Stealing Democracy Part X: How Far Does The Rot Go?

There is no doubt any more that Bill C-23 is deliberately designed to enable the CPC (or other political parties) to engage in the kind of electoral fraud that the CPC has attempted, and been caught out at repeatedly in the past.  Worse, it goes so far as to politicize the staffing of voting stations.  None of this can end well.

Consider the following list of malfeasance on the part of the CPC since 2006:

1. The "In and Out" Fundraising Scheme (Money Laundering Fraud) 2006
2. Dean del Mastro is facing charges relating to campaign spending in 2008
3. Peter Penashue forced to resign over campaign spending issues in 2011
4. Robocalls in 2011 (direct voter suppression)
5. Appointment of Mike Duffy to the Senate
6. Appointment of Pamela Wallin to the Senate
7. Appointment of Patrick Brazeau to the Senate
8. Bruce Carson - appointed to be an advisor to Stephen Harper in the PMO - facing criminal fraud charges.
9. Bill C-23 an act designed to undermine our elections system.
10. Bill C-24 which is designed to politicize immigration to an even greater degree, and can be used in conjunction with C-23 for voter suppression.
11. Massive government spending on propaganda campaigns at taxpayer expense.  (Economic Action Plan ads, Canada Job Grant ads, etc)

There's no doubt quite a bit more that has escaped my notice.  

In today's news, we have another addition to the list - Hubert Pichet, policy advisor to Conservative Senators, has been charged with fraud as a result of the RCMP investigation into the Senate.  

We have to ask ourselves how pervasive is the rot in Harper's government?  At the highest levels, appointees to very senior positions are being charged with fraud and other criminal activities.  This is a government that is unique in Canada's history.  Not only is it clearly corrupt, but it is passing laws designed to entrench its particular brand of corruption into our politics for the foreseeable future.

Rising Corporate Feudalism - Policy Versus Law

The story of Carla Cheney has been making the rounds for the last week or so.  The short synopsis is that she was fired from WalMart in Ontario for calling the police about an animal left locked in a closed vehicle.  

Superficially, this is not a particularly big story - she apparently violated company policy regarding how she interacts with customers and got fired for it.  Companies are free to create policy that regulates the actions of their employees - this is neither new nor surprising.  What is interesting is the intersection between the company policy and civil law.

Here we have a situation where public education programs are very clear - if you see an animal in distress, call the police or animal services.  Period.  In Ontario summers, leaving an animal locked in a car is leaving the animal in distress - heat and humidity in a closed car is an evil combination.  No pet should ever be subjected to those conditions.  Even leaving windows partially open is highly debatable.

WalMart's policy guidelines stipulate that the employee should bring the issue to the attention of a manager and let the manager deal with it.  Superficially, this doesn't sound unreasonable.  Until you realize that a busy manager is going to prioritize an issue like that based on all the other topics they are dealing with at the same time.  Further, we don't know if the rest of corporate policy enables the manager to act in accordance with local law, or if the manager is explicitly or implicitly discouraged from engaging law enforcement in such situations.

What is interesting here is that the corporation has a policy which essentially appears to overlap with existing civil law.  Were I, as a private citizen, to make the same phone call that Ms. Cheney did, WalMart would be unable to do anything about it.  However, in the context of the situation, WalMart saw fit to terminate her employment for "violating company policy".  This creates a situation where in some very fundamental respects, the corporation has placed its own internal "laws" (policies) above those of the state.  Further, they have also exacted a surprisingly harsh penalty for violating those policies - certainly one that far exceeds the penalties which would be applied to the animal's owner, for example.

This creates precisely the environment which I have been critical of in other posts on this blog - namely one of corporate feudalism.  As long as you abide by the rules of the corporation, you can get away with just about anything you like - at the price of sacrificing personal ethics as well as potentially ignoring local laws.

The same issue had started to emerge in the 1990s in the form of "whistleblower" issues.  People who found themselves observing wrongdoing within the walls of a corporation had no avenue to safely call out those actions without being terminated.  This provoked an attempt to solve the problem in the form of "whistleblower" legislation in a number of jurisdictions, but ultimately has not been adequately resolved.  Employees within a corporation are still held to a code of silence when their corporation acts maliciously.  This is little different to the oath of fealty that a feudal lord would demand of his followers - it acts in many respects as a law above the law which limits the ability of the individual to challenge that which they see as wrong.  Corporate policy, especially in multi-national entities has become a law above the law - used as an instrument to limit individuals' ability to do the right thing for fear of serious economic consequences.

If calling the police because you see an animal in distress is an offence that gets you fired, one can imagine that were Ms. Cheney to be witness to more serious fraud within the company that she could be subject to severe sanction within the company should she take the story outside of the company.

While I can respect the fact that companies, like individuals, have a right to protect themselves from unjust and inappropriate accusations.  However, I do have a huge problem with corporations creating policies which essentially place them above local laws.  When those systems become such that the individuals within a corporation are threatened with consequences should they step outside of them, even when they have witnessed the violation of laws.

