Or all of them. That is the theme of the editorial in the Montreal Gazette this morning (hat-tip NealeNews).
When is an offer not an offer? When is a private conversation not private? When is a transcript not a transcript? When is a defection really a sting operation? Or not? When is an independent ethics commissioner not independent? More than two weeks into the Gurmant Grewal tapes saga, Canadians still have far more questions than answers. And the one answer we do have, from Prime Minister Paul Martin, is merely an obfuscation, to put it kindly. It's time for somebody to pay for this disgraceful spectacle.
...Dosanjh's response has been to challenge the integrity of the translation from Punjabi, the completeness of the transcript, and so on. We have fallen to this in Canadian politics.
We have also fallen, apparently, to the point where the PM's chief of staff can undertake to have Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro, who is supposed to report to Parliament, not Martin, write some kind of "interim report" clearing Grewal in an unrelated investigation about visas.
...this one touches the cabinet and the PMO, and that won't do. Murphy needs to resign, or be fired, and Dosanjh needs to leave the cabinet. The ethics commissioner - for whatever he can still be worth - should look into this. So should the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, although they have always proved to be ultra-cautious when it comes to political investigations.
And when the election finally comes, voters in both Vancouver South (Dosanjh's riding) and Newton-North Delta (Grewal's) should ask themselves, and the incumbents, some hard questions about integrity and transparency.
