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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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Apr. 22 - Adscam may be the least of Paul Martin's worries. Canada Free Press has uncovered damaging information that ties Martin, Maurice Strong, Tongsun Park, Saddam Hussein, and the U.N. Oil for Food project: Hussein invested one million dollars in Paul Martin-owned Cordex.

The Canadian company that Saddam Hussein invested a million dollars in belonged to the Prime Minister of Canada, canadafreepress.com has discovered.

Cordex Petroleum Inc., launched with SaddamÂ’s million by Prime Minister Paul MartinÂ’s mentor Maurice StrongÂ’s son Fred Strong, is listed among MartinÂ’s assets to the Federal Ethics committee on November 4, 2003.

Among Martin’s Public Declaration of Declarable Assets are: "The Canada Steamship Lines Group Inc. (Montreal, Canada) 100 percent owned"; "Canada Steamship Lines Inc. (Montreal, Canada) 100 percent owned"–Cordex Petroleums Inc. (Alberta, Canada) 4.6 percent owned by the CSL Group Inc."

Yesterday, Strong admitted that Tongsun Park, the Korean man accused by U.S. federal authorities of illegally acting as an Iraqi agent, invested in Cordex, the company he owned with his son, in 1997.

In that admission, Strong describes Cordex as a Denver-based company. Cordex Petroleum Inc. is listed among MartinÂ’s assets as an Alberta-based company.Read the whole thing.

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1 I see how this shows why the Chretien government was opposed to the War. Good Point.

Posted by: JAson at April 24, 2005 03:47 AM (doHxV)

2 Jason makes a good point. Just because Chretien has been otherwise corrupt and Martin has taken bribes from Saddam, should he be jumping to conclusions and discussing whether the Liberal Party made decisions based on bribes? Isn't this type of curiosity unCanadian? After all, should Canadians lower themselves to the point where they question the honesty and sincerity of their representatives. I think NOT.

Posted by: mikem at April 24, 2005 11:06 PM (EzNXf)

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Apr. 21 - Prime Minister Paul Martin gave his speech and begged for time to let the Gomery Inquiry finish it's task. He pledged to call an election Election 30 days after final Gomery report.

In short, he gave the Canadian equivalent of a Checkers speech.

Opposition Leaders Stephen Harper and Giles Duceppe responded with well-targeted, rapid-fire rebuttals of Martin's points. They both hammered home the point that it's not the country that is in crisis but the Liberal Party.

NDP Leader gave a foolish speech in which he made promises that would amount to raising taxes.

There are video links to the right of the CTV article.

More later, other people in this household want equal (ha!) time on the computer. I should toss 'em a second or two ...

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Apr. 21 - Damian Brooks has two impressive series of posts on the report from the Canadian Defence Committee and one on the purchase of submarines and the death of a Canadian sailor:

Big week

Defence review: first blush

The submarine purchase fiasco.

Good, solid reads.

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Apr. 21 - I woke up and turned on CPAC about half-way through Question Period (and a fine Question Period it was!) and nearly fell over when a member of the Opposition stated that Maurice Strong had stepped down from his UN post and went on to ask questions about the Canadian involvement in the U.N. Oil-for-food program.

I believe this is the first time that particular scandal has been addressed in the House of Commons.

The article is accompanied by no links to the ongoing investigations into the U.N. Oil-for-food program but does link to a glowing in-depth profile of the United Nations.

Yesterday, two investigators, Robert Parton and Miranda Duncan, resigned from the Volcker inquiry which is looking into the U.N. Oil-for-Food program Saying Probe Too Soft on Annan. Neither investigator was available for comment.

Back to Strong (see here and here for background to the story behind this story):

UNITED NATIONS - Maurice Strong, a long-time Canadian businessman and currently the top UN envoy for North Korea, will suspend his work for the United Nations while investigators look into his ties to a South Korean businessman accused in the UN oil-for-food scandal in Iraq.

Strong denies any involvement with the tainted program and has pledged to co-operate with investigators.

