April 2, 2005
A political scandal involving the Public Works Ministry, a government effort called the Sponsorship Program, and allegations of corruption in the ruling Liberal Party has Canada abuzz with rumors of payoffs, Mob ties, and snap elections. For the last two years, Canadian politics has been gripped by the so-called “sponsorship scandal” – tens of millions of dollars in government contracts which were funneled into advertizing firms closely connected with the Liberal government for little or no work, but with shadowy rumours that much of the money found its way back into Liberal coffers. Prime Minister Paul Martin, himself a Liberal, appointed the Gomery Commission to investigate these charges and determine whether to bring charges against government officials for corruption and malfeasance. (See the blog Small Dead Animals for some excellent background on the case.) Most of the testimony heard by the Commission has been public, but Judge Gomery has decided...
April 3, 2005
Canada's Sponsorship Program scandal, called Adscam north of the border, may result in snap elections. At first, this was thought to support the Liberal Party, the undeniable if temporary beneficiary of Judge Gomery's publication ban on key testimony at the Adscam hearings, and for good reason. However, lawyers for Jean Brault now want to delay his upcoming May trial to the fall -- and since the proximity of Brault's trial to his Gomery testimony caused Gomery to impose the ban, a significant delay might force Gomery to lift it. If so, the Liberals could face an enraged Canadian electorate much sooner than planned: Explosive new testimony at the Gomery commission has created a buzz in Ottawa that the opposition could force a quick election on a Liberal government damaged by the sponsorship scandal. ... Charged on six counts relating to the way his agency handled five federal contracts, Mr. Brault...
I spent most of the day offline, as today was my birthday and I'm still trying to shake off the effects of the flu or a nasty cold (not sure which). I spoke with a couple of Canadian reporters regarding the Brault testimony, and I also worked on another source which confirmed the overall accuracy of my original source for the material. I also got a note from CTV News that their lawyers cleared them to mention Captain's Quarters on their evening news, which started at 10 pm ET. Since then, traffic has tripled this evening, so if you're dropping by the blog for the first time, welcome aboard. More information should be forthcoming regarding the embargoed testimony either tomorrow night or Tuesday. I plan on staying with the story regardless of whether the ban stays in place. Hopefully, the publication here will convince Judge Gomery to do what should...
In a late update to the Adscam story, the Canadian Liberal Party will request standing at the Gomery Commission tomorrow in order to cross-examine Jean Brault. This news has not yet been published in any Canadian newspaper, but I understand that it has been broadcast on CTV. This may be a result of the Brault testimony being made public here at CQ, but as soon as I get some better detail on the request and what it might mean for the investigation, I'll update this post. UPDATE: Here's a CTV report on the release. It came out prior to their lawyers approving the mention of CQ in relation to the story. Believe it or not, Canadian news sources could wind up committing a crime just by linking to my blog now: Some of the so-called explosive testimony from the Gomery Inquiry that Canadians aren't supposed to see has found its...
April 4, 2005
After CTV named Captain's Quarters on their news program last night, the site got swarmed with tens of thousands of visitors, leading to some slower response times (sorry!) and a "magnitude" increase of traffic for blogs who I've linked, especially on this story. However, if you've linked your blog to CQ and you live six or seven hours north of me, you may receive a summons from your government, according to this report from the London Free Press this morning: A U.S. website has breached the publication ban protecting a Montreal ad executive's explosive and damning testimony at the federal sponsorship inquiry. The U.S. blogger riled the Gomery commission during the weekend by posting extracts of testimony given in secret Thursday by Jean Brault. The American blog, being promoted by an all-news Canadian website, boasts "Canada's Corruption Scandal Breaks Wide Open" and promises more to come. The owner of the...
I expect to have more information today on the Adscam testimony, as well as more background information on why this matters to both Canadians and Americans. That may come later in the day, probably in the early evening. In the meantime, if you have found this site and are looking for the original post, you can find it here. Also, I've created a new subcategory for Canada, which will have all of the updates on this story. Bookmark it and check back often. Winds of Change has a great post on the scandal. Be sure to read it. Don't forget Small Dead Animals, which has a lot of background on Adscam. My web hosting service, Hosting Matters, has done an excellent job handling the huge boost in traffic coming from CQ's new Canadian readers. I hope if you experience any slow loading or error messages that you remain patient. They...
Despite having a ruined voice thanks to a lingering bout of laryngitis, I spent most of my work breaks juggling telephone interviews with Canadian media outlets. For the most part, they wanted to know why I broke the publication ban. I told them I don't believe in restricting free speech, either in Canada or in the US or anywhere else, and if a government has corruption problems, making them a secret hardly helps clean it up. For CQ readers in Vancouver, I will appear on CBC's television news program this evening, in my very first TV appearance. Bear in mind that I look like hell today and sound worse, so be kind in your judgment. I do not know whether CBC will post the video to their website, but hopefully at some point we'll get a look at it. Lastly, I understand that comments have stopped functioning, which may either...
This installment of the testimony of Jean Brault at the Gomery Commission comes from Friday and follows the first installment. Today;s testimony is still being rebuilt from notes and may not be ready until tomorrow. Again, I want to caution people that this is a single source of information, although I did receive independent confirmation about the first installment from two separate sources. Bear in mind that the witness has not yet been cross-examined as well. The Martin Connections So far, Jean Brault has testified that in addition to the roughly $250,000 (US) his company legitimately gave to the Liberal Party, they made almost $250,000 in under the table contributions (cash donations, or donations funneled through employees or other companies), and put party workers on the payroll for an in-kind contribution value of about $200,000. Most of Brault’s testimony seems to implicate the circles around Jean Chrétien and Alfonso Gagliano...
April 5, 2005
Jane Taber reports in this morning's edition of the Globe and Mail on a second interview I gave her yesterday, when I had a moment and my voice could handle it. It's meant to give Canadian readers some background on me personally, and Taber does a fine job of presenting that information. However, more importantly -- perhaps for American readers -- it explains one of the reasons I found the publication ban so ridiculous. One of my commenters last night asked why Americans should be so offended by a publication ban, considering that grand jury testimony is often kept secret here. However, grand jury testimony is truly held in camera, meaning closed off to the public. As Taber reports, that's hardly the case with the Gomery Inquiry: His contact could be anyone as the commission hearings are open to the public. Indeed, the Brault testimony is an open secret in...
In an odd display of twisted priorities, Canada's Attorney General may start investigating the Canadian blogosphere to find bloggers who have linked back to CQ and broken the publication ban: CANADA'S attorney general is probing possible breaches of a publication ban set up to protect explosive testimony at the AdScam inquiry. Justice spokesman Patrick Charette said federal lawyers are looking into the Internet sites reproducing excerpts of Montreal ad exec Jean Brault's testimony and providing a link to a U.S. blog featuring more extensive coverage of the hearing. "We have to decide what the best course of action is," Charette said, adding federal lawyers could charge Canadian bloggers and website owners with contempt of court or suggest AdScam Justice John Gomery issue warning letters. So instead of chasing down felons or prosecuting violent criminals, or perhaps investigating government corruption, the AG intends to start delivering contempt citations ... or even...
My source for the testimony for the Gomery Inquiry has told me not to expect an update today on yesterday's or today's hearings tonight. The actions of the Attorney General have spooked some people in the courtroom, and apparently Justice Gomery has threatened to clear out the spectators and the TV feeds if the leaks continue. Things may change tomorrow, or even later on tonight. If I get an update, I will post it as soon as I'm able. Just as yesterday, I did a number of interviews with Canadian media today. Most of the questions were the same, but the people with whom I spoke were uniformly friendly, courteous, and gracious. This has been true across Canada, as I believe I have spoken with media in almost every province now. It's been quite impressive. The last Canadian interview I did was for a magazine in Montreal, and they asked...
April 6, 2005
The following is a translation of the two installments of Jean Brault's testimony at the Gomery Inquiry into French, for the benefit of readers in Quebec. The translation was kindly provided to me by CQ reader P.E. from Montréal. The bulk of the post will be in the extended comments; just click on the link below to read the entire post. 1) Pots-de-vin et ristournes ==================== Le jeudi 31 mars 2005, Jean Brault a commencé à livrer son témoignage (encore soumis à une interdiction de publication) et a révélé l'existence d'un gigantesque système de corruption étendant ses tentacules jusqu'aux plus hauts niveaux du Parti libéral. Brault a révélé l'existence de transactions fictives s'élevant à des centaines de milliers de dollars, faites au profit du Parti libéral de 1994 à 2002. La plupart des contributions électorales illégales consistaient à ce que Brault engage des «employés» —qui étaient en fait des employés...
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Justice Lise Côté postponed the trials of Jean Brault and Chuck Guité until June 2nd, far shorter than the September date the two men requested to prepare their defense. The shorter date calls into question whether Justice Gomery will lift the publication ban as had been anticipated in the event of a postponement: A Montreal judge has postponed the criminal fraud trials of ad executive Jean Brault and former bureaucrat Chuck Guité until June 6, putting into question whether a ban on explosive testimony Mr. Brault provided at the sponsorship inquiry will be lifted. Quebec Superior Court Justice Lise Côté decided Wednesday to put the two men's criminal trials over until June 6. They were supposed to have begun on May 2, but Mr. Brault and Mr. Guité argued that they did not have enough time to prepare for that date. They had asked that their trials be delayed until...
The Toronto Sun has developed its own independent sources into the Sponsorship Program scandal, uncovering more corruption at Groupaction while Jean Brault testifies under a publication ban at the Gomery Inquiry. The Canadian website Angry in the Great White North points out the article by Greg Weston, who reveals that the Liberals were not the only beneficiaries of the political shenanigans at Groupaction: A MONTREAL advertising firm that received more than $40 million in AdScam sponsorship contracts paid huge kickbacks to both the federal Liberal party and the Quebec separatists, senior executives of the company have told Sun Media. "I remember seeing the cheques," one former Groupaction executive said of payments to the federal Liberal party in Quebec. The man spoke on condition that he not be identified until he testifies at the Gomery inquiry sometime over the coming weeks. The exec said the president of Groupaction, Jean Brault, made...
Justice Gomery has put off a decision on lifting the publication ban on Adscam testimony until tomorrow, in part because Liberal cross-examination of Jean Brault took longer than expected: Mr. Justice John Gomery decided late in the day Wednesday that he needed more time to consider whether to allow the testimony of Mr. Brault to be reported in the media after Mr. Brault completed his time on the stand. Judge Gomery is to make a decision Thursday morning. If he lifts the ban, it may start the ball rolling for opposition parties to pose a non-confidence motion in the Liberals and potentially bring the government down. Opposition parties believe that Mr. Brault's testimony is extremely damaging to the Liberal Party. If the ban gets lifted, expect the media to explode with information. Based on a few conversations I've had with some Canadian journalists, they cannot wait to tell you this...
April 7, 2005
One complaint that Americans receive from Canadians, and deservedly so, is how little our media covers Canadian issues, leaving Americans poorly informed of the affairs of our northern neighbors. I don't believe it to be deliberate, but in an effort to cover global hot spots, our media gives Canada short shrift. I wondered when I started writing about Adscam when the American media would pick up on the story, if at all, since it held the real possibility of toppling the government. Ironically, the tremendous interest from Canada in this blog has caught the notice of American media and put Adscam in our newspapers. Yesterday and this morning, several articles appeared around the country, including an interview I did with the New York Times which went out on their wire service to newspapers all over. Clifford Krauss spoke with me yesterday and explained Adscam to Americans: Edward Morrissey, a 42-year-old...
A couple of updates on Adscam for Canadian readers this morning: First, after I posted about the Toronto Sun's allegations yesterday about Parti Quebecois receiving Sponsorship Program monies through Groupaction, several people e-mailed and commented that PQ vigorously denied the allegations and that the Sun had reported factually incorrect data. Specifically, the contract to which the Sun tied the illegal payments expired in 1998. However, Greg Weston's column in today's Sun makes the chronology clear : As we reported yesterday, Alain Renaud, a senior executive who worked for the ad firm Groupaction during the Adscam years, claims that while the company was getting $43 million in sponsorship funds, it was slipping thousands of dollars to the PQ. In one deal, Renaud says, Groupaction paid about $90,000 to the PQ in return for a $4.5-million advertising contract with the Quebec liquor board, the SAQ. The PQ, of course, went berserk over...
Justice John Gomery has lifted the publication ban on Jean Brault's testimony, allowing the Canadian media to finally report the testimony to the Canadian public. As CTV demonstrates in its data-dump format, the facts as presented by CQ's source stand up very well against the revelations possible now that the media has been unleashed: Brault claims in his testimony that he systematically kicked back huge amounts of taxpayer money to the federal Liberal party, a deception he claims involved senior Liberal organizers and people close to former prime minister Jean Chretien. His testimony detailed secret meetings, phoney paper trails, envelopes stuffed with cash and bogus billings. * He said there were phoney employees on the payroll at the ad firm Groupaction. * Brault said there was $1 million in kickbacks to the Liberal Party of Canada. * His reward, he claims, was $172 million in government business for his firm....
Now that the publication ban has been lifted, at least from the Brault testimony (more on that in a moment), the Canadian media have taken over the role of presenting the information that should have been available to Canadians all along. I had planned on reviewing the material for some blogging tonight, but I think that everyone needs to absorb the entire record for a bit first. Over the past week, I have had the good fortune of interacting with a number of Canadians on this story -- my source, the media, and all the terrific people who have left comments on my blog. Most of you have offered your encouragement and thanks, which are much appreciated. Those who criticized my decision to post the material mostly did so politely and courteously. A number of you have dropped a few loonies in the tip jar along the way, which is...
April 9, 2005
Testimony continued in public at the Gomery Inquiry on Friday, and much of it devastated the Liberal Party and its former leader, Jean Chretien. Witnesses tied Adscam efforts directly to Chretien's staff, including his brother Gaby, for the first time since the publication ban was lifted earlier this week: 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. Former Groupaction Marketing employee Alain Renaud said two years after the election, 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 in 1994 to bring in federal contracts, added to his former boss's explosive testimony about secret donations to key Liberals. ......
New polling in the wake of the explosive testimony by Jean Brault shows that the Liberal Party in Canada may have done what some thought impossible -- given new hope to the Tories. An Ipsos poll for G&M/CTV shows the Liberal lead shrinking to four points nationwide, a drop of seven points in less than eight weeks: The Ipsos-Reid poll, conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV, found 34 per cent of respondents across Canada would vote for Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberals, compared to 30 per cent for the Tories. That's a dramatic shrink in the Liberal lead, from an 11-percentage point gap in February to only four points this week. The Liberals fell further behind the Bloc Québécois in Quebec, and the Conservatives almost wiped out the governing party's big lead in Ontario, the key swing region where shifts in support can cause changes in government. The...
