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.
I’d say it’s a good bet that the Liberals and media are already working pretty closely together on this one.
Yup.
Robert Fife is already suggesting legal strategies for the Libs. Suggesting the Libs were only repeating on their site what they said in the HOC.
Apparently Fife thinks he knows more about liable than a liable lawyer at a major firm.
Any legal types here care to parse the difference between “repeating” and “quoting”?
The Discovery will be a treat.
Liberal phone logs, meeting minutes, names of who attended the meetings.
It will be a full fledged education in how to plan and execute a drive by smear campaign thinking you won’t get caught and exposed.
If we are lucky it will be the final stake driven into the black heart of the Liberal brand in Canada.
Wow. This exactly what I said in my blog post on the subject last week. People had better be careful about statements made or written outside the House. You’d think the LPoC would be smarter.
The fertile soil of the scandal has sprouted its first suit, and at the highest levels of power. Incredible.
the fool’s stepped out parliment to repeat their stupity out side of previlege. go steve go !
Like I said from the start of this dog an pony show…Boag and CBC are in this up to their bloody red eyballs…. the Author of the book Zytaruk is clueless …. Dion and the LIberals have been suckered.
Looking ….. forward to phone logs and e-mails from investigation to be made public.
heres my theory or one that the MSM will be touting soon,
Harper along with Bush set the whole thing up. Dona Cadman will get paid off to change her story and make Dion and Martin look dumb. oh right , they already do.
Liberal site, complete with Photo Shop art work.
Dan Wallace has denied being in the office when Nichols and Flanagan met with Cadman. Journalists from CBC’s As It Happens made reference to this fact in their interview of Tom Zytaruk last week.
Furthermore, Zytaruk didn’t even know who the two CPC representatives were and only found that out during this interview.
I kid you not, take the time to listen to that “As it Happens” interview to find out the magnitude of Zytaruk’s “doofus factor”. It is beyond belief.
Which leads me to believe that only the Liberal Party has a greater “doofus factor” as they chose to follow this guy.
CBCpravda has changed their headline. expect the whole to blow over like a beerfart in Pincher Creek.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/03/03/cadman-statement.html
A great day for Canadian comedy.
First, Ken Dryden the angry Pillsbury Dough boy getting slapped down in the HoC, then Robert Fife furiously blinking his way through a so-called interview on CTV news as he blathered incoherently.
Stephen Harper is toying with these fools. It’s nice to see a Prime Minister defend his good name and inflict terrible damage to the respondents credibility.
Kate did you pull a Kinswilsuya on the liberal party? Come on, tell the truth, did you set them up?
fools….remember it was only a week ago Karl Rove was in Canada….i tell you…HE truly is one magnificent bastard..i’ve never so much enjoyed having Canadian sovereignty abused in decades.
I agree with Jom Begley. In fact, Rove and the PM met to discuss this matter. I know this to be true because an aquaintance of a friend of Zytaruk told the aquaintance that he had a friend who heard they got together and discussed it over dinner.
The Liberals? Stick a fork in them, they’re done. There is simply NO WAY that a man as cagey as Steven Harper would embark upon a libel suit unless he knew there was zero chance of losing. Look for a big spike in Google searches for crow recipes.
Funny though, in all the speculation about who said what to Chuck Cadman, that nobody made any reference to what I believe would have been an ethical way for the CPC to offer him financial “reassurance” in the event that his vote were to topple the Libs. That would be, simply, for the CPC to offer a promise that they would support a campaign to solicit donations to a foundation set up in support of Chuck’s family. There would be nothing unethical, in my mind, for the CPC to urge its members and the public at large to help make whole the family of a brave MP who performed a signal service to the country by toppling a corrupt government, at the cost of halving his life insurance benefits.
If such a thing had actually happened, I know I would have contributed, even if such a foundation were not tax deductible. I’m sure others here would have done, as well.
According to the party website, The Liberals are now trying head off the discovery by demanding an “immediate” inquiry by the RCMP, and further re-iterated that they would “never apologise”.
“Dis is not fair. Do you tink it’s easy to apologize?”
it his not izzy beening sued. Borat Dion
Dion is done…
mark peters: “You’d think the LPoC would be smarter.”
