Monday, February 9, 2009

Today's skill testing question



In a taped interview with journalist Tom Zytaruk, Stephen Harper stated:

"But the, uh, of the offer to Chuck [Cadman] was that it was only to replace, uh, financial, uh, considerations, he might lose due to an election."

In your opinion, do you believe the offer that Stephen Harper was describing, constitutes an attempt to bribe an elected Member of Parliament, Chuck Cadman?

Yes

No

You can vote in the box on the right

3 comments:

Dr Mike said...

If what Harper said was true , why did he not sue the writer since he was the one who was supposed to have doctored the tape & not the Liberal party of Canada.

We know the answer for sure.

Unfortunately , the people on the street do not & unless the Liberal party does something about the situation this thing will go unpunished.

Dr Mike

Dr Mike said...

Update on Chuck

A Cadman update, of Sorts

Adam Radwanski, today at 1:19 PM EST

There's been some confusion the past couple of days over whether, as part of the settlement of Stephen Harper's lawsuit, the Liberals agreed not to make further public comment on the entire Chuck Cadman saga, or just not to comment on the lawsuit itself.

For what it's worth, I'm told it was only the latter.

In other words, if the Liberals are interested in getting to the bottom of what Stephen Harper was talking about on Tom Zytaruk's (apparently undoctored) tape, they should be able to ask all the questions they want.

That being said, I'm not optimistic they actually will. This whole saga seems to be viewed as an unpleasant relic from the Stephane Dion era, which might help explain why the Liberals were happy to settle without trying to retrieve costs.

If so, it's a little disheartening for those of us still having trouble squaring the seemingly different accounts of the offer to Cadman that Harper provided on tape ("the offer to Chuck was that it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election") and in his sworn affidavit (the offfer was "only related to normal nomination and election campaign expenses that would be incurred by any candidate").

As Kady O'Malley laments, there's not an abundance of options for media to follow up on this; there aren't a lot of people in the know and those who are probably don't much feel like talking about it. The opposition, on the other hand, can at least try to use the committee system - something I'm normally loath to recommend under any circumstances, but possibly the only way to extract information on this.

With Art Hanger retired, at least it would fall to a different Conservative MP to figure out how to block an investigation.

Anonymous said...

PM dropped Cadman suit ahead of key hearing


TIM NAUMETZ
The Canadian Press
February 9, 2009

OTTAWA — Stephen Harper dropped his lawsuit against the Liberals in the Cadman affair just weeks before a hearing on whether his emails, notes and agenda could be called into evidence.

A court date was to be scheduled this month over the failure of the Prime Minister's legal team to provide documents and answers to questions that had been requested during a series of cross-examinations last summer.

The lawyer for the Liberal party was set to ask the court to rule whether Mr. Harper would have to provide emails and notes for meetings his staff held related to Chuck Cadman.