OUR SENATE IS THE ENVY OF SUCH STERLING TOTALITARIAN COUNTRIES AS RED CHINA.
AND TO ADD INSULT TO INJURY, OUR SENATE HAS EVEN MORE SENATORS (105) THAN DOES THE U.S. SENATE (100) DESPITE THE FACT THAT OUR COUNTRY IS BUT 10% OF ITS SIZE.
OKAY GALAGHER...'SO JUST HOW BAD IS YOUR SENATE?'
GLAD YOU ASKED.
AND TO DO THAT, WE'LL LOOK NO FURTHER THAN THE CASE OF THE MOST RECENT HONOURABLE SENATOR TO FIND HIMSELF ON THE FRONT PAGES OF THE NEWS...
MICHAEL DENNIS DUFFY KNOWN TO ALL AND SUNDRY SIMPLY AS 'DUFFY'.
In his maiden Senate Speech he began by saying he had not sought the honour of being named a Canadian Senator ...rather it had been thrust upon him. This despite the fact that everyone who knows
Duffy knew that he had lobbied long and hard for this appointment for over many decades. As an aside, He would have made an excellent politician given my belief that you can believe whatever a politician tells you up to the time their lips begin to move.
Duffy did not waste any time making a name for himself by quickly becoming the subject of 31 Criminal Charges for Bribery, Fraud and Breach of Trust all related to his new role as a Canadian Senator. Eventually and in my opinion amazingly, he was found not guilty on all charges though it is widely held that his actions were deemed to be those of a totally morally bankrupt individual.
He was able to return to his cushy sinecure and reimbursed retroactively for his pay and benefits.
(Below you will find an article by one of Canada's best Columnists, Andrew Coyne who expertly and better than me sets out for you, in some detail, the shenanigans The Duffy was up to in the lead up to his 31 Criminal Charges:
Andrew Coyne:
What is $8 million, after all when one considers
the 'cruel and unusual punishment' to which, according to his statement of
claim, Duffy was subjected.
“If this action succeeds in bringing Charter protections to all who work on Parliament Hill, this will be my greatest contribution to public life.”
— Senator Mike Duffy
Well I think we can all agree on that. And let there be no doubt: in suing the Senate of Canada and the Attorney General of Canada for $6.5 million in general damages, $1 million in punitive damages, and $300,000 in lost income, in addition to unspecified amounts in special damages, interest, and costs, the Senator from Wherever I Designate is not fighting for yet another great wad of dough from the taxpayer, in compensation for having been deprived of great wads of dough from the taxpayer when the Senate suspended him for taking great wads of dough from the taxpayer.
No, he is fighting for you and me. Well, you and me, if we were appointed to the Senate of Canada. After his spectacular 2016 acquittal on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust, he is fighting for the rights we all enjoy: the right to be presumed innocent by a credulous judge, the right to a strangely inert Crown prosecutor (who failed to ask him, among other omissions, about the famous $90,000 cheque from Nigel Wright), and most of all, the right to claim tens of thousands from the public purse for personal trainers, “emergency” makeup artists, and travel of all kinds — notably “travel” to the Ottawa house he had lived in for 38 years — on the grounds that the rules did not specifically prohibit it.
Sure, the “experts” say his chances are slim. Sure, the road ahead seems long and hard. But if it saves even one life appointee …
What is $8 million, after all — roughly 80 per cent of what Omar Khadr (my italics - A convicted Islamic Terrorist) received for being imprisoned as a teenager and tortured for days on end — when one considers the “cruel and unusual punishment” to which, according to his statement of claim, Duffy was subjected, not to mention the deprivation of his right to “life, liberty and security of the person.” In case there is any confusion: both are references not to imprisonment or torture, but to the Senate decision to suspend him without pay he made as a senator. Well, he did, repeatedly, under both Liberal and Conservative governments, but the point remains: there but for a sense of shame go all of us. Each day as he takes his seat in the Senate he must relive the moment he was temporarily deprived of this basic right of citizenship, a six-figure sinecure until the age of 75, so long sought and so hard won. Not to mention the cost to his reputation, unblemished until then by even a hint of propriety.
And what is even that trauma compared to what he endured earlier, behind the scenes: blackmailed into accepting the $90,000, with the threat that if he did not take the money he had repeatedly demanded he would not get it.* For months he was obliged to remain silent while the most senior figures in the Conservative government furiously attempted to whiten his good name: rewriting a Senate committee report, attempting to tamper with an outside audit, pretending to the public that Duffy had repaid his expenses himself, all with a view to avoiding any suggestion that he had knowingly done wrong. To this day he must live with the stigma of being forced to publicly acknowledge he “may have made a mistake” in claiming his unwinterized cottage in PEI as his principal residence, though to date he has been spared the stigma of having to repay any of it.
This is a moment for all Canadians to reflect. What has happened to us? What have we become that we should so cruelly mistreat this dedicated public servant? Not since Brian Mulroney was forced to pay taxes years late on the $300,000 in cash he had secretly taken from an international arms dealer and lied about under oath has there been such a travesty of justice.
As Duffy says, this is not about Duffy. Rather, it raises “questions which go to the heart of a democracy.” After all, if sitting legislators are to be forbidden from taking tens of thousands of dollars under the table from the prime minister’s chief of staff in return for colluding in a scheme to suppress a matter of some embarrassment to the government, namely their own questionable expense claims, it will be impossible to get good people to go into public life.
*Duffy’s claim that he was threatened with the loss of his Senate seat appears to be at best a misunderstanding, especially given the strenuous efforts by senior Conservatives, well documented in the email chains, to assure themselves that no such outcome was likely. As indeed it was not: the constitutional requirement is only that a senator be “resident” in the province he represents; the location of his “principal residence” is relevant only for purposes of claiming the housing allowance.
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So will Mike Duffy in the end get his sought after $8 million?...I would not bet against it, after all those types of results are all too frequent in our land of the squishy Left.
As I see it...
'K.D. Galagher'
