OTTAWA - The House of Commons justice committee has ruled a Liberal motion to study the Chuck Cadman affair out of order.
Chair and Conservative MP Art Hanger says the motion put forward by Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc falls outside of the committee's mandate.
LeBlanc wanted the committee to probe allegations Cadman was offered financial inducements to help the Tories bring down Paul Martin's Liberal government in May 2005.
All three opposition parties put forward motions to the Commons ethics committee to study the allegations, but the chair of that committee -- Liberal MP Paul Szabo -- ruled them out of order.
Then-Opposition leader Stephen Harper told a B.C. journalist in September 2005 that a pair of party operatives offered Cadman "financial considerations'' on the eve of a historic confidence vote.
Cadman's widow maintains the two Tories offered her husband -- who died of cancer two months after the vote -- a million-dollar life-insurance policy, but Harper's communications director "categorically'' denied it.
