Paul Martin: "I didn't listen to the recording"

From Politics Watch:

"Let me repeat once again: No offer was made. That means no offer was made."

These were the words Paul Martin said in the House of Commons under questioning from Bloc MP Michel Guimond, who demanded that chief of staff Tim Murphy step aside over allegations that offers of plum appointments were made to Conservative MP Gurmat Grewal in exchange for a vote in support of the budget bill.

Those conversations were taped. It seems remarkable that the Prime Minister can be so sure of his interpretation of the hypothetical situations bandied about by Murphy and Grewal. As it turns out, Paul Martin's opinion is pretty much useless:

Although the PM says no offer was made, under questioning from Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe about whether the voice on the tape is Murphy, the PM admitted, "I didn't listen to the recording."

At that point, if I were in opposition, I'd invite Paul Martin to sit down and be quiet, while an MP from the government benches who had listened to the tape stand up and say without equivocation "No offer was made. That means no offer was made."

Any volunteers?

Knowing that I had heard only 8 minutes of 4 hours of taped conversation, and that the Conservatives could be laying a trap by releasing 8 minutes of vague discussions, hoping to lure Liberals into denials, then releasing the 4 hours in which explicit offers were made, I wouldn't be as eager as the Prime Minister to speak in absolutes. But then Captain Ed thinks this is exactly what happened, and that the Conservatives won this game of chicken by maneuvering the Prime Minister into not blinking.

Already, we hear rumblings that the Prime Minister knew what was going on. If that report from CTV pans out, Warren Kinsella is right about the consequences:

[May 31, 2005] If [CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert] Fife is right (and he isn't always right) this latest revelation places this affair in a dramatically different light. What it means is that the Prime Minister of Canada was aware, in advance, of plans to offer a Member of Parliament a Senate seat, or a diplomatic posting, or (most seriously) a changed outcome in an RCMP investigation. Others, elsewhere, have argued that amounts to a bribe.

If Robert Fife is right, Paul Martin would be obliged to resign. Not even the NDP could justify propping him up, at that point. [my emphasis]

More chaos from a government that insists it is in control.

Time throw a snit fit

From Politcs Watch, MP and blogger Monte Solberg lists his favourite blogs:

• Blogging Tories


• Small Dead Animals


• The Shotgun


• Colbert's Comments


• Political Staples


• The Meatriarchy


• Andrew Coyne


• Inkless Wells

Ahem! AHEM!

I guess I'm just so much chopped liver. Right then, Solberg's off my Canadian Blog Rankings list. Don't bother emailing me today -- I plan to be scowling and doing nothing else.

OK, I'm just kidding. They are great blogs. And it's guys like Mr. Solberg who are taking blogging to a new level of respectability, for which we should all be grateful.

First Adscam domino falls?

I know it sounds silly to say it, but now we know for certain that something bad happened during the Sponsorship Program. What I mean to say is that we know it in a legal sense:

Paul Coffin, the first person charged in the federal sponsorship scandal, pleaded guilty Tuesday to 15 fraud charges.

Three of the 18 fraud charges that Coffin originally faced were withdrawn by the Crown.

It's not likely that Mr. Coffin will face 10 years per charge, but he will probably have to go to jail. At least that's what Crown prosecutor François Drolet is going to argue.

A guilty plea and jail time will elevate this to a new level. If ad executives who took money fraudulently are going to go to jail, what about the government officials who gave them the money, and did not seem to care that no work was done? One of those officials, Chuck Guite is already facing charges, but will there be more?

Another question that remains to be answered is why Paul Coffin copped a plea. Is there a sentencing agreement in place? In return for what? More testimony, under oath, in a courtroom, as a witness in future trials? Captain Ed thinks so, and so do I.

Will Chuck Guite, now facing the problem of having Paul Coffin working for the prosecution, enter into a plea bargain as well? If so, will more dominos fall? And will the clack-clack of dominos tipping lead to the door of the Prime Minister himself? What was idle speculation yesterday became significantly less idle today.

How are these two things not alike?

First, from the Gomery Inquiry Terms of Reference:

(k) the Commissioner be directed to perform his duties without expressing any conclusion or recommendation regarding the civil or criminal liability of any person or organization and to ensure that the conduct of the inquiry does not jeopardize any ongoing criminal investigation or criminal proceedings;

Second, spouted from the brain of Public Works Minister Scott Brison:

However, Public Works Minister Scott Brison says Justice Gomery can "already name names and can assign responsibility."

