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Feb. 9, 2004. 08:41 AM
Auditor's report to name names
SUSAN DELACOURT
OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
OTTAWA - The long-awaited auditor-general's report on federal advertising and sponsorship scandals in Quebec — due to land with a bang in Ottawa tomorrow — will come down hardest on the people behind the abuses, not the system, government sources say.
Sources also say the official government response to Auditor-General Sheila Fraser's report, which will also be released tomorrow within the text of the document, is heavy on concrete, remedial action, to be taken immediately on several fronts.
Already, the Martin government's first act in office in December was the cancellation of the $40 million annual advertising and sponsorship program, which has been the subject of an ongoing RCMP investigation. The police investigation has resulted in several fraud charges being laid against Montreal advertising companies and business people.
Fraser first looked into the sponsorship program in the spring of 2002 and said federal officials broke "just about every rule in the book" in the handling of the contracts and the RCMP was called in.
More charges and a bigger crackdown are possible after tomorrow's report.
"If it's as explosive as everybody seems to think, we'll have to address it directly," Liberal MP John Godfrey said on CTV's Question Period yesterday.
Godfrey, who serves as a parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Paul Martin, acknowledged that the Liberals will "take a lot of heat" from Fraser's report but will then "get on with implementing the reforms which the auditor-general suggests."
Conservative MP John Williams said he is not surprised the auditor-general is focusing more on people in her report.
"This was a people-driven thing," he said. "It wasn't the system."
The report's most devastating impact could come if it attempts to unravel alleged connections between Liberal party operations and abuses of the ad and sponsorship program.
Those were under the ultimate watch of former prime minister Jean Chrétien and his Quebec loyalists.
Between 1997 and 2003, the combined money spent by the ad and sponsorship program — designed to raise the federal profile in Quebec following the 1995 sovereignty referendum — was more than $1 billion.
Williams (St. Albert) has been pursuing the controversy for several years and says he received an anonymous tip more than a year ago alleging the government program had been used to pay outstanding Liberal debts from the 1997 election. He took the tip so seriously he sent it to the RCMP, who told him it would be followed up.
"The way I heard it, is that in the 1997 election, a lot of these (advertising) companies ... pretty well turned their staffs over to the Liberal Party of Canada ... and after it was all over, there was no money to pay them," Williams said in an interview yesterday. "So then they (the government) turned around and gave these companies money for reports that never existed."
"I'm comparing this to the dirty-tricks campaign in Watergate," Williams said, in reference to the early-1970s scandal that felled U.S. president Richard Nixon when it was revealed how much the highest office in that land was being used to wage political battles.
Williams said he received the tip in a plain, brown envelope at his office, around the summer of 2002, while the Commons public works committee was holding hearings into the ad and sponsorship program. The report could take the heat off Martin and his team, who are expected to do all they can to portray the report's explosive findings as the product of a Liberal style of governing that is already receding into history.
Martin and his new government will argue that the clean sweep has already begun, with the radical changing of the Liberal guard from Chrétien's 10 years in office.
Martin, whose relationship with Chrétien was distant and tense throughout most of those years, has said this distance applied to political dealings in the two men's home province as well.
Martin has also already started to bring on a new Quebec team of his own, including former Bloc Québécois MP and talk-show host Jean Lapierre, who will be Martin's Quebec lieutenant if he wins a seat in the next election.
Though people inside government are reluctant to pinpoint which individuals are possibly going to be named in the report, all eyes will be shifting to Denmark tomorrow to see whether Alfonso Gagliano is ousted from his ambassador's post as a result of the report's findings.
Gagliano, a former public works minister, was posted to Denmark by Chrétien in January, 2002, just as he was facing increasing heat for allegedly interfering in the work of crown corporations.
The public works department oversaw the advertising and sponsorship program, which was set up after the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum to increase the federal government's visibility in the province. Gagliano was Chrétien's close friend and Quebec lieutenant.
Gagliano was interviewed by the auditor-general several weeks ago. Reached by the Star's Les Whittington last week, Gagliano said he had no comment to offer on tomorrow's report.
The former public works minister may not be the only one on the hot seat. The auditor-general's investigation has stretched deep into the bureaucracy, political offices and to crown corporations headed by former Chrétien loyalists. Chrétien himself will be in China when the auditor-general tables her report in the Commons. The former prime minister is travelling on business with his son-in-law, André Desmarais, of Power Corp. of Montreal.
Across Ottawa, government ministers, MPs and aides are bracing themselves for a rough ride in the wake of the auditor-general's report.
Last week was already tumultuous with the opposition attacks on Martin's own ethics surrounding his old Canada Steamship Lines firm.
Senior government officials said on background yesterday: "With its response, the government will show that it is deadly serious in its determination to provide Canadians with a full accounting of what occurred and an equally persuasive assurance that it will not be permitted to happen again."
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Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Distribution, transmission or republication of any material from www.thestar.com is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. For information please contact us using our webmaster form. www.thestar.com online since 1996.