April 10, 2005
Greg Weston writes in today's Ottawa Sun that the Gomery testimony not only paints a bleak picture of corruption and sleaze regarding the Sponsorship Program, but that it also contains clues showing that the graft extends far beyond that -- and possibly involving billions of dollars: While the auditor general found bureaucrats broke "every rule in the book" in the sponsorship scandal, evidence is emerging at the Gomery inquiry that Adscam may be only the tip of corruption in government contracting. 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"...
The Sponsorship Program scandal promises to take a sporting turn on Monday, when Justice John Gomery will likely begin questioning GP backer Normand Legault and Liberal functionary Jacques Corriveau. One of the first issues addressed will be the disposition of 600 Grand Prix tickets that the Canadian government bought but never received -- as they didn't really exist in the first place: 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...
April 11, 2005
The Globe & Mail reports this morning that Canadian PM Paul Martin will employ a new strategy in combatting the public perception of widespread corruption in the Liberal Party by using two new tactics. First, Martin will press the notion with Canadian voters that while corruption may have occurred with Liberals in charge, the Liberals are the ones cleaning it up as well. Second, Martin plans on asking Justice Gomery to "follow the money" by referring him to two previous audits, which Liberals say prove that the monies about which Brault testified never made it into the books: The Liberal Party will call on Mr. Justice John Gomery today to investigate whether large sums of money allegedly paid to well-connected members for government sponsorship contracts ever made it to the party coffers. As part of a communications strategy to cope with the scandal and distance the party from any Liberals...
In a sign that the reformist mood has gained momentum in Ottawa, two close confidants of Prime Minister Paul Martin have been subpoenaed to testify to a Commons committee to review contracts awarded to research firms with close ties to Martin. Two other reluctant witnesses have also been subpoenaed, along with Allan Cutler, one of the Adscam whistleblowers who will testify voluntarily: Four reluctant witnesses — including two close confidants of Prime Minister Paul Martin — will be subpoenaed by a Commons committee investigating research contracts awarded to a consulting firm closely allied with Mr. Martin. ... Among the targets are Terrie O'Leary, who was chief of staff to Mr. Martin when he was finance minister, and David Herle, co-chairman of the Liberal campaign in the last election. Also subpoenaed will be Warren Kinsella, a former Jean Chrétien loyalist who has been critical of Mr. Martin in the past, and...
CTV announced the results of a new Ipsos poll this evening, taken after the release of Jean Brault's previously-embargoed testimony, which shows the Liberals trailing the Tories nationally for the first time in years. Martin's Liberals have dropped to 27%, falling another 10 points since the last Ipsos poll: The flames of political discontent from the sponsorship scandal are scorching the Liberals, and now a new poll shows the party's national support falling to 27 per cent. That represents a 10 percentage-point drop in the past two months, according to an Ipsos-Reid poll conducted for CTV and The Globe and Mail. The Conservatives are up to 30 per cent, a four-point rise. The NDP are at 19 per cent. ... Ominously, 45 per cent of Canadians say the Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin has lost its "moral right" to govern. The poll is just the latest development in...
April 12, 2005
Testifying before the Gomery Inquiry today, former Groupaction controller Bernard Michaud produced a check register and testified to helping to covertly direct illegal cash contributions to the Liberal Party. Michaud's testimony provides the first independent corroboration of the illegal cash transfers and bolsters Brault's credibility: A cheque register and testimony by ex-controller Bernard Michaud at the federal sponsorship inquiry backed Brault's claim that he covertly funnelled secret cash payments to the party. Michaud told the inquiry he handed over $15,000 in cash to his boss in April 1997 - around the same period Brault has said he gave $15,000 in cash to a party official. The cheque register tabled at the inquiry showed a $15,000 cheque issued in Michaud's name on April 28, 1997. Brault told the inquiry last month he asked Michaud to withdraw the sum for the first instalment of a $100,000 cash request by top Liberal brass...
Rondi Adamson writes in tomorrow's Christian Science Monitor about Adscam and the publication ban in the Internet age, and notes the futility of the practice in today's context: A Canadian publication ban and an American blogger clashed last week. The court-ordered ban did not survive the impact. The blogger was overwhelmed with visitors. And what had been Canada's own private scandal - so private Canadians had been prevented from hearing about it in full - fast traveled the borderless blogosphere. Publication bans prevent anyone from publishing or broadcasting evidence given or motions made during the course of a trial. Publication bans are not common in Canada, but when imposed they are meant to ensure that a jury pool, or a sitting jury, is not tainted. (One can be forgiven for wondering what the point of jury selection is, if a judge can't feel confident those selected are unable to look...
April 13, 2005
Jacques Corriveau, close confidante to former Liberal PM Jean Chrétien and a major player in party politics, won over $6.7 million in Sponsorship Program contracts through a lesser-known and lower-profile subprogram referred to as the Polygone deals. Luc Lemay, Polygone's former president, corroborated yet another part of Jean Brault's testimony that laid bare the corruption at the heart of Adscam: Jacques Corriveau's firm, Pluri-Design Inc., sent the invoices as part of a series of trade fairs and consumer shows for nature lovers, commercials for rural radios and other publications that are commonly known as the Polygone deals. Already, ad executive Jean Brault, whose company handled some of those events, has alleged at the inquiry that he kicked back half a million dollars from his commissions earned on the Polygone events, a sum that ostensibly was supposed to go the coffers of the Liberal Party. The Polygone sponsorships had always been...
Jack Kelly pens a speculative but interesting take on Adscam this morning in Jewish World Review, noting that the probable fall of the Liberal government could have wide-ranging effects on Canadian stability and its energy policies, among other things. With oil prices soaring and the Middle East/OPEC nations approaching full capacity output, Kelly looks at Alberta as a possible "Texas with snow": A Canadian political mega-scandal could — one way or the other — help solve our energy woes. Gasoline prices have moderated in recent days, but soon will resume climbing toward $3 a gallon, because world oil production is stabilizing while demand — especially from China — is soaring. The world's largest oil reserves are in Saudi Arabia. The next largest are in the Canadian province of Alberta. Kelly notes that Liberals don't just have Adscam on their plate at the moment, either. The Kyoto Treaty, which the Liberals...
April 14, 2005
Canadian PM Paul Martin refused to answer questions regarding his earlier assertions that he barely knew of Claude Boulay when new testimony shows that he met with Boulay over lunch at least once. Instead, Martin used his Question Period rebuttal time to change the subject to Canadian health care, a tactic that the PM will likely employ during any election challenge in the near future: The most controversial comment came inside the House of Commons. Jason Kenney, a Conservative MP from Calgary, said Mr. Martin may have perjured himself when he testified before the sponsorship inquiry that he did not know Claude Boulay, former president of the advertising firm Groupe Everest, very well. "There is now testimony that the Prime Minister may, frankly, have perjured himself, that he may have had lunch with Mr. Boulay, one of the principal scamsters in the ad scam," Mr. Kenney told MPs during another...
Jacques Corriveau took the stand today at the Gomery Inquiry, and despite a haughty manner with the press, painted himself as a rather humble, if cultured, person of good fortune. Apparently Corriveau finds that easier to explain than admitting to any personal relationship with Jean Chrétien, especially as an explanation for the six million dollars in sponsorship subcontracts for which his firm did essentially no work: Jacques Corriveau had been portrayed in previous testimony as a central power broker who earned $5.9-million in sponsorship subcontracts for which his design firm did no actual work. The inquiry had heard that his companies paid him $9-million in dividends, thanks to large subcontracting deals with firms involved in the sponsorship programs. ... "When fortune smiles on you, you don't turn it down," he beamed. However, Mr. Corriveau denied that he had been a close friend of Mr. Chrétien, leader of both the Liberal...
April 15, 2005
Since Canadians and Americans have tax deadlines within a couple of weeks of each other, form-filing is almost equally relevant on either side of the 49th Parallel in April. Today, as my good friend David Strom puts it, is a day Americans despise. "Abraham Lincoln died on April 15th. The Titanic sunk on April 15th. And we pay our taxes on April 15th!" One of the more amusing features on our federal and state forms is an option to direct one, two, or three dollars of our taxes into election-campaign funds, allocated by the FEC for federal dollars. This got me wondering if Canadians had such an option for themselves on their tax forms. Perhaps not, although according to the Canadian Press, taxpayers certainly feel as though that's exactly what the Sponsorhip Program turned out to be: The watchdog Canadian Taxpayers Federation says seething callers have lit up its phones....
CQ regular Ed_in_CDA points out a story which goes beyond the Gomery publication ban and into a truly frightening display of speech suppression in Calgary. The police chief of Calgary shut down a website that had been critical of him and his management team by seizing a computer from a private home -- and no one involved can speak of it, nor tell anyone what charges have been proferred: A website critical of Calgary's police chief and his senior managers has been shut down, after the chief used a rare legal tactic to seize a computer from a private home. Chief Jack Beaton obtained a civil court order this month to enter the home of a civilian police employee and seize the computer. A sweeping gag order issued at the same time prevents anyone from talking about the case or reading documents related to it, which have been sealed. This...
April 16, 2005
A new Ipsos poll shows that Canadians have begun to seriously lose faith with the Liberal Party and increasingly will turn to the Conservatives, the Globe & Mail reports this morning. The flood of testimony and evidence coming from the Gomery Inquiry have taken its toll on the Liberals, and the anti-government sentiment only shows sign of deepening: The Conservatives are edging toward a majority as anger with the Liberals become more firmly entrenched and Stephen Harper begins to earn the trust of Canadians, even in wary Ontario, a new poll suggests. An Ipsos-Reid survey conducted for The Globe and Mail and CTV between Tuesday and Thursday of this week — as damning testimony from the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal made headlines and election speculation heated to a boil — put the Conservatives at levels of support they have not seen since the election of 1988, when they...
April 17, 2005
For those who have followed the explosive developments in Canada's Sponsorship Program corruption case and the spectacular testimony, an expectation that the money-laundering conspiracy would result in wholesale criminal convictions across a wide swath of the political class would be reasonable. However, as Greg Weston points out in today's Ottawa Sun, most of the crimes committed no longer qualify for prosecution -- meaning that the con men at the middle of Adscam will likely escape any punishment at all: Don't expect a parade of Adscam players being marched off to jail, either. 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...
Kate at Small Dead Animals discovered that Scott Brison, the former Tory MP who defected to the Liberals in 2003 and has passionately defended them during the Adscam crisis, has his own small contribution scandal brewing. Friday's Toronto Sun notes that a $4400 check sent to Brison in July from a contributor did not get cashed until the day after Brison's defection to the Liberals, and didn't ever get disclosed in campaign documents as required: The cabinet minister who has mounted the vigorous defence of the Liberal government over Adscam is himself snared in a nasty money dispute with his old Conservative riding association that prompted a complaint to the RCMP, Sun Media has learned. For more than a year, Public Works Minister Scott Brison has been asked to provide receipts or invoices to the King-Hants Conservative riding association to account for a $4,400 cheque given to him in 2003,...
April 18, 2005
The Hill Times reports today that Canadian MPs from all parties have begun to panic as a new election looks increasingly certain in the near future, because the Canadian government has not yet paid MPs for their last contest. Canadians running for Parliament receive public funds for their campaigns, but the audits for last year's elections still have not been completed -- meaning the politicians still have yet to be reimbursed for their expenses: MPs from all parties say they are worried about their sparse war chests as a possible spring election draws closer, and are also in a panic because they still haven't received their final refunds from Elections Canada for election expenses incurred during the last federal campaign a year ago that hobbled the Liberals to minority status. Some consider the matter so "urgent" that they have summoned Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley to appear before the House...
April 19, 2005
Two parallel investigations into political corruption got close enough to the current Liberal Prime Minister to scare Canada's ruling party to the point that their parliamentarians canceled a previously-scheduled Opposition Day -- an action seen as an attempt to deny the Conservatives a chance at tabling a no-confidence vote and toppling the government: The Liberals choked off an opposition attempt to control the timetable for possibly bringing down the government. They postponed a so-called parliamentary opposition day on Wednesday in a move foes called a desperate attempt to retain power. The Conservatives hinted they would no longer help the Liberal government remain afloat. "When a government starts trying to cancel dissent or avoid dissent is frankly when it's rapidly losing its moral authority to govern," said Conservative Leader Stephen Harper. ... The Tories were preparing to use one of their allotted opposition days on Wednesday to arm themselves with a...
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin may have serious trouble on his hands on two separate fronts. Both the Gomery Inquiry and the Commons investigation into Earnscliffe produced testimony that placed the Liberal party leader squarely within the corruption of both cases, leading to a Liberal panic in Parliament late last night. First, the Gomery inquiry heard that despite Martin's insistence that he never knew key Adscam player Claude Boulay, the PM wrote gushy notes to him nonetheless: A Quebec ad executive and his wife, who was known as the "queen of ticket sellers" for Liberal fundraisers, declared more than $6.5-million in revenues after they reaped huge federal contracts at the time of the sponsorship program, documents filed yesterday at the Gomery inquiry indicate. The documents, which set the stage today for the testimony of Claude Boulay, include a gushy "Dear Claude" letter that Prime Minister Paul Martin sent when he...
New Gomery Inquiry testimony shows that while the people who actually performed work on government contracts received appropriate compensation for their efforts, the middlemen tied to Liberal politicians made almost twenty times as much without lifting a finger. The Sponsorship Program bought advertising at ten hunting and fishing shows from Gaetan Mondou for $100,000, who discovered yesterday that the man who bought them, Luc Lemay, told the government that they had cost over $1.8 million. The difference disappeared into the pockets of Jacques Corriveau, longtime pal of Jean Chrétien and a man who doesn't even fish: An events promoter who bought the exclusive federal government sponsorship rights to two small hunting and fishing shows for $100,000 turned around and billed taxpayers more than 10 times that amount to display the Canada wordmark. Luc Lemay, president of Expour Inc., charged the government more than $1.8 million over five years to sponsor...
