Liberals to Break Silence on the Cadman Affair?

Posted by Devin Johnston on January 23rd, 2010

Today, as thousands of Canadians are demonstrating against the Harper government's second prorogation of Parliament, the Liberals put out a press release outlining Stephen Harper's top 20 democratic abuses. The list is worth a look, though there is a much more comprehensive list over at Driving the Porcelain Bus. What caught my attention, though, is item number 18 on the list:

18. Launching a lawsuit to hush-up the Cadman Affair into bribery allegations.

Chuck Cadman Cheque

Posted by Devin Johnston on October 24th, 2009

The Liberal Party has put together a new site attacking the Conservative Party over allegations that the government is paying for partisan political advertising as part of the distribution of "Economic Action Plan" stimulus money. In particular, the Conservative MPs have come under fire for distributing over-sized novelty cheques with Conservative Party logos and colours to organizations receiving stimulus money. The attack site includes a "make your own cheque" web application, allowing visitors to create fake Conservative Party cheques. The cheque I made, pictured above, is a $1,000,000 cheque to Chuck Cadman, the late independent MP whom the Conservative Party allegedly offered a bribe to defeat the Martin government in 2005. These allegations have received very little attention of late; the Liberals mysteriously stopped talking about them after settling a lawsuit with the Conservative Party earlier this year.

Disclaimer: the attempted bribery allegations against Mr. Harper and the Conservatives were made by journalist Tom Zytaruk and others and have not been proved in a court of law. The RCMP announced there was not enough evidence to support criminal charges in much the same way that they declined to investigate allegations by the NDP that the Conservatives engaged in illegal interception of private communications in 2008.