Auditor's report to name names-- big bomb for Martin

[afransen TO]

Only the former MP Alfonso Gagliano was named... people knew he was a crook a couple of years ago, which is what led to him being shipping off to Denmark. It is Chretien's fault for not firing him outright, even if he is a personal friend.

I only wonder what the Danes are thinking right now. I wouldn't want Canada to be a dumping ground for foreign sleazebags. Remember that Russian diplomat who killed two Ottawa women who were out walking their dogs after he decided to drive drunk. Diplomatic immunity is a mixed blessing.

 

[Are Be]

Sheila Fraser's guide to abuse of the system


UPDATED AT 12:44 AM EST &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2004

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Auditor-General Sheila Fraser has a way with a punchy quote. Her 2002 interim report on contracts between the federal Department of Public Works and the communications agency Groupaction Marketing said that "senior public servants broke just about every rule in the book." Yesterday, in a scathing indictment of the whole handling of sponsorship and advertising dollars between 1997 and 2001, Ms. Fraser said "the federal government ran the sponsorship program in a way that showed little regard for Parliament, the Financial Administration Act, contracting rules and regulations, transparency and value for money."

What an abysmal trip this has been. Prime minister Jean Chrétien, after the near-defeat of the federalist forces in the 1995 Quebec referendum, mounted a campaign to wave the Canadian flag in that province and created a new branch of Public Works to do so -- the Communications Co-ordination Services Branch (CCSB). From 1997 until last year, the government spent $150-million at 1,987 events, mainly in Quebec, and paid another $100-million in production fees and commissions to communications agencies to handle everything. The government knew the main agencies well; they had donated large sums to the Liberal Party.

Mr. Chrétien was so committed to this outpouring of money that, when reporters asked him in 2002 about the department's abuses, he indignantly asked why they were fretting that "a few million dollars . . . might have been stolen" when the sponsorships were (supposedly) winning the hearts of Quebeckers. Rather than make an example of Alfonso Gagliano, the minister who ran Public Works during that period, Mr. Chrétien appointed him ambassador to Denmark and stacked a Commons committee so that it wouldn't ask Mr. Gagliano any embarrassing questions.

Well, Mr. Chrétien is gone. His successor, Paul Martin, ended the sponsorship program two months ago and yesterday ordered Mr. Gagliano home. Despite serving as finance minister during those years, Mr. Martin has turned cartwheels to distance himself from the government that permitted the abuses. "I had no idea what was going on here," he said yesterday, making one wonder whether he read the news. "I didn't know anything about it." Ms. Fraser, to her infinite credit, has devoted three hard-hitting chapters of her latest annual report to what went wrong, and why it is so important to prevent a recurrence.

She makes it clear that Public Works was not a monolith. The "vast majority" of public servants there perform their jobs conscientiously. But the awarding of sponsorship and advertising dollars by CCSB was another story. Particularly egregious was its payment of sponsorship money to Crown corporations, including Via Rail, the Business Development Bank of Canada and the RCMP. It used "multiple transactions with multiple companies, artificial invoices and contracts, or no written contracts at all" -- apparently to disguise who was paying the money and why. How damning an indictment is that of the department's mindset: that it knew what it was doing was wrong and didn't care.

The managers of the sponsorship program, with authority delegated by the minister through the deputy minister, were a law unto themselves. Not only did they break the government's contracting rules, but the violations were not "detected, prevented [or] reported for over four years because of the almost total collapse of oversight mechanisms and essential controls." The public servants responsible for selecting ad agencies also broke the rules. "In some cases, we could find no evidence that a selection process was conducted at all."

The government has said it will reform its ways. But then, the Chrétien Liberals came into power a decade ago assuring Canadians that they would disown the patronage practices of Brian Mulroney's Conservatives. There is a particularly distressing line in Ms. Fraser's report: Even as of its writing, "the [Public Works] Department has not provided us with an adequate explanation for the almost complete collapse of its essential controls" in managing the sponsorship program.

Without that explanation, little can go forward. That's why a public inquiry into this mess is needed. Mr. Martin called one yesterday. Good.



© 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

[Are Be]

&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp
Feb. 12, 2004. 01:00 AM
Editorial: Chrétien's 'legacy' is Martin's test


During the 1993 election campaign, Jean Chrétien observed with devastating simplicity, "You cannot divorce yourself from your record."

