Chuck Cadman -- What Really Happened

There's something wrong with the story.
In a biography of Chuck Cadman, due out in two weeks, his wife Dona says he told her two Conservative representatives offered him a $1-million life insurance policy and other inducements in exchange for his tie-breaking vote against the minority Liberal government's May 2005 budget.

But Chuck Cadman, a man of unquestioned integrity was dying. A life policy cannot be bought for a dying man -- it just can't be done. A straight bribe of $1,000,000, with a weak cover as 'life insurance' is out of a bad novel -- it's just not plausible. So what's left?

The representatives tried to trick Cadman on the theory once he's dead he'll never know there was no policy? Hardly; even if Cadman was corrupt he's want proof of the policy.

Cadman (or his wife) made up the story -- and remember his wife is a Conservative. Why? There's no possible upside to such a lie. The answer doesn't rest here.

Or ... a dying man of great integrity, in extremis, and two political operators on a fools errand (and the Prime Minister's much ballyhoo'd comments suggests the effort was hopeless) misunderstood each other. Well, that sounds about right. Whatever was on offer -- and probably something was, although likely we'll never know what it was -- these people from different worlds just failed to communicate.
James Morton
1100 - 5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
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