Duffy trial follows Harper on campaign trail; Liberals ask RCMP to reopen probe

TORONTO – The Mike Duffy inferno grew ever closer to breaching Stephen Harper’s firewall Friday, but with the trial nearly over and the 11-week election campaign just ramping up, the prime minister appeared convinced it would burn out on its own.

Harper nearly had the campaign trail all to himself — Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe was the only other one of the five main party leaders holding public events — but the Duffy questions just kept coming.

Harper’s former legal adviser testified Friday that he believed Harper himself had approved a five-point plan by former chief of staff Nigel Wright to compel Duffy to repay $90,000 in dubious expenses — a plan that eventually resulted in Wright himself footing the bill on the senator’s behalf.

Benjamin Perrin testified earlier in the week that Harper’s current chief of staff, Ray Novak, was present on two occasions when Wright’s payment was discussed — contradicting assertions from Harper and the Conservative campaign about what Novak knew about the repayment scheme.

Perrin said he took the now infamous “we’re good to go from the PM” line from a Wright email to mean Harper had reviewed a 2013 plan to get Duffy to repay his expenses and had given the go-ahead.

The trial is set to wrap next week.

When asked Friday why he still has confidence in Novak — his current chief of staff — Harper turned to a well-worn message: “There are two people who are responsible for the actions here,” he said, meaning Duffy and Wright.

Harper has maintained he was unaware until months later that anyone other than Duffy paid the $90,000 and when he learned of the deal he took action.

Melanee Thomas, a political science professor at the University of Calgary, said the Duffy trial would be “explosively” damaging to the Conservative campaign if it was closer to the Oct. 19 election.

As it is, it has consistently pushed Harper off message, she said.

“They’re making a policy announcement or some kind of statement first thing in the morning and they want that to frame the day,” Thomas said.

“With the stuff that’s coming out of the Duffy trial, it’s difficult for them to frame each day on the kind of thing that they want the day to be about.”

Any potential fallout might be mitigated by the likelihood many voters won’t start paying attention to the campaign until after Labour Day, she said.

But if Harper’s strategy is to ride out any heat from the Duffy trial, the NDP and Liberals seem equally determined to keep fanning the flames.

Liberal candidate Dominic LeBlanc sent a letter to the RCMP and the information commissioner Friday, asking them to look into text messages and BlackBerry PIN messages sent and received by Ray Novak because they may be relevant to Duffy’s fraud trial.

“Email records produced thus far may not tell the complete story. Specifically, new testimony may indicate that Mr. Wright and Mr. Novak communicated via BlackBerry PINs and BlackBerry messages in the past, and as recently as two weeks ago,” LeBlanc wrote.

“Given that certain PINs, text messages, or BlackBerry messages could be relevant to the criminal trial, I am requesting that any necessary steps be taken to ensure that these potentially relevant communications are preserved and not deleted or destroyed.”

The NDP sent a letter earlier this week to the RCMP commissioner, asking him to consider laying charges against Wright and up to a dozen other staffers in the Prime Minister’s Office for their alleged roles in covering up the Duffy expenses scandal.

NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus said Wright’s testimony — which wrapped up this week after six days on the stand — produced significant new evidence about Wright’s role as well as that of at least a dozen other senior staff in the PMO, including Novak.

The RCMP did not return a request for comment.

Claude Denis, a political science professor at the University of Ottawa, said the Duffy trial feeds into already established narratives for both Harper’s fervent supporters and his opponents.

The latter see Duffy trial testimony as more evidence of what they already believed about the Harper government — that it is secretive and untrustworthy, Denis said.

To Harper’s supporters, it’s likely seen as more evidence that the mainstream media and the courts are against him, Denis said.

Case in point: the angry Harper supporter who launched into a profane diatribe against reporters for their insistence on pressing the prime minister about the embattled senator.

“You’re making an issue out of Duffy?” the man shrieked after a Toronto event on Tuesday.

“He’s a nothing. Harper has produced good government. It’s nothing.”