The Political Assassination of Gurmant Grewal

Gurmant Grewal is being accused, though no one dare say the word, of fraud. At the very least, the intimation is that he is in violation of electoral legislation for not tendering receipts for monies donated to his campaign. CBC’s story the night before last (July 12) never bothered looking at reporting about the dates on the cheques in connection to the legal electoral regime that existed at the time (Update: see here for Terry Milewski’s TV clip). CBC, like much reported elsewhere, are acting as though the legal framework governing elections in Canada has been the same for ever. That is simply not so. And yet, Terry Milewski, supposedly a senior and experienced reporter, failed to inform the public of such circumstances (Milewski is interviewed by CBC Radio in Vancouver here).

In its July 11 web report, all CBC claims is that one of the cheques was deposited in January 2004. Although there is the issue of a few other cheques, no dates are provided for them, no allusion to the new legislation coming into effect that January, but they do write:

The Elections Act has strict rules about campaign donations. Every donor has to get a receipt.

Milewski said the same thing in his report. This is at best disingenuous, and, at worst dishonest, because it fails to inform about crucial details of the story and about the context. It is also wilfully unfair. The law does not apply retroactively. The question of one cheque deposited in January (and likely donated the year before posits, at best, a grey area regarding the tendering of tax receipts). Put it this way, if Grewal had issued tax receipts for all of those cheques donated in 2003, he would now be under investigation for issuing receipts that were not required by law, and there would be accusations, charges and hints that he was trying to cheat the state by issuing bogus receipts. This is crucial because in many ways it betrays the motivations behind the accusations.

Joe Volpe, the Minister of Immigration, concocted bogus charges against Grewal about immigration bonds, and then, in violation of all rules of ethics and Grewal’s rights, he publicised the matter with the clear intent to smear the Tory MP. The charge was a set up to make Grewal more likely to talk to the Liberals, who had already selected him as a target of bribery by Tim Murphy. They singled out Grewal on cold mathematical calculations: one set of bribing talks would potentially yield two votes.

Then the tape affair surfaced, about which there is not much to be said at the moment. There may be more tapes, it is being said, and it would be wise to wait until more is known. But the tapes and resulting accusations against Liberals are likely now the source of Grewal’s newer troubles. Since then, he has been accused of violating security laws at the Vancouver airport for trying to find a parliamentary peer to take an envelop to Ottawa for him. The media made a circus out of the whole thing, and they are still calling the envelop a package, suggesting something illicit. After that, came allegations about violation of immigrations law upon Grewal’s entry into Canada, casting doubt about the legitimacy of his entry and therefore of his citizenship. If his citizenship is called into question, then so does the legitimacy of his tenure as a Member of Parliament. And finally, we have the latest about the donations detailed above.

All of these, and to a large extent the tapes can be included, there have been allegations, investigations, and big waves without much substance to the accusations. With the exception of the tapes issue, they have been largely inflated or exaggerated charges, mishandled on purpose, twisted language (an envelop is not a package), questions unasked by senior reporters, and so on. It seems like an awful lot of hot air, and it seems like an awful lot of attention to one man over such short period of time. Even if Grewal had done all the things that the Government has claimed, it is at least suspicious that it would all come out practically at once. Millions and millions have been defrauded by Liberals, and on account of a grey area over one cheque, there is another scandal. If the cheque affair smells fishy, as one of the donors called it, the attention the government has given to Grewal lately smells like a whole fishing boat.

This is not to exonerate Grewal a priori. I am convinced that Grewal has made more than a few key and serious errors of judgement over these things, but they hardly equate to the conspiracies of the governing party to steal from Canadians to give to their friends and correligionists. Asking people to write cheques to the MP, even when all is above board, is at least unseemly; it is an imprudent thing to do, even if he did not violate the Elections Act then. And if it is found that he mishandled money, he should pay accordingly.

That still does not bear the wilful misreporting and mishandling of information (Update: One of the complainants about receipts is a current member of the executive in Ujjal Donsanjh’s Liberal Party riding association: SDA). John Reynolds has suggested that there is some sort of Liberal vendetta going on because of the tapes. Vendetta is my choice of words, not Reynolds, but it is the most appropriate considering what we have heard coming out of the Gomery Inquiry. We are witnessing the political (public) assassination of a Canadian citizen by the government in power, aided an abetted by the media. With media complicity, let’s not forget, the Liberals attempted to destroy Brian Mulroney in the 1990s over the Airbus allegations. If they can do it to a former prime minister, they can do it to a recently-arrived immigrant MP who is, shall we say, prudentially-challenged. Think about what they could to an ordinary citizen like you and me, if they believed that you crossed them.

In the smearing of Grewal, the Liberals win three prizes in the process:

1. The political assassination is likely irreversible. When Joe Volpe withdrew his accusations about the immigration bond incident, it was never directly reported, and it showed up in one single line at the bottom of a reportt in the Globe. The damage is done.
2. Grewal’s reputation will stick to the Tories for a while. The tape affair showed as much with a willing media looking to promote their pet mantra that all politicians are the same. I am betting that if and when Grewal gets cleared of these newly-trumped charges, it will not get the attention that the accusations have received. If all politicians are corrupt, then we may as well keep the nice Liberals because the other guys are so scary.
3. The descent of the Tories will typically signify some ascent for the Liberals at the polls. The Liberals, with the help of media, have successfully implanted in the minds of Canadians that Grewal is a corrupt man. But the greater price is to be found in the long-term strategy: one and potentially the two BC seats occupied by the Grewals will go to the Liberals. Grewal won his Newton-North Delta seat in 2004 by the slim margin of 520 votes. I doubt that Grewal will recuperate from all the accusations and insinuations well enough to win the seat again.

The cold calculation that Liberals applied to the bribery project resurfaces, if it ever went away. If you destroy Gurmant Grewal’s reputation, you also undermine Nina Grewal. You get two for the price of one.

Cross posted from Civitatensis