OTTAWA—The federal ethics commissioner Mary Dawson says Stephen Harper’s former top aide Nigel Wright breached the federal Conflict of Interest Act when he sought to repay Sen. Mike Duffy’s questioned expenses.In a report released Thursday, more than a year after Justice Charles Vaillancourt cleared Duffy in the controversial senate expenses affair, Dawson fingers Wright for blame on two fronts – when he pressed the Conservative party to repay Duffy’s bill, and when he decided to do so himself.There is no penalty attached to Dawson’s findings, but the conclusion is a politically difficult one for the Conservative party as it struggles to move on from the Harper era, and a personally difficult one for Wright, who is now a London-based financier.“My intention throughout was to ensure that the taxpayer was repaid for Sen. Duffy`s expenses. I have always believed, and still believe, that my effort to get those funds repaid was in the public interest. We`ll take the time to review and understand the report,” said Wright in a statement issued Thursday by his lawyers.Dawson said the former chief of staff to prime minister Stephen Harper acted improperly when he first tried to get the Conservative party to pay off the senator’s debt — which the party appeared ready to do when the amount was believed to be $32,000.When Duffy’s bills were added up including interest, the tab ran to more than $90,000 and the party balked.Dawson rejected Wright’s defence that he was acting in a partisan capacity when he turned to former Sen. Irving Gerstein, chair of the Conservative Fund of Canada, to repay Duffy’s politically embarrassing expenses. “I am of the opinion that in his communications with Sen. Gerstein, Mr. Wright used his position as chief of staff to the prime minister to seek to influence Sen. Gerstein and the Conservative Fund Canada to reimburse Senator Duffy’s living ...
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