Canada’s election campaign is wrapping up its third week, but much of it has played out just steps from Parliament Hill – in Courtroom 33, where a senator appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper is standing trial.
Advertisement
Perrin told Crown prosecutor Jason Neubauer that there was no further discussion of Duffy’s reluctance to go along with the agreement orchestrated by the Prime Minister’s Office.
Novak has been kept out of the public eye and away from media travelling with Harper’s campaign in recent days.
“I took a seat at his boardroom table”.
Wright testified here that he was so offended by Duffy’s piggery (my word, not his) that he decided he’d repay his expenses, because he felt the Canadian taxpayer deserved it. He also attempted to make good the promises he’d made Duffy in convincing him that he was in the wrong, ethically if not legally.
“I looked to my right to see Mr. Novak’s reaction and he didn’t have any reaction”, Perrin told the court.
The NDP sent a letter earlier this week to the RCMP commissioner, asking him to consider laying charges against Wright and up to a dozen other staffers in the Prime Minister’s Office for their alleged roles in covering up the Duffy expenses scandal.
He sparked a series of online memes and images, with his face superimposed onto Conservative signs, making him something of a campaign folk hero.
“He came over and sat across from me and I gave him a short briefing on how the call was likely to go”.
Perrin’s tenure at the PMO in 2012-2013 was not smooth sailing.
Mr. Perrin and Ms. Payne arranged the last-ditch direct conversation between Mr. Wright and Ms. Payne as.
“Goodness, what a relief that’s finally wrapped up and I’ll never have to think about all this ever again”, Perrin may have thought at the time.
“The issue of trust is at the heart of what we are seeing come from the Duffy trial and, indeed, from the prime minister’s behaviour over the past weeks, months and even years”, he said.
The adjective that was applied to one of the reporters who was hounding a Harper supporter was very fitting and described the whole delusional group of frenzied bottom feeders.
The lawyer was testifying for a second day at Duffy’s trial on 31 counts of fraud, breach of trust and bribery.
It was clear, said Perrin, that the PMO and Senate Conservative leadership’s objective was to “protect” senators. Duffy’s housing allowance claims and other expenses, which the Senator had until then been putting off as his lawyer continued pressing for commitments from the PMO for the extraction of Sen.
Advertisement
“As counsel in the matter, I was clearly left in the dark and my client was not informing me”, Perrin told the court. Nearly a quarter of the respondents who identified themselves as leaning towards the right-of-center Conservatives said Harper’s account was untrue.