He was reminding voters that Kim Campbell, then prime minister, could not shrug off her Conservative government's years of corruption and mismanagement under her predecessor, Brian Mulroney.

How true that lesson remains today as the Liberals find themselves frantically scrambling to outrun their own recent past.

And how galling, considering Chrétien's pledge to change the way Ottawa did business. He was to lead a squeaky-clean government that would "return honesty and integrity to the land." He retired from politics late last year with his promise unfulfilled and his much-vaunted ethics package dead on the order paper, a decade after he promised to bring it in.

With Auditor-General Sheila Fraser's devastating indictment this week of the $250-million federal sponsorship fiasco, the tarnish from Chrétien's sullied legacy is rubbing off on what his successor, Prime Minister Paul Martin, had hoped would be a shiny new beginning.

Fraser's report found the public works department systematically funnelled funds from a national-unity program to a select group of businesses from 1997 to 2003. As originally conceived, the program was a legitimate program to raise Ottawa's profile in Quebec after the near-disastrous 1995 sovereignty referendum. In practice, it degenerated into a slush fund for Liberal friends who were paid needless commissions.

Saving the country is certainly a worthy idea, but Fraser rightly points out that the results don't always justify the means.

It's tempting for Liberals to toss blame at Chrétien's recently departed regime, ignoring a basic fact: They have a new leader, but they are the same gang on whose watch this mess occurred.

Nor can Martin duck all responsibility. The man who was finance minister for nine years says he was in the dark about a "very sophisticated cover-up." That may be so, but it is up to him to remedy this stunning lapse.

Neither the finance department nor Treasury Board appears to have had any oversight on the sponsorship funds, which were doled out by a group of a dozen or so people in public works. Fraser finds it hard to fathom, as we do, that such flagrant abuse of the system went on for years, involving crown corporations and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Martin has started to act. He killed the sponsorship program the day he became prime minister. He has ordered a judicial inquiry into the scandal, promised legislation to protect whistle-blowers and fired former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano as ambassador to Denmark.

But why haven't more heads rolled? Top bureaucrats who ran this operation should be fired. Obviously a culture exists deep within government that gives people in positions of power the misguided sense of entitlement that they can ignore all the rules — financial, ethical or otherwise.

Martin must address the broader issues of ministerial responsibility and restore a commitment to ethical conduct at all levels of government. Only then can he begin to staunch the spread of this scandal's stain.

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[Are Be]

Unanswered questions in the Liberal scandal


UPDATED AT 11:30 AM EST &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Thursday, Feb. 12, 2004

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Auditor-General Sheila Fraser's report on the federal government's scandal-plagued sponsorship program is far from the end of the affair. Rather, it is only the beginning -- the beginning of a thorough investigation into how the program degenerated into a morass of fake invoices and slush-fund payments, and who exactly was responsible.

Prime Minister Paul Martin and his government have done the right thing by facing the scandal head on and calling for an inquiry, and they deserve credit for doing so. But they shouldn't spend too much time patting themselves on the back. There are plenty of unanswered questions, and they go to the heart of the Liberal Party.

Mr. Martin's team has tried to paint the scandal as the product of a previous regime, which is true to some extent. But the current administration is made up of senior Liberals, just as the last one was, and in many cases they are the same people. Mr. Martin himself was a senior member of the previous government. Not only was he finance minister, but he sat on the Treasury Board, which oversaw all government spending. He was also a member of the Quebec caucus, and therefore had a special interest in how the government was dealing with the separatist threat, which was the excuse for the Public Works sponsorship program and the payments made under it.

Mr. Martin says he knew nothing of these payments. But are there not things he should have known? Did he and others in the government deliberately shy away from things they should have inquired about? Did he and others in the government not have a duty to the country and to the taxpayers who have wasted more than $100-million?

These are some of the questions an inquiry must ask. Another is where that $100-million actually wound up. It seems hard to believe that the government funnelled such a massive sum to half a dozen Quebec-based communications agencies simply because they were faithful Liberals, or that it was simply "misadministration," as Health Minister Pierre Pettigrew described it.

Was there some darker purpose behind those payments? For example, was there "tollgating" going on, in which money was routed to companies in return for donations to the party? Were funds laundered through advertising agencies so that the party could direct them to other things?

