Now… Let Us All Savage Mike Duffy By Robin Mathews Dec. 22, 2015

A long, long road of sleaze, near criminal, and criminal attacks on Canadian democracy … and much more of ugly behaviour … marked the Stephen Harper Conservative years from 2006 to 2015. Almost numberless were the violations of the trust that Canadians place in their national government.

A part of the aftermath of that orgy of sleaze is the attempt by what I call the neo-fascist Big Media, now, to paper over – even to praise – the behaviour of those years. The (literal) “papering over” of the Harper years is in full swing by those major newspapers that supported him in the 2015 election even despite Conservative last-campaign-days devoted to strident racism and fear-mongering. During the long years up to that time, sleaze was everywhere a person looked ….

Even in the last days of Conservative power, dirty tricks were the name of the game.

Elizabeth Thompson and then Michael Harris (ipolitics) remind us that before the 2015 Election was even called, the PMO and Stephen Harper re-appointed top civil servant favourites when they weren’t anywhere near normal re-appointment date. To move them out will cost taxpayers millions of dollars if those faux-appointees don’t agree to slip away quietly. Every fake re-appointment bears Stephen Harper’s mark. As does the $90,000.00 Nigel Wright handed to Mike Duffy as a personal cheque.

Duffy testified in trial that Harper told him he had to pay back money even though he didn’t really owe it!

All of that is to say again that the Mike Duffy trial looks like a sham from start to finish. For instance -

Why was Duffy alone charged? With a ridiculous 31 charges? And an apparently fake bribery charge for headline purposes? Where are the other “bad” senators?

How is it - THE QUESTION again – that Nigel Wright could hand Mike Duffy a bribery cheque of $90,000.00 which facilitated Duffy being charged with receiving that cheque as a bribe – but Wright is not charged with paying a bribe for writing it and handing it to Duffy?

How is it that on October 20, 2015, finding that Stephen Harper was merely an MP, Defence lawyer Donald Bayne didn’t immediately apply to have citizen Harper testify at the Mike Duffy trial?

And how did the bribery charge continue when prosecution lawyer Joseph Neuberger told the CBC ”a conviction on the bribery charge may be unlikely”. (Advocate Daily.com) And how could Defence lawyer Donald Bayne let Nigel Wright slip away without pushing him very hard on the cheque he paid Mike Duffy as a bribe – pushing until it was all over the front pages of Canadian newspapers and forced into editorials questioning the credibility of the trial?

Something stinks.

If the bribery charge against Mike Duffy was rigged by RCMP and Prosecution at the instancing of the Harper/PMO gaggle, then all in the know at the trial would want to soft-peddle the issue … hoping it would somehow go away almost unseen.

Who has accepted all the absurdity of what seems to be a staged trial? The RCMP investigators. RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson. The judge and the Crown Prosecutor on the case. The Defence lawyer Donald Bayne. Mike Duffy himself… as well as all, all, all the conventional press and media. Something stinks.

The “something” that stinks might just be said to concentrate itself in the Christie Blatchford writing on the Duffy case. Apparently looking for an active ‘cleaning agent’ in the careful attempts to erase the record of Conservative crime from 2006 to 2015, Ms. Blatchford and her employers appear to have found what she needs. She hasn’t merely filled columns of print, but pages of it (obviously called for by Postmedia power brokers who then spread her “dispatches” across Canada).

What better way to take attention away from the Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper which actively crippled and exploited the Canadian Senate for dirty use than by concentrating on Mike Duffy (probably among the lowest ten per cent of Conservative bad actors)? MAKE HIM the big story of Conservative wrong-doing from 2006 to 2015.

What does this apparent across-the-board chicanery mean – with all the apparent across-the-board savaging of Mike Duffy? It constitutes such a stupendously large set of apparent acts of cooperation to shield the Conservative wrecking action in the Senate, in the PMO, in the House of Commons, in the Conservative Party of Canada that one can scarcely believe what is there in front of us all….

Readers who say “none of what has been written in this column so far is anything but sheer nonsense” might seem very clear-headed. Except … except there is just too much evidence of trial chicanery to say outright that it isn’t there.

Can we predict the outcome of the Mike Duffy trial? Mr. Justice Charles Vaillancourt might send Mike Duffy to jail for several years for – as a public servant (a senator) accepting a bribe in order to (a) do a favour to Stephen Harper and his cabinet, and (b) to seek to wipe out or disguise his own petty wrong-doing. Then Mr. Justice Vaillancourt could pile on censure (and perhaps more jail time) for all the other violations of trust that Mike Duffy (along with many, many other senators) is alleged to have engaged in over expense account infractions … and other misdeeds.

The betting – from the information in this column – all goes the other way.

Mr. Justice Vaillancourt will decide that the acceptance of a bribe cannot be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. (Mike Duffy will sigh in relief, and Nigel Wright will be able to come out of hiding overseas and return to Canada.)

The judge will decide that trust practice and lax expense spending rules make it impossible to attach judicial blame to what Mike Duffy did in expenditure. (Duffy will sigh with relief, as will the Honourable Pamela Wallin and many, many other senators.)

The judge will decide that since Stephen Harper appointed Mike Duffy as senator for Prince Edward Island, Duffy’s claims for residence expenses in Ottawa are not clear enough as violations for a judge to rule upon….

Mr. Justice Charles Vaillancourt may find a wrong-doing or two (unique to Duffy) – such as perhaps the Ottawa living expenses - that he can censure and punish with a suspended sentence, house-arrest, and time spent doing constructive community work (the judge showing grand human generosity - in the light of Mr. Duffy’s ill-health).

And so millions and millions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent in Harper and PMO-directed Senate chicanery, in (what became faux) RCMP investigation and reporting, in Prosecution Office time and expertise shaping a dubious case, in Nigel Wright’s improper activity, and in all the other many, many activities related to other Conservative wrong-doings carefully hidden from Canadians. And now we can look forward to the outcome - the trial outcome (costing a huge amount) doing nothing but covering-up the truth, with Mike Duffy fronting for the innumerable crimes that will never be faced.

That is why the almost unanimous cry has gone up – Far Right Media inspired and Conservative Party approved. It’s a huge smokescreen that’s working wonderfully well:

“Now’s the time… Now, Now. NOW… Let us all savage Mike Duffy!”


Contact: Robin Mathews