His ties to Tongsun Park are raising concerns about a possible conflict of interest in respect of his role as envoy to North Korea. (Emphasis added.)

Park is accused of accepting millions from the Iraqi government while being suspected of operating as an unregistered agent for Baghdad, lobbying for oil-for-food contracts.

Nice try by the CBC to imply the issue is a the propriety of being an envoy to N. Korea while maintaining business relations with a corrupt S. Korean ...

After Corbeil's revelations, the CBC needs to be scrutinized. After all, one of the first rules of warfare is to seize control of communications and news media, and the CBC is a federally funded body. I doubt it's an accident that they subtly altered this news items.

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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.

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.

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."

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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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.

“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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

(Alternate link here.)

(Globe and Mail link from Damian.)

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Apr. 20 - Sometimes somebody gets a really great notion, and even though I'm kind of out of this fight I'm also in it because I believe that the system of consensual government works best when there's a viable Opposition (and besides, I'm tired of being ripped off. Aren't you?)

All things Canadian has issued a fundraising challenge to the Blogging Tories. I'm not one [either a blogging Tory or a Tory as I'm not a citizen] so I'm encouraging Canadians who want to force some accountability onto government to go here if you've finally decided that voting for "the devil you know" is a dumb reason to vote for the kind of government you don't want.

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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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Apr. 19 - Is Maurice Strong the anonymous Canadian U.N. official No. 2 cited in reports about the arrest of David Bay Chalmers Jr? Sure looks like it ...

Oil-For-Food Probe Targets UN Aide Maurice Strong:

Strong, a special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on North Korea and one of Canada's most influential entrepreneurs, acknowledged on Monday that he had ties to South Korean Tongsun Park, who is suspected of bribing U.N. officials in the oil-for-food scandal.

Park, a central figure in an influence-peddling scandal in Washington in the 1970s, was charged by federal prosecutors in New York last week with being an unregistered agent for the Iraqi government before Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003.

The Independent Inquiry Committee into the oil-for-food program, led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, has now opened an investigation into Strong, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

In 1997 or 1998, Park arranged a meeting in a Manhattan restaurant with a high-ranking U.N. official, who was not identified. Park later told an informant he had spent $5 million to "fund business dealings" with the official, a U.S. criminal complaint said.

Park, according to the informant, invested about $1 million in an unnamed Canadian company set up by the son of the U.N. official. The money was later lost when the company failed.

Strong, 76, acknowledged in a written statement that Park in 1997 had invested "on a normal commercial basis" in an energy company with which he was associated that had no links to Iraq.

Strong's son Frederick Strong is a Canadian businessman who has worked in the energy industry. He could not immediately be reached for comment but the federal complaint did not mention Strong or anyone from his family.

Maurice Strong has been active in the oil industry and has also worked for the United Nations for decades in various jobs including several senior posts. He had an office down the hall from Annan for about a year in 1997 when he served as the secretary-general's special envoy for U.N. reform.

He also briefly was a member of the board of Air Harbour Technologies Ltd. along with Annan's son Kojo Annan, whom the Volcker panel is also investigating for possible conflicts of interest in the award of a multimillion-dollar oil-for-food contract to Cotecna, a Swiss company that employed him.

Air Harbour Technologies, based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is chaired by Hani Yamani, the son of former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani.

Strong, in a written statement on Monday, said he has continued to maintain a relationship with Park, who he said advised him on "North Korean issues in my role as U.N. envoy."

The United Nations was looking into whether it was appropriate for Strong to continue working for Annan during the investigation, spokesman Dujarric said.

Annan, however, would not be drawn into the controversy.

Dear oh dear, what shall we do with Annan? (raises hand) Cut of his .... funding?

"Maurice Strong has issued a statement and is also in touch with the Volcker Commission and has indicated he will cooperate with anyone who is looking into this," Annan said."

According to this, Annan didn't know that Strong and Tongsun Park had a business relationship and U.N. officials say that Park and former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali were close.

