does not recall the contents, nor who the letter was addressed to”
It was addressed to him (email #144).
3. “He does not recall proposing a solution to Nigel Wright that if Senator Duffy paid the money back, the Steering committee would stop the Deloitte audit…”
The letter from Duffy's lawyer apparently made enough of an impression that, one minute after receiving it, Tkachuk phoned Duffy's office requesting a call on a land line (email #145). 40 minutes later an internal PMO email is circulated which outlines a proposed settlement by which Tkachuk's Senate Committee would halt the Deloitte audit upon repayment (#email 146).
That was snappy, but Tkachuk wouldn't remember any of it just six months later.
4. “He is not aware of anyone, including Senator Gerstein contacting Deloitte for the purpose of stopping the audit process on Senator Duffy. He did ask Deloitte at one of their meetings if they would be stopping the audit if Senator Duffy paid back. Deloitte auditors just looked at him and did not respond to his question.”
5. "His personal view is that if Senator Duffy had paid back the money, there was no need for the audit to continue. He may have brought the idea to the table, but also believed it was a political impossibility to halt the audit;"
Which is quite a different story than Tkachuk's spanking new memories today. Concerning his request for Deloitte to abandon the audit, Tkachuk wrote on Tuesday that,
"I broached (the idea) with the auditors in the presence of the Clerk and we decided that in the interest of full accountability and diligence the audit should proceed."
Although that's a direct conflict with what he told police at the time, we can all be grateful for the senator's suddenly renewed powers of recall.
Multiple emails then show Nigel Wright's attempts to reach the Deloitte auditors through Senator Irving Gerstein's personal contact inside the firm. The idea is to reach the Senate auditor through back-channels, and manipulate the final outcome. None of this worked, but it appears considerable effort went into the attempt.
Gerstein checks back with the PMO at 10:19 am March 6, apparently reporting that the group must now include Senator Beth Marshall (email #311). Through email #313 sent an hour later, Nigel Wright informs the group that Tkachuk "would be ok with all this, just needs to be kept in the loop."
No comments:
Post a Comment