[ISL] "Stephen Harper should never have appointed Mike Duffy a P.E.I. senator"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Thomas Walkom writes about how, in appointing Ontario resident Mike Duffy as senator from Prince Edward Island, Stephen Harper violated the constitution, almost certainly knowingly.

By any reasonable interpretation, Duffy did not meet the primary constitutional qualification for a Canadian senator — that he be “resident in the province for which he is appointed.”

In fact, as the prime minister must have known (almost everyone else did), Duffy had been living in the Ottawa areas for decades. He was born in Prince Edward Island. But he had not lived there for a very long time.

And yet, in defiance of the Constitution, Harper appointed Duffy to represent P.E.I. in the Senate.

Almost all of Duffy’s legal problems stem from the efforts he and others made to try to square this impossible circle.

Crown prosecutor Mark Holmes made the point almost in passing Tuesday when he noted that Duffy was “probably ineligible” to sit as a P.E.I. senator.

The trial returned to the question Wednesday when former Senate clerk Mark Audcent was asked who was responsible for determining whether a senator met the constitutional requirement for residency.

His answer: The prime minister.