How far they've come...

Greg Weston puts forward his theory as to what the Cons may have offered Chuck Cadman for his vote. And if he's right, then the scam may have represented the Cons' ultimate repudiation of the movement that gave rise to Harper's party in its current form:

At the risk of inciting mass-protests from the federal pension department, here is a rough estimate of what might have been in the offing for Cadman.

At the time of Cadman's meeting with the two Conservative operatives, he was 57 years old and had been a sitting MP for just over eight years.

As such, he was entitled to an MP's pension, or "retiring allowance" as it is known, regardless if there were an election.

That retiring allowance, based on Cadman's eight years of service, would have been about $29,000 a year.

When he died two months after the mystery meeting, his widow would have been entitled to 60% of that amount, or just over $17,000 a year for the rest of her life, while each of his children would get 10% annually, or just under $3,000.

But a provision in the Commons pension plan allows an MP to "buy" more years of service, either by paying a lump-sum, or through increased monthly premiums over any period up to 20 years.

If Cadman bought an extra 10 years of service, it would have increased the pension to his widow by something in the order of $30,000 a year, and to his children by over $3,000 apiece.

If she lived another 30 years, her dying husband would have effectively provided his family with additional pension benefits worth about $1 million -- something Cadman might well have considered a "$1-million life-insurance policy."

For now, I don't have time to take a detailed look at the law surrounding that kind of scheme: while a party contribution to a candidate is indeed excepted from some of the provisions of the Canada Elections Act, it's hard to see how a loan on special terms wouldn't be seen as a "compensation" under the Parliament of Canada Act. And it's possible that the Cons may have been asking Cadman to take much of the legal risk if money was put into his campaign coffers which wasn't intended to be used for valid electoral purposes.

That said, regardless of the ultimate legal analysis, it would seem deliciously ironic if the heirs to the Reform legacy of protesting "gold-plated MP pensions" attempted to buy their way into power by purchasing a vote with nearly a million dollars from the current MP pension system. And that might explain why Harper would be afraid to admit the facts even if the scheme narrowly managed to stay on the right side of the law.