We Produced Ctrl+alt+del Season One. Never Again. Lost Huge Amounts of Money.
Christie Blatchford: Mike Duffy's makeup expense claim had no foundation
It was never going to be Loma lxx, only it was in the spring of 2009 when the now-suspended senator from P.E.I. almost lost information technology on what we might call Mountain Pancake
OTTAWA — It was never going to be Hill lxx, that storied battle the Canadian Corps won at enormous human cost in 1917, just it was nonetheless almost Mike Duffy'southward version, nearly the hill he chose to die on.
It was the spring of 2009 when the now-suspended senator from P.E.I. almost lost it on what we might telephone call Mount Pancake.
Duffy had been a senator for the proverbial New York infinitesimal, officially sworn in just on Jan. 26. Only he hitting the footing running, at least in senatorial way — immediately travelling hither and yon, filing myriad expenses and submitting his commencement invoice for makeup to the Senate's finance people.
To alert followers of Duffy's ongoing criminal trial here, the makeup issue will band familiar; Jacqueline Lambert, the makeup artist in question, already has testified, mostly well-nigh a 2010 photo shoot for which she made up Duffy and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Only that first occasion was on March 5, most a yr before, and it involved simply Duffy, making him up for a formal portrait.
Lambert submitted her $300 invoice, and Duffy in turn submitted it to the Senate administration.
Now, some may concord that this was but a function of Duffy having been in television so much of his adult life that he considered it normal, to which I would reply that they've never seen Rosemary Barton, the great CBC reporter who is covering the trial, as she without a fuss does her own makeup at the courthouse.
(Makeup, in other words, may well exist a necessity for TV types, simply equally in other spheres of life, there are those who are helpless and those who are non.)
In any case, Duffy's invoice caused a chip of a stir in Senate administration, where discretion rules, such that, according to Nicole Proulx, then the Senate'south chief financial officer, it made it all the way up the concatenation to her desk.
As she put it, "Because of the uniqueness of the request … it eventually was brought to my attending … (inferior staffers) were request, 'What do we do with this?'"
Proulx called Duffy's executive assistant, told her "this was not something that could be paid with Senate funds," and hoped to settle information technology informally.
Just the invoice didn't get away, she told prosecutor Jason Neubauer, and later on several conversations with Duffy's EA, Lambert finally spat it out: Would the senator withdraw the asking?
"I was told no," she said. "Senator Duffy wanted to pursue this."
Thus on April ix that year, Proulx wrote Duffy, breaking it to him that the toll of makeup service "is not an expenditure that is allowed" under the bazillion Senate guidelines and rules, and formally rejected the merits.
She pointed out that if Duffy wanted to pursue the thing, he could submit a request to the Senate'southward internal economy commission, essentially the Red Bedchamber's executive committee.
"Did you hear anything further?" Neubauer asked.
"Yes," Proulx replied. "Really information technology was near, it was to be discussed at the steering committee of internal economy, but just before they got to the item, the chair said it was being withdrawn by Senator Duffy."
(Had the senator from Prince Edward Isle actually come to his senses and pulled it? Or had the chair taken ane expect at the invoice, seen the madness, and done information technology for him? It'south unclear.)
For the record, the Senate never again saw a makeup bill from Duffy.
Instead, when he called Lambert once again to do his makeup for a G8-related youth height in 2010 with the PM, he told her to submit her invoice to Maple Ridge Media, ane of 2 companies his quondam friend Gerry Donohue was using on Duffy's behalf to cutting cheques for speechwriters, his fettle trainer, and the like.
Lambert was duly paid May 25, 2010, by Maple Ridge for that service; it was never established whether or how she was paid for the 2009 Duffy-alone photo shoot.
One thing has come up clear from Proulx'south testify, and this was merely alluded to, is that Duffy was known every bit a scrap of a handful.
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Suspended Senator Patrick Brazeau opts to become straight to trial on Senate expense charges
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Christie Blatchford: Somehow, living in Ottawa became expensive the day Duffy became a senator
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Mike Duffy's makeup creative person testifies that when she worked for other Conservatives, she billed the political party not the taxpayer
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Harper might take gotten his makeup done with Duffy, merely taxpayers didn't pick upwards the tab: sources
At one bespeak in 2012, he wrote a Senate finance official a snippy notation complaining that her staff had screwed upwards and sent the wrong information to the Canada Acquirement Bureau nearly Donohue's billings — for the 2nd consecutive year.
"Somehow," Duffy sniffed, "this elementary message (the right information) has not got through."
The letter wasn't signed, Neubauer pointed out, then how did Proulx know it was from Duffy?
"Based on the manner it was written," she said evenly, "I would deduce it was from Senator Duffy."
The contractor apple didn't fall far from the senatorial tree: Donohue himself raged about the mistakes with unbecoming righteousness.
Given that Donohue wrote on all four contracts he had with Duffy that he was providing "editorial" and "writing services" when he was doing zip of the sort himself, and given that Duffy certified on each one that Donohue had done that very work, information technology was all a bit rich.
How sharper than a snake's tooth, in other words, is an ungrateful senator — and his favourite contractor.
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• Email: cblatchford@postmedia.com | Twitter: blatchkiki
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Source: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/christie-blatchford-mike-duffys-makeup-expense-claim-had-no-foundation
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