Angry in the Great White North

If you haven't already, check out Charles Adler's list of questions regarding the Chuck Cadman controversy.  Charles takes the questions in a direction that many of us have been doing only in quiet.

For example, I've privately asked some people who knew Cadman in those last days if it was possible that the effects of the cancer or of his treatment (painkillers, in particular) could have caused him to spin tales of million dollar bribes.

Yeah, it's harsh, but frankly, I can't be the only one who has wondered about that.

But credit to Charles for asking that and many other questions that really need to be asked.

Read the whole thing, but here are some key ones:

7) If Cadman was angry at the Tories, could it be because their final offer, quite understandably, insulted him?

8) If the final offer was precisely what the Tories and what Chuck Cadman publicly said it was — an uncontested nomination and campaign expenses — wouldn't any of us be insulted?

A man of pride, feeling hurt and insulted, wants to leave a better memory with his family.  So instead of telling his wife and daughter the truth -- which he felt was an insult -- he tells them that the Conservatives caved and offered him a million bucks.  So where is the money?  Oh, he couldn't take the money, it was wrong.

There was no offer, but the people closest to him are left with the memory of an incorruptible man.

And we are left with a mess.

An even more difficult question to ask, but certainly one that poses doubt in the mind of any honest person trying to look at this situation impartially, is whether there was an offer of a million dollars (real or imagined), or whether there was a request for a million dollars:

12) If Chuck Cadman left any window open for the proposition of defeating the government, doesn't intellectual honesty demand that we ask the question of what was the price of the vote that the Tories wouldn't meet?

13) Could it have been a million dollars?

14) Is it possible that when the Tories told Cadman they couldn't do a serious money transaction because doing so would have exposed them to charges of criminality, the entire  episode left him feeling cheap, dirty and violated.

15)  If you were feeling this way, in your dying days, might you in your private moments with your family tell them that your anguish was planted by a group of ambitious political agents of evil trying to corrupt you.

If Chuck Cadman wanted more, and was rebuffed by Tories who realized immediately that any such arrangement was illegal, then Cadman could have been in some trouble.  Offering his vote for money?  Of course, they didn't report Chuck Cadman to the authorities.  In this scenario, they certainly could have, and perhaps have prevented Cadman's presence at the non-confidence vote.

But instead Cadman was told the Tories could not and would not cross the line, and just pretended nothing happened.  Cadman cast his vote, the Paul Martin government survived.

And now the Tories are paying a price for turning a blind eye and not stirring up trouble for a dying man.

Is this the truth?  Who knows?  Maybe.  Or maybe the idea that there was no offer or request, but just a comforting fabrication made by Cadman.  Or maybe something else. 

Or maybe there was a bribe attempt.

The funny thing is that this last possibility is also the least likely, given that all the principles, including Cadman, publicly denied any such bribe, given that everyone in the insurance industry says the alleged insurance policy simply couldn't exist, and given that in this environment of careful tracking of party finances, simply offering a million dollars would have been impossible to hide.

The truth is simply this.  We can never truly know what happened short of someone coming up with a video shot inside the office.  It is also true we can guess what likely happened, and the overwhelming likelihood is that what happened is exactly what people in the room say happened, and that is nothing much at all.

There are other possibilities, but most of them look make Chuck Cadman look bad.