Mike Duffy was a journalist for decades. He was a prominent national correspondent for the CBC. He had his own show on CTV. He won accolades, awards and honorary degrees.
For those of us who knew him then, Mike was a great guy. He was friendly and funny. He broke the mould as a television journalist; pink and portly, he was not the stereotype of 鈥渉air and teeth.鈥� That he succeeded on TV spoke well of him and his employers.
He was a good colleague, particularly to those more junior than he, as I was. At meetings of the parliamentary press gallery, he was outspoken.
Once, in 1984, when the Liberal government was trying to restrict our access, he blew up: 鈥淭he parliamentary press gallery is the pinnacle of Canadian journalism! We shouldn鈥檛 take this!鈥� He urged us, memorably, not to submit ourselves to an unpleasant act of a long, cylindrical object in an inconvenient place.
He could get angry.
One other thing about Mike: Whatever his commitment to journalism, he made no secret of his political ambitions.
Mike wanted to be a senator. Badly. It was no secret. We called him 鈥淪enator Duffy,鈥� and he beamed.
Finally, on Dec. 22, 2008, Stephen Harper named him a Conservative senator from Prince Edward Island.
It was then that critics who had been his colleagues began to wonder if Duffy had lobbied the Conservatives for the appointment. Or, more subtly, if he had softened, shaded or slanted his reportage to make himself more appealing to them.
In 2009, in response to complaints over a segment that Duffy did about Liberal leader St茅phane Dion鈥檚 performance in a CTV interview during the October 2008 election campaign, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council concluded that Duffy had not been 鈥渇air, balanced or even-handed.鈥�
In his four years in the Senate, Duffy has made many comments, on all kinds of questions. Of course, senators have opinions, even if they were once reporters. What was curious, though, was that Senator Duffy鈥檚 were particularly pugnacious, as if he were gloriously free to say now what he could not before.
He became partisan, unrelenting, unconstrained and unapologetic.
Duffy did not have to take a stand against former Conservative MP Helena Guergis in her own riding, but he did. There, he gave his blessing to a double standard that has different rules for different people.
Indeed, he became its beneficiary.
Harper had dropped Guergis from cabinet and caucus on the basis of accusations that remain unproven.
Then he denied her the Conservative nomination. It was breathless and ruthless.
Yet there has been no such rush to judgment from the prime minister regarding Duffy鈥檚 insistence on receiving a housing allowance for his residence in Ottawa. Duffy鈥檚 defence 鈥� that the rules are unclear, that his primary home is in Prince Edward Island (though he doesn鈥檛 pay taxes there) 鈥� is demeaning to a guy of his intelligence.
He could have defused this early and honourably by repaying the money. Instead, for months, he stonewalled. He has been rude to reporters, as if questioning him is l猫se-majest茅, and they have been hard on him. Had Duffy still been a reporter, he would have asked the same questions.
But he is not a reporter anymore. He is a senator, an unreconstructed Conservative and a good ol鈥� boy.
That means he can agree to repay the money, belatedly and grudgingly. It also means, in the way things work in Ottawa, that he will be spared the wrath of the prime minister and the punishment of the Senate 鈥� though surely not the scrutiny of his bemused former colleagues.
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Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University.