April 20, 2005
The Liberals gambled everything they had left on stripping Parliament of any opportunity to introduce a no-confidence vote that would topple the Martin regime -- their credibility, any hope of an alliance with the NDP, and what remained of public sympathy regarding their predicament. The naked power play designed to shut up the opposition and delay elections failed, however, as the Tories got a single Opposition Day back on the calendar for May 19th: One day after the government postponed the Conservatives' opposition day scheduled for today and attempted to push back all the opposition days that had been set for the first three weeks of May, the Tories managed to use a backdoor route to salvage one of them. On that day, May 19, the Conservatives can bring forward a no-confidence motion. The firm date, coupled with signals from all three opposition parties that they are willing to defeat...
Having exhausted every other possibility to keep his Liberal government from collapsing and facing a ruinous election as early as June, Paul Martin plans on making a speech on Canadian television tonight to convince voters to pressure Parliament to postpone a no-confidence vote: "He'll address the sponsorship issue and the current parliamentary context," Amy Butcher, a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister's Office, told globeandmail.com. She indicated the gravity of the address. "He'll speak directly to what he thinks to address the current political deadlock in the House of Commons," Ms. Butcher said. But she said the Prime Minister is not making a move toward calling an election. "He will not prorogue the House, nor dissolve Parliament." She would not say whether Mr. Martin would urge Canadians to wait until Mr. Justice John Gomery comes out with his report on the sponsorship inquiry, as his MPs have been doing during weeks...
April 21, 2005
It has been twelve days since the Calgary Police Chif, Jack Beaton, used an Anton Piller order from a local court to silence an internal critic under the guise of a slander civil case. Beaton conducted a raid on her and her husband's house, confiscated computer equipment, and most chillingly has forced her to remain silent about her own case under threat of imprisonment. Vahey could go to prison indefinitely because she dared to air critisim about the police chief on the Internet. The Canadian media rightfully complained about the publication ban on the Jean Brault testimony at the Gomery Inquiry. Why have we not seen any follow-up reporting on Vahey's oppressed status since the raid on her house? Have Canadian journalists reconciled themselves to Calgary's police state?...
Adscam figure Claude Boulay continued his testimony to the Gomery Inquiry yesterday, while a bit more of Jean Brault's embargoed testimony made it through the publication ban. Brault insisted that Boulay gave $50,000 in a secret donation to provincial Liberals in Quebec, a development that the BQ will certainly see as further provocation for immediate elections: The controversial Ottawa bureaucrat in charge of the federal sponsorship program allegedly directed a $50,000 secret donation to Jean Charest's provincial Liberals, the Gomery inquiry was told in testimony that could not be reported until now. The damaging accusation made during the testimony of ad executive Jean Brault had been under a publication ban but was made public during an exchange at the inquiry yesterday. ... The allegation that the provincial Liberals got a covert donation from Mr. Brault in 1998 had been reported before but it is only now that the media can...
Paul Martin may have even more corruption to explain in his extraordinary televised speech tonight, as new allegations that his Liberal Party handed out positions on the judicial bench in exchange for political favors has rocked Canada this afternoon (via NealeNews): A former senior Liberal organizer fingered as the man who demanded cash payments from the ad firm Groupaction has fired back with explosive allegations that a small network of party chieftains doled out contracts, sponsorship deals and judicial appointments to Liberal stalwarts in exchange for their work on election campaigns. The new claims, which threaten to inflame an already tense Parliament Hill, were broadcast last night on Radio-Canada even as Prime Minister Paul Martin's aides worked on a statement that is to be delivered on national television tonight. Benoît Corbeil, who served as executive director of the Liberal Party of Canada's Quebec wing in the late 1990s, told Radio-Canada...
Paul Martin's political collapse may have turned from tragedy to farce tonight as he appealed to Canadians to allow his government to continue for another eight months, even as new allegations of corruption call into question the impartiality of the Canadian judicial system. Martin insisted tonight that he has acted to uncover the truth and deserves time to uproot the corruption in his own party: "I commit to you tonight that I will call a general election within 30 days of the publication of the commission's final report and recommendations. Let [Mr. Justice John] Gomery do his work. Let the facts come out. And then the people of Canada will have their say," Mr. Martin said from the desk in his office, in a taped televised address in both French and English. Mr. Martin said he takes responsibility for the actions of his party and is prepared to let Canadians...
April 22, 2005
CQ reader Ed in Canada points out the latest in publication bans north of the 49th, in the case of a suspected gang ringleader who violated his bail agreement. Not only did the Canadian judge release Michael Kim, Marlene Graham refused to allow the Canadian media to report why Kim was freed from custody: Suspected high-ranking gang member Mark Kim received a belated 21st birthday present yesterday -- freedom pending his trial on weapons offences. Provincial court Judge Marlene Graham refused a Crown request to revoke Kim's bail on the charges after he was picked up for allegedly breaching his bail conditions. Kim, who spent his birthday Wednesday behind bars, was arrested April 13 on a charge of violating an 8 p.m. curfew imposed as a condition of his release. But Graham agreed with defence lawyer Charlie Stewart's assertion his client should not have to remain in custody as a...
April 25, 2005
The Gomery Inquiry has imposed new publication bans, as expected, on upcoming testimony into its investigation of corruption and money laundering in the Sponsorship Program. Chuck Guité and Paul Coffin will testify shortly, after Gomery hears from some other figures associated with Adscam: The Gomery Commission is scheduled to go after some big game in its hunt for the perpetrators of the federal sponsorship scandal, and once again it will have to go undercover. A temporary publication ban will shroud the testimony of long-awaited witnesses Charles (Chuck) Guite and Paul Coffin. ... Because their trials, beginning in June, will follow their Gomery appearances so closely, the testimony by Coffin and Guite will fall under a temporary publication ban imposed this month for commission witnesses who also face criminal trials in the near future. After each completes his testimony, Gomery will rule on what parts of it can be broadcast, and...
April 26, 2005
CQ reader Ed_in_Cda points out an article in today's Ottawa Sun which delineates some interesting transactions relating to Sponsorship Program money. Ad agencies in the program spent over $600,000 on a series of soccer matches pitting three international soccer teams against Canadians in Quebec and China. Most of the money went towards gifts for the athletes, although most of that cash went elsewhere instead: A Montreal ad firm used $120,000 in sponsorship money to offer all-expense paid trips to bring three soccer teams from as far away as Vietnam to Quebec, the Adscam inquiry heard yesterday. Groupe Everest also dipped into the funds meant to boost national unity to buy $500,000 in gifts such as parasols and Timex watches for former PM Jean Chretien to hand out during his 1999 Team Canada mission to China. Agency VP Diane Deslauriers took credit yesterday for orchestrating the soccer match at the 1997...
Paul Martin, whose minority Liberal government appeared to approach collapse in the wake of the explosive Adscam testimony, may have used Canadian tax money yet again to retain power -- this time by spending it on NDP budget priorities in order to buy Jack Layton's support and fend off an expected no-confidence vote next month from the Tories: The New Democrats have reached an "agreement in principle" with the Liberals on support for a key budget vote, says NDP Leader Jack Layton. The tentative deal could help the minority Liberal government survive. Layton said the details of the agreement are still being worked out, but it involves a guarantee of $4.6 billion in new investment in "people and the environment," plus an increase in foreign aid. He said Liberal promises of tax cuts for small-and medium-sized businesses will remain, while large corporations will no longer get planned cuts. Even having...
April 27, 2005
After having enabled a possible lifeline to the embattled Prime Minister and a Liberal Party swimming in corruption, Jack Layton defended his alliance with Paul Martin last night by claiming that getting his budget preferences passed outweighed the cost of leaving corruption in place for another seven or eight months: Mr. Layton said it is clear there will be an election on the corruption issue either next month or in "seven or eight" months, but that he hopes to accomplish something through the budget in the meantime. "We'll say [in an election] that we worked for the people while all the other parties were just taking care of their own business to their own advantage. Ordinary people will make their own decisions and I'm quite confident that what we're doing now will help us," he said. If the NDP leader thinks that allowing the party that stole hundreds of millions...
CQ reader Western Separatist wrote me earlier today about the publication ban in place on the testimony of Paul Coffin and Chuck Guité, and whether I would publish accounts of the testimony in defiance of the ban. Just to reiterate my position, if I have a reliable source for the information, I will publish the testimony. Right now, I do not have a commitment from a source to provide it -- but we will keep working to find one....
Paul Coffin testified under the publication ban on the Sponsorship Program scandal, and provided yet more blockbuster testimony -- which Justice Gomery released for immediate publication this time. Coffin testified that Chuck Guité and other federal bureaucrats deliberately set up front agencies to hide the direction of government contracts to companies with strong Liberal Party ties: Federal bureaucrats awarded a highly-sensitive contract to promote Ottawa's Clarity Act to a low-profile Montreal ad agency, hiding the fact that the campaign was actually subcontracted to Groupe BCP, a firm with well-known Liberal ties, testimony released Wednesday reveal. ... --Mr. Coffin's firm twice was retained by bureaucrats to act as a front and pretend to do work that was in fact farmed out to BCP, a Liberal-friendly firm, and Gingko Group, an ineligible ad agency --Mr. Coffin lied in his application to get his firm, Communication Coffin, selected as one of the agencies...
One of the bitter ironies of the Canadian Adscam scandal involves the status of Quebec. Originally, the government launched the Sponsorship Program as a public-relations effort to convince Quebeckers that they are a vital part of the Canadian federation, hoping to combat the separatists that had gained enough political power to force a referendum on independence -- which lost, but only narrowly, a few years ago. After seeing $250 million of Canadian tax money disappear into the pockets of Liberal Party activists and the party coffers, however, the momentum away from separatism has been reversed. Now 54% of Quebec favors separation from Canada in some form: Mr. Martin found himself in the thick of a revived national unity debate after a poll placed support for independence at 54 per cent — its highest level in seven years. Quebeckers are recoiling from daily corruption allegations emerging from Justice John Gomery's inquiry,...
April 28, 2005
Jack Layton, the leader of Canada's New Democrat Party (NDP), accused Tory leader Stephen Harper of cuddling up to separatists in his quest to topple the Liberal government. Layton also played into fears of Nova Scotians that any government collapse prior to a budget vote will steal their Atlantic Accord money away from them, bringing hot retorts from the Conservative leader: NDP Leader Jack Layton struck back at Stephen Harper on Thursday, saying the Conservative Leader will be "getting into bed with the separatists" if the Tories and Bloc Québécois work together to defeat the Liberal budget. He also warned that if the budget is defeated, it could endanger accords recently signed between the federal government and Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. The Atlantic accords protect equalization payments from cuts because of increased energy revenue. "[The accords are] at risk if Mr. Harper calls an election, because Mr. Harper...
April 29, 2005
After the testimony of Jean Brault blew open the Adscam scandal and demonstrated the extent of Liberal Party corruption, Stephen Harper had an opening to call new elections and topple the Martin government. He chose to wait until an overwhelming mandate developed to ride it to as close to a majority win as he could get. New polling numbers published in today's Globe and Mail show, however, that Harper may have been too slow on the trigger: Liberals have clawed their way back into the lead in a tight race for public support as Prime Minister Paul Martin's all-out public-relations campaign appears to have caused the Conservatives to slip, a new poll shows. The poll, conducted by the Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail and CTV, found the Liberals with the support of 30 per cent of Canadians, compared with 28 per cent for the Conservatives and 18 per...
April 30, 2005
Former Canadian PM Jean Chrétien made an appearance in Philadelphia to accept an award as an "international role model" while his political cronies and aides face ruinous testimony tying his administration to widespread corruption and graft in the Sponsorship Program. Chrétien refused to acknowledge the damage, insisting that the $250 million program which his Liberal Party and close aides turned into an electoral-fraud and money-laundering scheme was good for Canada: Former prime minister Jean Chrétien defended his handling of the sponsorship scandal last night, as he made his first public appearance since testifying at the Gomery inquiry. ... And as he did at Mr. Justice John Gomery's inquiry, he said that he accepts responsibility for any mistakes that were made under the sponsorship program, even though he continued to insist it was a good initiative. "I said I was sorry if mistakes were made. And I said that I have...
May 2, 2005
After new polling emerged showing that Liberals have rebounded significantly from the initial Adscam revelations, a Tory MP from the Liberal stronghold of Ontario has announced his preference to delay new elections, throwing the upcoming no-confidence vote into doubt: Cracks appeared yesterday in the Conservative Party's plan to topple the Liberal government at the earliest opportunity as several leading Tory parliamentarians insisted the decision isn't final and one central Ontario MP said a vote should be delayed. "I've said for a while that I don't think we should be going to an election right now," said Larry Miller, the Tory MP for Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound, in a radio interview Saturday. "Ultimately the choice will be out of our hands, but that's what the majority have said here and that's what I'll take back [to caucus]." The interview, aired by CKNX-FM in Wingham, Ont., was immediately seized upon by the Liberals as...
Requests for delays on trials for Jean Brault and Chuck Guité may result in the lifting of the publication ban currently in place for Guité's testimony. Lawyers for the two key Adscam figures requested continuances until September to prepare their defenses, with Justice Gomery due to rule on releasing embargoed testimony tomorrow or Wednesday: Lawyers for Jean Brault and Chuck Guité have requested that their clients' joint trial on fraud and conspiracy charges be delayed until September. Jury selection is currently scheduled for June 6 but lawyers for the two men say the sponsorship inquiry will still be sitting at that time. A judge will decide Wednesday whether to grant the request. Just as before, the proximity of the criminal trial provided one of the key rationales for Gomery's publication ban. He based the blackout for Canadian citizens on the notion that with a trial so close to the inquiry...
Stephen Harper came out of a Conservative caucus meeting tonight vowing to table a no-confidence motion as soon as possible, adding that the Tory caucus had unanimously backed his strategy: Conservative Leader Stephen Harper emerged from a caucus meeting late Monday night, saying his party cannot support the government and that a vote of confidence should take place as soon as possible. Harper called the decision "unanimous," declaring that his party remains committed to defeating a Liberal government "mired" in corruption scandals. "It is also apparent that the Liberal party does not today have the support of the majority of members of the House of Commons," he said. "It should face the House of Commons in a vote at the earliest possible opportunity." Harper had a number of difficulties in getting to the point where a no-confidence vote could be introduced, and he's not there yet. Earlier, of course, the...
May 3, 2005
I have received a number of e-mails questioning why I am not posting testimony that is subject to the publication ban. I have explained this in previous posts, but the number of these e-mailed queries appears to be increasing, which demonstrates pretty clearly that Canadians have reached a high level of frustration with Justice Gomery's blackouts. I am not in Canada, and I am not attending the hearings. I do not have firsthand access to the testimony. I did have a source for that kind of access during the Jean Brault testimony, but that source has since stopped sending that material. I do not know whether he/she feels as though the Canadian government had tracked them down and need to be much more discreet, or whether they just don't have access to the testimony any more. I have yet to find another source -- but if I can find one...