When such threats exist, implicitly or explicitly, we have a situation where one agency is acting in a manner that is explicitly hostile to the rule of law as currently understood and is in fact creating a second set of rules which not only binds the individuals involved, but subverts the purpose of civil and criminal law in the first place.  That binding is one more step in the creation of a feudalism which is hostile to the individual and their freedom.

The Duffy Scandal Keeps On Giving

In some respects, what is coming out regarding Mike Duffy this week is not really a big surprise.  However, it is important.

First up, we have a set of court document filings that bring out some very interesting points regarding timeline, and in particular how that timeline relates to the story that Harper has related to Canadians.

1. The documents reveal the RCMP is investigating Duffy over not just one, but three separate fraud allegations:

• For expenses perhaps fraudulently claimed for Ottawa housing and per diem costs, because Duffy said his primary residence was in P.E.I.
• For possible fraudulent per diem claims submitted while he was vacationing in Florida or while he was campaigning for the Conservative Party in the last federal election.
• For accepting, perhaps fraudulently, a payment from Nigel Wright, the prime minister's top aide, in exchange for a deal that would allow him to pay back his inappropriately claimed expenses quickly and without protest and for a promise a Senate report would "go easy on him."

2. Amid opposition party demands for an investigation, the RCMP, of its own volition, began investigating Duffy in March. That was two months before a Deloitte audit of Duffy's residency, commissioned by the Senate, was made public, and before a Senate committee voted to refer Duffy's expenses to the RCMP.

3. Although Duffy claimed his primary residence was in P.E.I., the documents reveal he's lived in Ottawa since 1971. However, he applied for a P.E.I. driver's licence on Dec. 22, 2008 — the same day it was announced he had been selected for appointment to the Senate.

4. In passport applications in 2007 and 2012, Duffy gave his Ottawa address as his permanent residence.

5. The documents reveal the Conservative Party initially believed Duffy owed only $32,000, an amount the party was apparently willing to pay. This amount may refer to the $34,000 the Deloitte report calculated Duffy had claimed in housing costs in Ottawa and per diems during the 18-month period of Deloitte's examination.

It is not clear why the party didn't know that Senator David Tkachuk, at the time chair of the Senate committee on internal economy, had written Duffy on Feb. 27 telling him he actually owed $90,172.

6. Lawyers for Nigel Wright, the prime minister's former chief of staff, told the RCMP that when Wright gave Duffy $90,000 he didn't know about any fraudulent claims on Duffy's part. But Wright was in contact with Senator Tkachuk during the time Deloitte was preparing its report, and it was Deloitte that discovered Duffy had claimed per diems for being on Senate business while on vacation in Florida.

7. It is not clear why the chair of the Conservative Fund, Senator Irving Gerstein, thought it was OK for the party to bear the cost of $32,000 for Duffy, but not $90,000.

8. Wright, in a statement given when he resigned, said he accepted "sole responsibility" for the decision to give money to Duffy. But the documents reveal that Wright's lawyers told the RCMP that three other senior people in the Prime Minister's Office knew about the $90,000 cheque, as did Gerstein.

At Huffington Post, they took the time to go through the documents and compare the timeline in the court filings with the version of the story that Harper has been trying to convince the public is "the real story":

Under intense questioning about the affair throughout the spring, Harper repeatedly insisted that his chief of staff, Nigel Wright, acted on his own when he decided to give Duffy $90,000 to reimburse the Senate for invalid expense claims.

"Those were his decisions. They were not communicated to me or to members of my office," Harper told the House of Commons on June 5.

But the RCMP, which has launched a criminal investigation into the matter, says in a court document that Wright recalls telling three other senior people in the Prime Minister's Office about the transaction.

Wright had not been interviewed by the Mounties at the time the document was filed in court by lead investigator Cpl. Greg Horton, on June 24. But the document recounts a June 19 meeting with Wright's lawyers, Patrick McCann and Peter Mantas.

The lawyers told the RCMP that Wright recalls telling his assistant, David van Hemmen; Harper's legal adviser, Benjamin Perrin; and Chris Woodcock, director of issues management in the PMO, about his intention to personally give Duffy the money to reimburse the Senate.

Anyone who believes that Harper was not fully briefed on what was going on in his own offices has to be either deluding themselves or they would believe someone trying to sell them the Brooklyn Bridge on the street.

Beyond Harper lying to Canadians about this whole fiasco, is the emerging evidence that Senator Duffy was not, and is not today, a resident of the region that he is supposedly representing.  This isn't just a matter of recently moving either.  Duffy has lived in Ottawa since 1971, and two passport applications list his Ottawa address as his permanent residence.

Why is this significant?  Because it calls into question whether Duffy should even be permitted to sit in the Senate as a representative of Prince Edward Island.

