Harper dropped lawsuit ahead of key hearing
Updated Tue. Feb. 10 2009 7:19 AM ET
The Canadian Press
OTTAWA -- Stephen Harper dropped his lawsuit against the Liberals in the Cadman affair just weeks before a hearing on whether his emails, notes and agenda could be called into evidence.
A court date was to be scheduled this month over the failure of the prime minister's legal team to provide documents and answers to questions that had been requested during a series of cross-examinations last summer.
The lawyer for the Liberal party was set to ask the court to rule whether Harper would have to provide emails and notes for meetings his staff held related to Chuck Cadman.
The matter involves allegations that the Conservatives offered a financial inducement to Cadman, an Independent MP, while trying to defeat the minority Liberal government in 2005. The Tories deny the charge.
The prime minister dropped his $3.5-million defamation lawsuit on Friday after reaching a deal with the Liberals.
Sources say the Liberal party is not obligated to pay any damages or apologize for claims on its website that Harper was aware Tory officials offered Cadman - who was dying - a $1-million insurance policy if he sided with them in a Commons budget vote.
Despite the refusal of either side to comment about their agreement to dismiss the case, records show a legal fight was brewing over the documents and other information Liberal lawyer Chris Paliare had requested.
Hearings were expected to begin this month over Harper's failure to have his lawyers respond to Paliare's request for documents and information from the prime minister's office.
In a series of cross-examinations last summer, Paliare requested copies of Harper's agenda for the day he was interviewed by B.C. journalist Tom Zytaruk, who reported the life-insurance allegations in a biography of Cadman.
Paliare had also asked for copies of Cadman's journals and diaries for the period of time during which the financial inducement allegedly took place.
Harper lawyer Richard Dearden abruptly quit last November, to be replaced by Toronto lawyer David Wingfield, after the initial stages of the Liberal efforts to obtain the documents and information began.
Dearden gave no explanation for his departure, and court notices of the lawyer swap do not indicate whether it was at Harper's wish or Dearden's.
During the examination of Harper last August, Dearden objected to Paliare's request for an email said to discuss a meeting between Cadman and two Conservatives the day of the confidence vote in 2005.
Other documents Paliare requested during his cross-examination of Harper included the notes of "all the people" who attended meetings in the prime minister's office in late February when the allegations were first reported.
Harper's lawsuit prevented the Liberals from exploiting the allegations during the federal election last fall.
Tom Conway, a prominent Ottawa lawyer who represented a former Tory member who sued Harper, said the looming court fight over access to emails and notes may have been behind Harper's decision to abandon the lawsuit.
"People drop lawsuits for all sorts of reason and sometimes they drop lawsuits because they are being asked to produce information they don't want to produce," said Conway, a member of the board of the Law Society of Upper Canada.
The NDP is calling on both parties to disclose the terms of their deal.
"Now it just sort of disappears from the radar because of this closed-door agreement?" said Vancouver MP Bill Siksay. "I don't think that's acceptable."
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