I present for your consideration the following idea: Prime Minister Harper did not know of the payment from his chief of staff, Nigel Wright, to Senator Duffy.
In other words, Harper is telling the truth. He would have been involved in a lie to parliament if he had known about this payment and denied it. But he did not know and he is telling the truth.
Now can everyone go home and shut up?
Many people want to believe that something dreadful has happened in the senate and the PMO. What I observe is:
1) Harper was trying to clean up a lax regime;
2) he imposed retroactive re-payments on senators who had had their expense accounts approved by valid internal procedures, procedures which failed a more stringent, later examination;
3) this excessive zeal to clean up was a grave political mistake, as it turned out, but not an immoral or illegal one;
4) he left it to his staff to work out the details, which is what staff are for;
5) staff erred, but they were trying to protect the boss by keeping him out of the loop, thus enabling plausible deniability on Harper’s part.
The Ontario Liberal government’s gas plant scandal is at least 1,200 times larger and more serious, assuming that the Senate scandal amounts to a total of a million dollars of ill-spent money. But the press seem to feel there is nothing further to be said about it. The Ontario Liberals have more or less fessed up to it, and the media have moved on, leaving the Ontario taxpayer much worse off.