"A complex billing scheme"

May 5 - Allegations that members of the federal government pressured sponsorship contractors to donate to the provincial Liberal Party of Quebec were bad enough, but now there is evidence that taxpayers paid for television ads for that same party (Public paid for TV spots):

TAXPAYERS were secretly billed for TV spots in 1998 showcasing French-speaking Quebec Liberal MPs to the tune of $92,008, the AdScam inquiry heard yesterday.

Financial documents tabled before Justice John Gomery show a complex billing scheme obscuring the fact that former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano had taxpayers pay for the production of partisan spots that aired on community television stations between 1997 and 2000.

Productions Cameo owner Thalie Tremblay, the daughter of Michelle Tremblay who is closely tied to Gagliano, told the AdScam inquiry that she first sent her invoices for the TV spots directly to Gagliano's office but later agreed to send her bills through Montreal's Groupaction Marketing.

In 1998, Pierre Tremblay, who was then Gagliano's chief-of-staff, told Thalie Tremblay to describe the work she did in general terms and to redirect the bill to Groupaction which "hid" the bill within sponsorship-related invoices. They paid Tremblay and Gagliano billed the House of Commons for the amount paid to Productions Cameo.

The article provides a bit more confirmation of Corbeil's testimony about what he termed "fake volunteeers":

A handful of Liberal organizers appeared before Justice John Gomery late yesterday, testifying that they were paid for their work during the 2000 election campaign through phony consulting invoices they sent to Quebec City's Commando Communication.

Following allegations by Corbeil about a connection between working for Liberal party campaigns and appointments to the bench, Judge John Gill in Alberta is being scrutinized:

John Gill, who served as co-chairman of the 2004 federal campaign, was appointed judge of the Court of Queen's Bench of Alberta in January. Elections Canada records show he made donations to the Liberal party in the last few years, including $763 in 1998, $828 in 2000 and $340 in 2003.

Gill's former law firm, Edmonton-based McCuaig Desrochers, also gave thousands of dollars in donations to the Liberal party, records show.

The NDP has raised concerns about the appointment on the heels of his high-profile work on the federal campaign, but Gill declined to respond to the concerns.

"I can't comment," he told the Sun. "Sorry, I can't talk about it. That's part of the job -- you don't talk about things. I've got nothing to say about it, basically."

A bit of thrusting and parrying during Question Period on this issue:

In the Commons yesterday, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper demanded an investigation, saying the Liberal party had "corrupted the system of nominating, vetting and appointing judges."

But Prime Minister Paul Martin said Canadians should be proud of their judiciary and blasted Harper for calling its integrity into question.

Chuck Guite admitted to violating federal rules requiring a one-year period between leaving public service and lobbying the federal government (he signed his first contract within 24 hours of retiring.) Records show that his company, Oro Communication, issued bills for more than $1,000,000 from 1999-2002 - mostly to advertising firms and one sponsorship contractor.

Greg Weston identified electile dysfunction in Sunday's column, and predicted that it is likely to worsen:

Call it electile dysfunction on a national scale -- Canadians so angry and disillusioned with the shambles in federal politics that they can't bring themselves to vote for anyone.

It was bad enough that last year's election set a 100-year record for voter absenteeism, Paul Martin and his Liberal government having been handed power by barely 20% of the registered electorate.

But by the time the muck settles this time around, the coming election could well establish yet another low-water mark.

Last year's poor showing on election day was driven primarily by voters turned off by their lack of choices -- angry with Liberal corruption, but unimpressed with Stephen Harper and fearful of his new party's agenda.

Unfortunately, it looks like the coming election could be more of the same. Polls indicate voters are even angrier at Liberal corruption, but only marginally more comfortable with the Conservatives and their leader.

O Canada: Mad as hell and not going to vote anymore.

The Georgians, Ukrainians, Iraqis, Kyrgys and soon the Lebanese continue to shame us by their determination to secure honest, representative governments. Can anyone imagine Canadians - or Americans - erecting tent cities in the dead of winter? Yet, out of pique, we are childishly surrendering that for which others have unyieldingly striven.

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Gomery Inquiry Extras

May 5 - I'm still fuming over my 2004 tax return so really didn't need this from the Captain's Quarters to further my state of discontent -- "spoiler" alert, eh?

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Guite links Martin, Manley, Dingwall and Gagliano to Adscam (Updated)

May 4 - Captain's Quarters reviews the connection between the American purchasers of ad agency Vickers and Benson and what they needed to do to ensure contracts under Adscam and what those dispensing contracts could do to ensure they got those contracts here, and (link via from that post) CTV has published some of Guite's testimony before the Gomery Commission in which he cites involvements by some top Cabinet officials in giving the assurances that Vickers and Benson would continue to receive contracts as inducement for the American buyers:

Guite testified that back in 2000, he was told that then-finance minister Paul Martin had intervened to ensure a Liberal-friendly ad firm wouldn't lose its lucrative contracts with the federal sponsorship program.

Guite had already left the civil service by then, and was lobbying the government on behalf of the Toronto-based advertising agency Vickers and Benson Ltd.

Hoping to secure the future of his firm's ad contracts with Ottawa, Guite said he had lunch with his former boss, Public Works Minister Alfonso Gagliano.

"He said he'd look after it," Guite told the commission.

A week later, Guite says he got a call from Gagliano's chief of staff, Pierre Tremblay.

"The minister had spoken with both ministers and the volume of business would be maintained," Guite testified. He claimed he was assured Vicker's contracts with two federal departments -- Industry under John Manley and Finance under Paul Martin -- were safe.

Martin and Manley have denied the allegations in statements issued by their offices.

The CTV also reports that Guite said that the awarding of contracts under the Progressive Conservatives was even more political which again reinforces the need for severe reformation of the system.

I've been sick with a virus and am still under the weather but will try to stay with this.

May 5 - 08:42: Toronto Sun story here has this item about a new piece of evidence:

A new inquiry document shows Corriveau went directly to Jean Carle in the PMO to secure sponsorships even before the creation of the program in 1996.

The document backs Guite's claims that Chretien's former chief of staff Jean Pelletier and Carle drew up the sponsorship lists. As the program matured, Guite said he got direction from Gagliano.

Guite said Gagliano dipped into the sponsorships to pay for his own pet projects, at one time demanding a paper trail-free approval for a Canada sign in a small Italian village.

While candidly admitting he broke contracting rules, Guite blamed the ad agencies for sky-high production fees.

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To the polls! (C'mon, you know you want to.)

Apr. 23 - The impact of Adscam is finally returning to the one arena that most needs to be challenged: the Ontario voter. I say "returning" because when Ontarians went to the polls last year far too many of them surrendered to the devil they knew and returned the Liberal Party to power - albeit limited as other Canadians were less willing to consort with that devil.

There's no getting around it: Quebeckers punished the Liberal Party. Albertans punished the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party leads a minority government because some Ontarians punished the Liberal Party but those in greater Toronto area did not - and the mayor of Toronto is setting the stage for us to be bribed - again:

"It would be very serious," he told reporters Saturday. "It would cost us, directly, $40 to $50 million this year. That's equivalent to about a four per cent tax hike. And indirectly, tens of millions more."

The impact would only get worse in succeeding years, he said.

Miller is worried about his city's share of federal gas tax revenue promised by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin.

The Toronto Star newspaper published an editorial Saturday opposing an early election. The newspaper said if the Martin government were defeated without the budget being passed, it would cost Canada's cities $600 million in lost gas tax revenue.

We've all read the accusations that Quebec holds Canada for ransom and that rivers of federal money flow into Quebec, but Quebeckers refused to be bribed in the last federal election. I wish I could say the same for Ontario.