Well, yeah, you’d THINK that, but the fact is, they’ve been so entitled and have been able to do and say whatever they want for so long–with cover from their buds in the MSM–that their guard’s down. ‘Though you’d think since PMSH won the election in 2006, the LPoC would, just as a survival tactic, cool their jets and back off slagging the PM and the CPC.
The reality is, the LPoC STILL feel entitled and seem quite sure that their cosy relationship with the PPG and MSM will prop up both them and their hearsay evidence of “wrong doing” on the part of the PM.
PMSH just called their bluff. Good on ‘im. These slime buckets need to understand that their sleazy pull down the government at any cost tactics are no longer going to be tolerated.
Ralphie Goodale looked worried on MDL, while he huffed and puffed and threatened to bring the CPC House down.
How sweet if it’s the LPoC house made of straw that collapses.
Iggy was just on politics saying how the libs do not want this matter to go before the ethics committee,and it really isn’t necessary to have the rcmp investigate. All the libs want is for Harper to stand up in the HofC and tell canadians what really happened. Yeah right. Newman replied that Harper probably thinks that he already did that. Iggy wasn’t his usual smug smirky self.This looks so good on those bastards. All we need now is to find the link between the libs and their propaganda arm.
“Tonight: CASH for CADMAN?!!”
If the sort of email or phone records that would be made available during a libel trial show even the teensiest hint of collusion between Liberals and CBC reporters/producers prior to the Feb 27 nationally-broadcast “exclusive” smear against Stephen Harper, it would be the CBC’s worst nightmare. But regardless of whether or not any such nodding or collaboration occurred it’s borderline criminal that a top-of-the-hour national news story suggesting Stephen Harper may have committed a serious crime would be based on a second-hand allegation that a man now dead said something off the record that wasn’t about Stephen Harper at all but rather about “a couple of individuals” whose identities were never even revealed to the second-hand source of the hearsay evidence, according to that second hand source herself.
“Was the dying MP offered a million dollar insurance policy for his vote?” — P. Mansbridge
Erm, shouldn’t one of your reporters try to find out the answer to that question before you go on air to ask the question?
Get this: Save for a brief interregnum consisting of Zytaruk talking, Zytaruk’s book — its name, its cover — was displayed onscreen for over a minute and a half straight. That’s waaay longer than it sounds, when you actually watch the news report.
Yikes. And if you actually read the part of the book that is the source of the report, and realize that the CBC’s “exclusive” libel comes from such a book, CBC’s “news” coverage of this could end up being far more significant than the Krista Erickson incident.
The CBC’s revolting Lib-proxy entitlement is starting to sound like a death-rattle. If the CBC’s producers and reporters continue to air unprovable allegations against the Conservatives as top news stories, they are going to find their asses sued off the air in a class action lawsuit by Conservative voters fed up with their blatantly partisan, anti-democratic campaigning.
Or maybe CBC will show their balance instead by broadcasting as top news stories unprovable, second-hand, hearsay innuendo-libels against Chretien or Martin or Dion.
Speaking of the propaganda arm …. CBC’s Boag has been dead silent since facts started coming out on Thursday …..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcLjA8wiiFA“ rel=”nofollow”>Dryden Smackdown here!!
Perhaps those of us here who jumped the gun and posted disparaging comments regarding Dona Cadman, should offer retractions in light of her support for PMSH today.
Agreed Gus…
I wondered what she was thinking…doing…saying on this issue. It was so disjointed.
I assumed she was stupid, for that I apologise.
CBC has been boaged. Sell the CBC/RadioCanada to the highest bidder.
Waddell says:
“It has been a tough few months for the credibility of political reporters.”
Christopher Waddell: Inside Ottawa
Five reasons why there won’t be a federal election
March 3, 2008
[…]
In Canada it has been the media’s efforts to promote an election, lighting fires where there has been little fuel, that is undermining the credibility of political reporting.
For two months, the news from Ottawa has focused on almost nothing else. The first election trigger was the (Liberal) Senate. Would it pass the Tories’ anti-crime bill? Then the confrontation was going to come over Canada’s future role in Afghanistan, or maybe Jim Flaherty’s budget.
