Nothing But The Truth

"It's not about what you did. It's about the perception of what you did that's been created in the media. The rules are inexplicable to our base."
"I was ordered by the prime minister to pay the money back, end of discussion."
Senator Mike Duffy

Photograph by: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand , Postmedia News

"Darn right I told him. You cannot claim an expense you did not incur. That is not right, that is not proper, and that will not be tolerated in this party.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper

The Opposition in the House of Commons is feasting itself righteously, sanctimoniously on the Prime Minister's error in judgement. That error in judgement relating solely to the original decision to bring someone of Mike Duffy's ilk into the Senate of Canada. Self-aggrandizement and self-serving opportunities appear to have motivated this man's fall from grace. He is simply incapable of exercising the slightest modicum of restraint, believing himself to be eminently entitled.

In a February 13 meeting post-caucus gathering, Mr. Duffy approached the Prime Minister for consultation on his ethical obligations within the Senate. He'd met, he said, with the Prime Minister and his chief of staff Nigel Wright -- "just the three of us". To carefully explain to them that he had broken no spending rules. The Prime Minister, according to Mr. Duffy, was not interested in the "truth".

That's some 'truth', Mr. Duffy was expounding. When he complained he couldn't afford to pay back to the Senate hugely excessive entitlements, Mr. Wright offered to "write the cheque". And from then on in, the sleuths working for Postmedia sniffed out the nasty little details for public delectation and outrage. So successfully piqued with outrage was the public that the Liberals and the NDP were overjoyed.

"Honourable Senators;
    I rise today against the orders of my doctors who fear my heart condition has worsened after months of unrelenting stress.
    But given the unprecedented nature of today's proceedings, I feel I have no other choice than to come here to defend my good name.
    Like you, I took a solemn oath to put the interests of Canadians ahead of all else.
    However the sad truth is, I allowed myself to be intimidated into doing what I knew in my heart was wrong, out of a fear of losing my job, and a misguided sense of loyalty ...
    Let me summarize it this way:
    December 3, 2012, the Ottawa Citizen ran a story asking how I could claim expenses for my house in Kanata, when I had owned the home before I was appointed to the Senate?
   The inference was clear. I was doing something wrong."

Quite so. He was most certainly doing "something wrong". The poor man suffering such undue stress leading his heart to threaten his undoing, defends a good name he has himself besmirched. His solemn oath to place the interests of the country before his own represented a pathetic mocking of reality. The sad truth is that the Ottawa Citizen asked a germane question, and Senator Duffy took umbrage at the very notion that honourable man that he is, he would seek to enrich himself immorally.

The man is delusional. He suffers from an absurd sense of personal grandeur. He deserves a failing mark in the spheres of ethics and morality. He is functionally incapable of recognizing malfeasance when he commits it. He asks to be pitied as an unwilling martyr to the Conservative cause. His health, his very life imperilled by the unrelenting hounding he has experienced. When the poor man has done nothing wrong.

"Canadians know me as an honest guy. To pay back money I didn't owe would destroy my reputation. The PMO piled on the pressure. One Senator, and he knows who he is, left several particularly nasty, menacing messages. Do what the Prime Minister wants! Do it for the PM and for the good of the party." Reputation? Which reputation might he be alluding to? His pious declarations of innocence fall flat. He sees "nasty" and "menacing" when reason is recommended.

"We do not assure Canadians that everything will be perfect, but we do assure Canadians that when anything goes wrong people will be held accountable. The misuse of expense accounts is not acceptable and will be dealt with appropriately." That assurance, coming from the Prime Minister, a man of impeccable ethical and moral standards will be fine with most Canadians.

And just for a bit of perspective; while we are outraged at the waste of federal tax dollars as a result of a few grasping people who feel their exceptional presence in the Senate is inadequately compensated by salary alone and simply sought to make up the difference between reality and their expectations, consider the truly horrendous waste of tax dollars on the provincial level when the McGuinty government unapologetically wasted $1-billion each for a failed eHealth, corrupt Ornge, and unprincipled cancellation of gas plant locations to win another election.