Although I have no sympathy for those who work, either directly or indirectly, for the Harper regime, there is a story in Toronto Life entitled, With Friends Like Harper: how Nigel Wright went from golden boy to fall guy which made for some interesting reading.
Part profile of Wright and part portrait of a cold, calculating and ruthless Prime Minister willing to jettison even those closest to him, the article revealed things I was quite unaware of. For example, I did not know that Wright and Tom Long were instrumental in luring Harper back into politics after he left following his three-year stint in the House as a Reform member:
In 2000, Wright, Long and then–provincial Tory minister Tony Clement helped found the Canadian Alliance—a new party conceived to bring east and west together. This party was led by Stockwell Day, whose leadership was to be contested the following year.
Although for a long time resistant to the notion, Harper eventually decided to make a leadership run, largely through the importuning of Wright. And of course the falling year, thanks to Peter Mackay's betrayal of his promise not to merge the Progressive Conservatives with the Alliance Party, the party became its current dark incarnation, The Conservative Party of Canada.
But Wright did much more than give Harper his unreserved support:
With his deep business connections and capital market experience, he gave Harper some much-needed Bay Street cachet, making the western reformer palatable to the Ontario wing of the party.
In 2003, Wright, along with Irving Gerstein, the former president of Peoples Jewellers, and Gordon Reid, founder of the Giant Tiger discount chain, established the Conservative Fund Canada. The CFC would become Harper’s greatest weapon in his war to eviscerate the Liberal party. Gerstein revolutionized the way Canadian political parties raise money—soliciting small individual donations, at the grassroots level—and the Conservatives became far and away the wealthiest party.
The article goes on to discuss how Wright left his high-paying position with Onex to become Harper's chief of staff in 2010 - in its boy-scout portrayal of Wright, we are told he took a significant pay cut and paid for all of his expenses out of his own pocket. He believed he shouldn’t charge taxpayers for expenses if he could afford to cover them himself.
The piece paints Wright as something of a living saint - he regularly helps out at an Ottawa homeless shelter and is contemplating going to Africa to do missionary work after resolution of his current legal problems arising from his $90,000 cheque to Mike Duffy. But that portrayal seems at odds with one curious fact:
His allegiance to the Prime Minister, we are told, is due to the fact that Harper's "...values align with [his] in every conceivable way.”
While we humans are a mass of contradictions, that one in particular is very difficult to reconcile.
Sinclair Lewis gave us a terrific portrait of religious hypocrisy, Lorne. When people are public about their religiosity, I am uncomfortable. I'd much prefer that they do good work quietly.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Owen. As it says in Matthew, "Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven."
DeleteInteresting Toronto Life article. Steve has apparently pissed off the rich corporate denizens of his base. When Gerald Schwartz of Onyx says that you have treated Bay Street's blonde-haired boy not just 'shabbily', but 'very shabbily', you gotta know that you're in deep shit.
ReplyDeleteGood luck Steve. It wasn't nice knowing you.
Let's hope this mud sticks to Dear Leader, Anon.
DeleteThis struck me after reading the article. Wright, we have been repeatedly told, is so principled that he even refused to expense taxpayers for eligible claims. Harper, on the other hand, apparently had no qualms abusing taxpayers' money by paying back only a small fraction of the costs of travel on the challenger jets for his own personal and/or Conservative Party use. Even Rathgeber is now publicly calling for Harper and the Conservative Party to return taxpayers the costs of travel that taxpayers had had to subsidize.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet Wright had claimed that Harper's values had aligned with his "in every conceivable way". Clearly, there is a big disconnect there. The obvious question that arises is: was Wright genuinely fooled by Harper?
If Wright was indeed fooled by Harper, then it is time he stood up and tell the public the truth as to what had happened in the Duffy affair, especially since many people believe that, being the principled and ethical man he was supposed to be, Wright must at the very least have informed Harper that he had arranged for Gerstein and the Conservative Party to pay off Duffy's ineligible claims (before the deal fell later fell apart causing Wright to write the cheque himself).
Your observations make eminent sense, Anon. In reading the article, I felt the writer was far too easy on Wright, and your comments ably demonstrate the article's apparent bias. And given that Wright has maintained an obdurate silence during the entire time he has been very publicly vilified by Harper also suggests a real 'party man' for whom truth and ethics take second place to his loyalty to the cause.
DeleteInteresting article, Lorne. The one weak spot was the description of how the scandal broke. It was all more or less under control until Duffy stupidly sent an e-mail outlining the terms of the deal to those he considered his close confidantes. Perhaps through an intermediary, a copy of that e-mail reached CTV. It shattered the cover story of Duffy supposedly borrowing funds from RBC to repay his Senate tab. The arrangement was for a good deal more than the gift of funds. Duffy was also promised that the Senate report into his expenses would "go easy on" him and, with it, came the condition that Duffy cease cooperating with the Deloitte auditors. There's a bribery issue to the funds, an obstruction issue in coercing Duffy to stonewall the auditors, and a corruption issue in the PMO compelling senators Tkachuk and Stewart-Olsen to launder the Senate audit report.
ReplyDeleteThis scandal also raises questions about the extent to which the Senate is an agency of the PMO. If the Senate is not ostensibly independent of the parties in the Commons what then is its role?
MoS
Hi Mound. Nice to hear from you, and I hope you are enjoying your blogging hiatus. Thanks for reminding us of some of the crucial facts of this story, facts that Harper seemed to think would magically disappear into the ether.
DeleteThe story at least makes the point of how the official narrative mutated from Dear Leader regretfully accepting Wright's resignation to his having dismissed his dastardly chief-of-staff. Of course, as per usual, Harper has refused to explain that discrepancy.
Keep up the good work, Lorne. I have been monitoring ProgBlogs and related sites since my departure and have been disillusioned to see the narrowing of focus to virtual navel gazing. Where progressivism has room to draw breath within these strictures I have no idea.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently pursuing the option of a post-grad programme delving into globalization and militarism. King's College, London, is terrific. Must run.
Thank you, Anon. I think we all try to do our best; given the challenges we face in these times, we each have our own way of responding.
DeleteBest of luck in your studies!