Kateland recognizes the tip of an iceberg when she sees it:

Adscam only represents one Liberal run government program. If this is how the Liberals ran the sponsorship program in Quebec; whatÂ’s to say that all the other liberal government programs in Quebec and the rest of the country are not run the same way? Think GUN REGISTRY or STRIPPERGATE for starters. Adscam is only where they got caught holding the smoking gun - not evidence of innocence.

Let's take it even further. If Benoit Corbeil's statements are true, the Liberal Party systematically set out to destroy the Progressive Conservative Party in Quebec and see to it that the Liberal Party and Canada became synonymous. What's to say they didn't also try to subvert the democratic process in other provinces?

Joe Clark, the last leader of the federal Progressive Conservative Party, actually endorsed Paul Martin and the Liberal Party over Stephen Harper and the newly merged Conservative Party of Canada one year ago. Greg Weston wrote a column last May in which he accused some very senior Tories of making a secret deal with the Liberal Party in the 2000 election to secure Clark's re-election in return for securing Alberta Liberal Anne McLellan's re-election - and then some:

Two weeks before Jean Chretien called the country to the polls in October 2000, reliable sources say, a small group of top Tory officials cut a secret deal to help Chretien's ultimately successful national campaign for a third majority government.

In return, the Liberals agreed to throw the vote in the Calgary Centre riding of then Tory leader Joe Clark.

In what may have been a series of similar deals, sources say the Tories also agreed to "stand down" to help Liberal Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan hang on to her Edmonton seat, which she won by only 733 votes.

Sources refuse to divulge details of what, exactly, the Tories agreed to do for the Liberals. One would say only that the deal "without question, helped them (the Liberals) nationally."

Another tool in the Liberal Party bag has been bribery of provincial governments by means of transfer payments to provinces - and that means they can also withhold transfer payments to punish provincial governments.

People should be outraged that the government give or withholds their money according to "correct voting," (it isn't that different from the kind of tactic that people like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe uses.) Nevertheless, the Liberal party was elected in Ontario with a general expectation that the federal Liberal party would loosen the purse-strings more readily for their provincial cousins than they had for the Progressive Conservative-led government and once the Liberals were installed, the federal government re-opened talks about extra money for Ontario - and nobody so much as blushed.

Kateland analyzed the reaction to Martin's pathetic speech April 22:

My conclusion was that the typical Ontarian will give him [Paul Martin] kudos and high marks for stating the obvious and delivering it with obvious sincerity. ..

Will that work? Canadians are neither naturally politicos or idealistic. We tend to take people at their word rather than judging them by their actions. I think the most common phrase in Canada is that “he means well.” That excuses all.

Here in Toronto, people desperately need that excuse so they can do the math from a high moral ground:

"he meant well"
+
"he'll give us money"
Toronto votes Liberal.

This should be easy, because it is for that monetary incentive that they voted Liberal last year. (Sheesh, sex workers have more brains than had the average Torontonian voter because they demand to be paid before rendering service.) The only question is how easily Torontonians can be fooled twice.

Martin's plea to let him "clean up the mess" sounds very reasonable unless you're alert like Laurent and remember a 1995 assertion from then Minister of Finance Paul Martin:

The problem is that Paul Martin has been claiming for the last 10 years that he was cleaning up. As soon as his 1995 budget speech, he claimed that he had introduced "a new and much tighter system to manage its spending" and that his first priority was to "eliminate waste and abuse and ensure value for Canadian taxpayers." We saw the results.

1995 was also the year of the referendum vote in Quebec and the the Liberal conspiracy to destroy the Progressive Conservative Party which was one of the goals for which the Sponsorship Program was designed. The question is inevitable: did Martin tighten the system or loosen it so that Adscam could proceed undetected for several years?

One of Benoit Corbeil's assertions was that lawyers worked for Liberal party candidates with the expectation of receiving appointments to the bench. (Kind of a neat Canadian twist on "will work for food," eh?) Damian Penny and Bob Tarantino write eloquently of their outrage so I won't cover the same ground here.

I seem to be the only person I've read that liked Duceppe's rebuttal last Thursday (and I'm disappointed that CTV didn't see fit to post the text to his speech yet included NDP Leader Jack Layton's) but my impression of Duceppe's remarks was that he appealed to Canadians to restore honesty to the Canadian government, and however cynical one might be about the Bloc Quebecois, there really isn't much we can say to urge Quebec to stay in Canada especially as voting Liberal would be to condone the dirty tactics they used in Quebec which gave a whole new meaning to the phrase "special relationship."

Maybe it's because I'm coming at this whole thing with an American anti-federalist (i.e., pro-States rights, pro-provincial rights) attitude. I can completely sympathize with the desires of both Quebeckers and Albertans to be free of a federal government that increasingly usurps power from provincial governments, takes the revenues of the provinces and then uses that same money to reward or punish according to how the electorate votes.

But this is the interesting part: I think that Ontario and Toronto will get a better deal from the Conservative Party than the Liberals can offer. The Liberals can be fairly confident that, as Toronto voters love platitudes and scare pretty easily, the election is in the bag for them so they can afford to make promises they don't intend to keep, but Conservative MPs would, if elected, have to go extra lengths to meet their promises in order to be re-elected and retain power.

Ah, power. It really is all about power, but there seems to be a perverse disinclination in Canada to examine the pursuit of power. Maybe that's why "he meant well" has such traction and why people seem actually surprised that the Liberal party is as corrupt as it is, and maybe that's why Torontonians, under the veneer of their sophistication, are stupid voters.

The Liberal Party has ruled Canada with unchallenged arrogance for 12 years -- how could anyone realistically expect them not to be corrupt? It defies logic, psychology and history. Mark Steyn puts it succinctly:

In a one-party state, the one party in power attracts not those interested in the party, but those interested in power.

In an age when there is so much talk about empowerment it seems beyond strange that more people don't understand power - personal or political.

It looks as though the Conservative Party is putting together a slate (Conservatives line up high-profile candidates) and, if you can believe anything Layton says, he isn't selling out to the Liberal Party but is willing to go with the proposed Liberal budget if they meet his demands to, er, fight smog (and, socialist to the end, drop plans for a tax rebate cut for businesses.)

Although I don't know if Toronto will vote Liberal or Conservative (or Green, NDP or even Rhinosaurus) I do think it urgently necessary that an election be held now rather than later. Those who vote to oust the Liberals will at least have the knowledge that they personally did not give tacit approval to corruption.

Fighting isn't only about winning, but about reclaiming honour, self-respect and human dignity. People who give into outrage without a fight lose more than those who lose a fight: damage to the spirit lasts longer than bruises and, knowing they wimped out, it gets harder to fight back as each subsequent outrage piles higher like stones on a burial cairn.

(Globe and Mail and Reuters links via Neale News.)

Apr. 24 - 07:56: Criminey, even CNN has noticed that the Liberals are desperate to forge a deal with the NDP and that Bono is disappointed in Martin.

18:12 - I should have read Sari before I posted; she articulates what I felt about Duceppe:

Duceppe had me wishing - not for the first time - that he wasn't on the wrong side, because as usual he stole the show with a fantastic opening line to his speech, something to the effect of "the last time a prime minister addressed the nation, it was 1995 and Chretien was fighting to save Canada; this time, Martin's fighting to save the Liberals". He picked up votes for sure.

It is surprisingly possible that separatist sentiments in the West and Quebec will end up saving Canada by forcing the federal government to return those powers to the provinces which were originally apportioned to them in the Constutution - including health care - and restore the notion of local control over local concerns. Of course, that would mean less power concentrated in Ottawa ...

Apr. 25 - 11:00: RJ at Thoughtcrimes.ca has a key observervation about Duceppe:

Duceppe does not have to maneuver for position nationally as do Martin, Harper, and Layton, so that gives him a bit more room to step up and be statesmanlike. He talked about how the BQ are not supporters of federalism, but that the BQ had pledged to work within the system.

