new in Ethics report (8): "all three parties agree that no offers were made"

From the Ethics Commissioner's report:

All three parties agree that the meeting ended with no offers having been made and that there was no commitment by Mr. Grewal.

This is as interesting for what it says as for what it doesn't.

First, Grewal, Dosanjh, and Murphy all agree that the Liberals made no offers at this meeting, which amounts to an admission of Grewal's that his many earlier statements that such offers had been made were false.

It also says, of course, that Grewal made no commitment, which is borne out by the recordings (which can read transcript here or here).

What this does not say, however, is that all three agree that no requests were made by Grewal, and since that was the allegation that the Ethics Commissioner was trying to get at.

And this comes to the heart of the matter. The Ethics commissioner had a limited set of questions to address:

1. “that Mr. Grewal sought inducements from Minister Dosanjh and/or Mr. Tim Murphy; or Minister Dosanjh or Mr. Murphy offered inducements to Mr. Grewal to change his vote(s) on matters before the House of Commons of Canada;
2. that Mr. Grewal surreptitiously audio taped conversations with Minister Dosanjh and/or others; and
3. that Mr. Grewal attempted to entrap Minister Dosanjh into improper conduct.”

That all three parties agree that no offer was made clears Dosanjh of allegation (i), but Grewal was alleged not to have made a commitment, but to have sought an inducement. And the larger finding was that he had in fact done so either really or in pretense to entrap Dosanjh.