Time to go hmmm (I'm kidding - it's way, way past time to content ourselves with going hmmm. It's rapidly getting to be time to grab those pitchforks and torches, though.) First Louise Frechette, then Reid Morden, and now Strong ... the Canadian bureaucrats at the U.N. are implicated in the Oil for Food scandal as deeply as their federal Liberal friends are in Adscam. Anyone see a pattern yet?

In seemingly unrelated news, Canada is revamping their foreign policy and forging stronger ties with its North American neighbours. I hope they mean the North Pole, because the revelations in the inquiry of the Oil-for-Food scandal have rendered Canada's profile as being, um, less than trustworthy with sensitive American security issues.

Oh, why mince words? They're the farking enemy! (I trust you know what Canadian "they" I'm referring to. Fourth member of the Axis of Weasels, right? Nothing must stand in the way of access to Iran's oil fields (scroll down.) They never met an enemy of the U.S. they didn't cozy up to. That them.)

True to form, the premiers of Ontario and Quebec are raising their fears over border plans, and just to clarify, they are referring to this one. That's right, the premiers of the two provinces that hate America most are upset that their residents can't enter a country they vehemently despise without a passport. (A curious person might wonder why on earth they'd want to visit such a horrible, dreadful, unenlightened country, but I don't. The Canadians who scream the most about being subverted by mysterious forces who envision Canada as the 51st state behave as they they have the same rights as the Phantom 51st State. Normal Canadians, I'm glad to report, are happy to be Canadian and just want to make this country better. Of course, they are also sane.)

It will be duck-and-cover time when the two aforementioned provincial premiers learn about this plan -- they are really going to be pissed off, but it will take awhile because they never pay attention to anything that is written in the West.

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Apr. 19 - Americans might wonder why the Liberal Party has been dubbed "The Libranos." In part it's due to allegations of mob involvement, but what makes the nickname so appealing is that they act like mobsters. The cliche "a falling out among thieves" also comes to mind as Chretien's guy tries to prove that Martin and his guys are also dirty.

The problem is clearly a symptom of the decayed education system: none of these people ever studied Greek or Shakespearean tragedies -- had they done so they would have known they were riding for a fall.

The hearings on Earnscliffe contracts awarded by the Finance Department outlined here have already produced fireworks. There were early warnings to Martin's chief-of-staff that the bidding process for polling contracts was flawed:

A letter from Warren Kinsella to Terrie O'Leary, made public at a Commons committee Monday, warned of flawed competitions for public-opinion polling contracts, excessive payments, unnecessary work and political interference.

But O'Leary and another former top Martin aide testified that they did nothing wrong.

"Terrie, all of this spells trouble and you know it," Kinsella wrote in his letter.

"The competition was flawed, the payment is excessive, the work is probably not needed, and the research community can be fully expected to blow the whistle on the political connections here."

Kinsella was an aide to Public Works Minister David Dingwall at the time and was responsible for ensuring that government departments followed contracting rules. He was later a fierce supporter of Jean Chretien in the leadership dispute with Martin.

[...]

Allegations of political influence by Martin's office in the awarding of contracts were raised last year by Chuck Guite, the former bureaucrat who ran the federal sponsorship program at the Public Works Department. He claimed, in testimony to the public accounts committee, that he came under pressure in the 1990s to channel work to Earnscliffe.

Further to Warren Kinsella's testimony, a more in-depth article today headlines that he proclaimed Martin knew about the 'rigged' contracts and that "someone" tried to intimidate him from telling the truth in his testimony. I'm excerpting out of order:

Paul Martin knew about claims of "bad behaviour" involving public-opinion contracts for a firm closely tied to his leadership campaign but threatened to quit his job as finance minister if his top advisor was disciplined, a former Liberal aide testified yesterday.

Warren Kinsella, a former advisor to Jean Chretien and a vehement political foe of Mr. Martin's, said the then-finance minister was aware of allegations that contracts in the mid-1990s had been "rigged" to favour the Earnscliffe Strategy Group.

