This past week, the RCMP announced that it did not have sufficient evidence to lay charges against Harper’s former Chief of Staff in regard to the latter’s gift of $90,000 to now suspended Senator Mike Duffy.
So I am throwing it over to you to decide, on the known facts, whether or not charges should have been laid.
First of all, Harper has stated that he fired his Chief of Staff for making this $90k payment.
Then we have the former Chief of Staff admitting that he gave this money to Duffy, a sitting legislator, to enable him to repay monies owing to the Senate which the Senate said were improperly paid to Duffy.
Then we found out that upon receipt of this $90k payment the Senate amended its draft report concerning Duffy to make it less offensive.
Then Duffy himself admitted that he lied to the public as to the source of $90,000.
So with that in mind, I recite the definition of bribery, ‘money given to influence the judgment or conduct of a person in a position of trust’.
How would you rule?
Not to influence your decision, but of note, Democracy Watch, a non-partisan advocacy group, is now actively considering the launch of a private criminal prosecution given the reticence of the police to do so.
That said, the greater issue in all of this for me is what I perceive to be a growing lack of respect for police forces in our society.
First of all, the RCMP, as well as the OPP, appear to have become politicized.
My faith in the RCMP first took a tumble in the infamous RCMP barn burning fiasco during the FLQ crisis of the 60s and 70s. More recently I have to question why the RCMP felt it necessary to announce at the height of the 2006 federal election that it had launched a criminal investigation against then liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale?
Even as a Tory I was offended by their egregious lack of discretion.
And as for the OPP why did has it allowed native terrorists to run amuck at Caledonia to this very day, even to the point where it disobeyed Judge ordered injunctions directed at them to move against the natives?
And then you have the trigger happy city police forces too often killing mentally disabled people… bringing guns to a knife fight.
Police Forces losing our trust through bad decisions; Judges making laws rather than interpreting them; if respect is on the decline for them, whom can we trust? Our politicians?
In all of this … something appears to be rotten in the State of Denmark or should I say in the State of Canada.
As I see it…
‘K.D. Galagher’