Key to both Harper and Duceppe's speeches was the distinction that the scandal allegations emerging from the Gomery Inquiry are Liberal scandals--not Quebec scandals. An important point that will continue to get much play from both BQ and CPC talking heads over the next few weeks.

The Meatriarchy may reflect the thoughts of many Canadians on Duceppe:

Duceppe - well I didnÂ’t really listen to him. Although the bit I caught he sounded better than usual. If anyone is growing in stature through this thing itÂ’s him.

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Martin boosted Boulay's contract

Apr. 21 - It's hard not to wonder if Paul Martin had his own, personal corruption ring that was not attached to the Sponsorship Program. First there were some surprising revelations about Martin's knowledge of improprieties in granting contracts to Earnscliffe and now it appears he helped other friends and political allies: Contract boost by Paul Martin earned $75,000 for his friend, say documents:

MONTREAL (CP) - Prime Minister Paul Martin approved a contract amendment when he was finance minister that landed an ad man friend $75,000 for doing little work, say documents at the sponsorship inquiry.

Memos from January 1996 indicate Martin approved the boost in additional funding for a Canada Savings Bond direct mail campaign. The file, unrelated to the sponsorship program, was co-managed by Montreal firm Groupe Everest, headed by Claude Boulay, and resulted in the $75,000 commission.

Finance official J.P. Labrosse said in a January 2, 1996, memo that the contract amendment involving Everest was "approved by the minister (Martin) on December 21, 1995." The contract was boosted to $2.6 million from $1.7 million.

Documents show Boulay's ad firm was paid a 17.56 per cent commission for the campaign even though the bulk of the work was done by another agency, Pinnacle Advertising.

It wasn't clear whether Martin knew the funding increase put money in Boulay's pocket.

There was some discussion about dividends paid out to Boulay during his testimony earlier (on Monday, I think.) I suspect Martin is familiar with that routine practice.

Boulay, who continued his testimony at the inquiry on Thursday, had worked on Martin's 1990 leadership bid as well as his 1988 and 1993 election campaigns.

The funding approval went ahead over the objections of Public Works official Allan Cutler, who later blew the lid off of the sponsorship scandal.

Cutler said in a memo to a finance official that Groupe Everest's involvement in the contract was minimal or nil.

"Groupe Everest will presumably obtain a commission on the sub-contract without having done any work," said the memo dated January 26, 1996.

Cutler also noted the funding increase had been approved even though all of the mailing and distribution work related to the contract had already been completed.

Is Claude Boulay trying to finesse his comments in a style akin to Corriveau? Note the following exchange:

Boulay testified Thursday that Cutler was in no position to know what work Everest performed on the campaign

"I don't know how he could make this comment," the ad executive said under questioning from inquiry counsel Marie Cossette.

"He wasn't there when we met with Pinnacle."

Cossette then asked: "So Mr. Cutler was mistaken when he wrote this memo?"

Boulay replied: "Listen. What I'm telling you is that he wasn't there. He can make a comment, but he wasn't there during our meeting with Pinnacle."

But the question was if Cutler was mistaken, and one has to infer that, as Boulay won't answer, Cutler was not.

Alternate link here.

Note this change: Prime Minister Martin will be addressing the nation (earlier than first scheduled) at 7 p.m. tonight.

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Corbeil confirms Brault's tesitmony, letters refute Chretien's

Apr. 21 - Jean Brault's shocking testimony about the manipulation of the Sponsorship Program to funnel money illegally to the Liberal Party in Quebec has been corroborated in an interview with Benoit Corbeil, who is the first Liberal insider to admit to the money laundering scheme.

From the Globe and Mail, Insider backs Brault story:

Benoît Corbeil, the former director-general of the Liberal Party's office in Montreal, said in an interview that he received approval from some of his superiors for the cash transactions that were part of a regular flouting of electoral law.

At the time, Mr. Corbeil was at the top of the party's organization in Quebec, working under the direct supervision of then-minister Alfonso Gagliano.

Gagliano was the man to see for contracts, and had claimed earlier while protesting his innocence that he was being victimized on account of his Italian ancestry.

“I took the bills [from Mr. Brault] and with that, I paid people, without declaring it [to Elections Canada],” Mr. Corbeil said, refusing to state exactly how much money he received that day.

“I have to admit it, that's the way it happened,” he said.

[...]

Mr. Corbeil said most of the recipients of cash payments were Liberal supporters who took unpaid leaves from their positions in ministerial offices to work on the general election.

“I liked to call them fake volunteers,” he said.

The interview M. Corbeil gave was in anticipation of his appearance before the Gomery Inquiry in May at which he intends to make clear the total control exerted over him by the Prime Minister's Office under Chretien and "the Liberal hierarchy in Quebec."

According to M. Corbeil, in 2000 Groupaction paid five "fake volunteers" by cheque through Commando Marketing, a Quebec City company owned by an employee of Groupaction, and Groupaction contributed $100,000 after Mr. Corbeil made an urgent plea for funds to a senior official in Ottawa who he declined to name. He said he relayed information about the transactions to "many of his superiors" and that his actions were approved. He also told members of the electoral commission.

Although Mr. Corbeil would not name names in the interview, he indicated he would do so under oath when he appears before the Inquiry.

“Many of them came and told me they wanted to get paid right away,” he said.

Mr. Corbeil said the people who received the cash payments were part of a larger group of party supporters who worked at the Liberal Party's headquarters in Montreal during the election campaign. He said most of that larger group were lawyers, engineers or accountants from major firms, which he said hoped to reap federal contracts after the election.

“They don't want to get paid right away, they want to get paid later,” he said, noting that many of the lawyers have since been named to the bench. (Emphasis added)

Mr. Corbeil said that in that context, the Liberals did not fully reveal the full cost associated with their campaign as required under Canadian law.

“We accounted for the provision of goods, but we didn't account for the majority of the services,” he said.

Mr. Corbeil went on to explain how the rationalization for the Sponsorship Program led so quickly to graft: it seems the Liberal Party adopted a war mentality about the separatists:

He said that after the [1995] referendum, two goals were approved by the highest authorities in the Liberal Party: Annihilate the Conservative Party in Quebec to unite all of the federalists in Quebec under the Liberal banner, and ensure that the Liberal Party became synonymous with Canada in the province of Quebec. (Emphasis added.)

They succeeded in the first part. The Progressive Conservtive Party was destroyed and the federal Liberal Party is despised for being so corrupt, which is why the Bloc won so many seats in the last federal election and why they will sweep the next one. As for the Liberal Party of Quebec, they are currently the party in power there but, if I may use an American saying, a member of that party probably couldn't get elected as dog catcher in the next election. My guess is that the Parti Quebecois will sweep the next elections, although the ADQ may win some seats.

But am I missing something? The 1995 referendum, like the one before, was defeated. Why would the Liberal Party decide to characterize it as a war and begin to fight it after it was defeated?

Maybe I'm just too cynical, but this explanation lacks credibility. It is entirely too self-serving, and I'd guess that they are using the unity card to conceal their true agenda: total and unlimited power by any means necessary.

Mr. Corbeil said the strategy was developed by the PMO and the Liberal establishment in Quebec, and that Mr. Corbeil's group only provided the foot soldiers.

Mr. Corbeil said that as the director-general of the party in Quebec, his biggest challenge was raising funds.

He said the Quebec wing of the party was in a constant rivalry with the national organization, which got the first crack at the biggest donors in Quebec.

He said the Quebec wing always wound up with the crumbs, and that it could never find a permanent solution to its funding woes.

“Maybe if more people had listened to us and paid more attention, maybe we could have avoided some problems down the road,” he said.