A Conservative MP with the memorable name Inky Mark claims that the new Liberal survival strategy will rely on buying Tory MPs in order to undermine Stephen Harper. Mark told the Canadian media in several interviews that the Grits attempted to induce him to switch parties in exchange for an appointment to the foreign service or to the Senate: Conservative MP Inky Mark says the Liberal party is trying to woo him by offering him an ambassadorship or Senate position. Mr. Mark said in several interviews Tuesday that he was approached by an unnamed cabinet minister who offered him a position in a phone call last Friday. "The suggestion was that well, maybe, well, there must be something that I want, right?" Mr. Mark said in an interview with CBC Newsworld Tuesday in Ottawa. "The minister said this?" the reporter asked him. "The minister said that. Perhaps I would like...
May 4, 2005
Thanks to a new source, I have received an extensive amount of the testimony given by Chuck Guité last Thursday and Friday under the publication ban. This testimony will take me hours to review for content, so please bear with me. I will start posting excerpts and analyses of what I've read tonight, when I have some time to properly review the material. Keep checking back here for updates....
Here's a taste of what one can expect to read now that the publication ban has been lifted on Chuck Guité's testimony, just minutes after I received a good deal of it from a covert source. (UPDATE: The ban is back in place now.) Guité testified about the purchase of Vickers & Benson by American interests and how the buyers had concerns about maintaining the government revenue streams that existed at the time. Guité acknowledged that the contracts meant millions of dollars to V&B and that without some sort of guarantee, the sale might fall through. Guité knew who to call-- Alfonse Gagliano, who possibly reached out to Paul Martin: CG: And then, not to take too much time, the same applies as we talked about this morning; there has to be a Canadian entity within V&B to maintain that. So I met with the V&B people. I discussed it...
With the publication ban mostly lifted on Chuck Guité's testimony at the Gomery Inquiry after a dizzying series of judicial rulings this afternoon, the only question that remains is what has been withheld from the public. After spending a few hours working through the first two days of testimony, it appears that the only part of Guité's testimony still subject to the ban involves a personal loan given to the lobbyist by Groupaction and Jean Brault. In fact, although the repayment came due in April 2002, Guité never paid it back -- and he continued to invoice Groupaction for his work. This strange arrangement caught the attention of the inquiry: MR. ROY: Okay. On April 19, 2001, you borrowed a sum of $25,000 from a company owned by Groupaction, or a part of the Groupaction Group of Companies called Alexsim Inc. Société Immobilière, and I am referring now to pages...
May 5, 2005
The Globe and Mail reports today that Liberal Party activists channeled over $300,000 in illegal cash drawn from Adscam sources into electoral efforts in Quebec. An upcoming Gomery witness has indicated that the money came from Chrétien crony Jacques Corriveau, a familiar power broker in the Sponsorship Program scandal: Senior Liberal organizers allegedly showered about $300,000 in cash on Quebec ridings held by the opposition during the 1997 federal election campaign, The Globe and Mail has learned. Michel Béliveau, a close supporter of former prime minister Jean Chrétien, made the allegation in preliminary interviews with members of the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship program. Mr. Béliveau is scheduled to testify today about allegedly receiving the cash from Jacques Corriveau, another Liberal supporter and close friend of Mr. Chrétien, who got millions through the sponsorship program in the 1990s. The testimony would be the first by a Liberal official describing illicit...
May 6, 2005
The Liberals may not leave office willingly if a no-confidence vote tied to a budget amendment succeeds, according to Liberal House leader Tony Valeri. The Globe and Mail reports that the Liberals intend on arguing that a failure on a budgetary procedural motion cannot equate to a no-confidence motion, making it more difficult for the Conservatives to bring down Paul Martin's government: The House of Commons will vote within two weeks on a motion calling on the government to resign after the Speaker of the House of Commons ruled against Liberal attempts to scuttle the vote. But government House Leader Tony Valeri announced the Liberals would not call an election should they lose that vote, because they don't consider it one of confidence. That move was greeted with anger by the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois. Conservative House Leader Jay Hill raised the spectre of involving Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, saying...
Michel Béliveau continues his testimony at the Gomery Inquiry today, and it looks like Béliveau may be taking one for the team. Despite testifying that two prominent Adscam operatives had been suspected of running illegal fundraisers by Liberal Party leadership, Béliveau claims that the $300,000 spent from illicit Sponsorship Program money is his responsibility alone: On Thursday, Mr. Béliveau told the Gomery inquiry how he dealt with the party's financial emergencies by asking for more than $300,000 in cash from people connected to the sponsorship program. Mr. Béliveau is the first party official to back up in testimony claims that illicit cash payments were used to cover party expenses while Mr. Chrétien was prime minister. A jittery Mr. Béliveau acted repentant and insisted he acted alone and never informed other Liberal officials. "It was me and no one else. I'm taking the responsibility." In every political scandal, one person usually...
May 7, 2005
In the excitement of the banned Guité testimony coming to light, I missed another significant piece of testimony in the Gomery Inquiry. Serge Gosselin, a Liberal Party pollster, testified that Chrétien crony Jacques Corriveau paid him directly for his work on behalf of the party and had no idea that Corriveau kept the payments off the books: A federal Liberal pollster and researcher was paid more than $60,000 by a friend of Jean Chretien for partisan activities, including work during the 2000 election campaign, the sponsorship inquiry was told Thursday. Serge Gosselin, one-time aide to unity minister Stephane Dion, said he vetted campaign billboards and other material on behalf of Jacques Corriveau. Gosselin was told by inquiry counsel Guy Cournoyer there's no evidence Pluri Design, Corriveau's company, ever passed the bill on to the Liberals for the work. "Are you surprised to find that for services of an essentially political...
May 8, 2005
Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin has desperately looked for ways to fend off a call for elections, trying to delay all efforts to remove the Liberal government for its massive embezzlement and electoral-fraud scheme in Adscam. Last week he cut a deal with NDP leader Jack Layton to take $4.6 billion more in taxes from Canadians and redirect them to NDP's legislative priorities. Now the price tag for Martin's continuing political career has gone past the $10 billion mark, as Martin cut a deal with Ontario to send $5.7 billion over the next five years to the Liberal power base he so desperately needs: Ontario will be getting an extra $5.75 billion in federal financial support over the next five years -- money that will mainly go into immigration, skills training and post-secondary education. ... McGuinty inherited a huge deficit from the former Progressive Conservative government. He started a campaign...
Upcoming Gomery Inquiry witness Beryl Wajsmann left a lengthy statement in the comments section of this post on CQ. Mr. Wajsmann serves as President of the Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal and his pending testimony before the Inquiry promises to shed much light on Adscam. In order to ensure that everyone gets a chance to read his statement, I'm pulling it out of the comments and posting it separately. (Note: I'm awaiting confirmation from Mr. Wasjmann that sent the message, but the IP address and the e-mail from IAPM matches. UPDATE 5/9: I've confirmed this as coming fro mMr. Wajsmann.) ------------- INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS OF MONTREAL 8 May 2005 Montreal WAJSMAN AND GOMERY Harry Truman said, “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen.” I just wanted to drop you a note to tell you that I can not only stand the heat, but we’re...
May 9, 2005
Bloc Quebecois made its intentions clear today in response to an assertion by Liberal Party leader Tony Valeri last week that the Grits can ignore a no-confidence rider on a budget amendment. BQ party leader Gilles Duceppe warned that such a blatant disregard for protocol will result in a demand to Canada's governor-general to dissolve the Liberal government by decree: The opposition will ask Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson to intervene if the Liberals lose a coming vote and won't resign, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe says. "That would be the duty of the Governor General to call Paul Martin and to tell him a few things about democracy,'' Duceppe said Monday as the country's federal political leaders attended VE-Day ceremonies in Holland. Nor is BQ alone in its ire. Stephen Harper, the Tory leader in Parliament who will likely force the issue on the amendment, warns of severe and immediate...
Benoit Corbeil testified at the Gomery Inquiry today that several Liberal Party activists and bureaucrats received illicit campaign contributions, including some currently serving on Prime Minister Paul Martin's staff. Included on the list was Daniel Dezainde, named in Beryl Wajsmann's statement to Captain's Quarters last night as well: Eight Liberal officials, including high-ranking Quebec wing executives and political staff in the current government of prime minister Paul Martin, are among people who received cash payments for the 2000 election, the Gomery inquiry has heard. The revelation came from Benoît Corbeil, the executive director of the party's Quebec wing from 1998 to 2001. Among those whom he said got cash in envelopes for election work are Irène Marcheterre, director of communications of Transport Minister Jean Lapierre, and Richard Mimeau, a Martin loyalist who is Mr. Lapierre's special assistant for Quebec. Another current political staffer whom Mr. Corbeil said received cash was...
This evening, I had the pleasure of speaking at length with Beryl Wajsman, the president of Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal and an upcoming witness for the Gomery Inquiry looking into Adscam. Our first contact came when Beryl posted an unsolicited statement in CQ's comments section, which I reposted separately to ensure that everyone had a chance to read it. Beryl, it turns out, is a man who does not remain silent gladly. As his statement suggests, he is a man of strong opinions and convictions, a man who speaks bluntly, and someone who needs little prompting to discuss difficult subjects. Despite the differences in our political viewpoints, I found Beryl very convincing and his enthusiasm contagious. Over the next couple of days, I plan on transcribing the interview and posting it in serial form. I don't want to try quoting Beryl without having a transcript in front of...
May 10, 2005
Benoit Corbeil made an interesting reference to a phone call from Alfonse Gagliano during his Gomery Inquiry testimony yesterday. According to Corbeil, Gagliano called to dissuade his former associate from testifying, warning him that his reputation was at stake: The lawyer for a sponsorship inquiry witness said Monday his client felt intimidated after Alfonso Gagliano called him and warned him about his reputation ahead of his potentially damaging testimony. Former party official Benoit Corbeil told the inquiry Gagliano called his home last month, warning him his reputation would be destroyed if he implicated top Liberals in an alleged illicit financing scheme. "He said 'listen, Benoit, people will come out against you, unanimously,''' said Corbeil, one-time boss of the party's Quebec wing. "(He said) 'you'll lose your reputation and you'll lose friends.''' Corbeil received the call from Gagliano last month after telling reporters that Gagliano knew of illicit money transfers to...
Stephen Harper tabled his no-confidence amendment this afternoon after much debate as to whether it constituted a legal demand for dissolution, and won a narrow 153-150 vote as the NDP could not rescue Paul Martin and the Liberals. However, the Liberals still refuse to recognize the amendment's mandate for new elections: In what was a Parliamentary squeaker, the Conservatives teamed up with the Bloc Quebecois, to defeat the Liberals who were backed by the NDP and two Independents by a vote of 153 to 150. Opposition members rose to their feet and broke into applause after House Speaker Peter Milliken announced the results. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper rose and accused the Prime Minister of clinging to power "at all costs." ... But the Liberals insist the vote holds no such power. Seeking to clarify confusion over the consequences of the Conservative motion, the Liberals convened an emergency press conference earlier...
Former Liberal activist Benoit Corbeil continued his testimony at the Gomery Inquiry today, revealing the covert campaign that Adscam money funded for the Grits. Corbeil also started talking about other scandals that so far have not found much resonation with Canadians: The federal Liberals ran their 2000 election campaign in Quebec with two parallel staff — only one of which was on the payroll at their Montreal headquarters, the sponsorship inquiry was told Tuesday. Former Quebec wing boss Benoit Corbeil said then-public works minister Alfonso Gagliano ran a team of 30 “fake volunteers” who included ministerial aides as well as lawyers and engineers. ... “There were two sections at the headquarters — there was the registered section, where I worked, and there was the unregistered section,” Mr. Corbeil told the inquiry. “Anyone who says they weren't aware of it ... either they've lost their memory or they aren't telling the...
May 11, 2005
Now that the Liberals have defied a no-confidence motion passed by Parliament, their next step may well be tabling their own motion of confidence soon to try to assure the public that the Liberals still have a right to govern. John Ward of the Canadian Press explains that without some sort of explicit act that shows yesterday's no-confidence vote as a fluke or a trick, the nation will reject the Liberal explanation for why they have not yet left office: xOpposition procedural manoeuvres may not topple the minority Liberals, but experts are predicting the government will likely have to bring forward its own confidence motion soon. Without a demonstration that it actually does have the confidence of the Commons, the government could find itself unable to govern. The problem that leads to all of this uncertainty is a lack of explicit rules dictating parliamentary procedure. A minority government which loses...
In response to the damaging loss on the contentious no-confidence motion last night, which the Liberals have refused to acknowledge, Paul Martin has now offered to table the budget motion for a vote on May 19th, eight days away. However, the Tories and Bloc Québécois have refused this offer, demanding that the Liberals table the motion today if they continue their refusal to recognize yesterday's vote to dissolve the government: Prime Minister Paul Martin has called for a vote on the budget for next Thursday, a move that could topple his fragile minority government. However, the opposition Bloc Québécois and Conservatives refused to co-operate, saying they're not prepared to wait, and want a vote today. "I am proposing that there will be a vote that day on the budget bill and that vote will be a vote of confidence," Mr. Martin told reporters in Ottawa Wednesday after an emergency cabinet...
Better put on your seat belts -- Ottawa's in for a bumpy ride tonight. After the Liberals ignored a no-confidence motion that passed by three votes, the Tories have upped the ante by refusing to allow for an adjournment, and immediately moved a new no-confidence motion: Conservative Leader Stephen Harper moved what he deemed a no-confidence motion in the government, the second such move made by the Tories in two days. ... Mr. Harper said the government has "lost the moral authority and democratic legitimacy to govern this country. Madame Speaker, today is one of those more difficult days where it falls to the Leader of the Oppostion to tell the... government that they cannot carry on," Mr. Harper said in a speech to the House Wednesday afternoon. It appears to be part of an opposition tactic to continue to push for a confidence motion to be recognized in the...
