“The culture has really changed. There’s always been some attempt to persuade your own colleagues to go along, God knows I tried, but that’s the culture. In the Senate, in the House of Commons, Members stand up and they’re reading from a script that’s been prepared for them by some people over there in the PMO,” said Lowell Murray, a former Progressive Conservative Senator who served in the Upper Chamber for 32 years, including seven-and-a-half as the Senate government leader, in a telephone interview with The Hill Times last week. “In general, it is a team sport, but they should never allow themselves—especially a committee like Internal Economy—to be so controlled that the PMO would be reaching in to decide what should be in a committee report, on a matter internal to the Senate. It wasn’t as if it was a big trade agreement or a bunch of Criminal Code amendments or something that the government would have a legitimate interest in.”
CTV reported in May that the steering committee of the Senate Internal Economy Committee, the Senate’s management committee that oversees the Chamber’s administration, “whitewashed” the final report on Senator Mike Duffy’s housing expense claims. The original draft report used stronger language to say that Sen. Duffy broke rules, but the final report that was made public did not include those portions. At the time, then-government Senate leader Marjory LeBreton said, “It is not a cover-up. I am absolutely comfortable with the process.”
There were three Senators on the steering committee, Conservatives David Tkachuk and Carolyn Stewart Olsen and Liberal George Furey. At the time, Sen. Furey said he voted against the changes. When asked whether the PMO ordered either Sen. Tkachuk or Sen. Stewart Olsen to change the report, Sen. Stewart Olsen told media: “No. The report is as we produced it, we changed it ourselves as we edited.”
Similarly, Sen. Tkachuk said that he sought advice from the PMO and other Senators and was not ordered to make the changes or write the report in a specific way. He told media he had a “number of discussions” with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) former chief of staff Nigel Wright, who gave Sen. Duffy $90,000 to repay his ineligible expenses.
An email exchange revealed in court documents filed by RCMP Cpl. Greg Horton recently suggests that was not the case, however.
In his information to obtain a production order, Cpl. Horton said, “On March 1, Senator Stewart Olsen e-mailed Nigel Wright about something that happened the day before: ‘Hi Nigel, just a quick note to say that I am always ready to do exactly what is asked but it would have been a great help to know in advance what the strategy was.’ Nigel Wright responded: ‘Please stay close to Chris and Patrick, Carolyn. As for Wednesday night and Thursday, we got a draft report, we asked for necessary changes. You should have been part of those conversations. As for strategy, I am extremely frustrated that we seem to be unable to get either the subcommittee or Deloitte to the point where it is agreed that the Deloitte examination of Duffy’s secondary residence claim is completed by the combination of (i) Deloitte determining the amount of expenses incurred by reason of the claim of secondary residence and (ii) Mike agreeing to repay that amount. Once we know that repayment will permit the subcommittee and Deloitte to state that that matter is resolved, then the repayment will follow forthwith. Somehow, despite agreement to this in advance from you, Marjory and David, no one on the Senate side is delivering. Chris and Patrick are our point people on this, please stay close to them and help make this happen.’”
Later in the email exchange, Senator Stewart Olsen responded: “Confidentially both Marj[ory LeBreton] and David [Tkachuk] are telling each other the audit will not be pulled. … I think the only way to do this is to tell Deloitte that we are satisfied with the repayment and end the audit. The non-partisan nature of the committee is a problem as is the clerk who seems to have his own agenda. Mind you it is a good agenda. He wants to clean up the place. In fairness, Chris [Woodcock] did talk to me about revisions but said he was talking to Dave so I left it. Checked with Dave later to see if they had spoken and was he okay with revisions and he said yes. I don’t envy you your job. As I said though, if I had known from the start where we needed to finish it prob[ably] could have been managed.”
Additionally, the court documents say that on May 8, Patrick Rogers sent an email to Mr. Wright, Mr. Woodcock, and David van Hemmen at 1:54 p.m. with the subject line “Report on Duffy.” Mr. Rogers wrote: “The meeting is about to begin at 2 p.m. I just met with CSO [Carolyn Stewart Olsen]. I gave her our changes. She agreed with them 100 per cent. I reinforced with her that the implementing of all the changes to the report was the fulfillment of her commitment to Nigel and our building. She indicated she understood this.”
At 2:34 p.m. Sen. Stewart Olsen replied, saying: “So I was too optimistic. [LeBreton staffer Chris] Montgomery says we as Senators should not compromise ourselves.” Mr. Rogers forwarded that email to Mr. Wright stating, “Here is the latest from the committee. This is unbelievable.”
At 2:35 p.m. Mr. Rogers responded to Sen. Stewart Olsen stating: “This is the direction. You are not compromising yourself. You’re fulfilling commitments that were made.”
At 3:30 Mr. Rogers emailed Mr. Wright and Mr. Woodcock stating: “I am in a meeting with Montgomery, LeBreton, Sandy [Melo, staffer to Ms. LeBreton], CSO [Carolyn Stewart Olsen]. This is epic. Montgomery is the problem.” Mr. Wright responded: “Should I come over?”
At 3:42 p.m. Mr. Woodcock emailed: “We’re done, Patrick made it happen.”
Mr. Murray said that this incident should be a call to Members of Parliament and Senators.
“I think that email and that issue should make every private Member of Parliament and Senator of any party who is being subject to attempted control by the leader look in the mirror and consider his or her responsibility,” he said, noting that in 32 years and serving two prime ministers, Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell, he’s “never seen any attempt … to try to do that, to control a committee or Senator.”
