What the Duff? The Duffy Trial and the Money Trail

A lot of Canadians are confused about the Duffy Trial. What’s the big deal they say? Why does it matter if someone paid Duffy’s debt?

The angry Harper supporter is probably typical of most Canadians who think it’s a small matter of no significance, because it’s just an income tax error.

If it’s such a minor issue as the Harper supporter suggests, then why are the charges against Duffy so serious? It must be more than just claiming the wrong expenses or cheating on his income tax statement.

Duffy faces 31 criminal charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery.

In the Duffy Trial several expense claims were questioned. One of the big issues has involved the testimony of Nigel Wright regarding his personal cheque to Duffy to cover his living allowance claim.

Senator Mike Duffy is from Prince Edward Island and he lives in Ontario. In fact he rarely goes to PEI where he has a cabin in Cavendish.  But since he was appointed Senator with a home province of PEI, Duffy felt he could claim living expenses from his home province. This did not sit well with the auditor who said that Duffy only spent 30% of the year in PEI – therefore PEI couldn’t be his primary residence.

Duffy didn’t see what the big deal was until he was told he had to pay back $90,000 all at once. $90,000! Where would he get that money to pay back the Senate?!

Nigel Wright from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said he had the solution.  For the next three months, Wright and his team worked out a way that they could ‘help’ Duffy get around the audit.

Wright said he could make part of the audit ‘go away’ on the condition that Duffy keep silent about where the $90,000 came from. There would be no need for Duffy to pay it back. All Duffy had to do was read out a script to the media… Sure, said Duffy, sounds like a plan.

Instead of going after the Prime Minister, the RCMP decided to charge Duffy with bribery, because it must have been Duffy who strong-armed Wright into writing the $90,000 cheque.

In the meantime, the audit spun around and around gathering dust until someone in Ottawa got wind that the PMO’s office was interfering with the audit. That was a clear breach of Senate Rules.

All the charges facing Duffy were laid under the Criminal Code. The RCMP did not lay any charges under the Parliament of Canada Act. If the RCMP had invoked the Parliament of Canada Act, Wright, Novak, and all the others would almost certainly have been charged. In the beginning it looked as though the RCMP would lay charges under the Parliament of Canada Act but in the end they didn’t.

Who is Nigel Wright?

Nigel Wright is a boomerang employee of Onex Corporation which is a private equity firm worth approximately $22 billion.

According to Onex’s website, Nigel Wright took a leave of absence from Onex from 2010 to 2014 to work as Chief of Staff for the Prime Minister of Canada. Now Wright is back working for Onex as a managing director. Prior to joining Onex in 1997, Nigel was a partner at the law firm of Davies, Ward & Beck. Before that, he worked in policy development in the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada.

The billionaire founder and CEO of Onex, Gerry Schwartz, has been pivotal in previous federal elections putting his support behind different political parties.

Wright’s specialty is the aerospace industry. Wright was the face of Onex in Wichita, Kansas, (home of Koch Bros. Industries including their aviation company). Onex  purchased Boeing’s commercial aircraft division in 2005. Renamed Spirit Aerosystems, the company is now run by Larry Lawson, former program manager of the F-35 at Lockheed Martin, and chief executive of the company’s aeronautics division. Wright had also worked with investment bankers Goldman Sachs in the purchase of Raytheon aircraft for $3.3 billion in 2006. The company was renamed Hawker Beechcraft Corporation, and has partnered with Lockheed Martin on projects for the F-35.

In July 2010, Harper announced Canada’s intention to buy 65 F-35s to replace the Canadian Forces’ existing 80 CF-18s in a untendered sole-sourced contract worth approximately $6.5 billion.

To deal with this potential conflict of interest, Wright claimed he didn’t participate in any discussions regarding the F-35 deal, known as ‘Stealthgate’.

The Money Trail

What if the $90,000 came from a third party then to Onex, then to Wright, then to Duffy? Records from a disinterested third party are much more likely to be authentic and to tell the truth about the money.

Was Nigel Wright a political fixer? What about Duffy? Was he a Tory bagman? Is this why Harper is so keen to get rid of them both?