It may be somewhat of an anticlimax after the fireworks at Parliament this evening, but the Gomery Inquiry heard testimony today that the money-laundering schemes at the heart of Adscam did not arise accidentally. Daniel Dezainde testified today that Jacques Corriveau bragged to him about how Corriveau himself had created the kickback structure himself to allow the Liberals to avoid campaign-finance regulation: Jacques Corriveau, a close friend of Jean Chrétien who made $8-million in sponsorship subcontracts, candidly told an official at the Quebec Liberal party wing that he had set up a kickback system, the Gomery inquiry heard Wednesday. Daniel Dezainde, who was the director-general of the Liberal Quebec wing in 2001, said that the admission came during a lunch he had with Mr. Corriveau. He said Mr. Corriveau told him: “In the past, I set up a system of kickbacks with communication agencies and I kept a part of...
Continue reading "Adscam: Kickback Scheme Intentional" »
May 12, 2005
Since Paul Martin and the Liberals refused to recognize the no-confidence motion of Tuesday and the adjournment yesterday as valid signs that the Liberals can no longer effectively govern, the Tories have decided to take a different tack in proving how little power they have left. Conservatives shut down the Commons today on an early adjournment after the Liberals refused to bring their budget motion immediately, and have now started boycotting committees: The Conservatives succeeded in a bid to adjourn the House of Commons for the day, in another move to paralyze the proceedings of government and force an immediate confidence vote in the government. The motion that the House be adjourned until Friday at 10 a.m. passed in the House of Commons before noon on Thursday, 152 to 144. It was supported by the Tories and the Bloc Québécois, part of a strategy to block or stall the activities...
May 13, 2005
Winding up some of the strangest testimony yet at the Gomery Inquiry, Daniel Dezainde continued to insist that he has remained in fear of his life after being told by Joe Morselli that he was "at war" with Dezainde, prompting two visits to the RCMP. Dezainde also managed to squeeze in more complaints about Beryl Wajsman, including alleged rudeness on the golf links, although what that has to do with Adscam has everyone scratching their heads: Four years after a nasty encounter with a threatening, finger-pointing Giuseppe (Joseph) Morselli, a Liberal official testified yesterday that even now he is still fearful of the friend of Alfonso Gagliano. Former senior party executive Daniel Dezainde told the Gomery inquiry that he saw the RCMP last month, ahead of his testimony, to talk to the police about his safety concerns because he was still apprehensive of Mr. Morselli, a onetime party fundraiser. "I...
Reuters analyzes the latest manueverings in the Canadian Commons and sees little chance of the Liberal government surviving, regardless of when a confidence vote is held: The main opposition Conservative Party wants the vote immediately but indications are that whenever it is held, the Liberals have a poor chance of surviving, even though the vote will be close. "This government is finished," a senior member of the cabinet confided. If the Liberals fall next Thursday it would open the way to a June 27 election. The Liberals and their left-leaning New Democrat allies have 151 seats in the 308-seat parliament, while the Conservatives and the separatist Bloc Quebecois have 153. The speaker of Parliament is a Liberal but he only votes in case of a tie. One seat is vacant. To have any chance of winning the Liberals need the support of two independent members of Parliament, at least one...
May 15, 2005
The Conservatives have decided to stop playing games with Parliamentary obstruction -- a game they have won for three straight days -- and focus their entire effort to topple the government on the upcoming budget motion Thursday: The federal Conservatives, after a week of bitter parliamentary gamesmanship, now appear willing to pin their hopes for a spring election on one high-stakes roll of the dice Thursday when the federal budget comes to a vote. “We will respect that vote,” Jay Hill, Tory House Leader in the Commons, said Sunday. Prime Minister Paul Martin has said that, if his minority Liberal government loses the budget showdown, it will mean an immediate election. It's been unclear until now what would happen if the government wins. Under parliamentary rules the Conservatives could still try to table another non-confidence motion to bring down the government later in the current session. Mr. Hill signalled, however,...
May 17, 2005
The Conservatives have taken the gloves off and started their election campaign two days before a confidence vote on the Canadian budget is scheduled. Tories started their ad campaign by asking voters why Prime Minister Paul Martin wants them to wait for a new election, and at the same time tries to negate the budget as an election issue: The federal Conservatives unleashed a series of radio attack ads yesterday that declare Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberals "desperate" and mired in corruption -- a tone that could carry through an election campaign anticipated to begin later this week. The Tories are also preparing to publish their campaign platform which, The Globe and Mail has learned, will include a number of Liberal-oriented social initiatives, including a commitment to increase foreign aid to 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product by 2015. The pledge, along with cash for daycare and infrastructure spending,...
Paul Martin has bought the support of Conservative MP Belinda Stronach with a ministerial position, changing the balance of power in Parliament and possibly saving the Liberal Party's grip on power. Martin induced Stronach to cross the aisle this morning by making her the Minister of Human Resources: Martin said he and Stronach share common beliefs on questions of policy and politics, including the Gomery commission investigating the sponsorship scandal. "Based on these shared beliefs, she and I have agreed that she fits more comfortably, can serve more appropriately and can contribute more substantially as a member of the government caucus," he said. "Accordingly, I am very pleased to announce that Ms. Stronach will cross the floor and has agreed to join the cabinet as Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development." The move could give the Liberals a better chance of passing a crucial confidence motion on the federal...
Belinda Stronach's defection to the Liberal Party came as a surprise to to Conservative leader Stephen Harper, who claims that Stronach never consulted him on her concerns or thoughts on crossing the aisle. However, Harper comes in a distant second in the betrayal stakes as the Canadian Press reports that Stronach never even bothered to consult her boyfriend on her abrupt about-face -- her boyfriend being Peter MacKay, Harper's second in command for the Tories: With news reverberating around Parliament Hill of Belinda Stronach's blockbuster bolt from the Tories to the Liberals, the indelicate question was unavoidable: "What about Peter MacKay?" Stronach's well-publicized romance with the Conservative deputy leader could hardly have come to a more stunning end. Sources confirmed the pair are taking a "break" from the photogenic relationship first made public in January. "Suffice it to say, I'm very happy and quite smitten," MacKay beamed at the time....
After the surprise defection of Belinda Stronach sent a shock wave through Canadian politics, the Conservative Party recast its electoral strategy for Thursday's vote. Instead of following the Liberal Party strategy that allows Martin to contest the confidence vote on the entire budget, Stephen Harper has instructed the Tories to pass the main budget and instead contest the amendment containing the agreement that brought Jack Layton and the NDP into alliance with Martin: The Conservatives will vote in support of the federal budget, but will still try to defeat the Liberal minority government on separate legislation that proposes $4.6 billion in spending on housing and the environment, Tory Leader Stephen Harper announced Tuesday night. "It's our intention to support Bill C-43, the original budget," Harper said, looking tired after a long day for the Conservative frontman that included the surprise defection of high-profile former leadership contender Belinda Stronach. "We'll oppose...
May 18, 2005
Another Conservative MP has gone public with allegations that the Liberal Party has attempted to bribe Tories with ministerial positions or Senate seats to buy votes on the upcoming confidence motion in tomorrow's session. Following the public outing by Inky Marks and the scandalous betrayal by Belinda Stronach, Gurmant Grewal came forward this evening to reveal that the Grits had offered a Senate seat for his wife and a Liberal sinecure to keep him from voting No on the budget: The Surrey, B.C. MP, whose wife Nina is also a Tory MP, alleges he made an audio recording of the offer from Liberal cabinet minister Ujjal Dosanjh and Tim Murphy, Prime Minister Paul Martin's chief of staff. The allegation comes a day after Belinda Stronach shocked her Tory caucus colleagues by jumping to the Liberal cabinet. Mr. Martin insisted the move was Ms. Stronach's initiative and that the Liberals were...
May 19, 2005
With the two budget motions tabled today with the potential for a no-confidence result that could collapse the government -- in the middle of a royal visit from Queen Elizabeth II -- the developments in attendance and last-minute maneuverings have been dizzying. Last night's allegations of vote-buying by Tory MP Gurmant Grewal appeared to mirror those made earlier by MP Inky Marks, only this time Grewal made a tape of the conversation and named Tim Murphy, Paul Martin's chief of staff, as the initiator of the offer. Politics Watch reviewed the tape (available here from CTV), and Romeo St. Martin reports that Murphy used extreme caution in approaching Grewal: At no time during the tape does Murphy make an explicit offer to Grewal, and he carefully chooses his words and speaks about hypothetical situations. The tape suggests that Murphy is more interested in Grewal abstaining than having the MP crossover...
CTV reports that independent MP David Kilgour has announced his intention to vote with the Conservatives in opposing C-48, the budget amendment and the confidence motion that could collapse the Liberal government: The combined votes of all Liberal and NDP MPs, as well as Independent MP Carolyn Parrish, adds up to 152 -- the same number as the Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois. That leaves Independent MPs David Kilgour and Chuck Cadman to swing the result. Just hours before the vote, Kilgour pledged publicly to vote for the budget, but against the additional spending package. Cadman, however, is still holding his cards very close to his chest. Watch for abstentions. Those wild cards will come out, if they exist, for the C-48 vote and may well determine who outfought whom in this political battle. If only Cadman abstains, Martin loses. UPDATE: C-48 vote just complete -- Cadman voted with the Liberals....
May 20, 2005
In the aftermath of the failed Tory bid to unseat the Liberals and Paul Martin, the pundits will start analyzing the failure in light of the seemingly unbeatable revelations that have come out from the Gomery Inquiry. As party leader, Stephen Harper bears the ultimate responsibility for the strategy of this no-confidence effort and its execution, as the G&M's Brian Laghi reminds readers this morning: The man who prides himself on his skill as a political tactician lost the biggest gamble of his political career last night. And, at least according to some, it didn't need to be that way. After his defeat on a vote designed to force a spring election, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper finds himself today with a chunk of his political capital spent, a temperamental image with the Canadian public, and some members of his party sniping at him for what they believe was the frittering...
May 21, 2005
NDP leader Jack Layton has joined with Bloc Quebecois chief Giles Duceppe in calling for an RCMP investigation into potential vote-buying in the case of Gurmant Grewal. Grewal taped two conversations with key Liberal leaders, including PM Paul Martin's chief of staff Tim Murphy, during which Murphy alluded to a future appointment to the Senate for Grewal's wife in exchange for an abstention on Thursday's no-confidence motion: NDP Leader Jack Layton yesterday joined calls for the RCMP to investigate a taped conversation in which it is alleged that the Prime Minister's chief of staff suggested to an MP that the government would be more free to discuss a possible Senate appointment only after he and his wife, also an MP, abstained on Thursday night's confidence vote. Mr. Layton backed Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe, who on Thursday wrote the RCMP asking them to investigate the matter. ... In the conversation,...
May 23, 2005
The Liberal Party sent new Cabinet minister Belinda Stronach to campaign in a critical federal by-election in Labrador this weekend in order to ensure the retention of a Commons seat for the Grits. While the seat in Goose Bay has historically been safe for the Liberals, with only one Tory elected in the last 50 years, the appearance of Stronach might not make for the best reminder of Liberal politics at the moment: Belinda Stronach was among three Liberal cabinet ministers campaigning in Labrador yesterday, two days before an important federal by-election in the region. The newly minted Human Resources Minister gave her first major speech since defecting from the Conservative Party last week, supporting Todd Russell in tomorrow's by-election to succeed the late Liberal MP Lawrence O'Brien. If the Tories can pull off an upset, they can gain a seat in the Commons and once again have a thin...
May 24, 2005
In a further twist to the Adscam scandal that has rocked Canada and nearly cost the Liberal Party its ruling status, records revealed at the Gomery Inquiry show that the Liberals have set up a "war room" for Gomery-related public relations using taxpayer money: The Liberal government has set up a war room -- at a cost of about $1-million to taxpayers -- to handle the fallout from the Gomery commission. Documents obtained by CanWest News Service through the Access to Information Act reveal the rapid-response war room, which is in almost daily contact with the Prime Minister's Office and the government's top bureaucrat, Alex Himelfarb, is operating out of the Privy Council Office. The cost of the strategic office, which does everything from prepare answers for Question Period in the House of Commons to keeping the PMO abreast of testimony at the inquiry, covers the salaries of staff and...
May 25, 2005
Forensic accountants scouring the finances of the Sponsorship Program have found an additional $100 million in losses, bringing the total scam's loss to $355 million, according to their latest testimony: The total amount of money lost in the sponsorship scandal now appears to be $355 million -- $100 million more than was originally thought. "If you didn't like the sponsorship program to begin with, you've now got about a hundred million more reasons to not like it," CTV's Jed Kahane said Tuesday. The new figure of $355 million is from the forensic accounting firm, Kroll Lindquist Avey, which was hired by the Gomery commission to examine sponsorship spending between 1994 and 2004. Of this, the accountants have identified $51 million that went into the pockets of the well-connected ad firms, such as Groupaction, whose officers have testified that significant portions of the money went back to the Liberal Party. The...
May 26, 2005
Testimony yesterday at the Gomery Inquiry put Adscam into the office of Prime Minister Paul Martin (not quite -- see Update II) for the first time yesterday, as one of the aides working directly for Martin revealed that part of his salary was paid not by the government but a key Adscam figure. Gaetano Manganiello told Gomery that he was not the only one in the PMO who received money from Adscam contractors, either: Gaetano Manganiello testified that he was one of at least three party workers in the Quebec wing's Montreal offices in the late 1990s who were paid by Mr. Corriveau even though they did not work for his firm. Mr. Corriveau, a close friend of Mr. Chrétien and a key broker in the sponsorship affair, earned $8-million in sponsorship subcontracts, according to evidence presented at the inquiry. Mr. Manganiello is on a paid leave from his job...
May 27, 2005
The Gomery Inquiry heard the testimony of another colorful witness in the Adscam investigation, discussing cash payments and cronyism. Giuseppe "Joe" Morselli testified that Jacques Corriveau and Alfonse Gagliano directed the transfers of unregulated and unaccounted cash for fundraisers and politicians alike. Morselli admitted to keeping some of it for himself: Former Liberal fundraiser Giuseppe (Joseph) Morselli told the Gomery inquiry yesterday that a friend of former prime minister Jean Chrétien asked him to intervene to restore sponsorship contracts for two music festivals. After the request from Chrétien confidant Jacques Corriveau, Mr. Morselli said, he called the office of his long-time friend, Alfonso Gagliano, then the public works minister, and got half of the funding reinstated. Mr. Morselli, a caterer and key figure in the sponsorship scandal, gave testimony that suggested he knew of illicit practices, but, when questioned further, stopped short of confirming them. His loose grasp of French...
