Cadman planned to run again despite cancer: Conservatives
BRODIE FENLON
Globe and Mail Update
March 10, 2008 at 3:47 PM EDT
Independent MP Chuck Cadman intended to run again for office in May 2005 – despite battling cancer that claimed his life two months later, the Conservatives say.
The Harper government came under fire again Monday in the House of Commons by opposition MPs who demanded to know what the Tories offered Mr. Cadman when they tried to woo him before a crucial budget vote that threatened to bring down the Liberal government of Paul Martin.
The Liberals dismissed as fiction the Tory explanation that two party operatives offered the dying MP a chance to rejoin the Conservative caucus and secure the riding nomination with a promise they would provide any financial help he might need to get re-elected.
“He didn't need a Conservative nomination,” Liberal deputy leader Michael Ignatieff said Monday during Question Period.
“He wasn't going to run. He didn't need their help. How long do they keep repeating these stories? No one believes them. So I ask you again, what financial considerations were offered to Mr. Cadman and his family?” he demanded.
“Mr. Cadman was going to run again,” responded Conservative MP James Moore, parliamentary secretary of public works and the government's point person on the contentious file.
“The only offer that was put on the table was the offer, as I said, to rejoin the Conservatives, get re-nominated as a Conseravtive, and that we would offer him any financial support that was necessary and mandated by Elections Canada – allowed by Elections Canada – to seek re-election.”
Mr. Cadman's widow, Dona, has said two Conservatives offered her husband a $1-million life insurance policy in exchange for his vote against a Liberal budget in 2005. Mr. Cadman voted instead with the government, which survived the vote. He died two months later.
In a taped interview recorded in September 2005, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told British Columbia journalist Tom Zytaruk he was aware that an offer had been made to Mr. Cadman but said "it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election."
“Canadians have still not been told what those ‘considerations' were,” said Mr. Ignatieff. “Mr. Cadman and his family had legitimate financial concerns about what would happen after [his] death and it just seems obvious that the Conservatives made an offer to address those concerns.”
The Prime Minister's Office has denied that any Conservative offered Mr. Cadman a million-dollar life insurance policy but has refused to say that no financial benefits were ever held out in exchange for his vote.
When The Canadian Press asked Sandra Buckler, the communications director for Mr. Harper, if anyone connected with the party had ever offered Mr. Cadman the policy, Ms. Buckler replied: "I categorically deny it."
That is the furthest a member of the Prime Minister's staff has gone to date in disputing the allegations of Mr. Cadman's widow, her daughter and her son-in-law.
But Ryan Sparrow, a Conservative Party spokesman, declined in six e-mail exchanges with The Globe and Mail to state that no Conservative official had ever offered a financial inducement of any kind to Mr. Cadman.
And late last week, Ms. Buckler also balked at making that kind of blanket denial – even when it was made clear that financial benefits were not being interpreted to include the campaign funds that the Conservatives admit they were prepared to give the dying MP.
The Globe and Mail asked Ms. Buckler to confirm that "no representative of the Conservative Party at any time offered Chuck Cadman a financial benefit in exchange for his vote [understanding] ‘financial benefit' to mean anything but help with a possible election campaign."
She twice refused, saying only that "the CP story is accurate" and that her "comment to CP stands."
With a report from Gloria Galloway