Everything was being analyzed through the prism of an inevitable and impending election now that Stephen Harper’s minority Conservative government had passed the two-year mark. It had to happen. At least, until suddenly, it didn’t.
Along the way, it seemed as if much of the media forgot some of the fundamental principles of politics. They crystallize around five questions related to the current state of the Liberal party, as Liberal MPs are the ones who will determine when and if the minority Conservative government falls.
Let’s go through them. …-
http://tinyurl.com/2k9jz3 (cbc)
Dona Cadman didn’t retract her comments about an offer of a 1 million dollar insurance policy; she stated that Harper himself knew nothing about such an offer.
The two people of the CPC who apparently talked with Cadman were Tom Flanagan, the U of Calgary professor who works closely as an advisor with the CPC, and Doug Findlay. They state that they discussed assisting Cadman with election expenses for a re-election campaign (if Cadman voted to bring down the Martin govt) and the CPC would not put a CPC candidate in the riding so he could run as an Independent. That seems reasonable and fair to me.
Cadman refused the offer; whether he was sceptical of lasting until a re-election or whatever – he stayed with Martin and his current pension and benefits to his widow.
The rhetoric about a one million offer is completely unsubstantiated and untenable. The Liberals are trying the tactic of: Oh, so if you don’t believe it, then, you are declaring Mrs. Cadman an liar”.
No; she’s not lying; she believes what she says; she’s not intending to deceive. But, that doesn’t mean that her recollection, or her belief, are the truth of the situation.
And, the Liberals are talking about ‘libel chill’, ie, that Harper’s threat of a lawsuit is a mean and nasty tactic to prevent debate. Wait. Wait.
Didn’t Stephane Dion file a libel lawsuit against Gilles Duceppe in 2005, claiming that Duceppe sent out pamphlets claiming that Dion was part of the Sponsorship scandal? Didn’t Dion file a lawsuit for 400,000 (which he apparently decided because he checked how much Duceppe had in his bank?)…and didn’t Duceppe have to apologize? That’s some Libel Chill.
maybe Boag will be the sudbury reporter.
CBCpravda in the middle of asking for funding and then going into PO mode.
Dona Cadman claims to have relayed what Chuck told her. She also completely believes that PMSH had no knowledge of any such offer. The offer may not have occurred, but I tend to believe that Chuck told her one did.
Asked my insurance agent if his company would issue a $1M insurance policy on a terminally ill man.
“Sure, no problem.”
“Wow. I had no idea. By the way, how much are the premiums per month?”
“Just a one-time payment of $1M up front.”
Guess the life insurance guys have been yukking it up this month.
Just heard one of the opposition party members – possibly NDP member of Ethics – that this should be taken to the “No Ethics Committee”. Please don’t do this to us. We don’t want any more of that “Committee.” I watched enough of that to make me ill for a decade.
Just saw on Duffy a reminder that Stephane Dion sued Gilles Duceppe for saying Dion knew about wrongdoing under ADSCAM.
Duceppe had to apologize.
Now we have Stephane Dion doing the very same thing for which he sued another politician and for which he got an apology.
WTF?! Stephane Dion is throwing stones inside a glass house!
Dion and his ilk are pretending to be appalled that PMSH is suing them. Boyoboy, but they either have terrible memories (hey, remember when Chretien was always threatening to sue everyone all the damn time?) or they’re the biggest hypocrites next to the “Palestinians” who themselves play the victim when Israel dares to fight back in self-defence after suffering many causualties for a long time…
For all their bluster about not apologizing, the Liberals WILL eventually apologize.
Saw Iggy on Newman also… kept repeating the same lame line over and over, evading Newman’s questions.
Karen Redman refused Jay Hill’s demands to “make your accusation” on Duffy and, like Iggy, simply repeated the same pathetic talking points.
The Liberals have nothing to offer by rhetoric and the standard “it’s in the public interest to look into this” nonsense to distract the attention from their own worthlessness as Opposition. Suddenly they don’t want to talk about anything that matters and try to make hay out of horseshit to hurt the Conservatives in the polls. Such is the utter worthlessness and irrelevance of the Libranos.
