Mike Duffy And Canada’s Senate – A Portrait Of No Honour, No Integrity And No Shame

A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper

There was a question that was more often asked in our society when a person whose responsibility it was to serve the public violated that responsibility – ‘When is (he or she) going to do the honourable thing and resign’.

Thanks to Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and company, shamed Senator Mike Duffy just keeps on chomping it up from the public trough.

Apparently at this point in our history, where so many in the community have come to almost expected that those serving in government may debase themselves and the office they serve in, words and phrases like “honourable,” “integrity,” and “doing the decent thing” are almost no longer part of any dialogue when it comes to government-sanctioned scalawags in our midst.

This brings me to the latest news about Canada’s house of ill repute – that chamber of shameless swine called the Senate – and one of its most reprehensible members, Mike Duffy.

This October 9^th, 2013, I opened up the front section of a relatively conservative national paper called the Globe and Mail to a headline that reads; ‘RCMP says Duffy gave friend close to $65,000 in contracts.’ If the headline isn’t enough, the lead sentence in the Globe story of the story offers the punctuation; “Mike Duffy is the focus of a criminal investigation into a potential case of fraud and breach of trust, with the RCMP officer saying in a court document that the senator gave $64,916.50 in contracts to a friend who produced ‘little or no apparent work’.”

Duffy is a Stephen Harper appointed senator who has already felt compelled to pay back tens-of-thousands of dollars to the Canadian taxpayers for questionable expense claims he has made around his travel and living arrangements. Yet, like another Harper-appointed senator, Pamela Wallin, who has felt compelled to pay back more than $100,000 for the same reason, he has simply left the so-called Tory caucus of the Canadian Senate to continue sitting  in those chambers, so barf-inducing described as “upper” and “regal,” making it possible for them to go on collecting a salary and benefits costing Canadian taxpayers well over $130,000 per year for every waste of space that occupies this pig farm.

This Harper appointed battle axe, Pamela Wallin, doesn’t know how to do the decent thing either. Let me ask you something. Where’s  the outrage from fiscally righteous members of the Tory Party now? Or is their wrath only meant for Liberals and the NDP? Where does non-partisan concern for the beleagered taxpayer come in?

Some may ask me why I wrote the whole Canadian Senate off as a house of ill repute or a pig farm due to a few like Duffy and Wallin who have been outed for their hubris when it comes to making expense claims that we, the taxpayers of the country, are expected to pay off.

To those who ask that question, I would say this. Why doesn’t this Senate do what the British House of Lords, its closet counterpart, does and impeach or throw these sullied individuals out of the building? And where is Prime Minister Stephen Harper? Why isn’t he asking for their resignations, if they can’t do the honourable thing and resign themselves.? Wasn’t Harper once in favour of doing away with the Senate or at least not making any more appointments to it? So why has he appointed more party hacks to this waste of space than any other prime minister in recent history?

I look forward to you share your answers to these questions below. My answer to these questions is get rid of the Senate and use the hundreds of millions of dollars we are throwing at this pig fest to help fund post-secondary education for our young people and better health care for those among us who need it.

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