I found a description of a crime boss on Wikipedia and could not help notice how accurately it parallels Parliament under Stephen Harper.
"A boss typically has absolute or near-absolute control over his subordinates, is greatly feared by his subordinates."
When a handful of Conservative MPs became disgruntled over not being able to raise private member's business, Harper held a caucus meeting. Remarkably, when those same MPs emerged from that meeting, they were once again toeing the party line.
After the scandal over former chief of staff Nigel Wright's repayment of Senator Mike Duffy's ill-begotten housing expenses, Harper made an open caucus speech expressing his unhappiness and defending his record on accountability.
In the following days, every time a question was put to an MP about the ongoing scandal, the answers were almost verbatim from the PM's speech.
"A boss will typically put up layers of insulation between himself and his men in order to defeat law enforcement efforts to arrest him. Whenever he issues orders, he does so either to his underboss, consigliere or capos. The orders are then passed down the line to the soldiers. This makes it difficult under most circumstances to directly implicate a boss in a crime, since he almost never directly gives orders to the soldiers."
Before the Conservative-led Senate Committee on Internal Economy released the audit report on Duffy's expenses, a secret meeting took place in the PMO and the language of the report was watered down. There are no records to link the order to Harper directly.
In cutting a personal cheque to Mike Duffy for the repayment of his fraudulently-claimed expenses, Nigel Wright "acted on his own." Being a good underboss, Wright then fell on his own sword to spare the Prime Minister.
"Only the boss, underboss or consigliere can initiate an associate into the family, allowing them to become a made man."
Only the Prime Minister can appoint Senators, which Harper has done with greater vigour than any PM before him. Senators are appointed for life. Witness Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin. Despite their obvious breach of the public trust-why else would they be paying it back?-they continue to sit in the Senate and collect their $135,200 annual salary and will do so until they are 75. Even worse, Patrick Brazeau is still being paid even though he has been suspended from the upper chamber because he is facing criminal charges.
"The boss can promote or demote family members at will."
The examples are too numerous to detail, from staffers to cabinet ministers to civil servants, anyone who doesn't serve Harper's ideological interests. Then there is poor Michael Sona, the loyal, 24-year-old staffer who the party threw under the bus to take the rap for robocalls.
"If the boss is incarcerated or incapacitated he places an acting boss who is responsible for running the crime family."
After the now infamous open caucus speech, Harper jetted off to Â鶹ÊÓƵ America leaving John Baird to take the heat in his absence.
I'm sure some readers will find this comparison hyperbolic. And maybe that is a fair assessment, but I am so sick of the double standard that seems to apply to Parliamentarians. Even when they do get their hands caught in the cookie jar, there are no consequences. And no, having to pay back money you were not entitled to in the first place is not a consequence.
As for Harper's "I didn't know" act, it just soaks him with hypocrisy. When Jean Chrétien was embroiled in his scandals, Harper didn't care what or when the prime minister knew. It happened on Chrétien's watch, therefore Chrétien should be held responsible.
Plausible deniability has been a joke ever since the CIA first coined the term during the Kennedy administration. Withholding information from political leaders to protect them from repercussions simply doesn't work. In fact, it may make things worse.
To give Harper the benefit of the doubt, he said he would have stopped Wright from paying Duffy off if he had known. On the other hand, he said he personally looked at Pamela Wallin's expenses and they were just fine. We all now know that is not true.
In politics, optics are almost, and sometimes even more, important than reality. Aside from making him look like a crime boss, this fiasco makes Harper look like a terrible manager at best and a massive liar at worst.
