OTTAWA -- Liberals vowed no let-up Friday in their quest to get answers from Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the Cadman affair after being advised by the RCMP that its investigation into the allegations of attempted bribery by Conservative officials found "no evidence" to support criminal charges.
Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc, who made the formal request for an RCMP investigation, said Harper still has a duty to tell Canadians everything he knows about what he's called "financial considerations" senior Conservatives offered the late Chuck Cadman in 2005 in a bid to win the Independent MP's support in a vote that could have toppled the then-Liberal government.
"I think the prime minister's ethical obligation is higher than simply the basic rules of evidence law relating to criminal prosecution," LeBlanc, the party's justice critic, said in an interview.
James Moore, the B.C. MP who is the government's point man on the Cadman file, said the RCMP conclusion confirmed the government's position from the beginning that "nothing improper happened here" and there was no wrongdoing by the prime minister or the Conservative party.
The Cadman affair was catapulted into the public arena in February after a book by Vancouver journalist Tom Zytaruk quoted Cadman's wife as saying her dying husband had told her two Conservative officials sought but failed to win his support in the crucial vote by promising him a $1-million life insurance policy.
Moore dismissed them as Liberal fabrications.
"The Liberals made fabricated accusations and very soon the Liberals will see how big of a legal problem they have created for themselves," he told reporters, referring to Harper's $2.5-million libel suit against the Liberal Party of Canada over its allegation that Harper knew of a bribery attempt on Cadman.
In a letter to LeBlanc, the RCMP criminal operations division said it had completed its investigation into the complaint and found no evidence to support laying charges. "The investigation disclosed no evidence to support a charge under the Criminal Code or under the Parliament of Canada Act," said the letter, which LeBlanc released Friday.
Dona Cadman, now a Conservative candidate in her late husband's B.C. riding of Surrey North, has confirmed her late husband's statements. Her daughter Jodi and son-in-law Mark also have publicly said they were separately told the same thing by the dying Cadman.
Zytaruk has an audiotape of a brief interview he did with Harper on the driveway of the Cadman home in September 2005, two months after Cadman died, in which Harper, who was then Opposition leader, says "the offer to Chuck was that it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election."
Harper has denied the bribery allegation from the outset, and filed the libel suit in March, just days after LeBlanc submitted his formal request for an RCMP investigation, citing a section of the Criminal Code that makes it illegal for anyone to try to influence a member of Parliament by offering financial incentives.
-- Canwest News Service
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