OTTAWA – Conservative senators were meeting in private Monday to discuss possible alternative punishments for three senators over their spending irregularities, as the strain within Conservative ranks continued to show.
“Most Canadians probably think there should be some sanction. But they want it to happen after the process,” said Tory senator Hugh Segal on his way into the meeting. “We all take a separate oath to Her Majesty to do our job loyally and honourably; the prime minister’s views are taken very seriously and they are important. But our oath to Her Majesty to do what’s right is actually more important than any other politician.”
All three embattled senators, Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau were on Parliament Hill, where the Senate itself was to meet in open session after 2 p.m. ET. Last week, the Conservative leadership in the Senate proposed motions to suspend the three without pay, privileges or benefits.
On the weekend, the government’s Senate leader, Claude Carignan, who had introduced the original motions, told Radio-Canada that his caucus could craft new plans Monday if there was consensus among party members. Those motions might involve somehow softening the punishment of Wallin and Brazeau.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, speaking with reporters Monday, said, “I usually don’t talk about the Senate because I want to have a long happy life. I really have no interest in it, quite frankly, other than it’s disruptive of what we’re trying to do economically.
But he continued: “I’m actually an advocate of abolition of the Senate. I always have been. I just think in this day and age to have a non-elected legislative body is an anachronism.”
Meanwhile, iPolitics.ca quoted former Conservative cabinet minister and MP Peter Kent as saying unease among Conservatives over the harshness of the originally proposed sanctions extended to members of Parliament as well.
“I would say that there is a significant number,” Kent said in an interview with iPolitics. “I haven’t polled my colleagues but I have had conversations with quite a few of them and we’re into double digits.”
Among Conservative senators, “I think there would be huge support if the leader came out with some changes, depending on what those changes would be,” said Conservative Sen. Don Plett who planned to introduce his own amendments at the party’s meeting Monday. “I think many senators would appreciate something other than what he’s been proposing so far.
“I know that the majority of us – I would say probably 100 per cent of us – are not happy with what is going on.”
Senate Opposition Leader James Cowan, who has publicly denounced the way the red chamber is trying its three members, wasn’t impressed.
“Instead of having this thing dealt with in the Senate, where Sen. Carignan has said it should be done . . . now it’s going to be settled in the Conservative caucus in private,” Cowan said. “That doesn’t sound like a fair and open process to me.”
Liberal senators were also meeting behind closed doors to map out their own strategy.
Liberals have been pushing to send the entire issue to a Senate committee so a detailed investigation can be undertaken on whether punishing the three senators may have legal implications for an ongoing RCMP investigation, or otherwise violate the senators’ right to a fair hearing.However, one Liberal senator admitted it was unlikely his party has enough Conservative support to push the matter forward.
Instead, the question becomes whether the Conservative senators will force a vote by mid-week on the motions.
If the Conservatives propose something besides suspension without pay, it remains unclear how the Liberals will respond.
“There are a lot Conservative senators who are very concerned about the way the government proposes to do this, so I hope they’re going to have an opportunity [Monday] to try to persuade the government to change its mind,” Cowan said. “I would hope that what they would say is, ‘We need to send this to a committee.’ “
Cowan said the debate was “not a public relations thing, as far as I’m concerned,” adding he was confident Canadians understood what he and the Liberals were trying to accomplish.
“I don’t base my positions on email traffic,” he said. “But the emails that I’ve received over the last couple of weeks have been shifting dramatically.
“These are individual, thoughtful people who are writing. And the overwhelming majority of them say ‘You’re doing the right thing. Due process is important. And this government motion shouldn’t be supported.’ “
Hints that the Tory majority in the Senate was thinking of revising senators’ sanctions emerged Friday while the Senate debated the fates of Duffy, Wallin and Brazeau in a rare Friday sitting. During the debate, Brazeau told senators that Carignan offered him a “backroom deal” whereby he would receive a lesser sentence if he apologized in the Senate for his inappropriate spending. Carignan has said Brazeau misunderstood him and there was no “deal.”
While the Prime Minister’s Office would not comment on activities of the Conservative Senate caucus, it reiterated its support for the original motions in a statement Sunday.
“We remain firm on this important point: Senators who have already been found to have claimed inappropriate expenses should not be collecting a public paycheque,” said PMO spokesperson Jason MacDonald in an email. “They know what they did is wrong, that’s why the prime minister supports the Senate motion and wants to see them vote on it.”
On Monday, it was expected there would be a government motion to fast-track a vote on the senators’ punishments.
The Conservative party convention kicks off in Calgary Thursday. Meanwhile, the prime minister said his chief of staff was “dismissed” earlier this year after writing a $90,000 cheque to pay back Duffy’s inappropriate expenses.
Stephen Harper’s comment on a Halifax radio show Monday was at odds with his statement in May that Nigel Wright resigned over the payment.
“I had a chief of staff who made an inappropriate payment to Mr. Duffy – he was dismissed,” Harper said in the interview.
Cowan said the shift of vocabulary from the prime minister “raises question about what is the real situation, and we’ve been trying to get to that from the beginning.”
“I’m sure the prime minister knows the difference between being dismissed and accepting a resignation.”
With a file from the Canadian Press