Er, right.

18:21 This indicates that the interview was on CBC (French) Radio.

Letters have revealed that Jacques Corriveau made Sponsorship pitches directly to Chretien and that Chretien replied - again in writing - that he would pass the request along.

But the request indicates Corriveau finessed his response when he testified last week that he never discussed sponsorship deals with Chretien.

The exchange of letters also raises questions about Chretien's testimony in February during which he said he never talked sponsorship with Corriveau and didn't know he was getting government business.

Corriveau provided a similar response at the inquiry last Thursday before he was even asked about it, saying "There was not, I can assure you, any request for any file that interests the commission."

Pressed further by inquiry counsel Bernard Roy about any possible sponsorship talk with Chretien, Corriveau replied, "It's certain. No."

But in his letter to Chretien, dated August 26, 2002, Corriveau said he was prepared to meet him to discuss an injection of cash into the 2003 show.

The letter contained a laundry list of items for the prime minister to consider, including:

$3.5 million in sponsorship funding for the event:
$2.6 million from other government departments:
$500,000 for similar botanical events in three African countries and for First Nations communities.
Lodging for 250 gardeners at a military base south of Montreal.

Chretien replied in writing just over two months later, saying he would send the request to colleagues including Sheila Copps, then heritage minister, as well as John McCallum, the defence minister at the time.

I need to sleep on this (and I want to see Martin's televised address tonight.) The time on the Globe article is Thursday, Apr. 21, 5:19 a.m., so Claude Boulay would not have heard about any of this during his testimony yesterday during which he admitted receiving a $3.5 million contract after lobbying Gagliano.

(Alternate link here.)

(Globe and Mail link from Damian.)

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Adscam catch-up

Apr. 20 - Sorry about the length of the following posts. After years of having not much to post it's a damned avalanche and I'm still playing catch-up on Adscam on my half-a-weekend ... by the way, watching the testimony has been made the easier due to the fluid delivery of the interpreter.

I need to get some sleep, so I'll just post the relevant links and try to counteract all the coffee I drank last night.

April 18 testimony at the Gomery Inquiry: Chretien ally may have lied to press (Corriveau's testimony.)

Letter ties Martin to sponsorship figure: Tories which is a smoking gun if you actually believe Martin is a sincere kind of guy -- I assumed someone in his office wrote it and Martin just scribbled the obligatory "personal" comment, but Kate sees more and she has often been right.

Somebody is unhappy about their cut from Adscam. What to do? Sue!

Boulay denies discussing sponsorship program with Martin ... well, he would say that, wouldn't he. (Longer living link here.)

Opposition Day cancelled by the Liberal minority government. It made Question Period even more uproarious than usual. The Opposition fights back - or allows itself to be provoked prematurely, depending on your point of view.

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Another new Adscam site

Apr. 19 - Slick intro for another new Anti-corruption.ca.

(Via Nealenews.)

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The money trail and recent Adscam testimony

Apr. 17 - Greg Weston reports that a "crack team of top forensic accountants" is Following the Adscam money trail to determine where the millions stolen from the Sponsorship Fund eventually landed:

... This is no ordinary group of number-crunchers.

Among its members are some of the key investigators who unraveled the massive and complex financial scandal at Enron Corporation, the giant American energy company that collapsed under billions of dollars of hidden debt and fraud. Sometime in the next few weeks, this squad of sleuthing bean-counters from the firm Kroll Lindquist & Avey will present the Gomery inquiry with the results of its Adscam investigation.

If successful, the accountants will answer the most contentious of all sponsorship questions: Who ended up with all the money?

So far, the Gomery commission has heard testimony that an elaborate web of kickbacks and fraudulent invoices siphoned millions of dollars from the federal sponsorship program into the coffers of Liberal Party operatives. What we don't know -- and the forensic super-snoops will likely tell us -- is what happened to all the loot after the Liberal bagmen got it.

There have been numerous debates about fixed terms and pre-set election days up here, but the fallout from Adscam shows the other side of that argument. If an election is called, it ought to be after this report has been made public -- the Liberal Party will be damaged by the corruption exposed directly within its structure or by that of it's paid campaigners - like Corriveau - who may have pocketed the money but whose ethical poverty reflects poorly on the leadership team of the party.

The statute of limitations for some of the illegal acts is very slim:

While Brault and two others are facing criminal fraud charges, time has wiped out any chance of nailing others with violations of election and lobbying laws.

The Gomery inquiry has so far heard from a dozen witnesses who broke election laws -- passing political cash around in brown paper bags does not exactly conform to federal political financing rules.

But an official at Elections Canada indicates there is nothing the government can do to prosecute the Adscammers -- under the old election financing laws in place during the sponsorship program, violators had to be prosecuted within 18 months.

The same applies to the numerous Gomery witnesses who have admitted they broke federal lobbying laws while they were out twisting arms in government for sponsorship cash.

A joke at the best of times, the lobbying laws don't even apply to AdScam -- the statute of limitations is two years.

The federal lawsuit against the 19 Adscam players is open-ended, to allow the government to add more names as they are unearthed at the Gomery inquiry. (Emphasis added)

On the other hand, the statute of limitations is possibly why some of the witnesses have been so forthcoming with their testimony: should the criminal prosecutions result in convictions, the sentencing for some may be lighter. Jean Brault was applauded when he appeared after the publication ban was lifted and I can understand why, especially when I compare Brault's straightforward testimony with Corriveau's haughty demeanor during the latter's appearances before the Gomery Inquiry.

I'm not likely to buy a used car from either man, but Brault came across as someone who tried to take a shortcut to success and ended up paying for it, and his testimony despite his poor health compared to Corriveau's memory-loss-by-medication makes Brault the more sympathetic character.

Mindful of the dictim that one can't excape death or taxes,

... If all else fails, there is always the long arm of the tax man, no doubt already hot on the trail of all that pilfered Adscam money. Where it will end nobody knows except, we hope, the accountants of Kroll Lindquist & Avey.

A couple of links and some background, starting with a profile of Corriveau here.

Some articles recapping Jean Brault's and Luc Lemay's testimony in anticipation of Corriveau's testimony here (including testimony from Groupaction employee Bernard Michaud that seemed to confirm that Brault was being pressure to donate to the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party) and Lemay's testimony that he never looked at Corriveau's bills but just paid them and that he didn't know that Gault was being pressured to donate to the party (the last contradicts Gault's testimony.)

A recap of Corriveau's testimony this past week: Corriveau denies kickback claims and CTV's coverage on Thursday and Friday.

In another link, on Thursday Corriveau denied ever discussing the Sponsorship Program with Chretien while running the graphic design company Pluri Design, denied that he was close to Alain Renaud, and denied one of the most damning segments of Brault's testimony:

Corriveau said he never referred to the party as "the cause" in any conversations, contrary to Brault's claim that the phrase came up often while Corriveau and top Liberal officials browbeat him for cash.

Corriveau had also denied that he was was a "really" good friend of Jean Chretien's and that he was an informal consultant to the former prime minister.

On Friday, he denied receiving any kickbacks or playing any role in a scheme to funnel money back to the Liberal Party and suggested the inquiry focus on Alain Renaud. He explained the invoices which were for events in non-existent Olympic stadiums were due to a "significant printing error" -- so it wasn't due to a copy-paste operation but the use of an original invoice (for a 1997 event at Montreal's Olympic Stadium) as a template for later invoices (which went undetected in several Accounts Payable departments? If the invoices contained a significant error due to the template it's not a "printing" error but human error, and that still doesn't explain why nobody noticed it.)

