PM Harper: We Tried To Bribe Him

It's stunning to me that this isn't a much bigger story. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has as much as admitted that members of the Tory party - with his knowledge - attempted to bribe a dying MP. (See post below for background if you need it.)

While researching the mentioned book author Tom Zytaruk interviewed now Prime Minister, then opposition party leader, Stephen Harper. Zytaruk asks him a question about a rumor of an offer being made to dying MP Chuck Cadman. Zytaruk's question is garbled, but it becomes clear what they're talking about as the conversation progresses.

What Harper admits should be enough for him and others to be investigated already. He confirms:

• A meeting between two people who were "legitimately representing the party," that being the Tory party, met with Cadman in 2005 to discuss a vote to bring down the Liberal government.

• Harper spoke with "the individuals" before they met with Cadman (he was against their going, he says, saying Cadman's mind was made up).

• The individuals "were convinced there were financial issues." Later in the interview he says that he told the two men not to press Cadman, saying "You have this theory that it's, you know, financial insecurity - um - uh - if that's what you say make that case, but [car starting]..."

• He later says that as he understood it, "The offer to Chuck, it was, that it was only to replace, uh, financial, uh, considerations he might lose due to an election."

• Staying on the two last points, Harper admits that the Tory Party offered Cadman something related to "financial issues," "financial insecurity," and "financial considerations," in exchange for a vote against the Liberals

• Cadman refused. His daughter now says that her father was enraged, and refused to disclose what had happened because he was dying: "All of this, this circus, would have been happening for the last weeks of his life," she said. "What would they want, cameras around his deathbed? He didn't want that. He was dying."

• Can this be more clear? This is clearly an attempted bribe. Harper's shrugging it off as "only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election," which Cadman apparently feared [add], doesn't make this not a bribe attempt. And remember that Harper was and is the head of the party. That he didn't stop it, and didn't report it when he knew it had happened, makes him complicit.

This is unbelievable. Again - why is this not a story?

National Post writer Jonathan Kay says The Cadman scandal is bogus. I've sent him an email with questions. We'll see.