Harper has insisted Wright acted on his own, though the prime minister’s story has evolved.
Advertisement
“I was quite surprised”, testified Perrin.
Campaign: “I’m not going to discuss individual things before the court”.
“But before we say this is having no impact (on the Tories’ standing in polls) it is possible that this is creating a barrier moving forward – a glass ceiling (on support)”. He took his campaign on to Winnipeg later in the day. I remember it very vividly because there were relatively few occasions when I met with him in his office.
“At some point during my sort of summary of this information, Ray Novak entered Mr. Wright’s office and took a seat at the, what’s actually the head of the table, so I was directly across from Mr. Wright and Mr. Novak was seated to my right and to Mr. Wright’s left”, Mr. Perrin testified.
Of the more than one million tweets that used more than five Canadian politics and election hashtags, Harper’s name came up most often in relation to Duffy – a helpful sign to opposition parties trying to push the scandal closer the prime minister. They included calling off the audit.
Now, that didn’t force Duffy to then start claiming expenses on the Ottawa home in which he’d lived for years, or engage in the other abuses of the taxpayer’s dime with which he’s charged.
Wright told the court he didn’t lie to the prime minister, but just didn’t think he needed to hear the details.
He brushed off testimony from the Mike Duffy trial earlier in the week that suggested Novak knew of a plan to have Duffy repay questioned expenses with a cheque from Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright.
Harper himself has rejected questions from reporters specifically on Novak’s knowledge of the payment.
Harper once again said he holds only Duffy and Wright responsible for any wrongdoing.
Perrin’s tenure at the PMO in 2012-2013 was not smooth sailing.
NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus said Wright’s testimony – which wrapped up this week after six days on the stand – produced significant new evidence about Wright’s role as well as that of at least a dozen other senior staff in the PMO, including Novak.
On Friday, Perrin indicated he believed Harper had signed off on the plan.
For Harper, the one-time opposition leader who campaigned on the promise to abolish the Senate, the Duffy and Meredith scandals are hardly the only ones to hit his government.
It was clear, said Perrin, that the PMO and Senate Conservative leadership’s objective was to “protect” senators. “And in this case I have held the two people accountable who are responsible”, Harper said in King Township, Ont. north of Toronto. “I identified that it is the Senate who determines whether a senator was eligible to sit or not and… that a senator should be resident in the province of their appointment”.
Advertisement
Claude Denis, a political science professor at the University of Ottawa, said the Duffy trial feeds into already established narratives for both Harper’s fervent supporters and his opponents. How can we condone electing a prime minister whose loyalties to our country are questionable?