He admitted being paid for lobbying the government for contracts for Lemay's Groupe Polygone even though he wasn't a registered lobbyist, and was caught contradicting testimony by Chretien's neice, Maria Lyne Chretien, when he admitted recommending her for a job at Groupaction upon her request (she had testified that she never solicited a recommendation from him.) Brault testified that of the five he hired (Serge Gosselin, Maria Lynn Chrétien, Gaby Chretien, Alain Renaud and Jacques Corriveau) she is the only one who did legitimate work for Groupaction.

[I've tried to cite numerous sources in part because some of the links have only a short life span and others will be subject to "subscribers only" retrieval.]

11:05: Lorrie Goldstein dispenses with the contention that Martin is the "wire brush" to clean up Canadian politics and brings the point home with the the reminder of the applause and praise in the Liberal caucus following Chretien's golfball testimony at the Gomery Inquiry -- an appearance that, to quote Goldstein, "made it perfectly clear he [Chretien] had nothing but contempt for the proceedings."

More chickens comes home to roost, as Linda Williamson reminds us of the "tainted blood scandal" and John Crosbie points out some bad bookkeeping and questionable business decisions at Canadian Steamship Lines, the company Paul Martin owned and ran before he became Prime Minister and wonders if the Canadian electorate will leave the government in the hands of wolves.

Edmonton Sun columnist Paul Stanway urges voters to "stop hiding behind the excuse of Battered voter syndrome" and outlines the flaws in the Liberal Party's pretensions as the "natural ruling party of Canada."

Salim Mansur asks Remember when honour was important?:

There was once an unspoken rule in public life that when trust is broken and a reputation sullied, the person in question should depart and save others from embarrassment.

We no longer live in such a world or, more properly, we now imagine that to demand honour in public life is romantic fiction.

It has become unreal to expect from public officials what Shakespeare made Mark Antony declare: "If I lose mine honour, I lose myself."

Instead, the unruffled contemporary norm is pass the buck, deny evidence and brazenly defy those whose trust has been broken due to poor judgment, ineptness or malfeasance.

Instead, the unruffled contemporary norm is pass the buck, deny evidence and brazenly defy those whose trust has been broken due to poor judgment, ineptness or malfeasance.

We've seen ample evidence of this in the AdScam debacle in Ottawa. So, too, we recently heard the pithy response of Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, when asked if he would resign following the release of the second interim report of the Volcker committee on the Oil-for-Food scandal: "Hell, no."

Yes, the column is actually about Kofi Annan - but could easily be about Martin. I think that's the point.

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Corriveau testimony Day 1

Apr. 14 - Some quick updates before I go to work. Corriveau says he can't remember Chretien calls but confirmed about 21 over the years, citing surgery and medication as reasons for some memory problems, and that he only saw Chretien once or twice a year on average. He also denied he was an "unofficial consultant" to Chretien

The story in the Globe reports that Corriveau defended the phone calls logged in the former prime minister's office as being due to his employment of Chretien's son, Michel, at Corriveau's graphic-design firm from 1989 to 1991, which was before Chretien came to power, as pointed out by inquiry counsel Bernard Roy.

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"I did not have lunch with that man!"

Apr. 14 - Paul Martin denies ever having lunch with Claude Boulay of Groupe Everest, one of the agencies implicated in Adscam (Paul Martin: I have never had lunch with Boulay.)

Greg Weston wasn't impressed with Martin's "moral authority" speech yesterday and even less impressed with Martin's refusal to answer Opposition Leader Stephen Harper's direct question yesterday about Boulay.

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Luc Lemay, Day 2

Apr. 14 - Yes, it's Update on Adscam time, but I'm not sure I'm up to it. I caught some of Lemay's testimony on CPAC this morning, but I couldn't believe my ears. Did he really assert that he has neither read nor heard anything as to the content of Jean Brault's testimony last week? That is so unbelievable that I'm certain I must have dozed off there for a bit.

Another curious note: I turned on CPAC a few minutes ago and there is debate going on over a Bloc motion for the Liberals to put their alleged ill-gotten gains into a trust account so as to level the playing field in the event of an election ... thus far, speakers from the Bloc, Conservative Party and NDP have supported the motion.

Back to Lemay's testimony, he seemingly has no understanding of what constitutes 'Influence peddling':

HUSTLING by a pal of Jean Chretien to land a Quebec publishing empire lucrative sponsorships for a hefty commission is blatant "influence peddling," Justice John Gomery charged yesterday. Gomery launched the allegation in heated testimony from Groupe Polygone owner Luc Lemay, who said he helped mask Jacques Corriveau's hefty commissions with fake invoices to avoid the federal lobbyist registry.

"You have never heard of what we call influence peddling, as being a forbidden practice in the government?" Gomery pointedly asked Lemay during his second day of grilling.

"No," Lemay answered.

Corriveau, a Liberal bagman and the former PM's confidant, made $6.7 million in commissions on the $37 million in sponsorships the feds pumped directly into Lemay's conglomerate of companies between 1996 and 2002.

Lemay is also Clueless In Rimouski, billing for an event in the Olympic Stadium there - except that none such exists.

Laughter erupted when inquiry counsel Bernard Roy noted Corriveau billed thousands of dollars for working at the Olympic Stadium in Sherbrooke, Trois-Rivieres, Rimouski, Chicoutimi and Ste-Foy, a suburb of Quebec City.

"To your knowledge, is there an Olympic stadium in Rimouski?" asked Roy, adding: "These details escaped you because you did not examine the bills."

Lemay replied: "Essentially."

Some of the events said to have taken place in Olympic Stadiums actually took place at shopping malls and hockey rinks.

Brian Daly also writes on Lemay's testimony here:

The fake bills complete with non-existent stadiums were turned in by Liberal organizer Jacques Corriveau for a series of regional hunting and fishing shows that did in fact take place, promoter Luc Lemay testified at the inquiry into the sponsorship scandal.

Many of the bills were duplicates of a legitimate invoice that Corriveau submitted for one of Lemay's hunting and fishing shows at Montreal's Olympic Stadium in 1999.

Lemay said Corriveau did little work or no work on the regional events and simply substituted the names of the smaller communities but left the rest of the document unchanged.

Lemay, who claims to be a businessman, testified that he paid whatever Corriveau requested. If Corriveau claimed he had spent more time than anticipated on a project and billed accordingly, Lemay paid without question.

Corriveau, also a graphic designer, had cut himself in on the lucrative deals at 17.5 per cent but did little more than eyeball mockups for most of the contracts, said Lemay.

"I never verified these bills," he said.

A $2.7 million People's Almanac contract and the Montreal outdoors show were the only two of 19 federally sponsored events for which Corriveau played a major role, said Lemay.

As for the other 17 events worth nearly $28 million, Lemay said he had a "good faith" agreement to pay commissions to Corriveau, but didn't ask for details about Corriveau's work.

Lemay wouldn't corroborate Brault's claims but didn't deny Corriveau's bills were inflated.

[...]

Brault has implicated Corriveau and Lemay in the wide-ranging scheme that allegedly used Brault's Groupaction firm to secretly funnel at least $1.1 million to the party's debt-ridden Quebec wing.

Brault said he paid Corriveau nearly $500,000 under a bogus contract, and alleged Corriveau sent the cash to the Quebec wing.

Brault, who's semi-retired, also testified Corriveau pressed him to make huge financial contributions, while one of Lemay's firms allegedly paid Brault $2.3 million in bogus commissions to offset the party's financial demands.

Lemay has admitted that $1.9 million in bills from Groupaction were "perhaps a bit inflated" but insisted Brault told him the money was to help manage sponsorship contracts.

He said he he had no idea Brault was being pressured for Liberal contributions and said no Liberals ever strongarmed him into sending cash.

The CTV link tells me I haven't gone Nuts Over Adscam

Gomery was incredulous when Lemay claimed he still didn't know about Brault's allegations, which have made international headlines.

