Helena Guergis, the minister of state for the status of women, is having a pretty rough month. Then, on Thursday, my colleague Glen McGregor had this in a piece in the Ottawa Citizen on Thursday:
Guergis paid $880,000 for the renovated four-bedroom house on Rock Avenue, a few blocks from Ashbury College, in the Lindenlea area of Rockcliffe.
Property records show she bought the 2,800 square-foot, two-storey home in late November and registered a mortgage for the full amount of $880,000.
The transaction was financed through a Bank of Nova Scotia branch in Edmonton, where Guergis’s husband, former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, held a seat until the last federal election.
It is unclear if Guergis bought the house with no money down, or whether the bank rolled an additional line of credit or other loan onto the mortgage to bring it up to the full purchase price of the house. Her office did not respond to a request for comment, saying only that her home and its financing were personal matters.
McGregor's revelation and Guergis' continuing difficulties came up this afternoon on CTV's Question Period:
Jane Taber (The Globe and Mail): And there's more on Ms Guergis. … there was a story in the Ottawa Citizen over the weekend from Glen McGregor talking about a new home that she has purchased in Lindenlea for $880,000 mortgage which it seems there's no down payment. Odd.
Robert Fife: (CTV News): That's right. And according to the Citizen story, she's got this house on the Athens on the Rideau crowd and she's, and apparently there's no mortgage on it. She's put no money down on this and she's got some kind of a loan, or, we don't know. They won't talk about it.
Tonda MacCharles (The Toronto Star): A mortgage on it, but it's not clear whether she actually had any down payment and what else was rolled into it.
Fife: So, anyway, she owes $890,000. The issue here is was Ms. Guergis given special treatment? We don't know that, but we're going to have to ask these questions now that the story is out. I will make a phone call to the ethics commissioner… Tuesday.. to ask the ethics commissioner: is this mortgage above board? Because if it isn't, if she's got special treatment that other Canadians have not been able to get in terms of a mortgage, then was it because of her position in cabinet that she was able to get this for a house? I think this could be quite a serious issue here. Maybe quite legitimate but, if there was special treatment here there needs to be brought out.
Taber: Let's point out the mortgage comes from Edmonton. Her husband is Rahim Jaffer the former MP from Edmonton. He was defeated in the last election.
Craig Oliver (CTV News): And well connected in that city. Here's what would worry me if I was Ms Guergis. It wouldn't worry me about anything I say or Bob says. What would worry me is off the top of this show, Tim Powers, who is a very well connected Conservative, suggested that Ms Guergis, you should be thinking about your future this weekend, considering what you want to do. What is he inviting her to do? He's inviting her, I think, to go to the Prime Minister and say I'm going to do you a favour, I'm quitting.
Fife: She won't do that. She's got an $880,000 mortgage, and in this town nobody voluntarily resigns. They've got a limo, and a staff, and they love this sort of stuff. She's not going to give it up. But there isn't a single Conservative in this town who is defending her. Not a single person. The only person who is, the reason why she's surviving right now is the Prime Minister, and the only reason he's keeping her on board is he doesn't want to do [fire her], he follows Jean Chretien's line that if you throw somebody overboard now the opposition will be back braying for the next child.