Canada's Gurmant Grewal tapes saga

Murphy and Dosanjh must go

The Montreal Gazette

Editorial
Thursday, June 02, 2005

When is an offer not an offer? When is a private conversation not private? When is a transcript not a transcript? When is a defection really a sting operation? Or not? When is an independent ethics commissioner not independent? More than two weeks into the Gurmant Grewal tapes saga, Canadians still have far more questions than answers. And the one answer we do have, from Prime Minister Paul Martin, is merely an obfuscation, to put it kindly. It's time for somebody to pay for this disgraceful spectacle.
With more persistence than he generally shows on policy, Martin insists his Liberals did not make any offer to Grewal, a British Columbia Conservative MP. True, Martin's chief of staff and a top minister from B.C. did romance Grewal for hours, during the lead-up to that razor-close House of Commons vote on May 19. True, the main topic of those tedious hours of chat was the idea of Grewal and his wife, Nina, also an MP, crossing the floor or at least abstaining. True, Grewal was asking what would be in it for him.
The two Liberals, chief of staff Tim Murphy and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh, tap-danced on the very edge of a precipice. So, for that matter, did Grewal, who insists this was only a "sting" operation and who has previously indulged in similar adventures in recording.
So you decide: Is Martin telling the truth, that no offer was made? Consider this Dosanjh quotation from the transcript: "You have to be able to say that I did not make a deal. That's very important. That's why these kinds of deals are not made in that fashion."
He also reminded Grewal that when Scott Brison crossed the floor, in 2003, he came as a backbencher and was promoted to cabinet only later. (And which came first for Belinda Stronach, we wonder, Martin's offer of a cabinet post or her commitment to become a Liberal?)
Dosanjh's response has been to challenge the integrity of the translation from Punjabi, the completeness of the transcript, and so on. We have fallen to this in Canadian politics.
We have also fallen, apparently, to the point where the PM's chief of staff can undertake to have Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro, who is supposed to report to Parliament, not Martin, write some kind of "interim report" clearing Grewal in an unrelated investigation about visas.
This stinks. It's worth recalling this was all a simple sub-plot in the multi-billion-dollar Liberal effort to save their grasp on power, and that their grasp is weakened because of the sponsorship scandal, and that in that great supermarket of stench this is just one more tiny sharp smell.
But this one touches the cabinet and the PMO, and that won't do. Murphy needs to resign, or be fired, and Dosanjh needs to leave the cabinet. The ethics commissioner - for whatever he can still be worth - should look into this. So should the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, although they have always proved to be ultra-cautious when it comes to political investigations.
And when the election finally comes, voters in both Vancouver South (Dosanjh's riding) and Newton-North Delta (Grewal's) should ask themselves, and the incumbents, some hard questions about integrity and transparency.

© The Gazette (Montreal) 2005

michael mccafferty comments:

The Editors of the Montreal Gazette have published a very excellent editorial about the whole stink in Ottawa over the Gurmant Grewal tapes. It smells of Watergate.

The sad fact is that this rotten stink is the kind of stuff that turns off good and decent Canadians when it comes to politics.

I believe the real truth is that the cunning Conservative Mr. Gurmant went looking to the Liberals for a sweet deal and then chickened out but not before the Liberals Minister Dosanjh and Chief of Staff Tim Murphy played 'lets make a deal' with Gurmant. In other words both sides have got their hands dirty.

Yes, the whole matter sticks the high heavens and the time has come to clean up the mess in Ottawa. Canadians should accept nothing less.