The Duffy-Wright affair: Behind closed doors and out on the street

Liberal MP Scott Andrews claims that, after yesterday’s meeting of the ethics committee was moved in camera by a Conservative motion, Conservatives voted to defeat his proposal for a study of the Duffy-Wright affair.

“Once again, the Conservatives want to cover up and deny a public hearing into this very important issue,” said Liberal MP Scott Andrews, who moved the motion to call Harper to give evidence.

The Senate’s internal economy committee, meanwhile, is considering whether to hold its meetings on Mr. Duffy’s expenses in public.

Mr. Tkachuk was expected to be back in Ottawa Monday after missing last week while recovering from surgery. The senator could not be reached Monday. However, in an interview with The Globe and Mail on Thursday, Mr. Tkachuk said he has strong reservations about public hearings. “There’s questions of process,” he said. “Sure it’s Mr. Duffy and he’s been pilloried in the paper, I feel … He hasn’t had his day in court, that’s for sure. I’m not that big about contributing to it by having an open meeting where I don’t think it’d be quite civil, actually.”

And CTV catches up with Nigel Wright on his morning run.

“I’m going to first of all give my submissions to the ethics commissioner, she’s going to look into this and I think I can stand behind everything I did,” Wright said after stopping to answer Hamamdjian’s questions. “I made some mistakes, I’m living with the consequences of those mistakes, but I believe I can account for my actions and I think that’s the right forum for it.”

So like the Harper government, Mr. Wright seems content to defer to the ethics commissioner and so the discussion increasingly becomes a matter of the commissioner’s mandate and whether the Conflict of Interest Act covers a situation like this.

Update 10:36am. A Conservative source says that, “This afternoon, Conservative Senators will move to open the meeting of Internal Economy to the public.” Liberal Senate leader James Cowan had previously requested that the meetings be conducted publicly.