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This article was published 29/10/2013 (2640 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS
Prime Minister Stephen Harper
OTTAWA -- Stephen Harper insists Mike Duffy should not be allowed to remain on the public payroll, but he has no problem with the Conservative party using taxpayer-subsidized funds to pay the disgraced senator's legal expenses.
The prime minister defended his party's decision to foot Duffy's $13,560 legal bill as he parried a fresh barrage of opposition questions Tuesday about the Senate expense scandal.
The barrage was fuelled by Duffy's bombshell revelation Monday he got a cheque from party lawyer Arthur Hamilton -- in addition to the well-known $90,000 given to him by Harper's former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, which enabled him to reimburse the Senate for his allegedly improper expense claims.
"The party regularly reimburses members of its caucus for valid legal expenses, as do other parties," Harper told the House of Commons under more withering criticism from NDP Leader Tom Mulcair.
Mulcair scoffed: "The prime minister, therefore, sees nothing wrong with using the money of the Conservative party to reimburse the legal expenses of someone he says has broken the law. That is the ethics of the prime minister. Duly noted."
Donations to political parties are underwritten by the public purse through generous tax credits.
"I think donors are beginning to wonder how this party administers their donations," said Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau.
However routinely Harper suggested the Conservative party covers it caucus members' legal fees, its largesse didn't extend to other senators under fire for improper expense claims.
Sen. Patrick Brazeau's office said no offer was made to pay his legal expenses. Terrence O'Sullivan, Sen. Pamela Wallin's lawyer, said the same.
"Sen. Wallin has received no assistance with her legal fees -- whether before or after she recused herself from the caucus -- from the Conservative party or anyone associated with the Conservative party," O'Sullivan said in an email.
All three senators are under investigation by the RCMP and are facing a government bid to suspend them, without pay or privileges, from the Senate.
The suspension motions were tied in procedural knots Tuesday, making it unlikely the Senate expense cloud will be lifted before the Conservatives gather Thursday evening for a two-day national convention in Calgary.
Claude Carignan, the government leader in the Senate, said it's "impossible" to get votes on the motions out of the way before the convention because of Liberal stalling tactics.
"It's very clear they try to filibuster the debate," he said outside the chamber.
James Cowan, the Liberal leader in the Senate, countered the Conservatives' own inept handling of the matter is responsible for the fact Friday afternoon is the earliest the suspension motions could be voted on.
That would be just in time for Harper's keynote speech to the convention Friday evening.
"I think they brought this in thinking that it would be a no-brainer and that it would go through and they'd be able to go to Calgary and this would be another success. Instead of that, in my respectful view, it's blown up in their faces," Cowan said.
The motions have run into stiff opposition among the Conservatives' own caucus. At least two senators -- Hugh Segal and Manitoba's Don Plett, a former president of the Tory party -- have said the motions amount to sentencing the trio of senators before they've been charged, much less convicted, of any wrongdoing.
Down the hall at the Commons, Edmonton MP Peter Goldring said he's spoken to 40 or 50 Tory MPs and about 80 per cent of them are concerned about the lack of due process for Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau.
Like Liberal senators, Goldring said he and other Tory MPs believe the issue should be "punted into a committee," where the trio can be given a fair hearing.
-- The Canadian Press