"He started it" is not a defence

It has now been one week since Gurmant Grewal, MP, first made his sensational allegations that senior members of the Liberal government had offered him a public office -- a bribe, in effect -- in exchange for his abstention in last Thursday’s budget vote. The same offer was allegedly extended to his wife, also an MP. As evidence, Mr. Grewal produced an eight-minute tape he had secretly recorded of a conversation between himself and Tim Murphy, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, a snippet of what he now says are four hours of tape-recorded conversations, not only with Mr. Murphy but with Ujjal Dosanjh, the Health Minister.

The Liberals have had a week, then, to come up with an innocent explanation for all this. They have not done so. Instead, they have attempted to change the subject. Mr. Grewal approached us, they insist. In some versions, he is described as having asked for a public office; in others, it is maintained that he wanted the government to call off an RCMP investigation into his affairs, launched just days before at the behest of Joe Volpe, the Immigration minister. And when they rejected his advances, Liberal ministers chime in unison, he “wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

This is utterly irrelevant, even assuming it was true. If Mr. Grewal had corrupt objectives in mind, it seems odd that he would tape himself in the act, still odder that he would tell the world of the tapes' existence. A more plausible explanation, if indeed it was he who first approached them, was that he set out to lay a trap for them. Fine: it was within Mr. Murphy's and Mr. Dosanjh's power not to fall into that trap.

Let us suppose there is some innocent explanation even for their entering into discussions with the Conservative MP; that Mr. Grewal kept the subject of their meeting a secret from them. The minute -- the second -- the discussion turned to what Mr. Grewal could expect in exchange for, or even following upon, his abstaining on a vote of the House, their only responsible course was to end the conversation, then and there.

Mr. Grewal would not take no for an answer? There are simple ways of dealing with people who won't take no for an answer. You don't take their calls. You don't meet with them. If necessary, you get a restraining order. You don't engage in long, elliptical conversations around the very subject you hotly deny any interest in, leaving aside the highly suggestive phrasing Mr. Murphy employed.

Here is how Mr. Murphy might have replied to Mr. Grewal’s alleged suggestion. “Get out of my office. [If that is where they were.] I am the chief of staff to the Prime Minister of Canada. I cannot have any discussion of this kind with you. I cannot even discuss with you why I cannot discuss it with you. Goodbye, Mr. Grewal!” He might have added a “how dare you” if he was truly affronted.

But that is not what he said. We do not know all that was said between them, but what is on the public record is more than enough to raise serious questions:

“I think it's a bad idea, truthfully, to have any kind of commitment that involves an explicit trade. I don't think it's good if anybody lies. So if anybody asks the question well, was there a deal, you say, 'No.' You want that to be the truth...”

But. “People who make decisions like this in a principled way are people who ought to and deserve to continue to contribute. So how do we square that circle.” How, indeed? “So one of the proposals I have is this...” And then he describes how, “if two members of the Conservative Party abstain” on the budget vote, it “can be done on the basis” that “my riding doesn’t want an election.”

“If someone then abstains,” it “gives the freedom to have negotiating room.” Then “you can have an explicit discussion.” And you can say, “I’m thinking hard about what’s the right thing for my riding and the contribution that I would like to make.” Then “we can have a discussion that welcomes someone to the party.”

But. “In advance of that, explicit discussions about Senate, not Senate, I don't think are very helpful, and I don't think frankly can be had, in advance of an abstention tomorrow. And then we'll have much more detailed and finely hued discussions after that with some freedom.”

There’s much more in that vein. In my opinion, and in the opinion of others, Mr. Murphy was coaching Mr. Grewal in how a deal could be arranged that was not a deal, that would appear to stay inside the letter of the law. Mr. Grewal was to take away the understanding that if he abstained, certain arrangements could follow, without an explicit agreement to that effect. But the starting point, it was clear, the sine qua non, was his abstention. Whether this would have been legal, whether the conversation itself was lawful would be for a court to decide. But it is enough to justify the calls that have come from the opposition parties and editorialists for a police investigation.

Moreover, as the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Mr. Murphy has ethical obligations that go beyond merely obeying the law, and should be held to a higher standard. If nothing else, he is guilty of a grotesque error in judgment, as indeed is Mr. Dosanjh, so far as he engaged in any similar discussions.

Mr. Murphy's silence, beyond a brief statement denying having made any offers to Mr. Grewal, is also an issue. A serious allegation has been made against him by a member of Parliament, who has provided audio-tape evidence to back his claim. Mr. Murphy has an obligation to explain his recorded “proposals,” to dispel the suspicions to which they give rise, which now hang like a cloud over the entire government. He has a duty to speak out.

Finally, the media have a responsibility. There are allegations that a crime was committed here, allegations serious enough to warrant an investigation. And not just any crime, but one that strikes at the heart of our democracy. Do we just shrug and leave it at that -- because the Liberals won the vote? Or do we pursue this?