I think you can see the problem. The first says he cannot make any criminal or civil conclusions regarding liability of any person or organization. The second says of course he can.

How do break the tie? You can make sure the Terms of Reference say what Scott Brison is saying, and the Conservatives are suggesting exactly that, introducing a motion into the House of Commons today demanding that the terms of reference be changed.

Justice Minister Irwin Cotler was restrained in his criticism:

Justice Minister Irwin Cotler, at the news conference with Brison, called the Conservative motion "inappropriate, unfounded, redundant, and prejudicial."

He said it threatens to derail the Gomery inquiry and potentially delay the release of the final report.

And that, adds Cotler, would "infringe the fundamental rights of those persons and run a very high risk of being struck down by the courts. In other words, having the Gomery Commission in and of itself disabled."

But disabled suggests it is able to do something, and the terms of reference suggest it is able to do little. As I've pointed out in another post, earlier inquiries have not been so explicit about avoiding making conclusions about liability, leaving it to the commission to make a judgment about whether such a conclusion adds value to the final report.

But only in the Gomery Inquiry is the judge required to submit a report summarizing his conclusions "without expressing any conclusion or recommendation". They are worried about criminal cases? This is the same judge who put up not one, not two, but three publication bans to protect criminal cases that hadn't even started yet.

We all know that the Liberals are desperate to make sure that they are not blamed by the Commission. They want to get a bland report that talks about accoutability and transparency, but names no names (not even the name of the Liberal Party -- it is an organization, too), and hand it over to Belinda Stronach, who, after getting past the big words, will reshape the government and the bureaucracy and make sure Liberal corruption is never revealed never occurs again.

So the Liberals will lean on the NDP and the independents to support them on this vote. Since it's not a confidence vote, the NDP and the independents could vote against the government. In the case of the NDP, there will be pressure to vote against the government. This is because they are leaning heavily on a reputation of honesty and integrity that they say they can maintain despite getting into bed with the Liberals.

The Liberals will try to help the NDP by suggesting a new motion:

"The House confirms that with reference to the Gomery inquiry, the commissioner has the authority under the inquiries' act, rulings of the Supreme Court of Canada and his existing terms of reference to name names and assign responsibility."

Now go back and read paragraph (k) and then read this paragraph again. I think Scott Brison, who will be introducing this counter motion, is channeling for George Orwell.

The surreal world of Jacques Corriveau

From the National Post:

[Jacques Corriveau, a longtime party organizer and friend of Jean Chretien,] denied at the sponsorship inquiry Monday that paying the salaries of three Liberal party staffers was a scheme to divert sponsorship profits to the federal party.

His reasoning? Well, it's a bit odd. Essentially, he is saying he hired these guys who did no work for him, but rather did work for the Liberal Party on Corriveau's dime, before he realized the millions in income from the Sponsorship Program.

So he is saying that he personally made illegal contributions to the Liberal Party (illegal because he did not report the $100,000 in salaries as a donation) as opposed to using the Sponsorship money.

The difference is subtle. In his version, he's a lone crook. In the version of events in which he hired these Liberal Party workers because he was getting money from the Sponsorship Program, he's a co-conspirator.

And still an idiot, but I suppose that's the same either way, so it's not relevant.

The problem is, of course, the facts get in the way. While he was paying these Liberal Party workers, he was pulling in millions from the Sponsorship Program:

Bernard Roy, a lawyer for the inquiry, noted Corriveau's Pluri Design firm pulled in at least $2.3 million from the subcontracts between 1998 and 2000, when the staffers were on the firm's payroll.

"So you returned a part of your profits that you obtained from certain clients to the Liberal party,'' said Roy.

Corriveau replied: "Completely false. That doesn't correspond with reality.''

Jacques Corriveau lives in a very fluid reality. People are strangers then close personal friends, depending on the day of the week:

Corriveau, who was testifying for the second time at the Gomery commission, contradicted some of the assertions he had made in April.

For example, he described party organizer Giuseppe Morselli on Monday as a friend, although he had previously told the inquiry he didn't know him well.

Corriveau's explanation: "To correct my testimony, I very much agree that I knew him and he was a friend.''

