'TIS NOT TOO LATE TO BUILD A BETTER WORLD

Tommy Douglas must be spinning in his grave like a lathe.

The former leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, chosen as the Greatest Canadian of all-time, would be shocked to find out what his party under Jack Layton has devolved into.

This week the New Democratic Party of Canada has decided it will not support an Ethics Committee investigation into the Chuck Cadman Affair. Cadman, as you may remember, was offered a bribe, according to his wife, daughter and son-in-law, of a million dollar life insurance policy as he lay on his death bed in exchange for his vote in the House of Commons that would have hastened the end of the Paul Martin Liberal government back in May 2005.

The Conservatives, who the Cadman family say made the improper advance to buy Chuck Cadman’s soul, have denied that they did nothing but offer a man, with weeks to live, a chance to join a party that once shunned him, and help him in an election. What the Conservative fail to realize, or are refuse to acknowledge, is that Cadman didn’t need their help to get elected in the first place and that an election would have ended shortly after Cadman would have been dead.

To paraphrase a question asked by former U.S. Senator Howard Baker in the Watergate hearing "what did the Prime Minister know and when did he know it" is something for Stephen Harper to answer but what jack Layton should be mindful of is something else Senator Baker said on subject of Watergate.”

“It is almost always the cover-up rather than the event that causes trouble.”

Pat Martin, an NDP representative on the House of Commons Ethics Committee, says the Cadman affair is not “a good fit for the ethics committee” and that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police should investigate.

Pat Martin and the NDP may be the last people who still have faith in the Mounties. The Liberals have also asked the RCMP to look into the matter as well, but have also proposed it go to the Ethics Committee. The Bloc Québecois support the Liberals but Jack Layton and the Conservatives oppose public committee hearings into allegations of bribery leveled against the prime minister.

The Cons motives are obvious. The same could be said about the Liberals and Bloc but the puzzling thing to some is why the Dippers aren’t willing to get to go along.

The conventional wisdom has the NDP in league with the Harper Gang in trying to silence the Chuck Cadman Affair, because they are afraid the only beneficiary, politically, of the whole scandal will be the Liberal Party and the New Democrats would rather be complicit in a cover-up than risk being hurt politically.

Pretty strong language, I agree, but then again it’s a pretty strong topic. This has the makings of the greatest Canadian political scandal since the Pacific Scandal that brought the end to the first Conservative government of John A. Macdonald.

So the question (again) is why is Jack Layton running interference for Stephen Harper? If the answer turns out to be for purely personal partisan gain than Layton and Martin have hands as dirty as they allege the Harper Gang’s are.

Also the NDP are coming off a bribery scandal their own. One where they had to apologize in the House of Commons and pay a cash settlement to a Liberal candidate in the last election that they accuse of trying to bribe one of his rivals. The story was a complete fabrication by a NDP candidate and the party paid a heavy price, both financially, and what would be more important to Tommy Douglas, to their reputation as being the conscious of the commons.

It might be something they want to avoid as the Cadman Affair may do collateral damage to Jack Layton’s political objectives.

Tommy once said something that Jack Layton and Pat Martin should take to heart.

“Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole. Now if only he could walk the earth like a man, this would be paradise.”