Prime Minister Stephen Harper is moving to sue Liberal Leader Stephane Dion, deputy leader Michael Ignatieff, House leader Ralph Goodale, and the entire Liberal party in relation to last week’s controversy involving the late Independent MP Chuck Cadman.
A notice of the suit, served on the parties at 7 a.m. today, claims the prime minister was libelled in “two devastatingly defamatory articles published at www.liberal.ca entitled ‘Harper Knew of Conservative Bribery’ (Feb. 29, 2008) and ‘Harper Must Come Clean About Allegations of Conservative Bribery, Liberals Say’ (Feb. 28, 2008),” according to the document, signed by Ottawa lawyer Richard Dearden.
And to think we knew him “back when”…
Stephen Taylor has more.
Nice to see as well,the media (Fife) starting to question why,when Libs KNEW about this in’07,it is just coming out now.Said ‘they had an obligation to report’…buckling up for QP! I can just see Newman’s head exploding and I am enjoying that thot!
A lot of hurt feelings……..sniff.
CTV has Lib response:They will NOT apologize,won’t back down..accuse PMSH of ‘libel chill’ and attempt to shut down the discourse.
Dona Cadman just came out in support of PMSH.
WTF!!!!!!!!
I hope Dion and the rest of the sorry bunch have a large supply of Depends. They’re gonna need them.
Despite our gun control laws AND the long gun registry, Dion has somehow managed to open his mouth and put in his foot, and then shoot it.
Twice.
I guess convention centers across Canada are sending brochures to the Liberal Party headquarters as we speak.
I hope dionski and crew roast in hell.
..ET, and Cadman said no as well
One thing we’ll have to be watching for is Liberal lawyers working pro-bono in order to be appointed to the bench some day. (It used to be liberal lawyers donating cash. Now that’s illegal beyond the grand a year.)
Any work should have to be declared a political donation, no? And any work done for free worth more than the max donation amount would be illegal, no? Not that a liberal lawyer is worth much…
Is it possible that Harper’s just doing this lawsuit to put the Liberals further in debt re: legal costs for this, which Harper probably would win? Remember that the CPC has money to burn at this point.
Pretty smart if it is…
A) I think it absolutely ROCKS that Harper is suing these gutter dwelling Liberal slime molds. Trampling the honor of a dead man to get cheap political points, it doesn’t get much lower than that.
B) Its about damn time somebody put a boot into them. The brain trust that runs the Liberals seriously needs an ass kicking, looks like this is finally going to be it. I got a pair of size 10 1/2 steel toes right here if Harper wants to borrow them.
I’d like to see the Liberals declare bankruptcy and be dissolved. It would make me happy.
The Liberals will get to spend what little cash they have on legal bills. Kinda hard to get donors to give you their money when you know it’s gonna be spent on defending the party against their own stupidity.
I guess Celine Dion hasn’t figured out that it’s not a good idea to play mouse to Harper’s cat.
lead story at CBC still Conrad Black
TG: The link to the Cadman Book http://www.667890ttt.com/Chuck%20Cadman%20-%20Like%20A%20Rock.pdf
isn’t working , maybe it’s been pulled? I would have liked to get it.
The Libranos must know that a Harper majority is within reach, as the sleeze factor of their behavior rises daily. Their confidence in their spin-machine is astonishing.
Equally astonishing is that they have not yet found their mole. Quite the tight grip their leader has. Imagine how steadfastly he could lead our country through the difficult times we face ahead – as the US dollar crisis deepens.
When you can’t manage an effective and orderly opposition, what makes you think you can lead the country?
RW
the CBC hates black so much that they wouldn’t pull the headline if a giant meteor was on its way to hit Toronto in the next half-hour.
Duker,
Correct you are. Guess the author sicked his lawyer on the website.
Google “Cadman+book” with the quotes and you may find another site for the pdf pages.
= TG
Can’t help but notice how quickly the Globe and Mail comments are being closed for stories related to this. Some within an couple of hours of publication.