I wonder if he was hoping that Justice Gomery would be taking a nap when he "corrected his testimony". Foolish man -- from what I've seen on CPAC, a fly couldn't get into that room without Justice Gomery noticing. There was no way Corriveau could get away with a howler like that one:

Justice John Gomery, the presiding judge, asked: "Why is it necessary to correct your testimony? Weren't your previous answers an attempt to mislead us?''

Corriveau couldn't, or wouldn't explain the contradiction in his remarks about Morselli, who a witness said was the party's "real boss'' on financing matters.

I think it's fair to say the Jacques Corriveau is trying desperately to counter the allegations of Daniel Dezainde and others who have said that Corriveau was responsible for over $300,000 in under-the-table donations to the Liberal Party. I think it's also fair to say that his return performance has only enhanced the credibility of his accusers, and in doing so, more firmly cemented the core allegation that the Liberal Party profited handsomely from the Sponsorship Program. I guess we'll see if Justice Gomery agrees with my judgment when he issues his report.

Jean Chretien should have listened to his psychic

From the Globe and Mail:

Former prime minister Jean Chretien was warned in the late 1990s to stay away from one of his old friends, who made millions of dollars in sponsorship funds allegedly with the use of fake or inflated invoices, the Gomery inquiry heard yesterday.

Nothing much happened after the warning, however, and Jacques Corriveau continued to receive the lucrative commissions that have since landed him in the thick of the sponsorship scandal.

Jean Pelletier, who was a chief of staff to Mr. Chretien when he was prime minister, testified that he suddenly started getting bad vibes regarding Mr. Corriveau in the late 1990s.

How did he know to be careful? What exactly did he think would happen?

"Once in a while, you look at somebody in the eye and you have an intuition and suddenly, the intuition, without knowing exactly why, tells you to be prudent," he said, pointing to his nose.

Apparently Jean Pelletier's nose is the equivalent of a Magic Eight Ball. Every time he asked "Should I trust Jacques Corriveau?" he got the answer "Very doubtful" or "My sources say no".

It would have been better if Pelletier kept a diary: "Dear Diary: I have real misgivings about Jacques Corriveau. Also, I think Britney Spears is really cute!"

But Pelletier seems to be right, even if it is 20-20 hindsight. Jacques Corriveau is coming off badly at the Inquiry, backtracking and in full denial mode.

As Mr. Corriveau left the inquiry, some spectators shouted "crook" and "thief" at him.

Sounds like Jean Chretien should have listened to his psychic.

Paul Martin through clenched teeth: "This is great news!"

From the Globe and Mail:

Former prime minister Jean Chretien unexpectedly dropped his attempt to oust Mr. Justice John Gomery as the head of the sponsorship inquiry yesterday, just a week before his lawyers were to argue their case in Federal Court.

With testimony at the inquiry ending this week, Mr. Chretien's lawyers said they did not have time to force Judge Gomery out before all the witnesses were heard.

"It's too late to replace the commissioner for the gathering of the evidence," one of Mr. Chretien's attorneys, Jean-Sebastien Gallant, said yesterday.

He added that the decision had nothing to do with testimony in recent weeks about the involvement of a number of staunch Chretien loyalists in the scandal.

He also neglected to add that this motion was probably the last, best hope for getting the Inquiry derailed. Paul Martin was prepared to send lawyers to fight the motion in order to keep Justice Gomery working.

One can only imagine how hard they would have tried.

But now we'll never know. Jean Chretien just gave his good friend Paul Martin quite the gift -- no delays or distractions while the Gomery Inquiry continues to reveal Liberal corruption. I bet Paul Martin is ever so thankful.

Canadian Blog Rankings updated

The rankings of Canadian blogs and of the Blogging Tories have been updated for today (Tuesday, May 31, 2005).

If you are a Canadian-based blog, and you want to appear on the list, first register with the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Then send me an email with the name of your blog and the URL, and I'll add you to the lookup list for automatic extraction and ranking.

If you are a new member of the Blogging Tories and have added yourself to the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem, let me know by email and I'll updated the Blogging Tories lookup list.

Interesting in making some money from blogging?

A group of über-bloggers, lead by Roger Simon, are working on a affiliates program tailor-made for bloggers. It is called Pajamas Media, and they are still looking for members. Currently there are 400 blogs signed up, including myself, so clearly there is room to grow, and still time to get in on the ground floor.

