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In this context, the trial of Mike Duffy serves to remind that this particular government – led by this particular prime minister – plays by a different set of rules. Stephen Colbert called it truthiness. Tom Flanagan has characterized it as being guided not by whether a thing is true but whether it is plausible. Now, Canadians have been given cause to question whether some in Harper’s PMO crossed into territory that was neither.

For example, we know that media lines were prepared by PMO officials in 2013 based on a clear falsehood: that Mike Duffy personally repaid his expenses. Seven senior members of the prime minister’s entourage – according to email evidence disclosed in court – knew that was not true. But Duffy was permitted to say it anyway.

There is also the example of the prime minister telling the House of Commons that only one person in his office knew of the secret payment – which, again, was not true and was known to not be true by the same senior staff members. Stunningly, these same PMO officials did not rush to tell the prime minister to stop telling Parliament things that were plainly false.

Until this week, peering through the lens of a former PMO staffer, I was actually willing to believe most of what we had been told. I felt that Nigel Wright was acting, in difficult circumstances and dealing with a scurrilous character, as best he could until making a terrible decision to finance Mike Duffy. I didn’t exactly see that as evidence of ecclesiastical purity as he claims, but it could at least be chalked up to understandable human failure. I also believed that Ray Novak knew nothing of it – because that’s what he said. And I sincerely believed all along that Harper was unaware.