To measure the magnitude of the hit inflicted on Stephen Harper’s political management by Wednesday’s RCMP allegations pertaining to the Senate spending scandal, consider that the only thing that would have made that damage worse would have been for the police to drag the prime minister himself into its net.
The 81-page document filed in court by lead RCMP investigator Cpl. Greg Horton stops short of that. He concludes that he is “not aware of any evidence that the prime minister was involved in the repayment or reimbursement of money to Senator Duffy or his lawyer.”
But that should offer only a minimum of solace to the government. For the picture painted by the RCMP — based on the evidence that it has gathered to date in the Duffy-Wright affair — suggests that the ethical rot that led to the scandal spreads beyond a couple of bad apples in the Conservative barrel.
Nigel Wright, a man who Harper once elevated to a position of influence second only to his own on Parliament Hill, is now alleged to have broken the Criminal Code in the exercise of his public duties.
There have in the past been Canadian senior officials who have been alleged to have run afoul of the law but never at the level of prime ministerial chief of staff or right under the nose of the prime minister himself.
According to the RCMP, the story does not begin and end with Wright, Duffy and the transaction that led the former to reimburse the latter’s housing allowance out of personal funds.
As part of the deal accepted by the PMO, a Senate report was doctored and an independent audit was manipulated, all to whitewash Duffy and all with the help of a handful of senior Conservatives.
Marjory LeBreton was Harper’s leader in the Senate over the episode. Carolyn Stewart Olsen is a former press secretary to Harper whom he subsequently appointed to the upper house. She and David Tkachuk, a veteran Conservative senator, both sat on the committee that oversaw the audit in Duffy’s expenses.
The RCMP alleges that they all actively colluded in the cleansing operation.
There’s more: only a few weeks ago, Irving Gerstein — the senator who oversees the Conservative war chest — told a party convention that he never considered using party funds to reimburse Duffy’s housing allowance on his behalf.
The RCMP evidence again says otherwise. Emails suggest that Gerstein was willing to bail Duffy out until it came to light that he owed three times more money than had initially been estimated.
But perhaps the most politically damaging feature of Wednesday’s filing is the suggestion that Harper — even as the RCMP says it has found no evidence that he had a hand in the scheme itself — was more in the loop of things than he has let on to date.
According to Wright’s correspondence, for instance, he initially sought and obtained Harper’s approval to reimburse Duffy’s expenses at the time when he was negotiating a reimbursement out of Conservative party funds.
It was only after that arrangement fell through that Wright decided to clear Duffy’s expense slate with his own money.
“The PM knows, in broad terms only, that I personally assisted Duffy when I was getting him to agree to repay the expenses,” Wright testified about that aspect of the case last May.
And with that, Wednesday’s affidavit gave the opposition parties in the House of Commons enough fuel to keep the government’s feet to the fire for the foreseeable future. And who could blame them for doing so?
To sum up: the RCMP alleges that people placed by Harper in the government’s and the Senate’s chain of command either broke the law or took part in a coverup designed to make a scandal go away, but leaves the prime minister himself off the hook and this is what has now come to pass for a good day at the office for the Conservatives.
Chantal Hébert is a syndicated Toronto Star national affairs writer.