Could it be the libs are not weathering this too well?
Can’t help but notice how quickly the Globe and Mail comments are being closed for stories related to this. Some within an couple of hours of publication.
Could it be the libs are not weathering this too well?
Duker,
Correct you are. Guess the author sicked his lawyer on the website.
Google “Cadman+book” with the quotes and you may find another site for the pdf pages.
= TG
Following QP,on ctv,Fife commented on how intense and convicted PMSH was in his threat to make good on lawsuit when responding to Dion.Fife said he has never seen PMSH so determined…wondered what PMSH has up his sleeve,and PMSH stated clearly it would go to court.Check out WK’s comments re same.
The clucking twit Kate Wheeler asked the fake blond Fife what he thinks about about the possibility of Dion retracting his claims about Cadman,to which Fife responded “good luck”,this was followed by chuckles and snickers by Wheeler.It boggles the mind how stupid these to are.
Hmm if they have had the “information” for some time and they botched it this bad was Jason Cherniak in charge “the sting”?
It used to be that Parliamentarians were careful to ensure all charges were made in the House. Going outside the house and co-ordinating with media (the point of asking for the planning documents, emails and phone calls) is just asking for trouble.
There is one thing about uttering a libel that gets reported, it is quite another to co-ordinate a libel with the newsmedia. If I were an editor, producer or publisher I would be double checking with my reporters that they were not engaged in any Krista Erikson like co-operatiion. They be liable for the libel as well and in big dollar amounts, since it becomes a conspiracy at that stage.
Ever see this movie
http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3634732800/tt0081974
Reminds me of Mulroney/Schreiber as well.
Got an error message on the last comment, and voila, two instead of one. = TG
The twit Kate Wheeler asked the fake blond Fife what are the chances of Dion et al retracting their claims about Cadman to which Fife responded “good luck”.Kate found this quite amusing judging by her snickers and chuckles.It boggles the mind that these two can be so transparently anti Harper.
“Yesterday Mr. Dion committed to spend $50 million on the creation of a ‘South Asian Foundation of Canada’.”
hmmm, sounds like somebody is trying to buy some votes.
Interesting – Dion won’t apologize and is using the tactic of ‘the best defence is an offense’, ie, he’s accusing Harper of threatening the Liberal Party with ‘libel chill’. This may buy them a day or two.
What’s the strategy? I’m assuming that there is no proof whatsoever to the Liberal claim of CPC bribing Cadman.
If there had been, they would have provided more evidence than hearsay, and they haven’t even hinted at such. Therefore, their original strategy was ‘scream and smear’. Not exposure of truth, but a deliberate, malicious, smear campaign.
It’s really a very serious allegation, to accuse a PM of corruption. Don’t the Liberals realize that when you accuse someone of such, you HAVE to have a full data base? Not just hearsay and allegations and speculations that ..’well, somone could have put up a million dollars’; and ‘somehow it could have been done..and.’
The Liberals tried to connect Schreiber with Harper and failed. Are they really that dumb?
How do they get out of it? They probably feel that an apology would destroy Dion’s credibility. Maybe. Can they get out of it? How?
1)The book author will retract.
2) The daughter will retract.
3) Mrs. Cadman has already, in a way, retracted but only from Harper, not from the CPC.
4)Are they waiting for the March 17th by-election in Toronto Centre, which Bob Rae is slated to win? Then, he can come charging in on his White Horse and take-over from Dion?
Are they hoping the sky will fall? A meteor?
Liberals have two prong strategy to deal with lawsuit. First they will claim website simply repeats Dion’s comments in House (except for that Bribery line at top of website, that is).
Second, they will hire a medium, try to get them into a court to hold a seance, so they can talk to Cadman and confirm his story, thus refuting the libel.
This is getting funnier by the moment. It seems like Harper was aware Donna Cadman would make statement. Liberals may have just stumbled into a quick and dirty way to get rid of Dion.