A related question is who ultimately directed the payments. Former prime minister Jean Chrétien has already shown a cavalier attitude toward the missing sponsorship money, saying "a few million dollars" stolen is a small price to pay for the benefits of the program (whatever those were). How much did Mr. Chrétien know about the nature of the program and where the money was being directed -- and what other senior ministers were involved? It defies belief that Alfonso Gagliano, minister of public works at the time, was the sole architect of the scandal. As Ms. Fraser said: "I find it hard to believe, quite frankly, that this could have gone on for so long and that people didn't, at a minimum, have suspicions."

If nothing else, the sponsorship scandal is yet another illustration of the hazards of unchallenged single-party rule, the kind Canada has suffered under for a decade. Secure in the knowledge that it was virtually invincible, the Chrétien government clearly felt free to indulge in the excesses that come with a surfeit of power. The results are all around us: the Human Resources Development debacle, the gun registry overruns and now the sponsorship scandal.

How far did the rot extend, and who encouraged it? The answers might prove very uncomfortable, not just for Mr. Chrétien, who has plenty to answer for, but for Mr. Martin and others as well.



© 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

[nicetommy2002]

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.

 

[Floodland]

Quite simply Canada is turning into a banana republic, but Canadians deserve this. Where are the protests at the Dundas Square?

 

[Are Be]

Why should I pay money to have people kick me in the balls if I can just have the Liberals tax me and use my tax dollars to kick me in the balls?
You have to give the Liberals credit: They are equal oppertunity ball kickers!




Feb. 12, 2004. 01:00 AM
Editorial: Martin's little EI scam


While Paul Martin tries to distance himself from the litany of scandals Auditor-General Sheila Fraser listed Tuesday, he can't evade responsibility for one scam she highlighted. Because he started it.

We are referring to his plundering of the Employment Insurance Account.

The money Ottawa collects from workers in the form of EI premiums to protect them from unemployment goes into this account. And the benefits it pays to workers who lose their jobs comes out of this account.

In principle, it should break even every year. In practice, Ottawa is to achieve an over-all balance between EI premiums and benefits over the business cycle, which requires it maintain a $15 billion cushion in the account to get it through lean years.

But Martin and John Manley, his successor as finance minister, caused the surplus to rise far beyond $15 billion by keeping premiums higher than they needed to be. The surplus hit $44 billion last year, and Fraser says it's still on the rise.

Martin and Manley confiscated the entire $44 billion from EI, first to reduce Ottawa's over-all budget deficit, and then to enlarge its budget surpluses, although filling Ottawa's coffers was never the purpose of EI.

In effect, they slapped a regressive, $30 billion payroll surtax on employers and employees to reduce deficits and debt, while letting the self-employed and coupon clippers off scot-free.

And in the bargain, they gave the unemployed a slap in the face.

Fraser reports that 65 per cent of those seeking help with EI questions from government telephone call centres in 2002/03 got a busy signal.

Also, she found the quality of service varied dramatically across regions. In some areas, she says, "(service) was significantly and chronically below performance targets."

So, after paying far too much money for some modest protection against unemployment, the majority got a final insult when they tried to collect. That's one fiasco Martin can't disavow.

› Get 50% off home delivery of the Toronto Star.
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Home| GTA| Business| Waymoresports| A&E| Life
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[nicetommy2002]

The protests and uproars should have been happening when Chretien was at the helm. But they didn't. I hope Martin doesn't pay for Chretien's follies. Anyways, there seems to be a teflon coating on anything with the Liberal name attached to it.

Look at Dalton. He hasn't done anything since being elected, except yap about the deficit [which he already knew about] The Unions are now afraid he is considering going back to the Rae Days again. What a surprise. I will laugh my ass of if he does that. Especially considering the high number of NDP'ers who abandoned their man Hampton, and voted for Dalton just to oust Eves.

 

[nicetommy2002]

"nicetommy2002 raised a very, very good point!!! VERY WELL DONE!! Very good point!"

I was hoping my posting of the copyright would make you chuckle, AreBe. LOL.

 

[Are Be]

OK, then :lol !
In any event, you raise a good point! Copyright is a big deal, and we should treat it as such.