May 28, 2005
Conservative Party leaders indicated yesterday that they plan on continuing their efforts to drive the Liberal minority government into collapse. The Tories plan on using their alliance with BQ to form a majority in committee and kill C-48, the $4.6 billion budget addendum that bought NDP support for Paul Martin and kept the Liberals in power -- a move which may have NDP leader Jack Layton rethinking his options: The Conservatives say they will attempt to block the government's two budget bills from being passed before the House of Commons summer recess to protest against what they say is excessive and unaccountable spending. And Conservative Leader Stephen Harper warned yesterday that his party may make further attempts to force an election, although he doubts they would succeed as long as the NDP supports the Liberals. Tory House Leader Jay Hill said Liberal pledges to pass the budget before the June...
May 30, 2005
Canadian politics may have taken a breath after the failure of the Conservative/BQ no-confidence efforts on May 19th, but all indications are that they will come back into full swing this week. Despite a hasty comment by Stephen Harper earlier this month that the Tories would "probably" not try again if their first attempt failed to bring down the Liberal government, the CPC has made it clear that they plan to contest another confidence motion this week: The House of Commons is heading back to work after a week off, with the Conservatives holding what they say is a “loaded gun” to the head of the governing Liberals and threatening another non-confidence vote as soon as Tuesday. Jay Hill, the Tory House leader, said Sunday his party hasn't settled yet on its final strategy. But he pointedly refused to rule out a new confidence test, despite the fact that Prime...
The Canadian network CTV reports tonight that the complete transcript of the Grewal tapes contain much more than the curious dance conducted between Tim Murphy, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, and Tory MP Gurmant Grewal. Despite Liberal denials, the transcripts apparently contain a specific offer of a ministry for Grewal in exchange for his vote on May 19th: CTV News' Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife reports that the Prime Minister knew of the negotiations. According to Fife, the full four hours of transcripts of Grewal's taped conversations with a top Martin aide and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh show: * Martin was ready to talk to Grewal about defecting like he did with Belinda Stronach * Grewal was offered a government position two weeks after the vote The transcripts could be released Tuesday. Conservative House Leader Jay Hill has said the party will be turning the tapes over to the...
May 31, 2005
Adscam has its first major conviction, as Paul Coffin agreed to plead guilty to 15 of the 18 counts of fraud and corruption he faced. The plea shifts his upcoming trial to a sentencing hearing, which will begin on August 16th: Advertising executive Paul Coffin pleaded guilty Tuesday to 15 fraud charges in connection with the federal sponsorship program, marking the first plea in the scandal that threatened to topple Paul Martin's minority Liberal government. Mr. Coffin, the first person charged in the scandal, had originally faced 18 counts. He was arrested by the RCMP in 2003 in connection with the matter. Three of the original charges were withdrawn by the Crown during Tuesday's hearing. Mr. Coffin, head of Montreal-based Communication Coffin, had been accused of submitting $2-million in false or inflated invoices as part of his handling of federal sponsorships of car and mountain-bike races, among other events, between...
The suspicions about vote-buying in the Liberal government deepened today when the Conservative Party released the transcripts of conversations between MP Gurmant Grewal and various Liberal Party leaders, including PM Paul Martin's chief of staff. Earlier, when it appeared that the Tories would resist releasing the entire set of tapes, Martin insisted that a deal had never been offered -- but after reviewing the transcripts, Canadians may reach a different conclusion: Transcripts and audio files from meetings between Mr. Grewal, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Dosanjh were posted on Mr. Grewal's Web page Tuesday. According to the transcripts, Mr. Martin agreed to meet with Mr. Grewal. "I talked to the PM moments ago," Mr. Dosanjh is quoted saying in the tapes during a meeting with Mr. Grewal on May 17. "He said he will be happy to talk to you over the phone tonight or in person if you want to...
June 2, 2005
The tapes that Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal took of conversations between himself and Liberal Party leaders have been spliced and edited to mislead listeners, Ujjal Dosanjh protested today. Dosanjh claimed that Grewal has altered evidence to make the Liberals appear to have offered a quid pro quo in return for Grewal's support or at least his abstention: As the New Democrats filed an official complaint with the Commons Ethics Commissioner calling for an inquiry and the Conservatives insisted that senior officials in the Liberal government had tried to buy an MP's vote, Mr. Dosanjh charged that the recordings are not only badly translated but pieced together from different conversation and edited to cut out sections. In a written statement he issued yesterday, he alleges, for example, that it appears there are "two obvious cuts" where the phrase "cabinet is quick" is spliced into a recording to make it appear as...
The Globe & Mail updated its report on the Grewal tapes a short time ago with the news that an audio expert says that the tapes show an "abnormality" that could indicate tampering: Stevan Pausak analysed a 46-second segment of the recordings and says there's a break in it that indicates a portion may have been cut out. He says the abnormality occurs in a recorded phone chat between Mr. Grewal and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh in which they discuss future job prospects for the MP in exchange for crossing the floor. He says there is a discontinuity in the audio file, what he calls a “zero-signal gap” of about 0.3 seconds. The signal goes abruptly to zero in that interval, and afterward it continues. I'm not an audio expert, but I do work with audio files as part of my job. The zero-signal artifact could mean that an audio...
June 3, 2005
Not everyone in the Liberal Party has joined Paul Martin's defense of his Chief of Staff and the Health Minister. Saying that the Grewal tapes "made my skin crawl," MP Roger Galloway demanded that Martin suspend Tim Murphy and Ujjal Dosanjh until the completion of an investigation into the tapes: A senior Liberal MP wants the Prime Minister's chief of staff, Tim Murphy, and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh suspended from their posts until an investigation takes place into the growing scandal over the secretly taped negotiations between the two men and a Tory MP who was considering crossing the floor. Sarnia MP Roger Gallaway says the situation is "totally odious" and "it shows the underbelly of politics that I think is quite unacceptable." "[Conservative Leader Stephen Harper] will have to deal with [Tory MP Gurmant Grewal, who made the tapes], but we have to deal with our own," Mr. Gallaway...
June 6, 2005
After gaining a seat in a critical by-election in Labrador, Paul Martin has returned to square one with a critical defection today by Pat O'Brien. O'Brien won't join the Tories but will instead stand a an independent, but specifically mentioned the Adscam scandal as a reason for his decision: Liberal MP Pat O'Brien, who opposes his party's position on gay marriage, says he's quitting the Grits to sit as an Independent. ... In April, he decided to stick with the Liberals after Prime Minister Paul Martin promised expanded debate of the marriage bill. But O'Brien said the "full and fair'' debate he expected has not happened. His discomfort with the party had also been growing with each revelation of malfeasance from the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal. It sounds as if O'Brien will be reluctant to support the Liberals if another no-confidence motion gets tabled in Parliament. This brings...
The controversy surrounding taped conversations between Tory MP Gurmant Grewal and Liberal Party leaders just got stranger tonight. Grewal has suddenly left for a leave of absence following an altercation at the airport that saw the MP attempting to get an envelope past security by asking other passengers to carry it for him: The Tory MP at the centre of a surreptitiously taped effort to make a deal with the Liberals is taking a stress leave from his parliamentary duties after Air Canada launched an investigation of incident at Vancouver airport. Gurmant Grewal was spotted in a waiting area Saturday asking passengers to carry a package to Ottawa for him, said an airline source. ... A union official said Mr. Grewal had earlier gone to an Air Canada ticket agent to ask if he could arrange for someone to carry a package to Ottawa aboard flight 166 on Saturday. He...
June 7, 2005
Americans do not realize the extent to which gender-neutral marriage remains controversial in Canada, having been fed a steady diet of harangues by the Left and the media about Canada's easy acceptance of the practice. In fact, the issue carries such controversy that the party that championed it had dozens of MPs so unhappy about its spread that they briefly considered bringing down their own government to stop it: Last Thursday morning in an office in the historic East Block, a dozen Liberal MPs opposed to the same-sex marriage bill met to plot its demise, and for a fleeting instant spoke about killing their own government as a means to an end. It was an extraordinary meeting in which the MPs discussed strategy, talked of ways to stall the bill and tossed out various scenarios. They even spoke about the possibility of supporting the Conservatives on a no-confidence motion to...
June 8, 2005
Stephen Harper acknowledged that the Tories had slipped in recent polling back to pre-Gomery levels this afternoon, a development that some predict will take the steam out of the no-confidence movement that had energized the Commons for the past month. However, Harper put the onus on Liberals to hold the government accountable for its transgressions, claiming that he has done all that he can: The fate of the government lies in the hands of disgruntled Liberals, not opposition parties, when upcoming confidence votes reach Parliament next week, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said Wednesday. Speaking with reporters following his party's weekly caucus meeting in Ottawa, Mr. Harper said the Conservatives will “do whatever we can” to make sure its MPs are in the House of Commons when a pair of key budget bills come forward next week. He said, however, that the final outcome will lie with members of the Liberal...
During the time I reported on the Gomery Inquiry testimony of Jean Brault in defiance of the publication ban, I received many e-mails thanking me for the effort -- but I also received a few that expressed opposition to its publication on my blog. A few of those tended to be nationalistic, but the rest politely questioned my motives for defying the ban. They argued persuasively that the ban had intended to protect the upcoming trials of Brault, Coffin, and Guité from being derailed by information tainting the jury pool, and/or interfering with the rights of the defendants to receive a fair trial in the court instead of by the press. Needless to say, although some of those arguments were undeniably eloquent, I disagreed with their basic premise that citizens could not tell the difference between evidence presented in court and hearsay reports in a newspaper. Nevertheless, I also conceded...
June 10, 2005
An audio expert retained by the Conservative Party to assess the original Grewal tapes of conversations between the MP and several members of Liberal Party leadership pronounced the tapes as unaltered and unedited this morning: An audio expert hired by the federal Conservative party says the final full versions of Gurmant Grewal's tapes have not been altered. The Tories released a letter from audio engineer Randy Dash that says the tapes, which have been handed over to the RCMP, appear to be clean and unaltered. The Tories made a mistake in releasing portions of the audio rather than the entire tapes. The experts who previously analyzed the recordings and found edits and gaps worked from copies, and in some cases digitized copies, of the originals rather than from the originals themselves. While some will point out that Dash worked for the Tories to question his credibility, the willingness of the...
June 11, 2005
Today's new poll from the Globe & Mail contains mixed news for the Conservative Party and Stephen Harper. On one hand, the Decima poll appears to have been an outlier, as the new poll shows that the parties stand about where they did before the Gomery Inquiry broke wide open. On the other, it also shows that Harper has lost significant ground with the Canadian electorate during that period: A Globe and Mail-CTV survey, conducted by the Strategic Counsel this week, also finds that, while Liberal support remains relatively stagnant since the week of the historic May 19 confidence vote, the Conservatives have dropped four percentage points and are the choice of 26 per cent of voters, eight points behind the Liberals at 34. Perhaps the most significant results are those measuring Canadians' attitudes to their federal leaders, particularly Mr. Harper. Compared with May 8, Mr. Harper's leadership has taken...
June 13, 2005
Despite the widespread corruption committed by the Liberals during their governance of Canada, at times their political brilliance requires some admiration, no matter how grudgingly given. The fact of their survival on May 19th took a blend of bald-faced vote-buying and hardball politics that took one's breath away in its audacity and its success. Their apparent recovery in the polls after hearing witness after witness attest to Liberal money-laundering and embezzlement for weeks is nothing short of astounding. Their ability to tar Tory leader Stephen Harper as a stooge of separatists and some malevolent, secretive force that will unravel Canadian federalism as a cover for that graft may stand as one of the great political comebacks in North American history. Today, however, the Liberals may have pushed their luck a bit too far by attacking Bloc Quebecois leader Giles Duceppe for turning down a provincial post in favor of remaining...
June 14, 2005
To no one's great surprise, the Tories blame Stephen Harper for booting their best chance in years to topple the Liberal grip on power in Ottawa this spring and may start looking for new leadership according to the Globe & Mail. Members deny that they have started that process as yet, but some organizers have started to grumble about the lost opportunities: Political knives are out for Stephen Harper as his federal Conservatives sink deeper in the polls, and the sharpest weapons are being brandished by members of his own party. "There is a lot of discontent with the turn of things. People are saying it's time to replace the leader," said one key Conservative organizer in Toronto who, like many others, asked not to be named because it could hurt his status in the party. ... [B]ehind the scenes, party members from coast to coast are pointing fingers and...
June 15, 2005
Yesterday morning I wrote that Stephen Harper needs to get out and engage the Canadian public personally in order to improve his image and the Conservative Party's accessibility to the electorate. Whether the issue of his declining polling numbers lies with a hostile media or himself, clearly Harper needs to actively work to improve the situation. Apparently, I get results (yes, I'm joking), as the Tory leader announced today that he will start making personal appearances around the country: Get ready for the new and improved Stephen Harper. The federal Conservative leader will criss-cross the country this summer to bolster his image and counter complaints from some Tories about a recent dramatic decline in party popularity. People, for all kinds of reasons, have a misperception of Harper, says Tory deputy leader Peter MacKay. And, MacKay adds, Harper knows it. "He's also come to understand that people have to like you,"...
June 17, 2005
Despite their last-minute partnership on a budget amendment with the Liberal Party that allowed Paul Martin to hold onto power, the NDP has lost patience with Parliament's ethics commissioner for dragging his feet on investigating their Grit allies. NDP leadership has called for the resignation of Bernard Shapiro and the appointment of a more active ethics watchdog: Parliament's independent ethics watchdog is an incompetent "wet noodle" who should be replaced, critics say. Bernard Shapiro, named ethics czar by the Liberals last year, has been asked in recent months to look into at least two cases of alleged conflict in the Liberal cabinet. He has not released final reports in either case, and has been cast by the opposition as a bumbling foot-dragger. Now, the NDP says Shapiro has declined to expand an inquiry into the controversial Grewal tapes affair to include the prime minister. They have demanded an explanation, and...
June 22, 2005
CTV reports that the Conservatives may try again to topple the Liberal government, this time focusing on the NDP budget amendment C-48 which gave PM Paul Martin a tie in the Commons, saving his grip on power by the single vote of the Speaker. The effort reverses an agreement reached earlier with the Liberals to delay action on C-38, the gender-neutral marriage proposal, until after the summer recess: Ottawa is buzzing over word that the Conservatives may once again try to bring the minority Liberal government down before the end of the month. The showdown could happen at the end of this week, or early next week, when the government's top priority budget add-on bill, Bill C-48, comes to a final vote. "I expect we're going to have every member in our caucus here whenever the vote is," B.C. Conservative MP John Reynolds told CTV News on Wednesday. "Whether it's...