Feb. 9, 2004. 08:41 AM
Auditor's report to name names
SUSAN DELACOURT
OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
OTTAWA - The long-awaited auditor-general's report on federal advertising and sponsorship scandals in Quebec — due to land with a bang in Ottawa tomorrow — will come down hardest on the people behind the abuses, not the system, government sources say.
Sources also say the official government response to Auditor-General Sheila Fraser's report, which will also be released tomorrow within the text of the document, is heavy on concrete, remedial action, to be taken immediately on several fronts.
Already, the Martin government's first act in office in December was the cancellation of the $40 million annual advertising and sponsorship program, which has been the subject of an ongoing RCMP investigation. The police investigation has resulted in several fraud charges being laid against Montreal advertising companies and business people.
Fraser first looked into the sponsorship program in the spring of 2002 and said federal officials broke "just about every rule in the book" in the handling of the contracts and the RCMP was called in.
More charges and a bigger crackdown are possible after tomorrow's report.
"If it's as explosive as everybody seems to think, we'll have to address it directly," Liberal MP John Godfrey said on CTV's Question Period yesterday.
Godfrey, who serves as a parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Paul Martin, acknowledged that the Liberals will "take a lot of heat" from Fraser's report but will then "get on with implementing the reforms which the auditor-general suggests."
Conservative MP John Williams said he is not surprised the auditor-general is focusing more on people in her report.
"This was a people-driven thing," he said. "It wasn't the system."
The report's most devastating impact could come if it attempts to unravel alleged connections between Liberal party operations and abuses of the ad and sponsorship program.
Those were under the ultimate watch of former prime minister Jean Chrétien and his Quebec loyalists.
Between 1997 and 2003, the combined money spent by the ad and sponsorship program — designed to raise the federal profile in Quebec following the 1995 sovereignty referendum — was more than $1 billion.
Williams (St. Albert) has been pursuing the controversy for several years and says he received an anonymous tip more than a year ago alleging the government program had been used to pay outstanding Liberal debts from the 1997 election. He took the tip so seriously he sent it to the RCMP, who told him it would be followed up.
"The way I heard it, is that in the 1997 election, a lot of these (advertising) companies ... pretty well turned their staffs over to the Liberal Party of Canada ... and after it was all over, there was no money to pay them," Williams said in an interview yesterday. "So then they (the government) turned around and gave these companies money for reports that never existed."
"I'm comparing this to the dirty-tricks campaign in Watergate," Williams said, in reference to the early-1970s scandal that felled U.S. president Richard Nixon when it was revealed how much the highest office in that land was being used to wage political battles.
Williams said he received the tip in a plain, brown envelope at his office, around the summer of 2002, while the Commons public works committee was holding hearings into the ad and sponsorship program. The report could take the heat off Martin and his team, who are expected to do all they can to portray the report's explosive findings as the product of a Liberal style of governing that is already receding into history.
Martin and his new government will argue that the clean sweep has already begun, with the radical changing of the Liberal guard from Chrétien's 10 years in office.
Martin, whose relationship with Chrétien was distant and tense throughout most of those years, has said this distance applied to political dealings in the two men's home province as well.
Martin has also already started to bring on a new Quebec team of his own, including former Bloc Québécois MP and talk-show host Jean Lapierre, who will be Martin's Quebec lieutenant if he wins a seat in the next election.
Though people inside government are reluctant to pinpoint which individuals are possibly going to be named in the report, all eyes will be shifting to Denmark tomorrow to see whether Alfonso Gagliano is ousted from his ambassador's post as a result of the report's findings.
Gagliano, a former public works minister, was posted to Denmark by Chrétien in January, 2002, just as he was facing increasing heat for allegedly interfering in the work of crown corporations.
The public works department oversaw the advertising and sponsorship program, which was set up after the 1995 Quebec sovereignty referendum to increase the federal government's visibility in the province. Gagliano was Chrétien's close friend and Quebec lieutenant.
Gagliano was interviewed by the auditor-general several weeks ago. Reached by the Star's Les Whittington last week, Gagliano said he had no comment to offer on tomorrow's report.
The former public works minister may not be the only one on the hot seat. The auditor-general's investigation has stretched deep into the bureaucracy, political offices and to crown corporations headed by former Chrétien loyalists. Chrétien himself will be in China when the auditor-general tables her report in the Commons. The former prime minister is travelling on business with his son-in-law, André Desmarais, of Power Corp. of Montreal.
Across Ottawa, government ministers, MPs and aides are bracing themselves for a rough ride in the wake of the auditor-general's report.
Last week was already tumultuous with the opposition attacks on Martin's own ethics surrounding his old Canada Steamship Lines firm.
Senior government officials said on background yesterday: "With its response, the government will show that it is deadly serious in its determination to provide Canadians with a full accounting of what occurred and an equally persuasive assurance that it will not be permitted to happen again."
› Get 50% off home delivery of the Toronto Star.
FAQs| Site Map| Privacy Policy| Webmaster| Subscribe| My Subscription
Home| GTA| Business| Waymoresports| A&E| Life
Legal Notice: Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Distribution, transmission or republication of any material from www.thestar.com is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. For information please contact us using our webmaster form. www.thestar.com online since 1996.