Pardon me as I just can't take my dancing shoes off!



Thu, February 12, 2004

Martin was told: MPs
Sounded alarm on spending
By SUN MEDIA

OTTAWA -- Quebec Liberal MPs say they raised red flags about the huge sponsorship commissions being raked in by ad agencies as far back as 1999. Montreal MP Marlene Jennings said she brought up the issue in caucus -- which was attended by then-finance minister Paul Martin -- even before the 1999 internal audit.

'ASKING QUESTIONS'

"I was asking questions of why there were commissions, because the companies weren't doing anything," Jennings said. "It's my sincere conviction that it's precisely because ordinary MPs were asking questions that an internal audit was conducted of the program."

Quebec MP George Farah said the alarm was sounded in the Liberal weekly caucus meeting, and pressure from MPs led to former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano being shuffled to Denmark.

Farah thought a review of all ad contracts launched by Gagliano's successor, Ralph Goodale, was an adequate response at the time to the problems uncovered by internal audits.

"At that time I thought it was OK, but two years later I could say we could have done more," Farah said.

Privy Council President Denis Coderre said he doesn't remember whether the Quebec caucus discussed the large commissions being billed by Montreal ad firms.

"I don't want to invent an answer about what happened four years ago. I was in sports at that time, I think. I was on the field," he said.

NDP MP Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg-Transcona) accused the Grits of trying to shift the blame from the Liberal party to public servants.

"Just because it's the year of the monkey doesn't mean that people are going to fall for this hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil on the part of the Liberals."

"I'm singing in the rain .. Just singing in the rain! What a glorious feeling, I'm happy again" --decidedly the Clockwork Orange version

 

[Are Be]

One PM's 'small stuff' is another PM's crisis

By LAWRENCE MARTIN

UPDATED AT 9:56 PM EST &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Thursday, Feb. 12, 2004

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'Take the sponsorship program," Jean Chrétien was saying, while seated in his living room at 24 Sussex Dr. some months ago. "You know, that was a great, successful program."

The sovereignty movement was in the dumps, he went on to say. All that money spent on boosting the federal presence in Quebec sure paid off.

As for the millions of taxpayer dollars disappearing into the pockets of good Liberals, well, that was insignificant. "If people committed mistakes in the process, too bad," said the prime minister. "But if we had not been present, you know, you might have had a lot of stuff to write today, rather than just fool around with small stuff."

Small stuff? If the royal commission Paul Martin has appointed gets anywhere near the truth of the matter, the small stuff could be more devastating for the Liberal Party than anything that has ever hit it.

The story of the manipulation of the public purse for political ends goes far beyond the sponsorship program. Consider the travesty at the Business Development Bank and the many sordid chapters in the Shawinigate controversy, or the boondoggle at Human Resources Development Canada, or the little-noticed Pierre Corbeil affair, wherein the Liberals appeared to be operating a kickback network in Quebec.

None of them have been fully examined. The whole underbelly of the Liberal patronage system is now at risk of being torn open. There are even indications, as the Auditor-General's report suggests, of police complicity in some of the handy work.

Ethics was always the Achilles heel of the Chrétien government. For Mr. Chrétien -- the Northern Noriega, as he was once half-jokingly described -- the end justified the means. As a defiant kid, he was always prepared to break the rules in order to get his way. As prime minister, he ruled with an iron fist. His attitude was, "I'll get what I want, and damn the torpedoes." How was he able to get away with it for so long?

Equipped with so much power, those close to Mr. Chrétien could bend the system to his will, knowing he would approve. If someone got in his way he could take them out, whether it was journalists reporting on Shawinigate (his office, I'm told, pushed for my dismissal from one job) or public officials who sought to challenge him. The vendetta campaign by Chrétien supporters against François Beaudoin, the head of the Business Development Bank who wasn't co-operating with Mr. Chrétien on the Auberge Grand-Mère file, was revealed in a Quebec Superior Court session last week.

It is a severe indictment.

When in trouble, Mr. Chrétien didn't have to worry because he had his bomb defuser, ethics counsellor Howard Wilson, at the ready.

Mr. Chrétien had other things going for him. The country was doing well. He was winning elections, the economy was good, Quebec was quiet, his decision on the war was supported. By comparison, the ethical shenanigans did appear small, and he was able to leave office in November to reasonably good reviews.

