new in Ethics report (11): chronological problems with Grewal's decision to start taping

Ethics Commissioner Shapiro's reports that Grewal

admitted that on Monday, May 16, 2005, he decided to tape the conversations he was having with Mr. Kalia, Mr. Dosanjh and Mr. Murphy in order to ensure he had proof of the nature of the discussions that were occurring.

Here again, Mr. Shapiro's decision not to use the primary evidence of Grewal's recordings let him down. Here is a list of phone calls, discussions, and events from the 16th:

1. Grewal's first phone calls with Sadesh Kalia: Sunday, May 15th. (one of which is taped: Kalia call #1, which you can read here)
2. the second recorded call with Kalia: early Monday, May 16th (here and here)
3. the third taped call is a missed call from Kalia (see here)
4. the fourth phone call from Kalia gets through (see here and here)
5. in his fifth phone call with Kalia (here), Grewal says that he can't phone Dosanjh right away because he is on his way to question period
6. in the sixth phone call with Kalia the pizza date is arranged
7. Pizza date with Dosanjh, Monday, May 16th, 8 pm. (not taped)

Grewal told Shapiro that he decided to begin taping while on the way to Question Period on May 16th (here) (which started at 2:15 pm according to Hansard). The problem, however, is that Grewal had already taped five phone calls by that point. And if Shapiro had bothered using the tapes as evidence, he would have seen that Grewal's account of how and when he started taping was problematic and needed further clarification.