Referring to the Constitution documents for Canada, we find the following qualifications for a Senator:

Qualifications of Senator
23. The Qualifications of a Senator shall be as follows:

1. (1)  He shall be of the full age of Thirty Years;
   
2. (2)  He shall be either a natural-born Subject of the Queen, or a Subject of the Queen naturalized by an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain, or of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, or of the Legislature of One of the Provinces of Upper Canada, Lower Canada, Canada, Nova Scotia, or New Brunswick, before the Union, or of the Parlia- ment of Canada after the Union;
   
3. (3)  He shall be legally or equitably seised as of Freehold for his own Use and Benefit of Lands or Tenements held in Free and Common Socage, or seised or possessed for his own Use and Benefit of Lands or Tenements held in Franc-alleu or in Roture, within the Province for which he is appointed, of the Value of Four thousand Dollars, over and above all Rents, Dues, Debts, Charges, Mortgages, and Incumbrances due or payable out of or charged on or affecting the same;
   
4. (4)  His Real and Personal Property shall be together worth Four thousand Dol- lars over and above his Debts and Liabilities;
   
5. (5)  He shall be resident in the Province for which he is appointed;
   
6. (6)  In the Case of Quebec he shall have his Real Property Qualification in the Electoral Division for which he is appointed, or shall be resident in that Di- vision. (13) 
   

At the time he was appointed to the Senate in 2008, he didn't even hold a driver's license from PEI.  In other words, all of his legal documentation likely showed that he resided in Ottawa.  I don't think that this has changed one iota.  For the sake of appearances, Duffy applied for a PEI Driver's License in 2009, but a subsequent passport application in 2011 listed his Ottawa home as his permanent address.

In short, Duffy fails the residency test in the first place.  Given that the Governor General appoints Senators on the advice of the Prime Minister, I think it is fairly clear that not only is Duffy's seat in the Senate highly suspect, but further that Harper is complicit in a fraudulent appointment.

Duffy Case Going To The RCMP

This broke last night, but I don't do a lot of writing late at night.

It seems that Harper has found his way to silence this issue for the time being.  The minute that it goes to the RCMP - regardless of what the outcome is - there will be a wall of silence about it on the basis of "not wanting to interfere" with an ongoing investigation.

I do not expect that this will produce any kind of charges against Mike Duffy.  At most, I expect it to produce a statement from the RCMP in a couple of months to the effect of "we investigated, but there is insufficient evidence to lay criminal charges".

It has long been my opinion that Duffy hasn't engaged in criminal behaviour per se (although his dipping into the Senate money trough should be criminal).  Duffy has engaged in something that might be borderline fraud - but it's definitely in a grey zone.  What he has engaged in is telling Canadians a different story every time we turn around.  Duffy's transgressions are moral and ethical in nature, and speak to a lack of clear-headedness that we demand of parliamentarians in both chambers.

The point here is that were Duffy an "honourable" man in this regard, he would have made right a long time ago.  More recently, he should have resigned from his Senate seat.

Unfortunately, with the current Conservative government, it is unlikely that we will see any such thing as a resignation in this matter.  Harper has shown that he will go to great lengths to protect people that he sees as political assets.  Having recently lost Penashue to a by-election, expect Harper to entrench his efforts to secure his grip on power.  

Something's Rotten Here ...

If DrDawg is correct, then Harper's goons are violating democracy in some pretty vile ways.

[Update]
There's more ... and this is looking distinctly like a Conservative attempt to suppress student voters - who are less likely to vote Conservative.
[/Update]

[Update #2]
... and the Con$ lose their first gambit to subvert voter rights to Guelph students.
[/Update]

In Harper's Canada

... it's inquisitive voters out and fraudsters to the front row:

A Toronto businessman and self-described campaign volunteer who circulates in Conservative circles is facing a criminal charge for allegedly fraudulent credit and debit card withdrawals — a background that did not prevent him from sitting right behind the Harper family at a rally last week.

Snover Dhillon met with Tory MP Patrick Brown, of Barrie, Ont., at an event in the Punjab region of India in January and attended a Tory convention in Halifax a month later, appearing to violate bail conditions set in December that barred him from leaving Ontario.

Stephen Harper's campaign has come under fire for its strict vetting of rally attendees. The prime minister is also facing questions about how a former senior adviser, Bruce Carson, was able to work in his inner circle despite fraud convictions in the 1980s and 1990s and a bankruptcy in 1993.

Dhillon landed a plum seat in the second row of Harper's rally in Brampton, Ont., on Mar. 27, right behind Laureen Harper, her children Rachel and Ben, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, and local candidates.

In short, if you are an undecided voter and openly explore all of the voting options out there, you better not let the Harperites find out that you have been to a *gasp*- Liberal or *GASP* - NDP or *SHOCK* - Green party event, you could well find The Party ... and the RCMP ... have opened a file on you.

Meanwhile, we see the "Tough on Crime" party giving the red carpet treatment and plum patronage appointments to fraudsters.

All this from the party which ran on "more open and accountable government" and "getting tough on criminals" - the cognitive dissonance in their warroom must be positively crippling!