He was deemed one of the luckiest prime ministers of all time. Then, as always happens, luck ran out.

I bumped into him last week, before he went to China. He was in good spirits, talking about how, in due course, he would be writing his memoirs.

I mentioned, somewhat light-heartedly, reports of his government giving Paul Martin's shipping company $161-million. With a suspicious glimmer in his eye, Mr. Chrétien said: "Yeh, $161-million. But, you know, I can't talk about politics. I'm out of it."

No, he isn't. Not with the small stuff coming back to haunt him. And unlike when he was in power, now he is helpless to control the outcome.

Paul Martin could have done Mr. Chrétien and the Liberal Party an enormous favour by not calling the royal commission. The Grits could probably have gotten away with just a parliamentary committee examining the affair, and a continuing police investigation. But the new Prime Minister was not about to do that.

Now Mr. Martin, who deserves some credit for wanting to come clean, has opened the door to a potential hellstorm. If the terms of reference of the royal commission are broad enough, the truth that will emerge could inflict such damage on the integrity of the party that the Liberals may take years to recover.

lawrencemartin9@hotmail.com



© 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

[Are Be]

Liberals on defensive over letter to Martin
Photo: Jonathan Hayward/CP
Public Works Minister Stephen Owen responds to questions during Question Period on Friday.

By ALLISON DUNFIELD
Globe and Mail Update

POSTED AT 1:02 PM EST &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Friday, Feb. 13, 2004

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A letter sent to Paul Martin in early 2002 outlining concerns about the sponsorship program caused more uproar in the Commons Friday — a day after Mr. Martin said he was not aware of the gravity of the sponsorship scandal until months after the letter was sent.

The letter, sent to Mr. Martin in February, 2002, by the party's then-national policy chairman, Akaash Maharaj, asked Mr. Martin to look into rumours surrounding the sponsorship program and have them “nipped in the bud.â€

The letter said Mr. Martin was well-positioned to do so because he was the party's most senior Liberal in Quebec.

Mr. Martin said Thursday that he did not understand how widespread the problems in the program were until the first report on the matter by the Auditor-General was released in May, 2002. Before that, he said he had heard rumours and questions about the funnelling of $100-million in government funds to a handful of Liberal-friendly advertising firms in Quebec, but he was left out of the loop of former prime minister Jean Chrétien's government.

Opposition MPs argued during Question Period on Friday that the letter proved that Mr. Martin must have known about the funnelling of Liberal money earlier than May, 2002.

They argued that Mr. Martin put his personal ambition to become prime minister ahead of investigating the matter.

“True to form, he did nothing. He blamed an uneasy relationship with the former prime minister; in other words, he was competing for his boss's job,†Conservative Party MP Peter MacKay said. “Why was the Prime Minister's personal ambition ... put ahead of taxpayers' trust?â€

The Liberals countered that the letter was consistent with what Mr. Martin has been saying all along.

Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said that, as described by Mr. Martin on Thursday, the Prime Minister first realized the gravity of the situation in early 2002. Then, the letter was written by Mr. Maharaj in February, 2002, and following that, the scandal was referred to the Auditor-General for investigation in March, and she released her first report in May of that year.

“Obviously, that's completely consistent with what the Prime Minister described yesterday.â€

Bloc MP Monique Guay said that when the letter was sent, it was clear there was a misappropriation of public funds.

“He had the capacity to act. But he chose not to act. That means he was either complicit or guilty.â€

In the letter, Mr. Maharaj also asks Mr. Martin for a “fact-based reply†to his questions. The Conservatives asked whether Mr. Martin did in fact reply and asked that the reply be tabled in the House.

Public Works Minister Stephen Owen said he would look into the matter.

The report by the Auditor-General named former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano, and he has since been removed from his post as ambassador to Denmark.

Opposition MPs called on the government to remove others linked to Crown corporations that were implicated in the report, including Canada Post and Via Rail. The report says Via issued a false invoice to hide a transaction worth almost a million dollars.

The Tories asked why, if Mr. Gagliano was fired, the same treatment was not extended to Canada Post head André Ouellet, a former ministerial colleague of Mr. Chrétien's, and Jean Pelletier, Mr. Chrétien's former chief-of-staff and current chairman of Via Rail.

