I believe Stephen Harper about as much as I believe Dominic D'Alessandro.

Why do some people have such a hard time fessing up to their own actions? They really must take Canadians to be fools.

Here we have Stephen Harper claiming that he was slandered by the Liberals for saying that Stephen Harper had knowledge about a financial offer being made in the name of the Conservative party to Chuck Cadman in order to affect the way Cadman would vote.

How does that possibly reconcile with the following:

"The insurance policy for a million dollars, do you know anything about that?" Zytaruk asks.

"I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions," Harper replies on the tape. "This is not for publication?"

"This will be for the book, not for the newspaper," answers Zytaruk, who works for a Surrey newspaper.

Harper goes on to explain on the tape that the offer to Cadman was "only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election." He adds that the offer was carried out by people who were "legitimately representing the party."

This reminds me of the revisionist history that CEO of Manulife Financial was pitching in testimony before the Finance Committee in February 2007, when he claimed:

Dominic D'Alessandro: “The notion and the implication that somehow the government on this file is responding to initiatives that originated with corporations is not based on reality.”

Well, if that's the case, then Dominic needs to get the Globe and Mail to retract their statement below. While he’s at it he might want to get an update from his fellow Vice-Chairman of the CCCE, Paul Desmarais Jr. about his unregistered lobbying activities against the competing product known as income trusts. As two members of Harper’s 10 member NACC panel, they need to get their stories straight in order for it to be believable and “based on reality”, as it were:

Income-trust crackdown: The inside story
When the telephone rang, Flaherty knew he had to act
SINCLAIR STEWART AND ANDREW WILLIS
Globe and Mail
November 2, 2006

“High-profile directors and CEOs, meanwhile, had approached Mr. Flaherty personally to express their concerns: Many felt they were being pressed into trusts because of their duty to maximize shareholder value, despite their misgivings about the structure. Paul Desmarais Jr., the well-connected chairman of Power Corp. of Canada, even railed against trusts in a conversation with Prime Minister Stephen Harper during a trip to Mexico, and told him he should act quickly to stop the raft of conversions, according to sources.”