Mike Duffy trial: Ex-aide's cellphone charges paid through Duffy associate, court hears

Mike Duffy arranged to have the monthly fees of his executive assistant's cellphone paid through his associate, after Senate administration said it would not cover the costs, court heard Tuesday.

"I think he said that he would arrange for Gerry Donohue to reimburse me," Diane Scharf testified. "Now we did not want to circumvent Senate rules. We were just trying to serve the public."

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Court has heard that Donohue had been awarded a series of Senate research contracts with Duffy worth nearly $65,000.

The RCMP have said Donohue received the money for "little or no apparent work." Instead, the Crown alleges, the pool of money was used by Duffy, through Donohue, to pay for a series of expenses, some of which the Crown says would not have been covered by the Senate.

Duffy's defence lawyer Donald Bayne has argued that while it was "administratively irregular" to not have these expenses paid out through Senate finance, the action was not criminal.

Scharf worked for Duffy for six months in 2011 while his full-time executive assistant Melanie Mercer was on maternity leave.

Scharf said she went to the Senate telecommunications office to receive a phone, but was told it would not pay for the fees, because Duffy already had a few phones though Senate communications.

Duffy arranged for reimbursement, court hears

"I arranged through Bell that I would pay the monthly fees on it, and Senator Duffy arranged for me to be reimbursed," she said.

"The Senate did not want to pay those monthly fees. They would provide the phone, they would do the configuration, but they didn't pay the little monthly fee."

Court exhibits reveal that Scharf was paid three cheques totalling nearly $500 through Donohue's family-owned company Ottawa ICF for phone-related services.

​Duffy has pleaded not guilty to 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery related to expenses he claimed as a senator and later repaid with money from the prime minister's former chief of staff Nigel Wright. The trial, which began April 7 in the Ontario court of justice in Ottawa, is in its 29th day.

Earlier, Mercer, Duffy's former full-time executive assistant, finished up her testimony under cross-examination by Bayne. She denied that Duffy ever gave her instructions to falsify expense claims or contracts, and instead described in an Ottawa courtroom the contract process that she says was poorly organized.

Mercer also testified Tuesday that she believed Donohue, had provided services for the senator, contrasting what the RCMP have alleged.

Crown prosecutor Mark Holmes spent much of Monday asking Mercer to review a series of contracts and travel claims of her former boss.

In her role as executive assistant, Mercer had filled out the details on some of those forms, based on information provided to her by Duffy or gleaned from his daily diary, she testified.

Denies Duffy gave instructions to falsify claims

On Tuesday, Bayne pointedly asked Mercer whether Duffy had ever given her "any instructions to falsify any of these expense claims."

"No he did not," she said.

"Did he ever give you any instructions to falsify any application for a service contract?"

"No he did not."

Bayne referred Mercer to a statement she gave to police in August 2013, asking whether she said that with respect to senators contracting out services, the process was very poorly explained to staff.

"You agree that you told police [Senate HR] didn't really explain it well, this contracting process at HR, right?" Bayne asked.

"There was confusion, yes," she said.

Mercer, according to the transcript of that police interview, said she got the impression from administrative officials in both Senate finance and HR that when it came to processing these contracts "there really is no process to it. It's whoever you like, it's whoever you want to bring on board."

Reading from Mercer's statement to police, Bayne asked if she said that she saw speeches that Donohue and Duffy had worked on together "pretty frequently" and if Donohue​ "did a lot of work for Senator Duffy."

"That was my understanding," Mercer told Bayne.

Blank travel claims pre-signed, witness says

On Monday, Mercer also testified that Duffy pre-signed a stack of blank travel claims before any details about trips had been provided on the documents.

Executive assistants from other Senate offices had suggested to her to have Duffy sign a stack of blank travel claim forms, because "that's what they did in their office to help expedite the process for filing claims," she testified.

But Bayne said one of those executive assistants had been assigned to Mercer to be her teacher, or shadow, as Mercer had just begun her role as Duffy's executive assistant.

"Clearly the message to you was this is an appropriate way of doing things," Bayne asked. 

"That was my thought at the time," Mercer said.​