Mr. Harper, Mr. Grewal:

Kindly do the collective intelligence of Canadians a favour and shut up about these so-called recordings of yours.

In a bid to "score" a few political points, you've come up with an amazingly complex tale of stupidity on Parliament Hill.

If your tapes were legitimate, they should have been placed in the hands of the RCMP immediately, and copies made available immediately. Instead, Mr. Grewal, you claimed to have these tapes a day after Belinda Stronach crossed the floor, and it took over 10 days for you to release even transcripts of parts of the tapes.

Anyone with a computer, a bit of patience and some ingenuity can do some fairly credible audio editing. Ten days is plenty of time for someone with a bit of readily available equipment and software to edit these tapes in all sorts of ways.

Frankly, you guys blew it - both in timing and then in holding onto the recordings for as long as you did. In all honesty, I cannot accept those tapes as particularly credible at this point. It's far too easy to have doctored them, and your constant harping on the topic makes me deeply suspicious that this is little more than a mildly staged "political points" exercise.

As I said before, it's time to focus on governing the country, not assuaging your egos. Minority governments have been amazingly effective, but it requires the governing and opposition parties to find common ground. The ongoing shenanigans of the Conservative party do the party and this parliament no favours. (Having your trained ape - Jason Kenney - on CBC's "The Current" this morning didn't exactly convince me of the credibility of your claims either...)

I heard a clip on the news the other day of a Conservative MP complaining that the amended budget increases spending, but does little to put appropriate controls in place to ensure the money doesn't go missing. Possibly the first good point I've heard come from the senior opposition benches since parliament convened. You would do far better to play that up, and find a way to amend the budget accordingly. People might start believing that you actually have an interest in governing the country rather than salivating after power the way an adolescent boy drools over every female in tight jeans he sees.

[Friday, June 3, 2005 - Update]

I see the latest excuse is a "technical glitch" transferring the audio from tape to CD. Gentlemen, do you think that Canadians are really such idiots? The only "technical glitch" that occurs ripping from tape to CD audio format turns the CD into a coffee mug coaster - it doesn't "drop" bits of the signal out - especially not little sections of the dialogue in nice neat snippets.

Do the country a favour, admit that you were playing a game, you blew it, and get over it all.

What's that flapping sound? The Conservative party's credibility flying out the window.