The tentative schedule is start running ads in June, and have revenue flowing soon after.

If you are interested in learning more, contact the Pajamas Media folks at join@pajamasmedia.com, and don't forget to tell them "Angry in the Great White North" referred you.

Taped bribes and NDP shaky support

CTV is saying that the the Martin Liberals were offering a deal to a Conservative MP willing to vote for the budget, and that Prime Minister Paul Martin knew about it:

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 [Conservative MP Gurmant] 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 tapes have yet to be given to the RCMP -- clearly because at that point they become evidence in an investigation, and the Conservatives lose the opportunity to release details. Maybe less clear is what level of trust the Conservatives have in the RCMP to investigate the government rigourously.

Of course, the problem is that only Scott Reid, the communications director at the Prime Minister's Office, Tim Murphy, Paul Martin's chief of staff, and Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh, are on the tapes. If the tapes are as damning as Robert Fife says, Paul Martin is lucky his voice is not on the tapes. Reid Murphy and Dosanjh might get roasted, but Paul Martin will probably plead ignorance, and promise a thorough investigation to make sure it never happens again.

Canadians might be angry for a while, but I worry that as before, the Liberals will ride it out, and Canadians, and in particular people in Ontario, will come back to support the Liberals.

On the other hand, Jack Layton is not happy:

"There is a real concern about this taped conversation that went on amongst Canadians. It has placed the entire House under a real cloud," NDP Leader Jack Layton said in the House of Commons during Monday's question period.

It's one thing to lose the support of Canadians for a while. But the NDP? Now that matters.

[Update: In a mistake entirely of my own making, I filled in the name of Scott Reid for Tim Murphy when the CTV article named a "top Martin aide". That was completely wrong, and in no way has anyone linked Scott Reid to the tapes or the allegations stemming from them. I unreservedly apologize to Mr. Reid -- he certainly did not deserve to be pull into this mess by my sloppiness.]

Too democratic in casting suspicions?

Stephen Taylor has an excellent post about a good idea from Democracy Watch executed poorly. The issue DW was checking on was the rules for disclosing political campaign donations, and the limits on their size.

Go read the entire piece -- it'll be worth your time (small dead animals has some comments as well). I'll highlight some of the major points here.

DW makes some good points with regards to unlimited donations still allowed under certain circumstances, not having to disclose volunteer labour (the issue of judicial appointments going to favoured lawyers stems from volunteer work more than from financial donations), and so forth, but then come to this remarkable conclusion:

Canadians should assume that the federal parties and their candidates are receiving secret donations, or hiding the identities of donors who are tied to corporate and special interest lobby groups or wealthy individuals

I suppose in a vacuum, that is, without any evidence it would be fair to treat everyone the same, including with the same suspicions.

But we're not in a vacuum. We have a great deal of evidence on donation patterns under the existing rules to all parties. When you consider that, DW's assertion that we should assume that they are all crooks seems patently unfair.

For example:

Bloc: 97% of donors donated less than $200
CPC: 95.8%
Green: 95.5%
NDP: 96.1%
Liberals: 61%

And this is more telling: how much of the total amount of donations is made up of donations under $200:

Bloc: 17%
CPC: 77.9%
Green: 36.6%
NDP: 76.2%
Liberals: 11.2%

So for the Liberals, the top 40% of donors account for nearly 90% of the money, while for the Conservatives and the NDP, a mere 5% of donors contribute large amounts, and that accounts for only 25% of the money. Of course, this lists only honest donations, not kickbacks.

It would seem that the Conservatives and the NDP are actually practicing what the rules are supposed to encourage: grassroots individual support of the political process.

Stephen Taylor highlights more statistics that emphasize how the grassroots support of the Conservatives and the NDP is strong and active, while the Liberals depend mostly on large donations from a small number of sources.

This information is extremely valuable and Democracy Watch should be congratulated on the work they've done to collect it. The loopholes in the law are a concern, and it might be that the Liberals in particular are taking advantage of them, suggesting that the loopholes were left in on purpose, tailor-made to support the Liberal funding patterns.

But it is also clear that the Conservatives and the NDP are playing fair, following the spirit of the law, even in the presence of the loopholes.

Democracy Watch should be more careful in pointing fingers, and telling Canadians what to assume. I'm willing to give credit where credit is due. The Conservatives and the NDP deserve better treatment than what Democracy Watch gave them.

