OTTAWA — The former lawyer for the Prime Minister's Office says he was taken aback when Stephen Harper insisted a senator only needed to own $4,000 worth of property in a province in order to represent it.
Benjamin Perrin is testifying at Mike Duffy's fraud, breach of trust and bribery trial, where he's recounting early PMO discussions about protecting Conservative senators from questions about their constitutional eligibility to sit in the upper chamber.
Perrin says he provided an opinion in February 2013 to Harper, as questions swirled about the eligibility of certain senators, including Duffy and Pamela Wallin.
Perrin says he recommended there should be certain indicators for evaluating whether a senator met the constitutional requirements for sitting on behalf a particular province.
The Constitution specifies that a senator must own at least $4,000 worth of property but it also says a senator "shall be resident" in the province he or she is appointed to represent.
Perrin says Harper maintained the minimum property requirement should be the only test of eligibility — a position Perrin says took him aback based on his own research.
Perrin, who is currently a law professor at the University of British Columbia, says that logic would mean he could represent Nunavut just by virtue of owning a bit of land there.
Perrin's appearance at the trial comes on the heels of testimony from Harper's former chief of staff, Nigel Wright.
Wright secretly paid Duffy $90,000 in March 2013 to cover the senator's contested expenses, a move that created a political firestorm when it became public two months later.
Perrin told police last year in an interview that Wright informed him of the payment during a meeting, and that Harper's current chief of staff, Ray Novak, was also in the room.
Novak, through a Conservative campaign spokesman, has denied knowledge of the payment.
Harper told the Commons that Wright did not tell others in his office about the payment, and has declined to directly address the contradictions raised over the course of the trial.