"He absolutely had knowledge of these things," Mr. Kinsella told the House of Commons public accounts committee during hearings into a 2003 Auditor-General's report that looked at how the government handled contracts for polling and other public opinion research.

Mr. Kinsella said that, as then-aide to Public Works and Government Services minister Dave Dingwall, he wrote to Mr. Martin's office to express his concerns about money flowing from the Finance department to a firm so closely affiliated with Mr. Martin's leadership ambitions.

He called this "bad behaviour -- I considered it inappropriate that you cross-subsidize using the public treasury."

Mr. Kinsella's claims topped a dramatic session that saw him seated at the witness table next to two of the Prime Minister's most loyal advisors -- Terrie O'Leary and David Herle, her common-law spouse and a former partner in Earnscliffe -- and claim that he was intimidated in a phone call he received shortly before his testimony.

He provided the name of the person who made the phone call in confidence to committee chairman John Williams, a Conservative MP. Mr. Williams said he considered the alleged call a form of intimidation and would refer it to a steering committee today to investigate. Mr. Williams refused to release the name when pressed by reporters.

Earlier at the session of the public accounts committee, Mr. Kinsella said that he raised flags about Department of Finance contracts for polling and other public-opinion research as early as 1994.

He also echoed claims made by previously by another witness, former public works bureaucrat Allan Cutler, who claimed the open bidding process for the Finance contracts were tailored so that only Earnscliffe could win them. He said he received complaints from several other polling firms about the contracts and felt obliged to investigate.

Auditor-General Sheila Fraser began the hearing by reiterating her opinion that while public-opinion contracts were generally well-managed, there were some concerns about contracts in which the public-opinion advice was given to departments verbally, not in writing. But opposition members of the committee pressed Mr. Kinsella for details of what Mr. Martin knew about the contract awards.

By 1995, there was enough concern about Earnscliffe's contracts that they were the subject of a meeting in the Prime Minsiter's Office involving Mr. Chretien's chief of staff, Jean Pelletier, and his ethics advisor, former Liberal Cabinet minister Mitchell Sharp, he said.

The possibility of dismissing Ms. O'Leary over an alleged conflict of intrest was discussed, Mr. Kinsella said. "Mr. Martin said he would quit before that would ever happen," Mr. Kinsella recall learning in in a disappointing call from PMO. "I phoned my wife said it's time to leave Ottawa."

Mr. Kinsella injected a note of intrigue in the proceedings when he claimed he received an intimidating phone call minutes before the hearing that indicated Mr. Martin's office would pressure former public works Minister David Dingwall to appear before the committee to contradict his testimony.

There's an item about Dingwall's tendency to porkbarrel here, a profile from a year ago after his appearance before the House of Commons public accounts committee on Adscam here, and an item about Dingwall, Martin, Kinsella and Chretien here.

Dingwall was the subject of a wonderful column by Lorne Guntner partially quoted here (canada.com links to opinion columns are sadly short-lived.)

The Wikipedia entry on Dingwall says he was appointed to the Canadian Mint in 2003 - I thought it was 2004, but then my memory sucks.

Aug. 20 - 03:33: Frank Schiller is reportedly the "mystery man" who advised Kinsella not to testify against Martin:

Parliament Hill sources named the man Tuesday as Frank Schiller, who once worked with Kinsella in the office of former public works minister David Dingwall. Schiller also put in a stint on the staff of former prime minister Jean Chretien and is currently a principal of the Ottawa consulting firm IGRG (Industry Government Relations Group).

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Apr. 19 - An article in the NY Times looks at the dithering in the House of Commons as the Liberals try to retain leadership (Canadian Leader Digs in to Confront Scandal) and makes some oblique observations that I'll take as substantiation of some views I've been forming. (As an aside, the author notes this time that the current PM was Minister of Finance during the Sponsorship Program.)