June 24, 2005
Prime Minister Paul Martin reached into his parliamentary bag of tricks again last night and outfoxed Tory leader Stephen Harper, allowing the Liberals to set a late-night vote on a crucial budget amendment that keeps them in control of the government: The contentious budget amendment bill passed 152 to 147 in the House of Commons Thursday in a late-night, snap vote. In a move that caught the Conservative opposition off guard, Liberal House Leader Tony Valeri proposed a rarely-used time allocation motion in the House of Commons, cutting off debate on Bill C-48. The motion passed easily. And as the clock ticked close to midnight ET, MPs voted on the bill's third and final reading. ... "It bushwhacked the Conservatives. They didn't see this coming," said CTV's Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife. Martin took advantage of a rarely-used procedure to call the vote unexpectedly at 11:30 PM. He also managed...
June 26, 2005
Stephen Harper has started out on his summer-long effort to connect with the Canadian electorate, starting off by opening the annual Dragon Boat festival in Toronto. He engaged in banter with the friendly crowd, asking for a rescue if he jumped into the lake to cool off, but his choice of apparel -- a business suit, sans tie -- looked a bit out of place and uncomfortable, an unfortunate allegory to his last few weeks in the Commons: Tory Leader Stephen Harper continued his image makeover tour Saturday after an embarrassing week that saw his party ambushed on a budget bill it had promised to defeat. Mr. Harper helped launch Toronto's International Dragon Boat Race Festival by cracking jokes about a quick rescue if he were to leap into Lake Ontario to escape the stifling heat. ... The embattled leader, who plans to hit the barbeque and festival circuit this...
June 28, 2005
Canadian business leaders have begun to sound the alarm over what they perceive as a threat to the Canadian economy from minority government rule. The Canadian Council of Chief Executives warn that the excessive political game-playing will undermine the basic economic structure of the nation as politicians play with taxpayer money to protect their jobs: Canada's top CEOs are warning that a failure of leadership by Ottawa on the economy has left the country without a long-term strategy to survive increasingly brutal global competition. In a declaration being released today, the Canadian Council of Chief Executives said the minority-government situation has left federal leaders preoccupied with short-term politicking -- and prone to excessive spending. "As a political entity, Canada is a nation adrift," said the business group representing 150 leading CEOs. Prone to excessive spending? No kidding. Paul Martin in the past month alone has given out billions of dollars...
July 5, 2005
James Allan wrote yesterday on the occasion of America's Independence Day to urge his fellow Canadians to reconsider their political choices. Now an ex-oatriate living in Australia, Allan finds that he can no longer comprehend Canadian politics, where the Conservatives sound like liberals in his adopted homeland -- and yet the electorate consistently mistrusts them and elects a single-party government on a consistent basis: When I raised this point during my time back in Canada -- that any well-functioning democracy needs the voters to kick parties out of power on a fairly regular basis -- I was met every time with this reply: "But Harper and the Tories are so right wing. We agree in theory, but really, no one could vote for them." The same sort of message could be heard implicitly on CBC radio and in most of the mainstream media. But here's the odd thing. In global...
July 7, 2005
The Fraser Institute has performed a financial analysis of the financial analysis of the Sponsorship Program, which shows that the corruption and graft runs far deeper than previously thought. The amounts of money and the scale of its laundering dwarf earlier estimates: The numbers of people and amounts of money involved in the Gomery inquiry are larger than previously known. Problems with federal government sponsorship and advertising programs can be understood using an economic theory of incentives and institutional structure. This study finds that at least 565 organizations and individuals are identified in reports and testimony related to the Gomery inquiry. The original 2003 Auditor General sponsorship and advertising report cited only 71 organizations. The activities under investigation are therefore quite widespread. The people identified in these reports and testimony are politicians and bureaucrats (government insiders), and political party members and business people(government outsiders). This paper finds that almost all...
July 11, 2005
The death of independent MP Chuck Cadman from long battle against cancer creates a difficult situation for the ruling Liberal minority. Cadman had provided the edge as one of three independents to back the government during the recent confidence motions that threatened to end Prime Minister Paul Martin's term at the helm of the Canadian executive. Without his vote, it could mean that the Liberals might not survive another such motion, but replacing him could make matters even worse: The death of independent MP Chuck Cadman leaves a big hole in the political landscape and all indications are it is not one the Liberals will be in a rush to fill. The vacancy, however, puts the minority government in a dilemma. Should it quickly call a by-election in Surrey North in an attempt to add a crucial seat by taking advantage of Conservative Party disarray in British Columbia? Or should...
July 16, 2005
Kate at Small Dead Animals finds a major problem with the CBC's reporting on donations made to Gurmant Grewal's political campaign. She has a copy of a letter from the Conservative Party to Terry Milewski at CBC that outlines the problems with the CBC report -- before the CBC went to air with it: As backgrounder on this complainant, it is a well-known fact that he is a very good friend of Ujjal Dosanjh. So good a friend is he of Mr. Dosanjh that just after the Taping Incident became public, and Mr., Dosanjh's central and principle role in that event became known to the public, Mr. Mann telephoned Mr. Grewal and voiced extreme displeasure with Mr. Grewal's actions. And then just a few short weeks later, up pops a complaint relayed to you regarding two cheques. Mann has provided you with two items, one for $1800. and another for...
July 19, 2005
Stephen Harper took time off from his Canadian summer tour to speak at a convention of center-right parties from around the world meeting in Washington DC this week. Looking to invigorate his image abroad and to repair some of the damage to Canadian-US relations over Iraq and missile defence, Harper proclaimed that a Tory government in Canada would start getting serious about counterterrorism efforts: A Conservative government in Canada would move aggressively to step up efforts in the war on international terrorism and create a single office to oversee Canada's spy and security forces, Opposition Leader Stephen Harper promised yesterday in a speech to right-wing fellow travellers gathered in Washington. "In particular, Canada can play a stronger role in the war on terrorism," Mr. Harper told a receptive audience of representatives of centrist and conservative parties from more than 60 nations attending the triennial International Democrat Union meeting. The G&M...
Despite having one of the worst political scandals in Canadian history as an albatross, the Liberal Party continues to outpoll the Conservatives, building up strong leads in BC and the Atlantic area. The reason? The Tories still have not done a good job of showcasing their party leader: The gift of scandal and voter fatigue with the four-term Liberal government have done little for Stephen Harper's Conservatives, a new poll suggests. A Pollara poll gives the Liberals a commanding advantage - 11 points ahead of their arch-rivals, with staggering leads in battlegrounds like B.C., the Toronto area and Atlantic Canada. Michael Marzolini, who heads Pollara, says the Canadian electorate wants to punish the Liberals and there's only one explanation for such a large lead. "The whole thing is Stephen Harper at this stage," said Marzolini, who was once the Liberals' pollster. Once again, the lack of standing for Harper remains...
July 23, 2005
Earlier this week, Canadian invesigators found a tunnel that runs under the border between British Columbia and Washington that ran drugs and guns between the two countries. American officials say that while they have uncovered more than 30 such tunnels between the US and Mexico, the BC-Washington tunnel is the first on our northern border, and one of the most sophisticated they've seen: The smugglers spent more than a year building the 360-foot (110-meter) tunnel that ran from a Quonset hut-style storage building in the rural Aldergrove neighborhood of Langley, British Columbia, to the living room of a home in Lynden, Washington, U.S. and Canadian investigators said. "It was well built, probably one of the most sophisticated tunnels we've ever seen," said Rod Benson, an agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "There was a significant drug trafficking organization that was responsible for the construction." Video supplied by investigators showed...
August 3, 2005
Now that Canadians have avoided the dreaded summer election, it appears that the tug-and-pull of electoral politics has also taken a seasonal break. According to a new poll from Environics, almost no change at all has taken place in support for the main parties since the pre-Gomery period: This latest survey shows that, nationally, 34 percent of eligible and decided Canadian voters would support the Liberal Party if an election were held today, compared with 36 percent in the March-April period (this difference falls well within the margin of sampling error). The Conservative Party now has the support of 31 percent (versus 30%), while the New Democratic Party is also holding steady at 20 percent (versus 19%). One in ten (11%) Canadian voters remain undecided about which party might deserve their support (down from 13%). Across the country, party preferences have moved modestly in some regions. The Liberals have lost...
August 15, 2005
Stephen Harper has apparently decided that the status quo has got to go -- along with a few members of his staff. The manager of his political office, chief of staff Phil Murphy, got his walking papers today: Stephen Harper's chief of staff Phil Murphy has been given his walking papers, the latest in a series of aides to resign or be forced out of the troubled office of the Conservative party leader. ... It was officially termed a resignation, but party insiders who spoke on condition of anonymity said Harper made it clear to Murphy that his time was up as right-hand man. "He booted him," said one well-placed source. "And there are going to be more of these changes in the next little while." The Canadian Press story analyzes that the departure of Murphy came for two main reasons: a failure to think strategically and personality conflicts within...
August 16, 2005
Canadian PM Paul Martin faces a daunting polling gap in Quebec, where the popular Giles Duceppe and the Bloc Quebecois not only control a majority of seats but also align themselves with Martin's nemesis, Conservative Stephen Harper. In an attempt to split Quebeckers, Martin named Michaëlle Jean to the mostly ceremonial role of Governor-General last month, despite questions about her dual citizenship with France. The move proved popular in Quebec and saw an improvement in the Liberal position. However, whispers that Jean not only has split loyalty but has endorsed the breakup of Canada will soon have Martin tapdancing across the rest of the provinces: Hard-line separatists in Quebec have unearthed quotations by Ms. Jean and Mr. Lafond from a book he wrote in 1993. His statements make clear his unequivocal support for a sovereign Quebec. Ms. Jean's statements are more ambiguous but suggest that she, too, favours the province's...
August 18, 2005
Earlier this year, the Canadian Supreme Court struck down the ban on private health insurance in Quebec due to an inability of the province to deliver timely health care. Now the Canadian Medical Association argues that the ban should be revoked throughout the country, and for much the same reasons: All Canadians should have the right to buy private health insurance to complement their care in the medicare system, the country's leading doctors' group says. The Canadian Medical Association said, in essence, that a recent Supreme Court of Canada judgment, which struck down a ban on private health insurance in Quebec because patients were not ensured timely access to care, should apply to all Canadians. In doing so, the CMA, which represents the country's 62,000 doctors, also clearly rejected the notion yesterday that there should be a medicare monopoly. It did so just one day after doctors gave their backing...
August 22, 2005
Radio Canada reports in its French-language news service that Jack Layton and the NDP have abandoned their partnership with Paul Martin and the Liberals, just two months after winning a major tax concession in exchange for propping up Martin during the Adscam scandal (via CQ reader SpaceNeedleBoy): Le chef du Nouveau Parti démocratique, Jack Layton, a confirmé au quotidien Le Devoir, que l'alliance entre sa formation politique et les libéraux de Paul Martin était terminée. In other words -- c'est fini. If this gets confirmed, the Liberals will suddenly be vulnerable to a Tory/BQ no-confidence motion as soon as Parliament comes back into session. The Liberals may have avoided the axe in May and June, but they have not capitalized on their political manuevering at all. Their national polling has them stuck at the mid-30s, a number which clearly gets them short of a Commons majority. Without a legislative partner,...
September 19, 2005
The First Mate and I will wing our way to Toronto this morning to visit Canada for her first time and my second. I will speak at a journalism conference on Tuesday night, but we decided to spend the week in the city to see some of the nation about which I wrote so extensively this past spring and summer. Canadian politics has quieted down some since the Gomery inquiry stopped hearing witnesses, and I'm hoping to reconnect to Canadian story lines while I'm visiting. I'll be blogging from Toronto and other points in the area as we do some sightseeing and getting some needed R&R. Perhaps we'll run into a couple of CQ fans along the way. If you see a middle-aged guy with a navy blue captain's hat, that just might be me! UPDATE: It's 3:30 pm in Toronto, and no one's arrested me yet. I must be...
The first sentencing from the Adscam political scandal came from the Quebec Superior Court this afternoon, and the lesson the court taught Paul Coffin apparently amounts to audacity pays. Despite pleading guilty to 15 counts of fraud and the theft of over $1.5 million in Sponsorship Programme funds, Coffin will not serve a single day in prison: Advertising executive Paul Coffin was sentenced Monday to a conditional sentence of two years less a day, to be served in the community, for defrauding Canadian taxpayers of $1.5-million. Coffin pleaded guilty earlier this year to 15 fraud charges. Justice Jean-Guy Boilard of Quebec Superior Court said he allowed Mr. Coffin to avoid jail after considering his clean record, his repayment of $1 million to the federal government and his remorse. “Mr. Coffin is genuinely contrite but unfortunately he cannot turn the clock back,” Judge Boilard said. Am I missing something? If my...
A new Leger survey shows that the Liberal Party has fully recovered the standing it held in 2000, when it sailed to a majority government, despite the damage done this spring by the Adscam scandal. Martin has gained strength in Western Canada, a troubling development for the opposition Tories, whose numbers dropped by eleven points since their peak in the spring: The federal Liberals had the support of 40 per cent of respondents in a new poll - virtually the same level of backing they received in rolling to their majority government in 2000. The Leger Marketing survey, conducted Sept. 6-11, pegged Conservative support at 24 per cent, while the NDP stood at 15 per cent and the Bloc Quebecois at 13 per cent. ... Marois said the poll revealed strong growth for the Liberals in Western Canada, including a jump of 16 percentage points in Alberta in two months...
September 21, 2005
As many of you already know, I have blogged this week from Canada, appearing at a conference hosted by the Canadian Journalism Foundation last night at the University of Toronto. I had the pleasure of joining Andrew Coyne on stage, along with Jesse Hirsh and Julian Porter, to discuss whether bloggers are "shamans or shams". Afterwards, I met a number of fine Canadian bloggers for the first time -- RightGirl, Wonder Woman, Stephen Taylor, Brent Colbert, Bob Tarantino and Greg Staples of Blogging Tories, and John from Newsbeat1. Here's a shot of all of us at the conference: The conference itself provoked a wide-ranging Q&A. In fact, we overran our time, but none of us noticed it -- I know I had a great time answering everyone's questions. Canadians have a marvelous sense of hospitality and grace, and even those who had no inclination to support an American right-wing blogger...
