Green Party Leader Elizabeth May says an independent inquiry would be the best way to investigate the prime minister’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, who stepped down Sunday after it was revealed he paid the $90,000 owed by Sen. Mike Duffy in a Senate housing allowance scandal.
Liberals in the Senate are trying to trigger special parliamentary hearings in the hopes of forcing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former top aide and others to testify about the secret payment to a former Tory senator.
Duffy quit the Conservative caucus on Thursday.
On Tuesday night, meanwhile, Conservative senators sent Duffy’s controversial expenses back to the same closed-door committee that initially reviewed them, rejecting a Liberal bid to have the matter referred to the police.
The NDP has called on the RCMP to investigate. Ethics commissioner Mary Dawson has launched an examination under the Conflict of Interest Act of Wright’s involvement in the repayment of the senator’s expenses. And the issue will also be reviewed anew by the Senate internal economy committee.
Liberal Senate Leader James Cowan argued late Tuesday night that the committee on internal economy had lost credibility with Canadians and the police should take over.
Parliamentary hearings in the Senate would include subpoena powers and could be more transparent than RCMP investigation, May said. But any hearing in the Senate has the potential for Conservative Senators to block certain lines of inquiry, she added.
The Saanich-Gulf Islands MP said the best approach would be an independent inquiry with the power to subpoena witnesses and require testimony under oath. “An inquiry might be better placed to get to the bottom of it,” May said.
“I think an RCMP inquiry is better than nothing, but I think we need more transparency than what the RCMP can bring to this,” May said. “I think we need the powers of subpoena in the hands of an independent person … who can get Nigel Wright, Stephen Harper, Mike Duffy under oath because something very peculiar has gone on here.”
May said she would not oppose what the NDP or Liberals are proposing because opposition parties are pressing for answers.
“The plausible explanations are not the innocent ones,” May said. “To believe this happened innocently, you have to assume and be willing to accept — which I don’t — that Nigel Wright is a fool. He clearly isn’t. He’s got two law degrees. He’s very, very intelligent.”
Cowan argued on the Senate floor that Stephen Harper’s office violated the sacrosanct privileges of parliamentarians, and might be in contempt of Parliament.
“Canadians are demanding there be an investigation [by] the police,” said Victoria NDP MP Murray Rankin, a lawyer. “Is there a breach of the Criminal Code, is there a breach of the Parliament of Canada Act, is this $90,000 payment under the law? There needs to be at least that [RCMP investigation].”
With a file from The Canadian Press