The article focuses on the difficulty of running Parliament as a minority government but suggests the ways in which the Liberal Party is trying to shape the focus of a possible election. Some excerpts:

Prime Minister Paul Martin is scrambling to keep power as the scandal involving his Liberal Party grows, making deals that delay or even jettison central elements of his political agenda, including a bill to legalize same-sex marriages and a measure to control greenhouse gases.

The campaign debate is already emerging in Parliament. The opposition is emphasizing the issue of honesty in government, while the Liberals are claiming that the Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, has allied with the separatist Bloc Québécois on a secret agenda to scrap the public health insurance system.

With Mr. Martin's position deteriorating, action has been delayed on many of his campaign promises - including decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana, establishing a national child-care system and cracking down on child pornography.

The long-promised legislation to strengthen regulation of the online pharmacy industry, which provides many elderly Americans with cheaper drugs, has also been delayed because Liberal Party lawmakers in western Canada fear they could be punished politically by the 4,000 Canadians who work in the industry.

Earlier this month, a threat by Conservatives to vote against Mr. Martin's budget forced him to remove the financing for an environmental measure that would have fined industrial producers of greenhouse gases.

Since Canadian courts have already made same-sex marriage legal in provinces and territories where 90 percent of the population lives, the legislation is mostly symbolic. But the delay makes it clear that it will be a campaign issue. (Emphasis added)

The Liberal Party has not backed down on these legislative matters but has deferred them in order to have a platform on which to campaign - the same platform on which they campaigned in the last election:

1. Chretien was the crook, and we're cleaning up his mess, and
2. If you want these progressive laws, you will have to vote for us.

David Frum, in the op-ed section, offers an analysis of the Liberal Party citing the reasoning behind setting up the Sponsorship Program as an indicator that the the Liberal Party is a "brokerage" party (that sounds considerably more cynical than "big tent") which is more intent on securing power to distribute the spoils rather than a party held together by shared principles and policies.

And it was presumably for these same reasons that Mr. Chrétien set in motion his kickback scheme. As Liberal strength in Quebec has decayed, the Liberals have found it more and more difficult to hold together an effective political organization in the province. How do you sustain a political party without principles or vision? Sometimes you do it with graft.

a huge unmonitored slush fund from which key political figures in the province could be rewarded. A large portion of those rewards, the judicial inquiry in Montreal is being told, were then kicked back as campaign contributions to the Liberal Party and as payments to Liberal insiders.

It was the Supreme Court decision recognizing the Charter right of gays to marry that finally resulted in the merger of the Canadian Alliance with most of the remnants of the federal Progressive Conservatives*, and the continued opposition of the CPC to gay marriage - but not "civil union" which would guarantee the same rights and benefits of marriage - keeps many whom I would call South Park Republicans Conservatives from supporting the new party. The CPC has yet to present ideas for reforming the "dividing of the spoils" that accompanies gaining federal power, which I see as a fundamental flaw in their program.

Frum ends on a hopeful note:

As countries modernize, they tend to leave brokerage parties behind. Very belatedly, that moment of maturity may now be arriving in Canada. Americans may lose their illusions about my native country; Canadians will gain true multiparty democracy and accountability in government. It's an exchange that is long past due.

* The provincial Progressive Conservative parties retained vitality and were even elected as the ruling party in Ontario after the demise of their federal cousins. The party here retains the Progressive Conservative name.

(South Park Conservatives link via Neale News.)

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Apr. 17 - The Earnscliffe Strategy Group obtained federal contracts during PM Paul Martin's tenure as Finance Minister. Former Martin aide Terrie O'Leary has been subpoenaed by the Commons public accounts committee looking into the relationship of the group, federal research contracts and the Finance Department. Her lawyer says its for "political" purposes:

A parliamentary committee examining federal research contracts is trying to "embarrass and humiliate" a former aide to Paul Martin for political purposes, says the woman's lawyer.

