How Stephen Harper Created the Duffy/Senate Mess ......
In a May, 2013 Buckdog post, I told you how the Duffy/Harper mess got started ...
May 20, 2013:
"When Stephen Harper decided to add Pamela Wallin and Mike Duffy to Canada's unelected, undemocratic Senate, he started in motion a series of events that has ultimately become an ugly, nasty political scandal.
For starters, neither Duffy nor Wallin qualified for senate appointment as representatives of their respective native provinces.
While Ms. Wallin is originally from Saskatchewan, she has lived away for most of her adult life and Saskatchewan was no longer her principle residence. Saskatchewan's right leaning corporate MSM came running to Harper's defence and tried to murky the waters about Wallin's residency requirement.
Same with Mr. Duffy. While originally from Prince Edward Island, he has for decades made Ontario the site of his actual 'principle residence'.
In his haste to add these two high powered, Conservative fundraisers to the 'Upper House', Stephen Harper and the Senate turned a blind eye to the residency requirements for Duffy and Wallin. In fact, to try and maintain the optics of residency in their respective provinces, both Senators started to declare, in writing, that their residences were 'back home' in both PEI and Saskatchewan.
Here is where it all went wrong.
In order to be appointed to the Senate, ‘principle residence' reality had to be fabricated in order for Harper's appointments to be acknowledged under existing Senate rules. False expense claims were the only way to maintain the charade ...
Stephen Harper wanted both Duffy and Wallin in the Senate so that these well-known Canadians could crisscross the nation and rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations for Conservative Party coffers.
Harper created this mess. It is his doing ... and hopefully, it will also be his undoing.
Amen.
-Buckdog 2008: Academic Says Pamela Wallin Does NOT Meet Residency Requirements - Should NOT Be Appointed Senator 'From Saskatchewan'!
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