Thursday, December 05, 2013

What Ford and Harper Have In Common

They both have problems with telling the truth.

Yesterday, news broke that Rob Ford had been attempting to purchase the video of him smoking crack cocaine - before Gawker and the Toronto Star made the existence of the video public.  In this morning's news, we find Ford denying that he was doing that at all.

So far, in the course of this saga, every time Ford has denied something, evidence has come along to disprove his denials.  At first, he denied ever having smoked crack cocaine, and then at the end of October, the video mysteriously turns up in the hands of police.  Given the pattern to date, I'd say the odds of Ford's utterances (which appear to contradict the ITO documents) being true are fairly low.

As we've seen with the Senate Expenses Scandal, Harper has a similar approach - lie, deflect, deny until the evidence corners you.  At first, Harper was saying the everything was just fine with his errant senators, then when it became impossible to avoid, they were being "disciplined" by the Senate; and eventually the whole mess got handed to the RCMP in a clumsy attempt to bury it in a criminal investigation.  All the way along, Harper has denied all knowledge.  Meanwhile, Duffy's speeches have made it abundantly clear that the PM clearly knew what was going on in considerable detail.

In parliamentary terms, both have chosen to "deliberately mislead the house".

Do the math.

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