“The government has worked very assiduously on this file,†Mr. Goodale said, noting that Mr. Martin cancelled the sponsorship program in December and within minutes of the Auditor-General's report, issued a plan that included a a public inquiry and a public-accounts hearing.

Mr. Martin has agreed to appear before the committee or the inquiry and has said that the Crown corporations will also be called upon to “answer for their actions.â€

Later Friday, a list of names of the 14 so-called “rogue†senior bureaucrats from within the public works department's sponsorship program will likely be made public by the Auditor-General.

As well, Mr. Martin will hold a press conference at 3:45 EST where he is likely to face more grilling on the matter.



© 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

[Are Be]

Chrétien's friends warn of backlash

Canadian Press

POSTED AT 1:34 PM EST &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Friday, Feb. 13, 2004

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Ottawa — Jean Chrétien's friends will strike back with “every conceivable measure†at Prime Minister Paul Martin if he drags their old boss into the sponsorship scandal, one Chrétien loyalist warned Friday.

Some pockets of the Liberal party are reacting with fury to insinuations that Mr. Chrétien's inner circle is to blame for a scheme that bilked $100-million from the public purse.

And one top Chrétien loyalist hinted at a broad range of retaliatory measures, including possible legal action against Martin aides who anonymously spread rumours targeting the former prime minister.

“Every conceivable measure is possible,†said the Chrétien ally, who requested anonymity.

“You know him (Mr. Chrétien). He will defend his reputation, because he has a good reputation to defend. And all of us will defend his reputation because he — the man who called in the Auditor-General, the man who called in the RCMP — does not deserve to now be handed the blame.â€

The loyalist said Mr. Chrétien acted immediately to stop wrongdoing in the sponsorship program when it became apparent that it was being abused by Liberal-friendly ad firms.

The scheme was detailed in a devastating report this week by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser.

Aides to Mr. Martin reacted to the report by blaming the former prime minister's brand of politics for the scandal.

On Thursday, Mr. Martin praised his ex-boss as a man of integrity but added swiftly that he was kept out of the loop on the sponsorship program because he disagreed with Mr. Chrétien's approach to Quebec politics.

The Chrétien loyalist warned that he was not entirely satisfied when Mr. Martin repudiated the anonymous jabs from his aides.

“We would now hope he takes the steps to discipline the people spreading those sorts of lies and innuendo,†he said.

Then he warned of a potential repeat of a legal drama involving another former prime minister, Brian Mulroney, who sued the federal government and reached an out-of-court settlement in the Airbus affair.



© 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

[Are Be]

Martin burns Chrétien
ANALYSIS: It's open war now, JEFFREY SIMPSON writes, because the scandal just wouldn't go away

By JEFFREY SIMPSON

UPDATED AT 3:01 PM EST &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Friday, Feb. 13, 2004

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OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Paul Martin declared the equivalent of open political war yesterday on his predecessor, Jean Chrétien. Nothing like this has ever happened in Canadian politics.

Yesterday's developments combined long-simmering anger and a degree of political panic. The Martin government is being roasted for the Quebec sponsorships scandal. An election call is pending in about seven weeks.

Mr. Martin's initial defence of ignorance was being breached by a common-sense question: How could this Prime Minister, a former finance minister representing a Quebec riding, not have known a great deal about this sordid affair?

The question would not die, in the House or the media. But the Liberals had to make it die to respect the first rule of political survival: Protect the Prime Minister.

If protecting this Prime Minister meant he had to tarnish the previous one, so be it. After all, the two men were barely civil to each other before. They never will be again, not after yesterday.

Prime ministers have sometimes put distance between themselves and predecessors. They have made a public point of doing things differently. They might not even have liked their predecessors very much, or they may have fought with them for the leadership. But new leaders tried, in the interests of party unity, public decency and turning the page, to wrap disagreements in a gossamer of civility.

That a prime minister would urge a public inquiry to investigate the former prime minister's top advisers -- and those of his friends and former colleagues, whom he appointed to run Crown corporations -- is unprecedented. That is what Mr. Martin did yesterday.

To those who doubted whether he might fail to make heads roll at Crown corporations if abuse of public trust be found there, he replied by using one of prime minister Pierre Trudeau's famous quips about the War Measures Act: "Just watch me." Mr. Martin said he would testify before the inquiry if asked. The inference for his predecessor was clear.