"I've never seen media coverage like that of Mr. Brault's testimony," said the judge, adding: "You've read nothing about it?"

Lemay replied: "I don't have the time to read it."

Gomery then said, "Maybe it's time for a break," before ordering a pause in the proceedings.

Jacques Corriveau is to testify today.

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Inquiry moves closer to Chretien's circle

Apr. 13 - Luc Lemay testified yesterday that Chretien pal Corriveau got millions:

A GOLFING buddy of former PM Jean Chretien raked in $6.7 million for landing a Quebec publishing empire lucrative federal sponsorships, the AdScam inquiry heard. Luc Lemay, owner of Expour and the Polygone publishing giant, said the millions were a thank you to Jacques Corriveau for landing him $42 million in sponsorships from 1997-2003 -- by far the lion's share of the $250-million program.

Lemay first hired Corriveau, Chretien's riding organizer and bagman, to design Expour's first outdoor show in 1997.

Lemay said only two short months before his show was set to open at Montreal's Olympic Stadium, Corriveau showed up with a vital $450,000 federal sponsorship.

CTV elaborates further on Lemay's testimony and Corriveau's billing procedures:

MONTREAL — Jean Chretien's good friend Jacques Corriveau did almost nothing to earn a $6.7 million cut from a Montreal promoter's sponsorship deals, an inquiry heard Tuesday.

Promoter and publisher Luc Lemay said he simply rubber-stamped Corriveau's bills, which in some cases appeared to be duplicates with the names of various events pasted in.

Lead inquiry counsel Bernard Roy ran down a list of $36 million in federal sponsorship contracts handled from 1996 to 2002 by Lemay's firms, mainly for hunting and fishing shows in rural Quebec.

Corriveau, a Liberal organizer and graphic designer, had cut himself in on the lucrative deals to the tune of 17.5 per cent. But Lemay acknowledged the former prime minister's friend did little more than eyeball mockups for most of the contracts.

Roy asked: "The bills that you received at the time were for honorariums for services that were not really performed as described in the bills."

Lemay confirmed: "I never verified these bills."

A $2.7 million People's Almanac contract and a Montreal hunting and a fishing show were the only two of the 19 events for which Corriveau played a major role, said Lemay.

As for the other 17 events worth nearly $28 million, Lemay said he had a "good faith" agreement to pay commissions to Corriveau, but didn't ask for details about Corriveau's work.

Lemay's admission suggests millions of taxpayer dollars went unaccounted for through Corriveau's Pluri Design firm during a period when huge sums of cash were allegedly diverted from the sponsorship program to the Liberal party.

Ad man Jean Brault has said Corriveau extracted huge sums from himself and Lemay to fatten the party's coffers in a corruption scandal that threatens Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority Liberal government.

Lemay wouldn't corroborate Brault's spectacular claims but didn't deny Corriveau's bills were inflated.

The bills, tabled at the inquiry, indicated Corriveau performed professional services when in fact his income came from commissions earned after lobbying the Liberal government on Lemay's behalf.

[...]

Brault has implicated Corriveau and Lemay in the wide-ranging scheme that allegedly used Brault's Groupaction firm to secretly funnel at least $1.1 million to the party's Quebec wing.

Brault said he paid Corriveau nearly $500,000 under a bogus contract, and alleged Corriveau sent the cash to the party's debt-ridden Quebec wing.

Brault, who's semi-retired, also testified Corriveau pressed him to make huge financial contributions, while one of Lemay's firms allegedly paid Brault $2.3 million in bogus commissions to offset the party's financial demands.

Corriveau's $6.7 million in honorariums and professional services represent more than 18 per cent of Lemay's sponsorship income between 1997 and 2002.

Andrew Coyne is all over the employment of former Immigration Minister Denis Coderre with Group Polygone in the late 90's.

He also notes a contradiction in Martin's contention that he "barely knew Claude Boulay, the president of Groupe Everest" and the fact that he was seen lunching with M. Boulay at the Liberal convention. Predicatably, Martin deflected direct questions on that to defending health care ... three times!

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NY Times on Adscam

Apr. 13 - The NY Times has taken note of the scandal up here even though one can only hope they'll dispatch a reporter in Montreal, where the Gomery Inquiry is behind held. From Canadian Prime Minister Struggles to Keep Job:

TORONTO, April 11 - Prime Minister Paul Martin sought Monday to distance himself from a scandal that is enveloping the governing Liberal Party, saying that he was "personally offended" by a pattern of money laundering, payoffs and kickbacks by party functionaries that has emerged in recent days.

Something that first came up on March 18 constitutes "recent days?"

The crisis has been simmering for over a year as a commission led by Justice John Gomery has been investigating charges that the Liberal government under the former prime minister, Jean Chrétien, transferred nearly $100 million to several advertising firms under a program to publicize federal activities in Quebec, in exchange for little or no work.

The Times is bracing the American public for the "Blame Chretien!" side-step, omitting the fact that the man who was Finance Minister and thus should have noticed huge sums of money were unaccounted for happens to be the current Prime Minister.

But the Times article somewhat makes up for their omission of the above detail with the next few paragraphs that make Martin look hapless if not foolish:

While in Rome for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, Mr. Martin remained silent about the Brault testimony; and over the weekend he huddled with his advisers to consider his political options. On Monday morning, he finally appeared in public and spoke in solemn but firm tones.

"I was as offended as any other Canadian - even if that testimony is contested, I was personally offended by what I heard," he told reporters on Parliament Hill. "That is not the way that politics is done in Quebec. It is not the way that politics should be done in Canada. And it is certainly not the way that I believe that politics should be done."

He added, "I can assure you that anyone who has been implicated in this matter is going to be punished." (Emphasis added)

That is an odd statement from a legal framework. Being implicated does not necessarily equate guilt, but now Martin is on record assuring the Canadian and now the American public that those "implicated" will be punished. Does signing the cheques "implicate" an official? The Times then reports

Mr. Martin, who has not been personally implicated in the scandal, also contended that he has the "moral authority" to continue governing. (Emphasis added)

Again with the "implicate" thing! Yet Martin has failed to accept his own accountability as the Finance Minister who failed to take action after a few millions here and a few millions there went missing or were spent in violation of the rules (e.g., no competitive bidding) on his watch.

The one strength on which Martin can capitalize is the Gomery Inquiry itself and Martin's refusal to end it.

"Establishing the Gomery inquiry has cost me and my party political support," Martin told reporters in Ottawa.

"But it was and it remains the right thing to do because it is needed to defend and protect the integrity of our political process."

[...]

Martin said that as prime minister, he accepts his responsibilities and is accountable for the government.

"The true test of character is doing the right thing when it is difficult. And let me tell you that matters a great deal more than the ambitions of any political leader," he said in an apparent shot at the opposition parties who have been threatening to end his minority government.

Martin knows whereof he speaks when he invokes "the ambitions of any political leader" -- he landed in the middle of this mess because he maneuvered behind the scenes to get Chretien out rather than let Chretien face the backlash of the Auditor-General's report back in early 2004.

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Liberal Scandal Record

Apr. 11 - Another new site keep track of the Adscam mess: LIBRANO SCANDALS AND PROMISES.

(Link via Kate.)

I had almost forgotten that the name Adscam was selected in a democratic manner by an elite group of people who read the right blog.

I kind of miss Andrew's Noth-ing posts. If Corriveau develops amnesia, how about a return appearance?

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Corriveau on Tuesday?

Apr. 11 - Chretien's pal Corriveau is up next before the Gomery Inquiry:

JUSTICE JOHN Gomery will take his first bite out of a Liberal rainmaker this week when former PM Jean Chretien's golfing buddy makes an appearance before the AdScam inquiry. Jacques Corriveau is expected at the Gomery commission as early as Tuesday, where he will be grilled by lawyers on his dealings with Liberal-friendly ad firms and about his involvement in the scandal-plagued $250-million sponsorship program.

