It's a time-honoured tradition for governments to drop unpleasant or embarrassing news on a Friday afternoon, when it's likely to attract minimal attention. But on this, the media really shouldn't allow the Conservatives to get away with it.
Nearly a year ago, at the height of the Chuck Cadman controversy, I wrote the following (with usual apologies for quoting myself):
...seeing as how the PM has yet to offer a coherent explanation for what he was talking about on that infamous tape, it's increasingly difficult to give the Tories the benefit of the doubt. And if you can't do that, then you really shouldn't be willing to let this issue go.
I've been prone over the past 10 days or so to go on a bit of a rant whenever it's been suggested to me that there's no real scandal here; that the Liberals are just trying to distract from their well-documented woes; worst of all, that it's politics as usual. If you are able to give Harper the benefit of the doubt, then I suppose your optimism is admirable. But if you believe there's more to Harper's ambiguous talk of "replac[ing] financial considerations" and you're willing to let it slide anyway, that's just inexcusable.
Since then, we have let it slide - the opposition, the media, pretty much everyone. That's because the Tories imposed libel chill by filing a $3.5-million lawsuit that hinged largely on an allegation that the tape of Harper had been altered.
If it had been altered, that would have negated the need for the aforementioned explanation of what Harper was talking about. But Harper's own expert concluded that the key part of the recording wasn't changed, his lawyer stepped down, and now the lawsuit has been dropped altogether.
And so we're back to where we began. The Conservatives have been accused of offering inducements to a dying MP to vote a certain way. They have not provided a coherent account of what transpired between them and that MP that disproves the allegation. The only difference is that, until their case fell apart, they managed to shoot the messenger by claiming that he was the unethical one.
If nobody bothers trying to get to the bottom of this, just because a year has passed and the controversy has been reignited at the end of a work week, we really deserve the ethical standards our short attention spans will deliver us.