More likely, though, after some huffing, puffing, and of course, bluffing, Dion, Goodale and crew will issue some sort of meal culpa that they didn’t actually speak outside privilege, but apologize for misunderstanding. To go to the wall on this means they will, at least, incur significant legal expenses and look really bad.
This is pretty high stakes. There is so much on the table now from both sides that this will be impossible to resolve without major loss of face and likely a resignation.
Harper cannot back down now, not that he wants to. If DIon is going to back down then he better do so in the next 48 hours. If he lets this go much longer then he is investing more and more into it. HE might buy some time but being forced by a court to apologize would be a killer. The Liberal party really doesnt have the money to take care of this. An apology now likely gets keeps money out of the equation.
As I said above, some news organizations better pray that their people arent on the call lists of the main people involved. Imagine if the CBC was caught again in this kind of a media/Liberal Party Dance….I think you could easily look at the destruction of CBC news and the Liberal Party….long way down the road but the scenario exists.
First the liberals call a deadman Mr. Cadman a liar, now the liberal call his widow Dona Cadman, a liar.
No news on who the two alleged cpc members are that made the supposed offer. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out if it were the liberal party that made the offer, it is more thier style.
Not looking good for the liberals, not good at all.
By the time this is done, the higher ranking liberal party members, will not be able to run for local dogcather.
The Libs statements (both in and out of the HoC)were so over the top and incendiary that something had to be done. If Dion had been smart he would have simply said that the allegations were very serious, and are being referred to the RCMP.
This is all symptomatic of what was posted on this site about Liberal “hope bubbles”. The hope that some quick and easy fix resulting in renewed Liberal power will show up. Like a genie in a bottle or sword in a stone. That tough realities such as poor finances, lack of vision, and a dweeb in Stornaway don’t really matter.
Well, the Liberals still have real convictions in their safe place, the HOC today at QP. Dion, Iggy et al were going on with the accusations in their only safe haven.
Also in the HOC today Shawn Murphy, MP from PEI apologized to EVERYONE, the House, his constituents, Brian Mulroney and his family, the Conservative MP from Abbotsford who was trying to ask a question when he went on his vitriolic rant, his own family and on and on, also hoping everyone would forgive him. Guess the devil made him do it. Lot of that going on in the Liberal ranks these days.
Worst pack of dunderheads ever seen in the HOC.
I think Harper was pretty sharp on this.
1 – put the ball in Libs camp to prove their allegations.
2 – circumvent a “showcase” trial in the ethics committee.
3 – cause the MSM to review their notes on this and cool down their heavy anti-Harper breathing.
4 – maybe cause a change in what constitutes “parliamentary privelege” and get the House back to doing actual work, with everyone assuming their proper responsibilities.
The Liberals have offers on the brain, but they never make them — in the May 16 2005 PMO recordings the furry comforts on offer were clearly stated as being not an offer, yet somehow offers were hanging in the air. In Zytaruk’s book, even the Cadmans, waiting in their apartment — also on May 16 — for Dosanjh and Paul Martin, were somehow well aware of the Martinites’ propensity to make offers:
“A few minutes before their distinguished Liberal guests arrived, Chuck and Dona wondered what they were going to be offered in an attempt to buy Chuck’s vote…”
In other words, the day before the two Conservatives allegedly showed up with an offer, the thought of an offer was fully on the Cadman’s mind. There are only two possibilities: either it was their own thought, or they were aware of something that the public was as yet unaware of. (The Murphy tape had not been released, and Stronach had yet to be offered Public Works, as far as the public knew.)
Martin would reiterate later on, to Zytaruk, how the very thought, or idea, of any offer offer of any kind was very much not on his mind or on anyone else’s: “In the conversation I had with Chuck Cadman, and Dona was there — she heard the whole thing, as did Ujjal – he never asked for anything,’ Martin stressed. ‘It never even occurred to us that he would want anything. It never even crossed our minds. The conversation totally took place on what was the right thing for the country.'”
