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At the next committee meeting, she said he handed her a document outlining his concerns about the bill, which again didn’t identify him as a Tory senator’s staffer. She noticed that he was wearing a Senate lanyard with his ID badge, so she asked him who he worked for.

“He said, ‘Oh, I’m in a contract but I’m an independent researcher.’ And I said, ‘So, who do you work for?”‘ Omidvar said.

He's been a constant (presence), I think, at the social affairs committee. It wasn't just me. He made it a point to speak to as many senators as he could

“And he hemmed and hawed and wasn’t quite forthcoming. And by this time, my parliamentary affairs adviser had already sort of alerted me and so I insisted, ‘Who do you work for?’ and he then said to me he worked for Sen. Carignan.”

Omidvar said Armstrong approached her again after another committee meeting to say “he was sorry if he had created an impression in my mind that he was anything but a Senate staffer but he was working as an independent, that his point of view was his own.”

Carignan fired Armstrong last week after learning he’d circulated a paper among independent senators urging them to postpone a final vote on the cannabis bill until they hear back from a special committee that he suggested should be set up to study aspects of legalization that have not yet been adequately considered.

Conservative Senate leader Larry Smith’s office disavowed the paper — which was designed to look like an official Senate document and which did not identify Armstrong as a Carignan staffer — and said Tory senators continue to abide by an agreement struck among all Senate factions to hold a final vote on C-45 by June 7.