If only I’d known that bribing MPs in Canada was legal?

Turns out the tape in which Harper admitted to bribery was not doctored, after all

I wished I’d known back when CAITI was formed in January 2007 that bribing MP’s in Canada was legal, as I would have expended the limited financial resources of CAITI quite differently.

I only became aware that bribing MPs in Canada is considered legal, or at least unworthy of punishment, after Stephen Harper admitted to doing that very thing with MP Chuck Cadman, and got away scott free.

I also learned from Stephen Harper that if anyone questions whether you actually bribed an MP, the remedy is simply to mount a campaign of moral indignation over the very thought that you actually engaged in such criminal behaviour and buy precious time by challenging whether the hard evidence is actually hard, which of course it turns out to be. I also learned that a little libel chill seems to goes a long way in this country, which is the basis on which Harper ultimately put that issue to bed......at least for now.

Meanwhile. I also learned that the RCMP are more focused on ignoring SOS signals from lost skiers in the mountains and tasering people immigrating to Canada wielding staplers, than they are in investigating the alleged criminal bribery of our elected members of Parliament

As for the bribery in question, what else could Stephen Harper have possibly meant in the following conversation:

Zytaruk: "I mean, there was an insurance policy for a million dollars. Do you know anything about that?"

Harper: "I don't know the details. I know that there were discussions, uh, this is not for publication?"........I can tell you that I had told the individuals, I mean, they wanted to do it. But I told them they were wasting their time. I said Chuck had made up his mind, he was going to vote with the Liberals and I knew why and I respected the decision. But they were just, they were convinced there was, there were financial issues. There may or may not have been, but I said that's not, you know, I mean, I, that's not going to change..... they were legitimately representing the party. I said don't press him. I mean, you have this theory that it's, you know, financial insecurity and, you know, just, you know, if that's what you're saying, make that case but don't press it...But the, uh, the offer to Chuck was that it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election."

If that ain’t a bribe, then I guess I don’t a bribe from a “financial consideration”?

Okay, so let’s call it a financial consideration, paid to a sitting MP to influence his vote in Parliament, instead. Wow, that’s a real mouthful.

In that case, if I had known that “a financial consideration, paid to a sitting MP to influence his vote in Parliament” was legal, then I would have conducted the affairs of CAITI quite differently. Instead of taking the $1.2 million in membership fees that we were able to raise from people across the country and use it to mount a nation wide advertising campaign of billboards, bus shelter ads, newspaper ads, press releases and websites, that money would have probably been far more effective had we simply bribed a few of the right people.

It’s a bit of a moot point that a large part of those monies were used to stimulate the very news media that have totally misrepresented and misreported to Canadians on this income trusts issue, but that money could have gone a long way had it been devoted to the more productive exercise of bribery, since I have also learned over the recent past that $300,000 is enough to buy the service of a sitting Prime Minister! Even though the sitting Prime Minister in question, insists it only costs $230,000 to buy the service of a sitting Prime Minister. Either way, that would have left us with over $900,000 to purchase the services of a group of lesser light politicians and maybe bureaucrats, to ensure ourselves of a speedy delivery of the policy of our dreams.......the one that is based on the truth and not Jim Flaherty’s policy that is based on outright falsehoods and fraud and fabricated claims that income trusts cause tax leakage.

Oh well, I guess its all water under the bridge.....the fact that we could have bribed.....but certainly not the fact that “tax leakage” is a fraudulent argument. That puppy is only just getting started.