If someone in the PMO paid off a big chunk of my mortgage, how much would you trust my coverage of politics?

Now, what if they did it for a legislator? It's wrong, totally wrong. And dangerous to our Constitution.

Watching Democratic as well as Republican legislators pry into American scandals involving IRS targeting of conservatives, Department of Justice snooping on journalists and White House fiddling of talking points on an ambassador's murder, I'm reminded how important the separation of powers is there.

Listening to the Tories babble about the Prime Minister's chief of staff writing a big personal cheque to a Senator, I desperately miss it here.

We have it in theory. But it's so badly eroded in practice that, on CBC's Power & Politics, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre could brazenly claim Nigel Wright wrote Mike Duffy a $90,000 cheque "Because we didn't believe taxpayers should have to pay the cost and Mr. Duffy was not in a position to pay them himself."

I don't know who "we" is, since Poilievre said Harper knew nothing.

But I do know Poilievre said "Nigel Wright did an exceptionally honourable thing. He reached in to his own resources, wrote a personal cheque out of his own bank account to cover the costs of these ineligible expenses and to protect taxpayers."

It's not "honourable" for someone in the PMO to give a big wad of cash to a legislator. It's scandalous. And it doesn't protect taxpayers.

What protects them is legislative scrutiny of the executive branch. How likely is a Senator, or MP, to obstruct or chastise a cabinet that just bailed him out of a gruesome self-inflicted ethical, financial and possibly even legal problem?

A cabinet to whom, for instance, the police force is ultimately answerable?

I am astounded that news stories say there appears to be nothing illegal about this payment. Even if that is true, it is patently unconstitutional.

The separation of powers is neither an American concept nor a quaint anachronism. Among other things, our House of Commons is constitutionally forbidden (S. 54) to pass any money bill "that has not been first recommended to that House by Message of the Governor General" in that session.

Legislators are executive watchdogs not lapdogs. They must be duly warned of things cabinet wants; they can't be blindsided or stampeded. In theory. In practice, well, would five figures cover it?

Suppose someone in the PMO suddenly paid a restless backbencher $90,000? Or someone on a committee about to look into something potentially embarrassing?

Remember, a discreet procedural vote can smother an awkward investigation.

What would Tory spinners be saying if Jean Chretien had done it? Or Kathleen Wynne's chief of staff suddenly wrote a cheque to Andrea Horwath, or some financially embarrassed member of Horwath's caucus? Or, in the middle of Obama's scandal trifecta, we found his chief of staff slipping nearly a hundred grand to a Congressman under murky circumstances?

My first reaction was we were dealing here with separation of brain and wallet.

How could anyone can have thought they would get away with it?

But they seem in part to have been counting on Canadians not understanding why the PMO shouldn't be writing fat cheques to desperate legislators. After all, cabinet already owns the legislature. Why not make it overt and official?

Well, suppose someone in the PMO handed me $90,000. Someone splendid. A fine public servant. Above reproach. You can trust me on that. Pay no attention to that pile of money behind the curtain. And I don't get to write laws or compel testimony.

Sen. Duffy must resign.

Nigel Wright must resign.

So must anyone involved in negotiating or concealing this obscene transaction. It corrupts our system of government.

john.robson@sunmedia.ca