Mr. Murray said while his Cabinet colleagues would “grumble” that their bills were not getting passed quickly enough, or resented certain lines of questioning by their own PC Senators, there was nothing “The Centre,” or the PMO, could do.
“They’d bitch or complain about it, but I never felt, never, never felt that there was an attempt to dictate or control. As a matter of fact, on several occasions, we didn’t like it one bit, but we had to accept PC Senators voting against the government and in some cases helping to bring down a government bill,” he said. “There was never an attempt to apply sanctions on them. … We just had to grin and bear it. That’s Parliament.”
It’s not the case anymore, he said, noting that “it’s pathetic” to see quite accomplished Parliamentarians having to only say preapproved lines from their leaders.
“It was quite demeaning to see them going on [TV] just regurgitating these talking points that has been given to them by PMO. That’s the whole culture now,” Mr. Murray said. “I don’t know why the Senators go along with it, but I guess they feel that they’re members of the team, and they should not stray from the party message or the government message and they should cooperate and all the rest of it.”
Former Senate clerk Gordon Barnhart, who served from 1989 to 1994, said that during his time, he doesn’t recall the PMO getting involved with internal Senate matters. “I don’t recall the PMO being an issue. Maybe it was, maybe they were giving instructions to individual Senators … [but] I don’t think it was when I was there,” he told The Hill Times.
Mr. Barnhart said Sen. Stewart Olsen’s comment in her email about current Senate Clerk Gary O’Brien having “his own agenda … to clean up the place” was interesting, because that was his own agenda.
“I was there five years, five long, hard years, and I worked very hard in terms of trying to bring change,” he said.
When former auditor general Ken Dye audited the Senate’s expenses in 1991, he made several recommendations on administrative issues, all of which were implemented, Mr. Barnhart said. “I was able to get that, but there were recommendations concerning the Senators, and they were not implemented.”
He said that one of the recommendations that he pushed for was to make the Senate clerk the person responsible for oversight and taking the Internal Economy Committee out of the day-to-day affairs of Senate business.
The recommendation Mr. Dye made was: “The Senate should more clearly define the mandates of the Committee of Internal Economy and its subcommittees, a newly-mandated committee on internal economy should in turn establish a clear accountability relationship with senior staff, particularly the Clerk of the Senate so that the Senators on the Committee do not become unnecessarily involved in the day to day administration of the Senate support services. In doing so, the Senate should ensure that it has settled key issues and holds management accountable.”
Mr. Barnhart said, however, that the Senators didn’t want to give up their powers and said he feels that if that recommendation had been implemented, the Senate would not be in the current mess that it is in.
“The Senators didn’t want it. They didn’t want it to be cleaned up. My argument then was very clearly: let the clerk manage. The clerk was given all the responsibility and none of the authority,” he said. “Basically what that’s saying is, ‘Internal Economy should set the policy, once they’ve set the policy, set the rules,’ then they say to the clerk and the chief financial officer, ‘Here are the rules, now implement them,’ and so if a Senator doesn’t like the rules, then they can’t go back to Internal Economy and say, ‘Well, please, please, please, on my case only let me do such and such.’ I think that’s what’s been happening, and then they get into trouble.”
Mr. Barnhart said it’s a simple solution that Senators should start with.
“I think that’s one of the biggest problems that hasn’t been addressed yet, hasn’t been solved, and to my mind, to me as an administrator, it seems so simple,” he said. “Just set the rules and delegate it and then hold the clerk and financial officer accountable. If the wheels are coming off the wagon, then it’s your fault. How come? Why aren’t these rules being implemented, evenly, fairly, across the board?”
In response to questions from The Hill Times on whether Mr. O’Brien had an agenda to ‘clean up’ the Senate, communications officer Annie Joannette said “We cannot comment on matters under investigation.”
She added, however, that “Mr. O’Brien is the clerk of the Senate and serves as the committee clerk for the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration. Since the committee is responsible for all strategic, operational and administrative matters, processes and policies, the clerk assists the chair on setting the agenda and through the management committee advises on which policies should be brought forward.”
For his part, Mr. Murray said that the Conservative government’s strategy is to treat everything as a communications exercise, which they did in this case at the committee.
“They feel it’s a communications issue. If they can control that, they can control anything, so they try to control the message coming out of the committee,” he said, but the strategy didn’t work this time and the issue went from bad to worse with each new revelation that came out about the expenses and the PMO’s involvement in trying to contain it.
“They haven’t been able to control it and they’re not going to be able to control it. I don’t see any alternative for the government or for the prime minister except at some point and sooner rather than later for him to stand up and take advantage of some opportunity preferably in the House, not during the Question Period, but in a debate perhaps to give not just an account of what he knew and when he knew it and what he knows now, but of the government’s position, how the government regards the whole matter,” Mr. Murray said.
“It just went from bad to worse as they tried to cover their tracks. Perhaps if they had simply said, ‘Yeah, the party paid it,’ most people might’ve said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s how it goes.’ It just went from bad to worse to worse. It was all this obfuscation and dancing around and Parliamentary secretaries giving crazy answers,” he said.
“I think the Prime Minister’s got to take an early opportunity in the House to make a fairly complete statement to try to lay to rest some of what he would consider to be misinterpretations or inaccuracies; lay to rest the questions that are out there. My view of all of this is the truth cannot ever be worse or more embarrassing than all the gossip and speculation and punditry and all the rest of it. It can never be worse,” said Mr. Murray.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: Bea Vongdouangchanh
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