The result could be that Mr. Chrétien will become the first Canadian prime minister to testify before a public inquiry to defend his conduct in office, just as British Prime Minister Tony Blair had to appear before the Hutton inquiry.

Those who thought the transfer of Liberal leadership would bury the hatchet between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were wrong. Mr. Martin banished almost all the Chrétienites from cabinet. He drove others out of politics. He sent one to New York as United Nations ambassador and suggested another become ambassador to Washington. He wanted none of them near the centre of power, to send a signal to Canadians that his government would be different.

Mr. Martin and his advisers, most of whom engineered his long and successful guerrilla campaign against Mr. Chrétien -- and who remain consumed by communications and politics -- are furious at what they consider the mess Mr. Chrétien left.

They accuse him of having prespent most of the federal surplus. They believe he did not act decisively in the Arar affair. They think he gratuitously soured Canada-U.S. relations. Worst of all, they have known for a long time that the Auditor-General's report was a political time bomb set to explode in Mr. Martin's face after Mr. Chrétien left office.

At first, Mr. Martin tried two sorts of damage control. The government adopted a tone of wounded virtue, established the public inquiry and sent the scandal to the public-accounts committee for study. Then the Prime Minister, who pronounced himself outraged by the scandal, tried to blame a group of civil servants and their minister of public works, Alfonso Gagliano, whom Mr. Chrétien appointed ambassador to Denmark. That didn't wash.

The opposition and media kept asking how Mr. Martin, a senior Quebec minister, could insist he knew nothing about the abuses the Auditor-General uncovered. Obviously alarmed by the continuous public fury, and worried about its impact on the Liberal Party's electoral fortunes, Mr. Martin turned on his predecessor.

At a hastily arranged press conference, Mr. Martin underlined repeatedly his previous disagreements with Mr. Chrétien over Quebec strategy. He painted himself as isolated from all Quebec files. He underscored their relationship's serious deterioration during his final years as finance minister. Normally, a successor would seek to let bygones be bygones. Mr. Martin deliberately wanted those bygones remembered.

Most telling, Mr. Martin stopped restricting the blame to a group of civil servants and Mr. Gagliano. He insisted that the inquiry should find out who gave the orders: questions that in the Canadian system of government, with its highly centralized methods of prime-ministerial control, must lead towards Jean Chrétien.

Mr. Martin carefully avoided fingering Mr. Chrétien. Instead, he extolled his predecessor's virtues and service to Canada. The cold political logic of Mr. Martin's strategy, however, could not be clearer: to finger Mr. Chrétien and a group of Quebec advisers as the ones ultimately responsible for the sponsorship abuses.

Also fingered were André Ouellet, a former ministerial colleague of Mr. Chrétien's and a Quebec political fixer under prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who is chairman of Canada Post, and Mr. Chrétien's former chief-of-staff Jean Pelletier, now chairman of Via Rail. Both Crown corporations were involved in promoting projects designed to enhance Canada's visibility in Quebec. Both corporations have denied doing anything untoward.

Jean Chrétien takes nothing sitting down, as Canadians will know after watching his political career. Nobody ever tried to punch Mr. Chrétien without getting a blow in reply. How Mr. Chrétien will respond to Mr. Martin's direct hit on his government, and the indirect one on his integrity, remains unknown. There will be a response. Count on it.

Mr. Martin has now attacked the very sponsorship programs Mr. Chrétien authorized and vigorously defended as assisting Canadian unity. The end does not justify the means, Mr. Martin insisted, a coded renunciation of the Chrétien defence.

The Prime Minister has expressed outrage at the abuses, trying to deflect public anger from his government. He has launched a public inquiry into the mess. And now, as part of damage control, he has targeted Mr. Chrétien and his friends, without, of course, admitting that they are the targets. The civil war within the Liberal Party continues.

jsimpson@globeandmail.ca



© 2004 Bell Globemedia Publishing Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

[Ed007Toronto]

Conspiracy?

Chretien says he'll stay until he is 70. Realizes a storm is brewing so he retires early than 70 to let his arch-rival Martin take a hit.

Martin's under the gun. Chretien's at home laughing.