Mar. 17 - Brian Legris, the chief executive of the Royal Canadian Mint is also a frequent traveller (Expensive business trips also on the bill.) No total is provided (Crown corporations don't have to divulge expenses) but there is this:

Mint spokesman Phil Taylor could not explain a $1,632 hospitality expense June 6, 2002 claim that Legris filed. There were no supporting receipts or explanations on what Legris spent the money on.

But Taylor said the mystery claim would no longer be approved under improved rules implemented since 2003.

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Mar. 14 - Lorrie Goldstein offers 20 simple rules for keeping our votes. They are all excellent (probably because they are simply common sense rules) but this one is most relevant to the over-use of consultative fees:

5) If your main problems are that your nuclear plants are breaking down and your electrical transmission grid desperately needs repair, no amount of consulting advice - whether Liberal or Tory - is going to help you. You need to fix the problem, not get more advice on how to "spin" the problem.

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Mar. 13 - More patronage appointees are culled: Michel Vennet, head of the Business Development Bank of Canada was finally, and I do mean finally, fired.

Technically the controversy over Vennet, Beaudoin and the bank are not part of Adscam so belong to an earlier scandal called Shawinigate but I'm not in the mood to distinguish between rats today. The same arrogance and corruption ties these scandals together and I'm going with what they have in common.

Anyone who's been reading Andrew Coyne might be excused for wondering what took them so long when lesser figures were summarily fired for lesser offenses and because I'm suspicious I wonder if they just gave him time to, er, tidy and clean out his files and computer records. As is noted here, they are suddenly reviewing the Governor-General's expenses or are they trying to change the subject?

Politics of diversion? In Canada? Oh, my!

The latest Adscam revelation: even the small amount of money allotted to the Department of Defense was subject to theft:

So far, only one federal employee, civilian director Paul Champagne, has been fired after auditors discovered national defence had paid $160 million for military computer hardware and support services it never received. more...

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Mar. 12 - Martin aides tied to scandal:

Aides to Prime Minister Paul Martin have been linked to an advertising firm involved in the sponsorship scandal, according to newly-released documents. Martin's former chief of staff at the finance department, Terrie O'Leary, and a former legislative assistant, Karl Littler, were both identified in documents in which Groupe Everest was awarded a lucrative contract in 1996.

Littler is now Martin's Ontario organizer and O'Leary remains a trusted adviser.

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Mar. 10 - They even stole from the Boy Scouts? The Scouts in Quebec, L'Association des Scouts du Canada, asked for $250,000 to assist in funding a Boy Scout Milllennium Jamboree and received it, but the Public Works website states the amount contributed was $600,000.

The case joins 720 other files that will come under scrutiny as special counsel André Gauthier seeks to recover sponsorship funds misspent between 1997 and 2001.

Groupaction Strategic Communications handled the transaction.

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Mar. 9 - Tall ships like Bluenose II have graced the waters of Lake Ontario and San Fransisco Bay and never failed to fill me with awe. The masts towering above the San Fransisco fog seemed to reach into heaven itself, and the sailors scrambling atop to the crows' nests defied both gravity and fear.

Does everyone have a pet heritage project that, when stung, makes them madder than reason would dictate? Count me as one who is more than furious that Bluenose II was victimized in the Adscam sting: out of $2.3M allotted, only $359,000 was received by the trust that oversees the schooner. Lefleur Communications was supposed to handle the transaction.

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Mar. 9 - Allan Cutler, who was fired (and fought to retain his job) after he filed a complaint in 1996 about the questionable handling of the sponsorship program has been guaranteed that he will keep his job when he testifies Thursday on before the Commons public accounts committee on who knew what and when about Adscam.

Maybe the real scandal is this:

Public Works called in a private auditing firm to probe Cutler's complaint in 1996 but both Cutler's concerns and the audit were kept secret by the Liberal government until they were unveiled by senior public servants testifying at the committee last week.

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Mar. 6 - Isn't this typical: Gagliano threatens lawsuit. I remember when he was appointed Ambassador to Denmark and there was a (brief) storm that he was being hurredly shipped out of town in an effort to deflect the brewing storm over the Sponsorship scandal. Some even pointed out that it was an insult to the Danes and didn't speak well as to how we regard amicable relations with them.

We've already apologised for Alfonso Gagliano. We've apologised a number of times.

I also seem to remember that he was first to have been appointed to the Vatican but they didn't want him (or was that another appointee? So many scandals, so little time . . .)

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Mar. 4 - Read these first: MPs in Panic and Fur flies in Grit caucus. Both articles refer to a Liberal caucus meeting which was publicly aired due to a technical error. more...

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Mar. 3 - It's becoming a tidal wave! (because we're too close to spring to use the word snowball!) Now the Canadian Mint is being audited because in a time when the mint was losing money, top officials received a 45% salary increase even though staff members were being laid off due to shortages of money. more...

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Mar. 3 - Who knew what and when they knew it seems to also be a why they did what they did and who knew they did it: Ex-official: Chretien accessed slush fund:

Former prime minister Jean Chretien dipped into a federal slush fund reserved strictly for his pet projects to create the sponsorship program, according to a senior public servant. Peter Harder, former treasury board secretary and comptroller general, said Chretien signed the submission launching the sponsorships in 1996 to ensure it got funding from a special pot.

"It was to access funds that were under his control in the fiscal framework," Harder told the Commons public accounts committee probing the AdScam scandal.

Harder, who held his position from 1995 to 2000, said it was "rare" to see the ex-PM's signature on a submission for cash, adding Chretien usually only backed those for Privy Council funds.

Harder, now a foreign affairs deputy minister, said the creation of sponsorships in 1997 was hidden by the Liberal government within the federal communications budget.

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Mar. 2 - Although PM Martin has requested that those who didn't blow the whistle earlier come forward now, it only serves to underline the danger of not having protections for whistle-blowers in place. According to this report, not only was money of the budgets for other projects cut back to fund the program, Alfonso Gagliano, the Cabinet minister in charge of the sponsorship funds, was directly involved in deciding who got funds, and others observed the by-passing of procedure:

Both Quail and former public works deputy minister Janice Cochrane told MPs that in hindsight they see grave problems in the sponsorship program.

Cochrane said she was "never able to receive a satisfactory answer" to why the program was being run outside the normal checks and balances.

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Mar. 2 - Another Instalaunch for The Globe and Mail and Margaret Wente's latest column in which she calls Jean Pelletier, Chretien's "Silent Executioner," on his arrogance:

There's only one explanation for Mr. Pelletier's bizarre remarks. He has pushed so many people around for so long that he thought nobody could ever push him back. For the past decade he was the PM's man, doing the PM's work. He had the habit of unchecked power, and old habits die hard.

I think Glenn's motive, however, might be more that of taking aim at Americans who have been too admiring of Canada's public image without looking below the surface, so please put a hold on any return fire.

UPDATE: Could we please stop using the phrase street-fighter to describe Chretien? It insults street-fighters. Chretien was more a mobster, or thug. who wielded power by hiding behind those like Pelletier.

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Mar. 1 - Some background and players for framing questions that need to be asked to learn Who knew what and when

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