Yep, until those bastard Conservatives showed up the very idea of an offer wasn’t even in anyone’s mind:
“(The Cadman’s) meeting (with Dosanjh and Martin) ended with a knock at the door.
“‘His first in command said it’s time to leave,’ Dona recalled. ‘They had that meeting with Belinda Stronach that night…’
“After the prime minister left and Chuck and Dona were once again alone in their little apartment, they looked at each other with eyebrows raised and smiled.
“‘Well, what do you think about that?’ Chuck inquired. “‘The prime minister, sitting in our living room, with our IKEA furniture!’
“After a pause, he added, ‘Well, they didn’t offer anything, did they?‘
“‘No, they didn’t,’ Dona agreed, with surprise in her voice.
“‘That’s kind of interesting,’ Chuck mused.” (All emph. mine)
What can you say?
BTW, for anyone else who is absolutely gobsmacked that the CBC would make top-of-the-hour news out of this fairy-tale story of a book, check out this astonishing bit:
“Chuck responded (to the two Conservatives) by bouncing them out of his office. They took the list with them when they were ushered out of the door.
“The only other person in the office with Chuck at the time was his legislative assistant Dan Wallace. But when I broached the subject with him, he recoiled like a spring.
“‘I believe Dona Cadman as the day is long,’ he offered. ‘She has no interest in fabricating anything.'”
Did you catch that? Dan Wallace was the only other person in the room when the offer was allegedly made, but when he was asked about the offer he deferred to Dona Cadman, the source of the money-quote in Zytaruk’s book, who wasn’t there.
What can you say? About the CBC, I mean?
Stephen: “As I said above, some news organizations better pray that their people arent on the call lists of the main people involved. Imagine if the CBC was caught again in this kind of a media/Liberal Party Dance”
We can hope — but I just don’t see it. What sort of collusion do you have in mind?
Surprise, surprise. The CBC is interviewing a Toronto lawyer who says that, in his opinion, Harper has no case. Funny considering that the Live interview came after Dion’s scrum with the PPG in which he would not use the term “bribe”, choosing instead to call it an “offer.”
The average goalie at best was at his perturbed best in question period today, Dryden was supremely pissed as were the fat “and “skinny lesbos in the libs and ndpeers. So obviously Harper must be doing something right and the real telling point was between Flaherty and a silent prarie porcupine Goodale, yes even good old “want some inside information on the income trusts” Ralphie shut his big mouth today, little scared possibly. As for that liberal fart bottling Fife, well if I had to live on 2500 a month waiting for the theives to return to power I would be hastening their return also. No money to steal in opposition and it is killing the stinking lieberals, ha ha, suck it up puffins.
Has no case?????
Publicly accusing someone of criminal conduct without a shred of evidence, ISN’T LIBEL????????
Ohhhhhh, sorry, I just reread the comment above, that was the CBC,
sorry carry on, makes sense now.
Just finished listening to the Michael Harris show on CFRA Ottawa. Callers overwhelmingly smell a rat as far as these allegations are concerned and given Harris’s leftish bent, they can’t all be Conservatives.
Harris indignantly harrumphed “You’re calling the widow a LIAR?” and hung up on one caller, but when others suggested we follow the money, I think he began to sense things were not going his way. Many were drawing an analogy between Belinda & Cadman. Another poll gone horribly wrong.
I believe Harper did this to save a deadman and his family some integrity. The liberals were going to make this an issue, and Harper would have had to deflate it with the truth. The truth is ugly at times, and Harper knows the liberals would stop at nothing, and Harper would have to bring the truth out. If the truth came out Cadman’s name and that of his family would be destroyed. Some people don’t have the stomach for that.