September 25, 2005
The Winnipeg Sun reports that the Conservatives in Canada await more than just one report next winter that could alter the trajectory of Canadian politics. While Judge Gomery writes his report on the Sponsorship Programme, the auditor general has quietly performed her investigation into the controversial gun registry that the Liberal Party imposed on its citizens, and the results could produce some uncomfortable moments of its own for the Grits and the Martin government: Critics of the gun registry are eagerly awaiting Auditor General Sheila Fraser's "Canadian Firearms Program" audit which is scheduled to be released in February -- if we're not in the midst of a federal election campaign. Fraser isn't doing interviews about the audit, which has been underway for months. The last time her office attempted to look into gun registry spending was 2002 and the results were explosive. In fact, her team was forced to abandon...
September 29, 2005
The Globe & Mail reports that Tory polling shows the Liberal lead eroding once again, and with the NDP pulling out of the temporary alliance that kept the Martin government in power last May, autumn might see more than just leaves fall. The NDP fired the first shot yesterday, as Ed Broadbent scolded the Liberals for reneging on electoral reform and indicating that it didn't need to wait for the full Gomery report to come out next year to act: Talk of a snap fall election is creeping into the political chatter on Parliament Hill as the NDP strikes a harder tone toward the Liberals and the Conservatives say their internal polling has them within four percentage points of the Liberals. Veteran NDP MP Ed Broadbent accused the Liberals during Question Period yesterday of backing down on a promise to launch consultations this fall on electoral reform. "Is this not...
September 30, 2005
Newsbeat1 notes an interesting admission by a minister in the Candian governennt, run now by the Liberals, at least until scandal finally overtakes them. Scott Brison, the Minister of Public Works, appeared rattled enough during yesterday's Q&A period to admit that the RCMP has 'several' investigations into government malfeasance active at once in attempting to explain why the Mounties took dozens of boxes of materials out of his office this week: Mr. Jason Kenney (Calgary Southeast, CPC): Mr. Speaker, yesterday, in response to a question from me about the apparent seizure of documents from the Department of Public Works, the minister said, “I am informed that last week the RCMP contacted Public Works [which] provided an invoice to the RCMP...”. Is it the position of the minister that the invoice ran over 100 boxes long? Is it not true and will he not confirm that over 100 boxes of information...
October 6, 2005
Siri Agrell, writing for the Canadian site Maisonneuve, wonders why the Canadian blogosphere has not uncovered a major scandal or exposed political shenanigans in the national government. Agrell notes the long track record of American bloggers in uncovering journalistic malpractice and governmental stupidity, resulting in high-profile career damage to luminaries like Dan Rather, Trent Lott, Eason Jordan, and others. Agrell suggests that Canadian bloggers are "pussies", and uses me as an example: US political bloggers have appeared on the cover of the New York Times magazine and were accredited to cover the 2004 Republican and Democratic conventions. But in Canada, blogs remain the domain of pundits and policy wonks, an outlet for little more than chest-thumping, crystal-ball gazing, slander and self-promotion. Only one major Canadian political story broken by bloggers has made its way through to the mainstream media and into our consciousness: the leaking of Jean Brault's testimony to...
October 30, 2005
The long-awaited Gomery Inquiry report comes out on Tuesday, November 1st, and already the politicians have begun to believe that no one outside of Ottowa will notice or care. At least, that's what the Liberals hope and the Tories fear, as Canada's worst political corruption case seems destined to slide into oblivion due to scandal fatigue: Stephen Harper would have you think it's all up to Jack Layton to help him pull down the government next week after Mr. Justice John Gomery's sponsorship report. The New Democrats would rather you believe that Mr. Harper's the coward for promising not to force an election to be held over the Christmas holidays. And the Bloc Québécois says it would be happy to participate in an election at any time, before or after Judge Gomery's report. But behind the bravado, all three opposition parties privately suggest that no one really wants to pull...
November 2, 2005
Yesterday's big news in Canada came not from Parliament barring doors, as did its American counterpart, but from the release of the long-awaited Gomery Report. Lengthy, detailed, and detached, its style appears more scholarly than accusatory, and almost seems designed to moderate calls for justice into points of mildly interesting historical review. The facts, however, completely the style. Gomery accuses people at the highest levels of the former Chrétien Liberal government of malfeasance, theft, money laundering, and more. Gomery identified Jean Pelletier, Chrétien's chief of staff, and minister Alfonse Gagliano as the highest-ranking members of the government personally tied to the corruption, and blames Chrétien himself for allowing the pair to run the entire scam right out of the Prime Minister's office: # The Prime Minister's Office, via Jean Pelletier, and then-minister of public works, Alfonso Gagliano, directed the awarding of contracts through the Sponsorship Program – bypassing normal departmental...
November 4, 2005
Now that the other Gomery Inquiry shoe has dropped on the Liberal Party, the Canadian electorate has begun to deliver its own verdict on the corruption that rose to the highest levels of government. Fresh polling by the Global National and Ipsos shows that the Liberals have lost seven points almost overnight and that their main rivals, the Tories of the CPC, have picked up four and now find themselves in a virtual dead heat (via Newsbeat1): While Federal NDP leader Jack Layton flirts with the possibility of pushing a Christmas election, an exclusive Global National/Ipsos Reid poll shows the Liberals taking a heavy beating in popularity, dropping seven per cent since the Gomery Report was released Tuesday. ... According to the poll national vote support for each major Federal party current sits at: • 31% for Paul Martin and the Liberals (-7 points) • 30% for Stephen Harper and...
November 8, 2005
The Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, drew a line in the sand today and dared Jack Layton to finally push the Martin executive over it. Harper told Canadian journalists that he would not allow the NDP to use the Tories as a "bargaining chip" to extort a better deal on health care from the Liberals and PM Paul Martin, while Layton continued to stall on whether he would support an explicit no-confidence vote early in the next session of Parliament: During Tuesday's speech — a campaign-style address which focused mainly on Liberal shortcomings and the findings of the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal — Mr. Harper noted that his party had tried to defeat the Liberals in the spring. He said that effort was born out of concern over revelations at the Gomery commission but was ultimately unsuccessful because the NDP struck a deal with the Liberals. Right now, he...
November 10, 2005
Paul Martin pulled out Santa Claus as a reason to avoid a no-confidence motion this month in the Commons and to save his shaky grip on power for at least another two months. Meanwhile, the NDP and the Tories came closer to agreeing on a strategy that will guarantee an election in the winter that should closely follow the release of the second Gomery report: Mr. Martin said he didn't understand the current rush for an election. Mr. Martin has promised to call an election within 30 days of the release of the final report from Judge Gomery on the sponsorship scandal. That report is due in February. He also said Canadians don't want a Christmas election. "You know, they want to see Santa Claus, they don't want to see politicians," Mr. Martin said. ... Conservative Leader Stephen Harper told reporters on Wednesday it was now clear that any agreement...
November 13, 2005
Events have moved quickly this weekend in Ottawa. The Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois finally reached an agreement with the NDP to force elections out of Paul Martin and the Liberals by demanding a January 20th poll. The Liberals, apparently believing that the three parties were bluffing about putting up a no-confidence vote that would create an unpopular holiday-season election, refused to come to that agreement -- and the Tory/NDP/BQ coalition have shown their hand: The Liberals rejected an ultimatum posed by the opposition parties Sunday that would either see the Prime Minister agree to an election call in January or face a non-confidence motion that could topple his government next week. Liberal House Leader Tony Valeri told reporters Sunday evening in Toronto the government would not agree to call an election in January. ... Mr. Valeri challenged the opposition parties to put forth a non-confidence motion if they no longer...
November 14, 2005
In a stunning display of sheer cynicism, the Liberals have now decided to offer a budget bill with a number of tax cuts in order to dare the three opposition parties to torpedo it for their no-confidence motion. Martin, who last avoided a no-confidence loss by coughing up $5 billion for NDP programs last spring, all of a sudden has more cash to spare for Canadians as long as they keep him in power: The federal government unveiled $39-billion in tax cuts and spending Monday in a mini-budget whose life expectancy could be measured in days as opposition parties threaten to force an election within a week. The document, released by Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, also includes a heavy emphasis on reducing Canadians' anxiety about their economic future by investing billions in post-secondary education and work training programs while making cuts to corporate taxes. ... "It's about people living fulfilling...
November 16, 2005
On the cusp of a no-confidence motion, the Liberal Party faces an increasingly hostile political environment, a new poll by SES research indicates. The Liberals have lost ground across the entire nation, both in total and within each region, with most of the gains going to the NDP (via Newsbeat1). They now lead the Conservatives by only a six-point margin, down by half in three weeks (Oct 27 poll in parentheses): Liberal: 34% (40%) CPC: 28% (28%) NDP: 20% (15%) BQ: 14% (12%) Even in the east, where the Liberals enjoyed a majority three weeks ago, their numbers have slipped dramatically: Liberal: 43% (57%) CPC: 35% (26%) NDP: 17% (14%) BQ: N/A (N/A) Looks like an excellent time to hold an election, if these numbers and trends continue to hold up....
November 17, 2005
Despite having reached an agreement with Jack Layton and the NDP to wait for November 28th to attempt a no-confidence motion, Conservatives may try to push the Martin government out next week if Liberals try to pass any tax-relief legislation through the Commons: The electoral gamesmanship on Parliament Hill has taken yet another turn, with Conservative Deputy Leader Peter MacKay hinting his party could try to bring down the minority Liberals a week earlier than previously anticipated. ... Conservative Leader Stephen Harper made it clear Wednesday he was setting his sights on Nov. 28 as the date to bring down the government, sparking an election campaign that would run through Christmas. On Thursday, however, Liberal House leader Tony Valeri signalled that he could call for votes next week on a series of motions to implement tax cuts and other measures arising from Finance Minister Ralph Goodale's recent mini-budget. Layton wants...
November 22, 2005
Instead of the expected no-confidence vote on an appropriation bill yesterday, the three Canadian opposition parties in Parliament joined to pass a bill urging February elections, offering one last opportunity to compromise on the fate of the government. Despite easily losing the vote, PM Paul Martin refused to agree to the conditions of the non-binding bill: Oposition parties easily overpowered the government 167-129 Monday night in a vote on a non-binding motion calling for a Feb. 13 election. The Liberals dismissed the opposition motion as a publicity stunt and prepared furiously for the more decisive showdown ahead. Instead of working within the offered compromise, which would allow the Commons to continue working on the tax breaks promised by the Liberals and the spending bills needed to make all of the Ottawa politicians look good, the Liberals insist on making all such legislation hostage to the no-confidence vote. "Canadians will be...
November 23, 2005
While the Liberal government spent the day trying to pass as much legislation as possible while it still holds the reins, the three Canadian opposition parties unveiled the no-confidence motion that will dethrone Paul Martin and the Grits. The motion, which appears certain to pass tomorrow, will take down a minority government on a pure no-confidence motion for the first time in over a century: The minority Liberal government will be slapped with a rare and ignominious distinction Thursday when its opponents table a non-confidence motion that will all but certainly trigger an election campaign within days. The Liberals would be the first minority government in at least a century to collapse on a stand-alone motion of censure, said a leading constitutional expert. The Opposition Conservatives had prepared a long, stinging condemnation that alluded to corruption, scandal and gross abuse of public funds. But various sources said opposition parties have...
November 24, 2005
The Canadian Parliament has taken up the no-confidence motion that threatens to topple the Martin executive and the Liberal grip on power after months of breath-holding following the Adscam investigation. The debate swings from banal to enlightening; the Liberals have attacked the Tories as unpatriotic for working with Bloc Quebecois, and the opposition parties have attacked the Grits for all sorts of policy differences -- a mistake, given the obvious target of corruption which should remain a focus. Jack Layton started well, but sounds more like MoveOn; anti-Americanism and attacks on George Bush peppering his speech. One great response to the catcalls coming from the Grit bench: "They will have their chance to explain themselves to the Canadian people soon enough." He committed the NDP to the no-confidence motion, however, saying "Enough is enough." I expect a vote later this morning, or perhaps in the afternoon. Keep an eye on...
November 25, 2005
It's no secret that PM Paul Martin played Monty Hall most of this year to keep his minority Liberal government from falling after the exposure of Adscam. A 5$ billion deal for the NDP last spring kept Jack Layton temporarily on Martin's good side, and lately the Liberals have tried using the same tactic with the Canadian electorate at large. Scott Deveau at the G&M takes a look at the largesse offered by the Grits in a panicked attempt to stave off a no-confidence motion this session: With an election pending, the government has given new meaning to term Liberal spending. It all started with the mini-budget released Nov. 14, which promised wide-ranging tax cuts and spending across most sectors. In addition to another Air India inquiry and reforms to income trusts, there have been so many spending promises it's been hard to keep track. The G&M list takes a...
November 26, 2005
With a no-confidence motion all but assured of passage on Monday, the Liberals had a choice as to how they would conduct their last days at the reins of power. They could demonstrate a steady and confident hand on the till, governing responsibly until the last possible moment -- or they could turn the Commons into an Ottawa bazaar in which every bill that could suck up to some small constituency gets tabled despite the fact that it will not survive to a vote. To their shame, the Martin-led Liberals chose the latter course, one that has even the notoriously biased media and punditry scratching their heads: With possibly 72 hours left in the life of their minority government, the Paul Martin Liberals introduced legislation Friday meant to crack down on gun violence and ban the bulk export of prescription drugs to the United States. The timing of both measures,...
November 27, 2005
Election polling by the Canadian media has shown a consistent lag of six to ten points between the Liberals and the Conservatives over the past several months. Many CQ readers and I have noted the small sample sizes used in these polls and some other independent efforts that have cast some doubt on those results. Now CQ reader Mark C. in Canada has found a substantial polling effort by Robbins Research, on behalf of a "US Corporation", that shows the Tories pulling into a dead heat with the Grits on one of the largest sample sizes used in political polling: A representative sample of 18,443 Canadians between November 11th and 16th, 2005. This survey features a margin of error of 2.15%, 19 times out of 20 @ 98% competency. This poll was paid for by a U.S. company doing business in Canada. Question #1 At this moment which of the...
November 28, 2005
The Canadian opposition wants an independent investigation into the Finance Ministry after a spike in trading for trusts occurred just as the government was expected to announce new policies governing trusts and their tax liabilities. The call for investigations came from both the Conservatives and the NDP: As federal politicians prepare to hit the campaign trail, the Conservatives and NDP are calling for investigations of alleged insider trading arising from tax policy announcements by Finance Minister Ralph Goodale. The Tories said Sunday they are writing to the Ontario Securities Commission to demand an inquiry, while the New Democrats want the matter turned over to the RCMP. At issue are events last Wednesday, when there was a spike in trading in income trust units amid speculation that Mr. Goodale was going to change the tax rules that applied to them. In fact, he left the trust rules unchanged. But he did...