Saturday, February 07, 2009

Friday night news dump : ConservaLiberals drop Cadman case

"Prime Minister Stephen Harper yesterday abandoned his $3.5-million libel lawsuit against the Liberal Party over allegations that he knew of Conservative efforts to bribe a dying MP in 2005.
The move was in direct contradiction with Mr. Harper's past vows to take the matter to a total victory in front of a judge.

"The truth is that this will prove to be in court the biggest mistake the leader of the Liberal Party has ever made," Mr. Harper said last March, speaking about Stéphane Dion.

The matter was settled, without an apology or a trial, and with all sides refusing to comment."

~ Globe and Mail, Feb 7, 2009


"Stéphane Dion and Stephen Harper are effectively functioning as leaders of the same political party, under the cover of apparent faked displays of "disagreements" in front of colluding affiliate corporate media organizations. These public displays, are designed to lull rank and file party members, and dupe Canadians into believing otherwise.

This strategy includes the defamation claim media spectacle about Chuck Cadman that was launched by Stephen Harper against Stéphane Dion.
Learned legal experts agree that this litigation claim will never see the light of day in a Canadian courtroom."

~ Yvette Lafleur, Global Research, April 2, 2008.


Well, you certainly called it, Yvette


In September Harper had the case postponed till after the October election.

In October the Cons' own former FBI expert testified the Zytaruk tape was not doctored as Harper had alleged under cross-examination.

In November the lead Conservative lawyer quit the case.

In a joint statement yesterday, the Liberal Party and the Conservatives said the matter was dropped and that no other comments would be made.

Now which of you is going to be the first to apologize to Tom Zytaruk?
.

2 comments:

Paul said...

This is really unbelievable. Why are the Liberals not talking? I get that the Conservatives won’t talk until they are under threat of law (and who knows if that would get them to ‘fess up), but why are the Liberals not commenting? Please, someone, enlighten me to possible legal or political scenarios that might produce this outcome? The NDP and the Bloc can nip at Harper’s heel all they want, but without the Liberals, we can forget about finding the truth about this incident.

Alison said...

I'm guessing, Paul, that given the whole point of Harper's lawsuit was to prevent the Libs from using the Cadman tapes against them during the last election, and that it's still not in the Con's best interests to have it aired, that the Con lawyers insisted the lawsuit settlement contains a mutually binding clause not to publicly discuss it.
Others have speculated that there is also possibly an unofficial pro quid pro agreement that the Cons would drop the lawsuit in exchange for the Libs passing the budget.

Blog Archive