You can almost hear them winking

“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.” What a fount of wisdom is Ujjal Dosanjh. The Minister of Health -- for that is his day job -- is practically unstoppable as he explains to Gurmant Grewal how “these kinds of deals are not made.” What kinds of deals? The deals that are not made. Like the deal that was not made with Mr. Grewal in exchange for his vote in the Commons. “Nobody will make you totally blunt promises,” Mr. Dosanjh advises in the first of their recorded discussions, “because that is not done in politics, usually.” Promises, perhaps, but not totally blunt ones. Usually. Later he is joined by Tim Murphy, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, who lectures Mr. Grewal on the important of “honesty, faith and trust,” as exemplified by, well, Mr. Dosanjh, who took a risk leaving the provincial NDP for the Liberals, but whose “faith was rewarded.” Mr. Dosanjh then takes up the theme. “I think what Tim is saying about trust is that most of these things do have our trust and you have to feel comfortable and that at the end, of course if the chief of staff says that certain conduct ought to be rewarded in due time that trust is kept 99.9% of the time.” And, still later: “I’m sure rewards are there at some point, right. No one can forget such gestures but they require a certain degree of deniability.” [Laughs]. There’s no deal, you understand. It’s just that “certain conduct ought to be rewarded.” Mind you, before they can talk to the Prime Minister, “we need to have a deal in place. We should have a deal in place here and the leader, simply, actually formally okays it.” Er, wait a minute, forget I said that. “I do not care to use deal as a language,” he says, on the now familiar principle laid down by Mr. Murphy in the previously released portions of the tapes -- that when someone asks, if there’s a deal, and you say no, you want that to be the truth. “But,” Mr. Dosanjh goes on, “I think we all understand what we are talking about.” Oh indeed we do. You can practically hear them winking. If, as everyone from the Prime Minister on down maintains, there were “no offers” made to Mr. Grewal, they have a funny way of saying so. If the transcript is an accurate rendering of their conversations -- and Mr. Dosanjh denies that they are -- it is simply no longer possible to pretend that senior Liberals firmly rebuffed Mr. Grewal’s persistent demands, or that Mr. Grewal repeatedly refused “to take no for an answer.” In all the four hours of tapes, he is never given no for an answer even once. He is given infinite variations of maybe -- albeit with a 99.9% probability of yes. A Cabinet job “may be possible,” even “right away.” And as for Mrs. Grewal’s hopes of a Senate appointment, well, that, as Mr. Murphy says at one point, is “a challenge.” Why is that? Because offering an MP (for so she is) a Senate appointment in exchange for their vote would be illegal? Because even to hint at such a deal would be unethical? No, because as the ever-helpful Mr. Dosanjh explains, “next six months, if one goes to Senate, you lose the numbers. This is the game of numbers.” And besides, Mr. Murphy adds, there’s only the one B.C. seat vacant, “and our problem is that we have already talked to someone” about it. Darn. Throughout, they are strangely solicitous of the MP they were so busy rebuffing. The go-between who arranged the meetings between Mr. Dosanjh and Mr. Grewal, Sudesh Kalia, calls and tells Mr. Grewal that “[the] minister called and asked me if I have spoken to you.” Mr. Kalia calls again the next day to tell him that Mr. Dosanjh “called me 6 a.m.” And called “twice again.” Mr. Kalia keeps calling with news of more calls from Mr. Dosanjh. “Make sure you wait for his call after 3 pm.” No, wait, “take his cell number... call him right now, he is waiting for your call... no, no call him right now, he is waiting for your call... He says please tell him to call me. Make sure you call him, he is keeping his cell phone on, which he normally does not.” (So you see: Mr. Grewal did call Mr. Dosanjh first!) As for Mr. Murphy, in the last of his meetings with Mr. Dosanjh, he is apologetic for arriving late, grateful for the tea, sympathetic about his Blackberry issues, anxious to hear what Mr. Grewal thinks about “one of” his “proposals,” and full of praise for the “principled” position that Mr. Grewal is about to take. Does that sound like someone brushing off a pest? And when, towards the end of their encounter, Mr. Grewal refers repeatedly to having been approached by a third party, does he say no? No, he says yes. Over and over again. For as Mr. Kalia advises Mr. Grewal in one of his first calls, “they are the ones who need you.”