"I'm Not Guilty, Your Honour"

"There may be some spirited discussion what primary means and secondary means."
"Let me be the first to say that primary means main or usual, and residence is where you live."
"Certain fundamental and common-sense provisions apply, notwithstanding politics."
"It is unhelpful to unnecessarily complicate things. As we weave our way through various policies and determine whether one is replaced with another or clarity is replaced with ambiguity, we have to stay focused on the basic question [respectful treatment of public money]."
Mark Holmes, prosecutor, Mike Duffy trial, Courtroom 33, Ontario Superior Court

"There's a cultural presumption in the institution [Senate of Canada]. Every time you see a senator referred to, it's 'The Honourable, The Honourable'. It's in their title. Also infused in the institution is a culture of respect for senators. I mean, they are senators of Canada."
"[...] On the day that you're appointed, you must be qualified, and 'qualified' includes the concept of residence."
"I don't think this provision [expectation of honesty, transparency, accountability] applies particularly to senators. I think it applies to everyone in life. We're expected to be honest, we're expected to be decent."
"At the time that's before this court, that still existed [the presumption that everyone would behave decently]. It's been repealed since, the honour principle."
Mark Audcent, former Senate law clerk

"The Crown hopes to have you [Justice Charles Vaillancourt] like an ostrich, put your head in the sand and ignore relevant evidence. It's not a book of common sense [Senate expense claims rules and procedures]. But it is the book that governs the Senate."
"It was appearance, not reality or truth that mattered. [It was ] a fiction, a fraud, a lie conceived for political damage-control purposes."
Donald Bayne, Duffy defence lawyer

The Senate of Canada. Photo: David Kawai/Postmedia News/Files

Both elected and unelected parliamentarians are considered to be intelligent, mature, capable and sincere individuals representing in their calling the best interests of the society in which they have been elevated to enact the laws of the land, as lawmakers and respected members of society who have chosen politics as their medium of public service. Senator Mike Duffy, now disgraced by the revelations of his mercenary blight on the Senate of Canada, should obviously never have been selected by the Prime Minister as a representative of Prince Edward Island.

That Mike Duffy aspired to the Senate appears to have been very well known. That he was a popular public figure as a broadcaster, a man committed to political conservatism was also made well known, by Duffy himself. That he was chosen to sit in the Senate, as a useful fundraising medium was most unfortunate a decision, one that has ricocheted back to smear the government with the distasteful details of a tarnishing of Parliament at the executive and the working level.

Having lived in Ottawa for decades, and owning a house in Kanata, upon his elevation to the Senate Mike Duffy lost no time in expensing  his permanent living arrangement in the city to the Senate; even before his seat was formalized. He declared his primary resident to be located in Prince Edward Island, in a cottage habitable only in the summer months, even though he was in possession of an Ontario driver's license, paid his taxes in Ottawa, and held an Ontario health card.

Trivial items he sought to rectify once he became aware that he was under scrutiny by an investigative reporter on suspicion of milking the public to advance his own pecuniary interests. His lawyer seems to feel that his client is above reproach, that the Senate of Canada in not setting out in excruciating detail just what may or may not be expensed and claimed, and expressly dotting every 'I' and crossing every 'T' to ensure that no misunderstandings could arise, it was inevitable that his poor client might be confused.

So it is not sheer, unadulterated greed that motivated Mike Duffy but a simple understanding, that his primary resident, the PEI cottage where he spent scant time was 'legitimately' declared as such, and the home he owned and had lived in for years was to be thought of as his secondary residence, enabling him to receive tens of thousands of dollars annually on top of his $132,000 annual salary, his $150,000 annual office budget, along with other expenses allowable. Not enough for high-flying Duffy.

Not to put too fine a point on it -- that alone, not taking into account the other transgressions he is charged with to foil Senate rules, such as charging for services that the Senate definitely does not pay for, by funnelling payment through yet another scheme for which he paid a former colleague who did not have to do anything to earn the payment but to transfer some of it as ordered by Mike Duffy to a personal trainer, a makeup artist, that kind of thing -- mark him as a colossal scammer, a thief whom basic decency has eluded.

His lawyer, however, paints him as a man deserving the honorific of 'honourable', a man misunderstood, a man so confused by the byzantine rules of the Senate that it's little wonder his innocent gaffes landed him in court. Poor Mike Duffy. Imagine, charging such a wonderful man with 28 charges of misconduct, of predation on the public purse. An absolute outrage!

It was, of course, entirely the fault of the Prime Minister and his executive assistant who handed over $90,000 of his personal wealth in an attempt to extract the Old Duff from a predicament he himself hadn't the wherewithal to buy himself out of, to return to the Senate the expenses he had illegally granted himself to the tune of $90,000, poor chap.