Andrew Davis, the counsel for Terrie O'Leary, levelled the accusation in an e-mail to the Commons public accounts committee, which wants to question O'Leary about opinion polling contracts that went to a firm with political ties to Martin.

[...]

O'Leary is one of four witnesses subpoenaed to appear next Monday at hearings that will centre on Earnscliffe Strategy Group and its relations with the Finance Department when Martin was minister there.

The subject has come up in passing at the federal sponsorship inquiry headed by Justice John Gomery, but the judge ruled the deals did not fall within his mandate.

That prompted Bloc Quebecois MP Benoit Sauvageau to propose that the public accounts committee take up the matter - a suggestion quickly adopted by other opposition MPs who command a 7-5 majority on the panel.

Herle, who co-chaired last year's Liberal election campaign, was a partner at Earnscliffe when the firm obtained contracts from the Finance Department during Martin's term there.

For much of the same period his longtime personal companion O'Leary was chief of staff to Martin. She has repeatedly said she was careful to avoid any involvement in contracts that went to Earnsclifffe.

The firm employed many political associates of Martin, and was often jokingly referred to at the time as the prime-minister's-office-in-waiting.

Two other witnesses will be Auditor-General Sheila Fraser and Public Works whistleblower Allan Cutler, a former Public Works official who was fired after he filed a complain in 1996 about the questionable handling of the Sponsorship Program.

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Apr. 17 - A report from the Conference of Defence Associations says that replacing the Hercules transport and other equipment is "years off" because the military lacks efficient procurement practices:

"At present, the department has inadequate numbers and expertise . . . to execute the existing capital acquisition plan," the association said in a report to the Commons defence committee.

"Existing approaches to military acquisitions and a dearth of project expertise lead to the troubling conclusion that transformation of the Canadian Forces . . . would not be possible before the year 2020."

The conclusions come as the all-party committee prepares to release a report on military procurement Monday. The panel is expected to say defence purchasing is weighed down in politics and inefficiency.

Similar to the revelations that followed the initial investigation into the Watergate break-in and the attempts to cover up the crime, many stories are now emerging which suggest other instances of wrong-doing. Some will prove out and others will not.

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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.

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)

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.

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.

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."

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Apr. 15 - I have to rush off to work, but this is troubling: Website gagged as Calgary police chief wins court order.

Neale News has a link to this page of the website.

We'd better keep an eye on this.

(Links via Neale News.)

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Apr. 15 - David Bay Chalmers Jr. of Bayoil U.S.A. was charged yesterday in Iraq Oil Sales by Hussein Aides.:

In an indictment, federal authorities in New York said David Bay Chalmers Jr., a Houston oil businessman, and his company, Bayoil U.S.A., made millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to the Iraqi government while trading oil under the $65 billion aid program.

Separate charges were brought against Tongsun Park, a millionaire South Korean businessman, for acting as an unregistered lobbyist for Iraq in behind-the-scenes negotiations in the United States to set up and shape the United Nations program. The criminal complaint said Mr. Park received at least $2 million in secret payments from Mr. Hussein's government for serving as a liaison between Iraqi and United Nations officials.

Mr. Park was at the center of a lobbying scandal in the 1970's, when he was accused of paying bribes to lawmakers in Washington to secure support for loans to South Korea.

[...]

The authorities not only charged that Bayoil made illegal payments to secure Iraqi oil, but also that it conspired to artificially lower the price Iraq received, depriving the Iraqi people of money for sorely needed items. The charges also disclosed new information about an alleged plan to pay senior United Nations officials to influence the course of the program.

Catherine M. Recker, a lawyer for Mr. Chalmers, said the Bayoil defendants and the company would plead not guilty and "vigorously dispute" the criminal charges.

According to federal authorities and the complaint against Mr. Park, he was a partner in the lobbying effort with Samir Vincent, an Iraqi-American businessman who pleaded guilty in January to illegal lobbying for Iraq.

Mr. Vincent, who is cooperating with federal investigators, said Iraqi officials signed agreements in 1996 to pay him and Mr. Park $15 million for their lobbying, the complaint says.

