| Publisher edits, adds to Cadman book |
| Juliet O'Neill and Norma Greenaway, Canwest News Service-Published: Tuesday, March 04, 2008 |
| The crucial date of May 17, 2005 - the date on which Conservatives allegedly offered dying MP Chuck Cadman a $1-million insurance policy in exchange for his vote - has been removed from the final version of a book that has sparked a political storm on Parliament Hill. |
| Publisher Howard White told Canwest News Service today that he "stopped the presses" to update the book with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's denial that party officials tried to bribe Cadman and to remove the May 17 date cited by Cadman's widow as when her husband received an offer from unidentified Conservative representatives. |
| The government has restricted its reaction to the bribe allegation to a meeting two days later, May 19, during which, it says, the only offer Conservative officials Doug Finley and Tom Flanagan made was to invite Cadman to run as Conservative candidate in the next election with the backing of the party apparatus. |
| The Harbour Press book by Tom Zytaruk, Like a Rock, now will say the alleged bribe was offered "sometime" before the May 19 confidence vote, in which Cadman's vote saved the minority Liberal government from defeat. |
| Harper again insisted in the House of Commons that the Conservatives offered Cadman nothing more than the party nomination for the riding, and assurances "financially and otherwise" that he was able to fight a successful election campaign. |
| "Those are the facts," Harper said, vowing to proceed with a threatened libel suit against Liberal Leader Stephane Dion if he does not withdraw and apologize for alleging Harper was aware of a bribery attempt. |
| "The leader of the opposition says otherwise. We will see how that theory stands up when he has to deal with it in a court of law." |
| The Liberals have refused to apologize or strip what Harper's lawyer called defamatory articles from the party's website. |
| White said Cadman's wife, Dona, still believes, as reported in a leaked manuscript of the book, that the meeting took place Tuesday, May 17. The book recounts how her husband came home angry and ashamed of the Conservatives. She didn't know who was at the meeting; she said Cadman showed the two the door. |
| But the date has been removed because "we simply don't know," White said. The decision was made after the publisher and author received a statement from Dan Wallace, Cadman's legislative assistant at the time, which says there was only one meeting among Cadman, Flanagan and Finley and that was on May 19, just before the vote. |
| "It would be pretty deceptive for both the Conservatives and Dan Wallace to say what they're saying if in fact they're aware there were other meetings," White said. "But who knows? Politicians have played tricks before." |
| Conservative party headquarters provided Canwest with a statement from Wallace today, that was dated Sunday, March 2. Wallace, who has not said anything about the matters except for two statements issued by the Conservative party, said there was only one meeting among the three men. It was May 19 and "I was outside that room and not privy to the details." |
| In the Commons, Liberal MPs ignored the May 19 meeting and zeroed in on the one that had reportedly been held May 17. |
| Deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and MP Ruby Dhalla pressed Harper to say who the party emissaries were at the meeting cited by Cadman's widow as the one when the million-dollar bribe was made. |
| "Will the prime minister admit a meeting took place on May 17 or is he saying that Dona Cadman is lying?" Dhalla asked. |
| "Who were the political operatives at the meeting and what offers were made to a dying man for his vote?" |
| White said Wallace had refused to confirm to the author that there was a meeting on the 17th, as Cadman's widow recalled it. |
| "Now Wallace has acknowledged a meeting and he's given a date for it, so we've had to take that into account," he said. "We're just backing off on the date. We don't know how many meetings there were and when they were, so we're not going to hang our hat on either date." |
| Just a note from ROBBINS-the online 'unscientific' Angus Reid poll on my site-and others we have researched-went from 46% (it had crawled up to that total over a one year period)-'respondents' wanting an election down to 36% about two weeks ago-for some inexplicable reason. The text for the online poll also changed. Now the number is 39%. What gives? |