And just now Dona Cadman has issued a statement:
Personal statement by Dona Cadman
Globe and Mail Update
March 3, 2008 at 1:42 PM EST
The following statement was released Monday by Surrey North Conservative candidate Dona Cadman, wife of the late MP Chuck Cadman
I’m a little bit surprised at the level of reaction to the disclosures in Tom Zytaruk’s book and I guess that’s probably because it was put to rest in my mind, when I discussed the matter with Stephen Harper, 2 ½ years ago. At that time, I recall specifically asking him if he was aware of a million dollar insurance policy offer, that upset Chuck so much.
He looked me straight in the eyes and told me he had no knowledge of an insurance policy offer. I knew he was telling me the truth; I could see it in his eyes. He said, yes he’d had some discussions with two individuals about asking Chuck to rejoin the party, but he’d told them they were wasting their time trying to convince Chuck.
From that point forward…. I didn’t regard it as a “Party” initiative, but rather; the overzealous indiscretion of a couple of individuals…. whose identity, Chuck never revealed to me.
It all comes back to my conversation with the Prime Minister…. 2 ½ years ago. I want to be perfectly clear in that regard. Chuck liked, respected and trusted Stephen Harper. I like, respect and trust Stephen Harper. If I didn’t believe in my heart, that he was telling me the truth…. I wouldn’t be running as the Conservative Candidate for Surrey North.
Dona Cadman
————————————
What the hell is going on here? This would appear to put the matter to rest. Presumably if Dion withdraws his allegations (though he says he won’t) Harper will accept, end the libel suit, and the whole matter will end—-except that the “no smoke without fire” Liberal smear squads will add it to their list for future use.
Dan Wallace was in the “office” but was he in the “room”. One wonders why hes isn’t quoted/interrogated more.
Dion has reached the edge of the precipice & willingly took the leap.
No apology in QP because ‘e is counting on Dona Cadman’s accusations to be his parachute.
But clueless Dion let Iggy pack his chute. Gonna be a messy landing!
Only 2500 a month,and with the cost of wash that gray right out of my hair,I guess my broadcasts would be inarticulate as well.
MJ
The co-operation in mind would be IF the media outlet and the Liberal party co-operated in setting up the libel. IE Liberal party approaches media outlet….I have hot story and here is what it looks like. We are going to release it on this day and time can I count on you guys covering it.
While this may sound ruin of the mill it will come down to whether the reporter checks up on the source and facts. If they say Thanks for the tip, cna you give me some background so I can check it out then they would be clean.
Its about the co-ordination of the message delivery that would cause issue. At some poitn a line is crossed by the reporter who can tjust say, well they these guys told me this outlandish thing and I put it on tape.
Media are very careful what they say, see recent National Post apology. They generally dont reprint,. rebroadcast potentially libellous staements without context..i.e. in the House of Commons today the leader of the opposition said that the Prime Minister is a member of a Notorious Biker Gang.
The opposition leader said that the Prime Minster should come clean. Outside the House the Leader of the Opposition said he is troubled by allegations and said it is important for the Prime Minister to ensure he is byond question.
To date the Opposition leader has offered no proof, but points to rumours and allegations.
How interesting that those who credit PM Harper for running a “tight ship”, would think he’d be stupid enough for a blunder of this magnitude. I would love it if this turned out to be nothing more than the feeding of a trap that the Libs walked right into.
Skeptic, you mentioned listening to Michael Harris show on CFRA today. Harris has had an abnormal hatred for Harper since he supported our traditional allies when Bush went to war against Iraq. He has never been able to support him since.
It’s rather sad, Harris has turned off a lot listeners for that reason. He is a rather accomplished individual otherwise so it’s disappointing to see him so blocked off.
Stephen, check out the stories that were filed after this audiotape surfaced. The one from Alexander Panetta was particularly laden with innuendos about what Harper knew.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080228.wcad20228/BNStory/National/home
I’d say it’s a good bet that the Liberals and media are already working pretty closely together on this one.
John g,
“I’d say it’s a good bet that the Liberals and media are already working pretty closely together on this one.”
I’d say your first clue on that would be that Paul Martin wrote the screed at the front of the book…