One of their tasks was "to take care of" a high-ranking United Nations official, which Mr. Vincent understood to mean to pay bribes, the complaint says. The authorities did not identify or bring charges against the United Nations official. (Emphasis added)

[...]

David N. Kelley, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, in Manhattan, said the complaint alleges that Mr. Park intended to bribe the official, but does not show that the official received any bribe.

The complaint also charges that Mr. Park met with a second unnamed senior United Nations official, once in a restaurant in Manhattan. After that, Mr. Park said he invested $1 million he had been paid by Iraq in a Canadian company belonging to the son of the second United Nations official, the complaint says.

Mr. Kelley declined to say whether the officials were still actively serving at the world organization. He said, however, that the investigation was "broad and large" and that his office would "wring the towel dry" in pursuing United Nations officials. (Emphasis added.)

A federal grand jury in Manhattan charged that David B. Chalmers Jr., founder of Houston-based Bayoil USA Inc. and Bayoil Supply & Trading Limited; Ludmil Dionissiev, a Bulgarian citizen who lives in Houston; and John Irving, a British oil trader, funneled millions of dollars in kickbacks through a foreign front company to an Iraqi-controlled bank account in the United Arab Emirates. If convicted, the three men could each be sentenced to as long as 62 years in prison, $1 million in fines, and the seizure of at least $100 million in personal and corporate assets.

The federal complaint against Park charges that he received a total of $2 million in cash from Iraq, including a fee to "take care" of an unnamed U.N. official. It also states that Park invested $1 million in Iraqi money in a Canadian company owned by the son of another unknown, "high-ranking" U.N. official. Park could face as long as five years in prison and a fine of as much as $250,000 or twice the value of profits he earned as a result of his alleged activities. (Emphasis added.)

The Telegraph (UK) has a fairly terse article on the arrests.

Thus far I've only found coverage of the arrests in The Globe and Mail which covers the arrest but as of 5:41 a.m. didn't report the allegations of a Canadian connection but does report that U.N. officials may be connected to these arrests:

The reference in the complaint against Mr. Park to two mystery high-ranking UN officials sparked widespread speculation in UN corridors of possible names.

Mr. Kelley, pressed repeatedly by reporters at a news conference to say whether U.N. officials had actually received money tied to Mr. Park, would say only that that issue was not part of the indictment.

The U.N. is claiming that the Americans and British were perfectly aware of the violations of the sanctions but refused to order their ships in the Persian Gulf to stop oil tankers heading for Turkish and Jordanian ports with illicit Iraqi oil. I have read reports that trucks loaded with illegally purchased oil from Iraq went to Turkey and Jordan (that became common knowledge after Operation Iraqi Freedom and the public learned just how corrupt OFF - or Oil for Palaces - really was) but I don't understand why oil headed for Jordan or Turkey would use rather lengthy sea lanes when they border Iraq and could drive it in.

Maybe Annan was thinking of Syria, a member of the U.N. Security Council, but, again, the oil was not transported by sea but by pipeline, two of which were turned off when U.S. troops got to them. Maybe he just forgot.

11:30 - Glenn Reynolds has lots of links on the arrests.

Apr. 16 - 10:05: FoxNews has no additional information on U.N. Official No. 1 and Official No. 2.

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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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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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1 now, if we can only find the soiled napkin.

Posted by: keith at April 14, 2005 07:23 PM (HRjgG)

2 Yay! That's the kind of punchline I was looking for, Keith.

Posted by: Debbye at April 14, 2005 08:04 PM (okk+Q)

3 Sounds like Clinton and Lewinsky "I never had sex with that woman" Oh wait, what was that? Hmm maybe if you define it that way, perhaps, maybe... uh huh

Posted by: Dwayne at April 15, 2005 10:36 AM (aPkwd)

4 It all depends on what the meaning of the word "lunch" is.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at April 16, 2005 05:32 PM (lAI6Q)

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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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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