Tomorrow Gomery is expected to uncover where the 600 VIP Montreal Grand Prix tickets purchased through the sponsorship program went when he questions the event's owner, Normand Legault.

Brault testified last week that once he began receiving lucrative sponsorships to manage, it was made clear to him that Corriveau had a big say in who got those contracts.

Corriveau is a close confidant of Chretien's and a longtime Liberal bagman who has been fingered by Brault and his staff during questioning over political influence in the doling out of lucrative sponsorships.

Corriveau, the former owner of ad agency Pluri Design, has been painted as an influential Liberal who directly demanded backdoor donations from Groupaction.

Brault said Corriveau was too much of a gentleman to outline the consequences of refusing to give secret donations but believed Groupaction would have been cut out of the sponsorship program.

Corriveau had not been mentioned by any of the witnesses prior to Brault and his staff and quite a few people are hoping Corriveau's testimony will connect Chretien directly to the scandal.

John Robson wrote last month that Judge Gomery's questioning style was similar to that of Lt. Columbo - seemingly innocuous questions which are revealed to connect loose ends and weave them into a net. Interesting read, or re-read.

Lorrie Goldstein had a column yesterday recounting the despicable treatment of Francois Beaudoin by Chretien and the former's use of real thug tactics when Beaudoin, then head of the Business Development Bank of Canada, responsibly turned down an unreasonable loan request by one of Chretien's friends, Yvon Duhaime.

There's an earnest story, MPs fear Gomery revelations hurt trust, which contains some interesting speculation tying cynicism to low voter turnout and one curious note:

In the federal election last June, some estimates of voter turnout put it just above 60 per cent, which would be the worst in Confederation's history. Due to problems in the voters' list, Elections Canada has not released an official number. (Bolding added)

I must have been asleep on the job, folks, because I don't remember anything about that. Is it tied in with difficulties in the Election Contributions database?

Lastly on that audit which Scott Brison had produced as evidence that no dirty money went into the bank, a notion that was firmly rejected by the Opposition:

"Let's not forget that when it comes to these types of activities, the whole purpose of money laundering is to hide the money. We're kind of overlooking the obvious here aren't we?" [Deputy Conservative leader Peter] MacKay said.

Sound bites are nice, but bloggers do better research - and accountant M.K. Braaten has looked at the reports and suggests that

In fact, these engagements are not audits but simply an analysis of parts of the Liberals finances that they asked the firm to analyze.

Braaten also includes the donations to the Liberal Party by the two firms and points out that there is a potential conflict of interest there (fancy such a thing! Ahem.)

Apr. 12 - 00:11 I'm watching Question Period, and Oppostion Leader Stephen Harper just brought up the letter in part 2 of M.K. Braaten's post in which Deloitte states that they did not conduct an audit. Harper, in asking a second question, calls it a "review." Diane Ablonzsky (?) is now pushing the point that Deloitte complained about the lack of documentation. (Story here.)

Braaten 2 - Liberals 0

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Time for Canadians to go hmmm

Apr. 10 - People who compare Adscam to Watergate are missing a vital difference. Whereas the Watergate hearings began with the use of private donations to President Nixon's re-election campaign for illegal operations, Adscam is increasingly exposing the use of public, taxpayer money to fund the election campaigns of the Liberal Party.

Follow the money has since entered public awareness as a standard investigatory practice, and it's hardly surprising that wrongdoers try obliterate the money trail in order to avoid detection or, at best, have some kind of plausible deniability even to the extent of blaming their own subordinates for incompetence or outright corruption. (Plan B is to accidentally erase 18 minutes from a tape or "not remember" what transpired.)

The use of such tactics is the picture that is emerging from the Gomery Inquiry, and as this National Post editorial notes, Judge Gomery has taken some low blows from some who have accused him of bias and cited the high costs of the inquiry to detract from its value.

One issue that must be confronted lies in the editorial:

A year ago, the struggles of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee proved how difficult it would be to get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal. (Bolding added.)

Why couldn't the Commons committee get to the bottom of the scandal? A second, unaddressed question: why it did it take so long for the alleged payoffs and paybacks, that at minimum go back 15 years, to be uncovered and brought to light? (A third questions might be as to what use is that committee if it can't get to the bottom of a scandal involving millions - if not billions - of dollars of misspending, corruption, graft, patronage appointments and the awarding of unbidded contracts?)

The latest testimony at the Gomery Commission concerns donations for the 1993 campaign which were made with the intent of influencing future contracts in the event of a Liberals victory (Ex-PM's staff took payoffs) which, it is ironic to remember, was fueled by accusations of corruption in the sitting government at the time - the Progressive Conservative Party.

MONTREAL -- Staffers of former PM Jean Chretien received secret payments to fund his victorious 1993 Shawinigan election campaign from a Montreal ad firm lobbying for federal contracts, the Gomery inquiry heard yesterday [April 8.] Former Groupaction Marketing employee Alain Renaud said that two years later Chretien's brother Gabriel personally set up meetings for him with a senior PMO staffer and top Liberal officials in a bid to open the floodgates of federal contracts.

Renaud, who was hired by Groupaction founder Jean Brault to bring in federal contracts in 1994, added to his former boss' explosive testimony about the fallout from secret donations made to key Liberals.

Renaud testified to the amounts paid, which he said added up to about $50,000, and how his expectations were fulfilled.

Renaud said he would complain to Michel Beliveau, the Liberal Party's former Quebec president, if the flow of contracts stopped.

He said Beliveau would call Chretien's then chief-of-staff Jean Pelletier about the complaint.

"I saw Mr. Beliveau call Mr. Pelletier directly in his (Beliveau's) office," Renaud said under questioning from Roy. "I never saw Mr. Beliveau speaking about a specific contract, but he spoke to the PMO regularly."

Roy asked: "How did you get confirmation that your messages were understood and were followed up on?"

Renaud replied: "When the contracts came in quickly."

Renaud credited Beliveau's influence with Pelletier for landing Groupaction Canadian Grand Prix contracts in 1998 worth a total of $1.3 million. (Bolding added.)

It doesn't take a genius to suspect that corruption is a communicable disease and to re-focus attention on previous instances of public money that went missing due to a variety of excuses that seemed to finger poor bookkeeping practices and ineptitude -- in short, to blame the civil servants employed in those ministries -- and go hmmm and pose like the incomparable Arsenio Hall.

Greg Weston is connecting some dots:

Now for the bad news: Adscam is likely just a puddle in a far wider, deeper and dirtier cesspool of corruption involving potentially billions of dollars in government programs unrelated to the sponsorship fiasco.

[...]

It is a huge amount of money. In the same time the Liberal government squandered $250 million on the sponsorship program, over $800 million was spent on federal ad programs.

As it happened, a pile of that cash went directly into the coffers of the same Quebec ad firms involved in Adscam.

Were palms greased and favours granted? Hmmm.

Weston notes that the federal government hands out millions of dollars in contracts and the potential for corruption is immense. The largest fraking red flag lies in this paragraph:

In one case that emerged at Gomery this week, Groupaction president Brault described how a $100,000 bribe got the firm over $5 million in contracts with the federal Justice Department.

According to the AG, in 1998, Justice officials were not happy with work being done by Groupaction and wanted to re-tender the contract. The retendering process began, but suddenly "was halted without explanation, and Groupaction was retained until mid-2002" after getting another $5.4 million in contracts.

What really happened, according to Brault, was he had asked Liberal Party bagman Joe Morselli to see if anything could be done to help Groupaction keep the contract in 1999. The two men met one day in Montreal, Brault testified, and Morselli told him: "$100,000 and your problem is solved."

