There were also a clusterfuck of other allegations that sounded pretty shady (dude was charging taxpayers for funerals he attended), compounded by the fact that former Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff Nigel Wright issued a $90,000 cheque to cover some of Duffy’s seemingly improper expenses.
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Ontario Court Justice Charles Vaillancourt delivered the verdicts of “not guilty” to all 31 fraud, breach of trust and bribery charges that Duffy was facing. And in a sense, he convicted Mr.
The Crown accused Duffy of fraudulently charging the trip to the Senate in order to see his daughter’s play, but its witnesses, including Lunn himself, although vague about whether the invitation was ever finalized, didn’t conclusively say it was a made-up excuse for Duffy to fly to Vancouver.
“I think we’re stuck with this institution, so we have to make it work”, says UBC political scientist Max Cameron, who points out full-out reform of the Senate will be nearly impossible to accomplish, given the need for all provinces to agree.
There, the Duffy reverberations echoed even Thursday as Sen. Does the reading of these emails give the impression that Senator Duffy was going to do as he was told or face the consequences?
An audit calculated that Duffy spent only 30 per cent of his time at his Cavendish cottage on the island, but Vaillancourt found Duffy honestly and reasonably believed it was proper to designate his P.E.I home as his primary residence. It was the first in a long chain of events that would, among other things, eventually force the departure of Nigel Wright, then the prime minister’s chief of staff. But not everyone saw the Duffy controversy as an indictment of the party or the Conservative government.
Vaillancourt said he accepted the defence’s argument that the senator was a pawn in the PMO’s strategy to manage the fallout of media reports about the validity of Duffy’s residency and expense claims. Pamela Wallin walked out of a meeting of independent senators – seven of which were recently appointed by the now-governing Liberals.
The trial continued as Harper launched last year’s election campaign, putting him on the hustings as the court heard that the prime minister’s office was deeply involved in trying to make the whole affair disappear.
Meanwhile, following his acquittal, Senate officials have announced that Duffy is now back in the senate and once again has access to his office and all the resources of the upper chamber.
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Vaillancourt suggested in his ruling that the Senate needs to clarify the rules governing spending.
