By arthur Weinreb
Tuesday, June 14, 2005We are now all familiar with the tapes that Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal made of his conservations with the prime minister’s Chief of Staff, Tim Murphy and the Minister of Health, Ujjal Dosanjh. Discussions were held about what rewards Grewal and his wife, Conservative MP Nina Grewal, might obtain if they abstained from voting on a motion of non confidence or crossed the floor to sit as Liberals. after the tapes were released there were allegations and counter allegations concerning what was said and the editing of and tampering with the tapes.
all this got to be just too much for poor Gurmant so he went on "stress leave". That meant that he was generally unavailable for the media. But instead of turning to the Liberals who were implicated in all this, Murphy and Dosanjh, the media set its sights on Nina Grewal.
Last week CBC did a piece that was headlined on their website as "Nothing to do with talks, Nina Grewal says". CBC manages to smear Nina Grewal by presenting a spirited defense against allegations that were never made against her. Nina appeared nowhere in the taped conversations. More importantly neither Murphy nor Dosanjh ever alleged that she was part of the discussions concerning any quid pro quo that she would receive if she abstained from the vote or crossed the floor, neither of which she did. By offering up her defense to charges that were never made, the CBC did nothing but inject her into the scandal while ignoring the Liberal players.
The Globe and Mail was even worse in reporting the non-Nina story. The Globe quoted Manjit Dhillon, a Conservative Party organizer as saying that the actions of Gurmant and Nina’s silence not only hurt politicians but hurt ethnic communities. Dhillon was quoted as saying, "It will take 10 years for the Indo-Canadian community to regain any trust, whether what happened on the tape is true or false and keeping quiet on her part doesn’t help."
Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh, a prominent member of the Indo-Canadian community is never mentioned once in the entire Globe and Mail article, especially when discussing harm to the community. Dosanjh is heard on the tape saying that what they are talking about cannot be seen to be a deal, strongly implying that he was willing to make a deal. Despite allegations of slicing and dicing, Dosanjh has never denied making this statement. Yet according to the Globe and Mail, Nina Grewal’s silence is hurting the community while the actions of Dosanjh do not even rate a casual mention.
Poor Gurmant is gone and the liberal media, rather than turning to the other players, Murphy and Dosanjh, are now turning to criticize Nina for her silence. It’s hard to believe that she is hurting the Indo-Canadian community but Ujjal Dosanjh isn’t.