And don’t forget… nothing we know so far is probative; nothing would be considered by a judge as worthy of being heard as a case. Hearsay evidence is all we have coming from Mrs. Cadman, by the way, and hearsay is inadmissible as evidence.
So, apparently the vote on the budget is tonight. Interesting co-inkydink, about the libel suit and the fact the three opps won’t bring it down… Now, question, can the government bring itself down on its own budget? As in, “gee, Stuphanie, you’re going to the polls whether you like it or not. See if you can fit some campaigning in between court appearances. Btw, there’s a court order blackout on Cadscam while I sue your ass off….”
The author was on Channel 139 Atlantic TV this afternoon and it appeared he really didn’t want to talk about it. The interviewer tried his best to get the “juice on Mr. Harper” but he just wanted to speak about Mr. Cadman as a great guy and things he said they talked about that Mr. Cadman did when he was young. I think he “put” that part about the PM in just to sell the book. These tidbits which happens to damage a person’s reputation was just to get interest to sell the book.
Skip @ 5.20 Dis is not fair. Do you tink it’s IZZY to apologize?”
What a fubn day it is! 🙂 And I still got to do a lot of work.
A funny thing happened on the way to vote for the Puffin budget ammendment – the Puffins got lost!!
Mercer said it best:
Liberals backing down and loving it.
I know I’m being petty but it’s nice to see a Conservative use the Civil Justice System against a Liberal for a change. It seems as if the Liberals sue anything that moves, once offended. What isn’t libel in their addled brains, it’s nice to see a Conservative use the system for a change.
Gus @5.54 As someone who didn’t disparage her, I can say that I am still ambivalent. Personally, I suspect she was jus’ talkin’ to the moron “author” who didn’t understand fact-checking. And possibly lines of communication were confused. I do not know how smart the Cadman clan is. This is all hearsay and doesn’t stand in court. In response to the libel suit, the liebrals will need to produce positive evidence to support their case. Of course, they don’t. This was a brilliant move by PMSH, no matter what the CBC, Red Star or Globe say.
The “meme for today” for these folks appears to be “LIBEL CHILL”. Ha! Luv it! 🙂 Really, it’s “LIBERAL CHILL”. You know, when things go cold and sweaty, when you start to hear your heart pounding and breathing gets deeper and deeper and somehow you cannot expel the CO2 fast enough.
I call it being on the panic ladder.
Janke has an interesting take on this ….. kind of political electronic warfare . Angry in the Great White North .
Maz2 @6.02
Quote:
“Harper’s Conservatives are very well organized, have lots of money and are politically ruthless in pursuit of their objectives.”:
And of course the liberals aren’t? Ah, those evil, ruthless conservatives.
Thing is, the current liebrals are not only without ruth, but also incontinent, or is that incompetent?
Kate, if it goes on like this, you may hit eight million on this thread alone 🙂
ET
“Cadman refused the offer”
There is only hearsay that here was even “an offer” and all participants in the “meeting” have said there wasn’t “an offer”.
I know we are on the same side politically, but one should always be careful (in any activity) of accidentaly buying into the other side’s propaganda, or mindset.
It is the Liebrals who are saying there was “an offer” with significance. The Cadman clan are just saying that Cadman said such and such. They haven’t said what else he said, or didn’t say, or what state he was in when he, reportedly by them, said it.
Just out of curiosity, what was Cadman’s estate?
From Angry: “Libel me on your website? Right then. Give us all your computers and cell phones.
And what about Stephane Dion? I wonder if he is fielding phone calls from Liberals who know they were mentioned in an email or in a phone call, and want to know exactly what Stephane Dion is going to do to keep their email archives and BlackBerries from being laid out in front of Conservative Party lawyers.”
…-
Here’s IncomeTrustMeScotty Brison:
“U Happy?”
“Scott Brison’s leadership race hindered by income trust Blackberry message”
http://zone.artizans.com/product.htm?pid=308486
“only seven Liberals turned out for the vote.”
