Last week's proceedings focused on some of the expenses claimed by the Puffster -- that's him on the right -- lauded by Prime Minister Steve Harper -- on the left. [Strange place for him? Ed.] "To Duff, a great journalist and a great senator," reads an endorsement written by Mr. Harpoon on one photo entered into evidence.
"Thanks for being one of my best, hardest-working appointments ever."-- as "my hardest-working senator" and "one of my best appointments".
"Ol' Duff" -- as he likes to call himself, as opposed to "fat f[that's enough! Ed.] -- got the Canadian taxpayer to pay for:
- framed enlargements of pictures of Barbara Bush and his (Duffy's) children
- the services of a makeup artist to prettify himself and Mr. Harpoon for the picture above
- massages and workouts with a fitness trainer, which evidently didn't have any effect
It's not the piddling amounts spent on these things that's at issue. [You call $10,000 for the trainer "piddling"? Ed.] It's the way the bills were paid. Last week we learned that Senator Puffy couldn't get the expenses approved by the beancounters in the Senate's admin department, so he gave a contract to a cement-forming company -- really -- run by his old buddy from the CTV days, Gerry Donohue. Mr. Donohue was paid 10s of 1000s of dollars per year -- whatever part of Duffy's budget hadn't been already used up yet -- out of which Donohue paid the trainer, the makeup artist, the picture-framer and several others.
What Mr. Donohue operated was a personal slush fund to pay whatever Ol' Duff wanted paid, with no oversight and no accountability. Very much at issue is the question of intent. The position of the defence is that the Senate's rules regarding expenses were vague and hard to understand, and that the honourable senator thought he was following the rules, although a few trifling mistakes may have been made.
If that's the case, why did he direct payment out of the monies which Donohue received for doing "editorial and research consulting"? If the expenses were not allowable under Senate rules, why would Duffy not pay them out of his own pocket? Walt is waiting for the honourable senator (suspended) to take the stand and answer those and similar questions.
Footnote: The presiding judge, Charles Vaillancourt, said last week that, at the rate the evidence is going in, there's no way the trial is going to finish in June, as was hoped. We may have to wait until the fall -- September or October -- to hear from Senator Puffy. Having him tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth -- hah! -- could be extremely embarrassing for the Dear Leader, who should be in the stretch drive of his campaign for re-election by then. Unless of course Steve calls a snap election after tabling his government's budget... tomorrow!
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