Bayne: None of the other Senators were there to speak for themselves?
Bayne points out that Brouse was never asked by police to produce e-mails between her and Mockler about the subscription, and doesn’t have access to them because she doesn’t work there anymore.
Bayne: In that first meeting what did he say about group subscription?
Brouse: It would be difficult to have one senator pay for the entire subscription. Would there be a way to share the subscription.
Bayne: He explained it was difficult for one senator to pay the $5,000 cost?
Brouse: What he communicated to me was $5,000 was too expensive to put through on his budget alone … so if 5 senators were to get in on this, perhaps split invoice between all of them.
Bayne: So it was clear to you that Mockler was prepared to commit Senate funds to this?
Brouse: Not one senator in the amount of $5,000.
Brouse: I can only say that he was prepared to spend $1,000 of his budget for this product.
Bayne: How did you formalize it?
Brouse: He sent me a list of senators to invite, and I sent the details of the invoices to billing/accounting department in Newfoundland
Bayne: Did you get a contract signed?
Brouse: I don’t know. Would have been billing/accounting department that dealt with that… sent to all senators involved.
Defence is trying to show the Duffy had no knowledge or involvement in the Atlantic Matters subscription with MQO. And it was all set up by Sen. Mockler
Brouse says her first contact with Duffy was when she sent out a welcome letter, and when he didn’t seem to have any idea what it was about.
Bayne asking her about who the other Senators were. She can’t recall, and Bayne grilling her pretty aggressively about how she can’t remember this. She only remembers Duffy’s name because they had chatted personally, he hadn't paid.
Brouse: “I have no reason to lie to you. I don’t remember the name of the other senators.”
Brouse sounding annoyed at Bayne repeatedly asking her about who the other Senators are: “I’m sorry, you can’t beat me into remembering who the other people’s names were… call my former employer and get the list.”
Bayne: When Duffy contacted Brouse and asked what the subscription was, "did that kind of surprise you?"
Bayne: You remembered that the Duffy portion of this was not paid.
Brouse: Yes.
Bayne: So the other four senators all paid?
Brouse: To the best of acknowledge. Accounting didn't ask me to follow up to any other senators. Reasonable conclusion to believe they paid.
Brouse says she doesn’t know in what way the invoices were paid. She told RCMP that they can get that info via her employer’s accounting department.
Brouse says her understanding was invoices were paid via Senators’ budgets.
Bayne now going through the e-mail chains for Duffy’s unpaid invoices.
Bayne asked and Brouse agreed that she only spoke once to Duffy, when he asked what the subscription was.
Bayne – one last question. MQO – were you aware that they were a Conservative-affiliated polling firm?
Brouse: No.
Mark Bourrie takes the stand
In law school, finishing first year. Have a criminal law exam on Monday.
Before that: I worked as newspaper as student, worked as Globe freelancer, and worked as Toronto Star freelancer. Moved to Ottawa in 1994. While working, got masters degree, and then PhD in 2009. Since had taught at Concordia University, Carleton University, University of Ottawa. Wrote 11 books.
After putting wife through law school, decided to put himself through law school.
Bourrie met Duffy soon after arriving in Ottawa 1994 – sat next to Duffy in the Hot Room in Centre Block.
Bourrie: “We had a number of interesting conversations because we lived in the same neighbourhood.” – One story was how a guy was jumping off the Alexandra Bridge (Bourrie: “the guy lived by the way”)
Bourrie: “I’m a short fat balding guy from a small town, and so is he, so we kind of got along."
JN asking Bourrie what their relationship is:
Bourrie: “I would say we were friends. At that point we weren’t social friends… I don’t drink so I avoid the rats next that is downtown Ottawa. So we didn’t see each other after work.”
Bourrie says he visited Duffy at his home in PEI after he was appointed to the Senate. Duffy was never in the Bourrie home.
Bourrie says he sent him a congratulations after he was appointed to the Senate, and “hope you make some good law.”
Bourrie says he had a lot of e-mail conversation and some phone calls after he was appointed in the Senate.
Bourrie: He knew I was working on news control research. I wouldn’t call myself a Tory. I’m not a partisan person, but he did talk about his reputation and the problems he was having.
Bourrie: It became clear after he was appointed there was a lot of Internet trolling going on. Nothing about political discourse and fair comment. We’re talking about mean, anonymous crap posted about this guy from the time he was appointed. He asked me what to do about it, because I had my problems in the past with trolls and Internet psychos
Bourrie: Reputation management – it’s an entirely new area of journalism/law/policy.
JN: So he was concerned about some troubling content on the internet?
Bourrie: “I said get a lawyer.” I said several time to get a lawyer … because big companies won’t listen to you until then.
Bourrie: I called up Wikipedia admin and said you can’t post that stuff about him… YouTube was particularly bad because you can’t communicate with these people (who post the details).
Wikipedia, YouTube – mostly “they’re accusing him of being drunk.” And blogs, but they seemed to have died off in recent years.
Bourrie said he told Duffy on getting questionable content off: “If you want a takedown notice, you don’t get a journalism professor in Montreal to do it, you get a lawyer to do it.”
Neubauer: When you were looking at this for him, did you ask him to pay you?
Bourrie: “No. … I’m positive I didn’t ask him to pay me.”
Neubauer: And did you expect to be paid?
Bourrie: “No, I never really thought about it. Maybe buy you a bottle of scotch or something one day.” JN: “Is that what you said to him?” Bourrie: “No.”
Bourrie said he asked his wife if she could help out because she wasn't insured. Says his wife didn't talk about defamation law.
