The recent developments surrounding the Chuck Cadman controversy serve to confirm my worst fears: Canadians are losing their bullshit detectors.

It’s a real shame too, because I have always found Canadian bullshit aversion rather pleasant, coming from the land down south where they practically invented the stuff. I don’t just say this because Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are a terrible government taking Canada in the wrong direction: I liked it when Canadians raised a ruckus over Adscam, too, and that mess was full of Liberal bullshit.

But something has happened, and I can’t tell if it’s just the winter blues or fear about economic downturn. What we do know is that two days before the tenuously passed budget in spring 2005, high-ranking officials from the Conservative Party of Canada approached now-deceased MP Chuck Cadman, of British Columbia, and made him an offer.

What was on the table, and at what cost?

A $1 million life insurance policy. All he would have had to do was vote against the Liberal budget, triggering an election. That’s a lot of money on the table in July 2005 when Chuck Cadman died of terminal melanoma, a form of skin cancer. But it wasn’t cashed because Cadman voted for the budget and then the Speaker voted for it, breaking the tie as Canadians waited until Christmas for an election to roll around.

We also know that after Mr. Cadman’s death, the Prime Minister acknowledged on tape that he knew financial gains were offered to Mr. Cadman, but that they were “only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election.”

So let’s go over the facts: money was offered to Mr. Cadman, and Mr. Harper knew about it. You with me? Good.

Moving forward two years to this week: a political storm is brewing, the NDP are piping mad, the Liberals are happy that finally they don’t have to look like idiots, and everybody can read. So they flip open their dictionaries to the word bribe: “money or favour given or promised in order to influence the conduct of a person in a position of trust.”

Then, just like you did, they put two and two together and decided that the offer made to Mr. Cadman was a bribe, and they smiled. Mr. Harper, the man of morals and good government, was finally caught with his pants down. And to the press they went.

Now, the PM is suing for libel for two articles published on the Liberals’ website, demanding access to a wide array of documents that the Liberals have gathered in their investigation. But once the story broke, the Conservatives began to backpedal and people are buying it. All I hear now is how this country does not need another election. Apparently everyone should just shut up and prepare for the massive economic downturn that is going to ruin our lives next year. Yikes.

Instead, we need to take a page out of the (American) history books and ask, “What did the PM know and when did he know it?” (The astute will recognize the homage to Richard Nixon.)

Several years ago, Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt published a wonderful little pamphlet, On Bullshit, where he treats the topic with the seriousness it deserves. The working definition proposed is that bullshit is the active disregard of the truth. It isn’t that someone knows the truth and obscures it—that’s a good old-fashioned lie. Bullshit is when someone has no interest in hearing the truth whatsoever. And that’s a dangerous road to travel.

I know that it didn’t seem to matter when an ex- PM was taking bribes instead of making them, but we need a serious inquiry, and we need it soon. This represents nothing less than an investigation of the moral bankruptcy of this government, and Canadians deserve to know.

Let’s demand that someone ask the tough questions on behalf of the Canadian people, and everyone, please—let’s cut the bullshit.