It’s a Galloway-Dunn report: Gloria, Gloriaaaa, Glory, Gloriyaaa, Glory, Gloria …-
Harper government survives key budget vote
http://tinyurl.com/2knr7o
Citoyen Dion said:
“I said over months, many times every day, that we’ll support the budget or we’ll not vote against the budget to a point to make the government falling down if the budget is not detrimental to Canadians too much,”
Translation, please?
Maz2 @ 8.29
“we’ll support the budget or we’ll not vote against the budget to a point to make the government falling down ”
It is izzy to make de guvernment falling down; much arder to keep eet upping.
(Sorry, couldn’t fit “peeples” into that)
I sense an Al Dione moment coming on. “An Inconvenient Steve”
It is two izzy to be iggy.
“A Liberal Party statement issued Monday accused the Conservatives of using libel chill to stifle the debate that has gripped Parliament Hill since last week.”
Pulled from the mop and pail(globe and mail) article.
Someone tell me why this is completely false. Parliament is immune from “libel chill”.
On CBC Radio One,
4:20 PM PST, Kady O’Malley [Macleans], did a pro Dion Liberal spin talk that was so offensive, I almost couldn*t believe it was happening.
Annoyed, I wrote an Email to Maclean*s. Do you think my note was too strong? . . .
How can Macleans allow Kady O’malley wildcard to act as spin agent for Dion and the Liberals regarding the Cadman Issue?
Is she a Liberal paid spin artist? Where is the balance? Do CBC and Macleans conspire to damage the Conservative Party and PM Harper?
Disgusting. Outrageous. Criminal in fact.
Would a lawsuit against Macleans as co-conspirator with the LPC in character assassination be logical? Certainly!= TG
====================== CBC Radio One
CBC Television, . . .
EBD at March 3, 2008 5:45 PM . . . wrote . .
Get this: Save for a brief interregnum consisting of Zytaruk talking, Zytaruk’s book — its name, its cover — was displayed onscreen for over a minute and a half straight. That’s waaay longer than it sounds, when you actually watch the news report.
Yikes. And if you actually read the part of the book that is the source of the report, and realize that the CBC’s *exclusive* libel comes from such a book, CBC’s ** news ** coverage of this could end up being far more significant than the Krista Erickson incident.
The CBC’s revolting Lib-proxy entitlement is starting to sound like a death-rattle. If the CBC’s producers and reporters continue to air unprovable allegations against the Conservatives as top news stories, they are going to find their asses sued off the air in a class action lawsuit by Conservative voters fed up with their blatantly partisan, anti-democratic campaigning.
Or maybe CBC will show their balance instead by broadcasting as top news stories unprovable, second-hand, hearsay innuendo-libels against Chretien or Martin or Dion.
============================ EBD, great! Exactly!
Sue both the CBC and Macleans… Co-conspirators. = TG
On the National, Boag inferred that Harper is a bully by making this the lead of his report on today’s developments…
“Parliamentary researchers”? Boag says, “cannot find another example of a sitting prime minister threatening the leader of the opposition with a lawsuit.”
Boag infers that because there is no precedent that therefore Harper’s threat to sue is wrong. But if there were previous examples, wouldn’t one of them have been a first? Isn’t that how precedents are created? But no, because it’s Harper threatening it, Boag infers, it’s wrong and heavy-handed. He attempts in his report to make Dion, Ignatieff, Goodale and The LPC the victims of bullying tactics.
Also from Boag…
“This is what the prime minister says is libelous and defamatory [images shown of the Liberals’ website], statements about bribery that have been on the Liberal website for the past few days, allegations the prime minister knew about a million dollar insurance policy offered in return for the vote of the late Chuck Cadman, an independent MP”.
The problem with Boag’s “reporting” (really nothing more than an attempt to mitigate damage against the LPC) is that as he uses the term “allegations”, the image shown is the Liberal’s webpage are the words “Harper Knew of Conservative Bribery.”
That’s not an allegation made, Keith. That’s written as a statement of fact, and thus libelous.
Irony is they are willing to repeat the libel by showing it but pixelate the Mohammed cartoons.
I’m just saying…..