Circumstances Extenuating

"By then they're maybe in too deep to change course. It's very hard -- you don't always have the option of going down the different path. Sometimes you go down the wrong path too far to get back on the straight and narrow.
"If Hugh Segal had gotten into this trouble, I'm not sure that the Prime Minister's Office would have gone to the same efforts.
"Duffy had a few special characteristics that would perhaps explain the potential for greater embarrassment."
Norman Spector, former chief of staff to former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney

"I think they were just thinking of making a headache for Stephen Harper go away.
"I think the sense was within the Prime Minister's Office that the prime minister did not want the type of tawdry scandal that caught the Liberals to catch him. People felt like this had to be dealt with.
"You can't just cut (people) loose. Parties have helped people out; that's what they're there for. That's part of the understanding.  ...That in part, is what makes politics work."
Kathy Brock, political parties expert, Queen's University

Certainly the PMO was concerned over the growing realization that Senator Mike Duffy, appointed to the Senate by the prime minister, in recognition of his fund-raising capabilities for the party, and of his staunch Conservative bona fides, had become a loose cannon. As long as everything went along nicely for Senator Duffy and no one questioned his morally loose entitlements he could be relied upon to behave himself.

Question his entitlements, and inform him that he has been draining funding from the Senate for expense claims that could not be justified and in all fairness to the moral and ethical code expected of all members of the Senate, that money must be repaid, and no further such shenanigans would be countenanced, and all hell broke loose.

It was obviously his understanding that he was destined for great things, and that no sacrifices on the part of others were too great to ensure he would be happy and content.

And he was happy left to his fund-raising and party-thumping devices, exhorting others to release their personal funds for the good of the Conservative Party of Canada, while he continued to rake in whatever he could manage, by hook or crooked devices, whatever worked. And it worked for him for quite a long time, until some nosy investigative journalists thought that something smelled fishy and went digging for details.

They're entitled to do that, it's their job, and in the end it benefits the public. He, on the other hand, was never entitled to "his entitlements" he clung to so ferociously. The reluctance of the prime minister to see how degraded and disabled his once trusted Senate appointee had become, was understandable, but he was adamant that there was no choice but for the man to own up to malfeasance and return to the Senate (and by extension the taxpayers of Canada) all that he had extorted.

The rest is truly unfortunate. The old Duff stuck to his entitlements, aggrieved that no one understood fully that he had done absolutely nothing untoward, it was merely their interpretation that was skewed, not his entitlements. He demanded that he receive a public apology from the Senate committee busy reviewing his claims. And though he claimed otherwise, he insisted that the PMO pay up for what he was so reluctantly forced to admit he owed, screaming innocence all the way.

He'd burnt his bridges at that point; everyone who might once have tried to help him was just too disgusted by the depth of his greed, his ranting and raving, his prevarications and outright lies. And a hitherto-patient Mr. Wright informed him finally "the government would not stand behind him." With that writing on the wall of his consciousness, Mr. Duffy went into attack mode, claiming to have been forced by the PMO to embark on questionable proceedings he was reluctant to have anything to do with.

Simply because it all went against the grain of an honourable man of simple tastes and faith in friendship.