Stephen Harper calls Nigel Wright's cheque a 'gift'
Stepehen Harper's answers on Senate scandal are contradictory: Mulcair
OTTAWA—New emails have been discovered belonging to Prime Minister Stephen's former legal adviser that may shed fresh light upon the controversial decision to pay Sen. Mike Duffy's living expenses.
Harper's office issued a statement Sunday night saying that emails belonging to Benjamin Perrin had been uncovered, almost three months after the Mounties formally demanded to see them.
Government officials had said in September that the email records had been deleted after Perrin left Harper's office in March.
But on Sunday the Privy Council Office sent a letter to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police advising them of the discovery. The RCMP are currently conducting an investigation into the $90,172 payment made last winter by Nigel Wright, Harper's former chief of staff, to cover Duffy's disputed living expenses.
"PCO recently learned that the email account in question had, in fact, been frozen due to unrelated litigation," Jason MacDonald, Harper's director of communications, said in a statement. "PCO has advised the RCMP that it will immediately turn over these email records."
The RCMP is investigating whether the dealings between Duffy and Wright will form the basis of criminal charges.
When the controversy first erupted into the open in May, Harper's office assured investigators it would co-operate with them: that included providing documentation such as emails.
The emails provided so far paint a picture of the negotiations between officials in Harper's office and Duffy, who was digging in his heels and was reluctant to repay the expenses.
Those emails show that Perrin, who was then legal counsel in the Prime Minister's Office, was involved in the negotiations with lawyer Janice Payne, representing Duffy.
However, investigators were missing Perrin's emails — the PCO said they had been deleted when he quit in March, calling it the "usual protocol."
When the RCMP asked the PMO in September for Perrin's emails, the PCO advised that emails "had been deleted from the server and were no longer available."
But when the RCMP asked again last week, a further check turned up the emails, resulting in Sunday's letter from the PCO.
"We found that Mr. Perrin's emails had in fact been retained due to a litigation hold in an unrelated matter," Isabelle Mondou, assistant secretary to the cabinet, wrote to RCMP Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud.
"We understand that the PMO's counsel will contact you with a view to making Mr. Perrin's emails available to you without further delay," Mondou wrote. "We regret that we failed, even inadvertently, to accurately inform you and the PMO about the availability of Mr. Perrin's emails."
Perrin's name appears in RCMP documents released in November containing explosive allegations about a scheme to repay Duffy's disallowed housing expenses and whitewash a Senate report into the controversy.
The documents allege senior PMO staffers, including Wright, worked with top Tory senators to change the report after unsuccessfully trying to shape an independent audit.
With files from The Canadian Press
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