Brault said he slipped the first $50,000 to Morselli at a spaghetti dinner, and never got around to paying the second instalment before the sponsorship scandal erupted in 2002.

The Justice Department. Somewhere, John Mitchell is smiling.

Weston discusses the $1,000,000,000 that has been spent on the "useless gun registry" and reminds us

In one case, a Sun investigation almost two years ago revealed Groupaction billed the feds hundreds of thousands of dollars for gun registry work that no one seems to remember being done. The firm is now facing criminal charges related to those contracts.

Two websites have come to my attention of late:

Alberta's Voice with an especial note to read their Scandals page, and
Law-abiding Unregistered Firearms Association (LUFA) which also lists some of the scandals since the Liberals took power in 1993. (People may remember that the Liberal government blamed those fighting the registry for it's high costs and cited the need to run advertisements in support of the registry.)

The Alberta's Voice scandal page reminds us that funding for the HRDC program spiked just before, and just after, the 1997 election. There were accusations that those who got jobs through the program were primarily family members of civil servants and Liberal party volunteers. Hmmm.

It appears that the health care system, once a source of deserved pride, was also manipulated by those who were supposed to be maintaining it. Weston writes

Ad exec Jean Lambert testified that his spouse, Sylvie Cloutier, had won a competitive bid for a $200,000 Health Canada contract in 1994. Instead, she was forced to run the work through Lafleur Communications, a firm now at the centre of Adscam.

The Gomery commission was told Cloutier was forced to pay Lafleur $50,000 to do nothing but pass along her invoices to the government.

So all the extra money pumped into the health care system went ... where again?

[A quick comment on Alberta's Voice - I really recommend you write you own letters rather than copy and paste any form letter. Their examples provide a good reminder of the talking points you might want to address, but sincerity counts the most in any endeavour, and the numbers of sincerely outraged taxpayers is what directs political and institutional change.]

Captain's Quarters is already on election watch and it appears that at least one Liberal in Alberta is thinking about jumping ship - MP David Kilgour. He also covers recent poll figures which I'm avoiding (I live in Toronto and have little faith in the common sense of the voters of this town. I'm just saying ...)

As I've stated before, an election is not going to solve anything. It's the structure of how the government approves spending - and the lack of whistleblower protection - that is all wrong and provides an open invitation to corruption. Andrew Coyne summed it up succinctly in Trust Us:

"All we have to say is 'We won't steal your money'," the Conservative stalwart said...

[...]

What this member of the public wants to hear is: Don't trust us. You don't have to. Here are the specific things we'll do to ensure that you don't have to trust us -- because this kind of thing will be impossible.

That's what I too want to hear because I don't trust anyone with my money, which what I view tax dollars to be and, quite frankly, is how you should view that amorphous mass called "government money."

(Links from the Ottawa Sun and National Post via Neale News who should bookmarked by every blogger and checked several times a day by newshounds.)

10:20 Tom Brodbeck of the Winnepeg Sun points to another instance wherein the Prime Minister of Canada assumed powers above those of Parliament:

[Former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray] ... was given a patronage appointment to head the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy by Martin, even though he's completely unqualified for the position.

His appointment was rejected by a Commons standing committee. And this past week, Parliament voted to rescind Murray's appointment. A majority of democratically elected MPs voted against the appointment. Yet, Martin's appointment stands.

So much for democracy.

Murray was grilled by a Commons standing committee and he revealed how pathetically unqualified he is for the job.

He even acknowledged his shortcomings and apologized to the committee for them.

The House of Commons rejected Murray's appointment by a vote of 143-108.

But junior Environment Minister Bryon Wilfert said Murray will keep his job anyway.

"The position of the prime minister stands absolutely," said Wilfert. "The house has voted after the fact. ..

Then why hold a vote? And, if it was intended to have been a rubber-stamping exercise and Parliament revolted, why didn't they do something principled when they learned they had been ignored, like walk out or express their displeasure to the press?

This country drives me nuts.

15:48: Brodbeck column linked. Sorry!

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The Hell's Angels strike back

Apr. 8 - Pirate Paul Martin! (move your mouse onto the picture to read the article and your mouse off the article to view the picture.)

Can't really argue their point!

Posted by: Debbye at 05:45 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Restoring Ethics to Canadian sensibilities

Apr. 7 - The Captain has posted portions of the the CTV summary and is doing some fact checking -- comparing the information he received from his source to what is going up the CTV site.

Before we go further, I would like to tell you all about something known as a Tipjar. It's located right under the "Official Blogger" button and is a white box that says "Make a Donation." Captain Ed hasn't said, but I suspect the heavy traffic generated by his Adscam reports exceeded his bandwidth and has cost him money, so each of us should give him something if only as a token of our thanks for all he has done. Okay?

Back to Adscam.

The Capt'n makes a point which says much about some of what led to Adscam:

Under cross examination, a lawyer for the Liberals suggested Brault didn't really know if some of his payments ended up in Liberal coffers. Brault agreed with that, saying 'You're right."

Well, perhaps the attorney representing the Liberals on the cross-examination felt he scored a point. However, when political appointees demand cash from a government contractor, either the money is for themselves or their party -- and either way, it's corruption.

The attorney representing the Liberals probably doesn't, in fact, realize that very thing. Ethics rank lower than scoring a point.

And that's where the work need to begin - to stop shrugging and saying "everyone does it" but to press for reforms that will end - or at least minimize - institutionalized theft, to decentralize power so that those elected to represent their ridings are actually able do so.

Chretien's legacy is still under advisement, but the stench he left behind remains. It's about the cynicism, civil service promotions on the basis of who you know rather than how well you do your job, trips abroad to study brothels and red light districts, and golfballs.

It will be easy to sit back and hope that somebody else does it, but it don't work like that. If you've never written a letter or visited your MP's site before, now is the time (even if you are represented by a Liberal.) Let them know how sick and tired you are, and demand changes. (Just don't believe anyone who promises to fix the democratic deficit.)

Send the Liberals further into panic mode, and demand the Conservatives come up with something better than criticizing the Liberals.

That's how I see it, anyway. Good night.

Oh wait, the Globe and Mail report must have popped up after I left their site (link via Angry in the Great White North, who will probably be going full steam this evening so be sure and check him often.)

A shorter article is up at the CNews here noting this from that article: Brault said he circumvented Quebec election rules in 1996 to funnel at least $100,000 to the Parti Quebecois when Lucien Bouchard was premier.

Posted by: Debbye at 02:46 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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That publication ban -- lifted!

Apr. 7 - I meant to sleep, honest. But I'm watching CBC Newsworld (along with a long of bloggers, I'll wager) and readying my rebel yell.

Here goes: Judge Gomery says that it is in the public interest that Brault's and Guite's testimony, with a few exceptions, be lifted.

Judge Gomery cites a precedent which says the jury may not be able to distinguish between what impressions they had before the trial and what they hear as evidence in the trial, which is why the ban will stay on a few items which were testified to in the inquiry.

14:15 CBC Newsworld is already airing their coverage of Brault's testimony, and it's already on their web site here.

Oh lord, CBC has Jim Travers on.

Question Period has begun in the House of Commons. McKay was strong, McClellan was shrill. Everyone seems charged! (maybe not everyone ...)

The Conservative Party website has a web page dedicated to the Gomery Inquiry which might balance out the CBC spin.

CTV coverage of Brault's testimony is here.

Toronto Sun has coverage of the lifting of the ban.

I just realized I've never thanked Captain Ed! Thank you, sir, for standing up for the rights of free people and their right to know what their government is doing.

Let freedom ring!

Posted by: Debbye at 02:09 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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