Gomery, Krever and the Somalia Inquiries -- Finger-pointing allowed?

The question of the limitations of the Gomery Inquiry made me check into previous inquiries:

From the Krever Inquiry investigating Canada's tainted blood supply:

(h) is directed to submit an interim report in both official languages to the Governor in Council no later than May 31, 1994 on the safety of the blood system, with appropriate recommendations on actions might be taken to address any current shortcomings

From to Somalia Inquiry investigating the actions of the Canadian Airborne Regiment in 1993:

Our mandate includes proposing appropriate corrective measures for future missions. The Inquiry was not intended to be a trial, or a retrial of any trial previously held, although our hearings did include an examination of the institutional causes of and responses to incidents that previously resulted in the charge and trial of individuals. In the same way, the Inquiry was not an examination or re-examination of the issue of compensation for the victims. Hence, the Inquiry's primary focus was the organization and management of the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence, as well as institutional and systemic issues, rather than the individuals who constitute them. However, this focus inevitably required us to examine the actions of the chain of command and the manner in which leadership was exercised. Nevertheless, we refrain in this report from making findings of individual misconduct, save as regards the pre-deployment phase and on the issue of disclosure of documents by the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces and the events involving the Directorate General of Public Affairs.

From the Gomery Inquiry investigating the Liberal-run Sponsorship Program:

(k) the Commissioner be directed to perform his duties without expressing any conclusion or recommendation regarding the civil or criminal liability of any person or organization and to ensure that the conduct of the inquiry does not jeopardize any ongoing criminal investigation or criminal proceedings;

From looking at the other two most recent examples (and created under the Liberal government, making the comparison apt), it seems to me fair to say that all three are not criminal investigations as such. But I think it's also fair to say that the Krever and Somalia Inquiries did not go out of their way to limit their scope with regards to current investigations, or to avoid the question of blame for the major players in those scandals. In fact, the Gomery Inquiry seemed remarkably explicit, almost panicky, in making sure the fingers not be pointed.

I have to say that on the balance the evidence suggests that the Gomery Inquiry is not "normal" when it comes to the infamous paragraph (k). Who's responsible for this? I know who, but I'm not allowed to say.

1 blog, 2 blogs, 3 blogs, 4 blogs...

The publisher of the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem, Mr. N. Z. Bear, is quoted in this piece from the Wall Street Journal about counting blogs. Very informative and thought provoking article -- read it and the related post and comments at TTLB.

An eye-opener for me: Instapundit is not an important blog! At least not to ComScore Media Metrix and Neilsen//NetRatings. One of the giants of the blogosphere just doesn't cut the mustard. For these guys to notice you, you have to be pulling down 150,000 unique visitors a month. Unique visitors. The New York Times website takes in 28.9 million unique visitors in April!

I guess I can stop reserving that primo spot on my front page for Nike. They won't be calling me anytime soon.

Now you go look at your site counter and be ashamed.

Canadian Blog Rankings updated

The rankings of Canadian blogs and of the Blogging Tories have been updated for today (Monday, May 30, 2005).

If you are a Canadian-based blog, and you want to appear on the list, first register with the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Then send me an email with the name of your blog and the URL, and I'll add you to the lookup list for automatic extraction and ranking.

If you are a new member of the Blogging Tories and have added yourself to the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem, let me know by email and I'll updated the Blogging Tories lookup list.

Canadian Blog Rankings updated

The rankings of Canadian blogs and of the Blogging Tories have been updated for today (Sunday, May 29, 2005).

If you are a Canadian-based blog, and you want to appear on the list, first register with the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Then send me an email with the name of your blog and the URL, and I'll add you to the lookup list for automatic extraction and ranking.

If you are a new member of the Blogging Tories and have added yourself to the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem, let me know by email and I'll updated the Blogging Tories lookup list.

rabble.ca -- A call in support of political spam [Updated]

Canadian socialist web site rabble.ca is calling for reader to get involved in US politics.

Well, "involved" is a strong word. It suggests injecting yourself into the process, understanding the way the government and party system works, and finding a way in which a foreigner can legitimately affect change.

That's a lot of work, but they've got a better way. On June 1, they want readers engage in what they call a "3-minute action". I guess this is political action for the chronically lazy. Readers are to follow this link to a huge listing of email addresses for media outlets in the United States, and email each one of them requesting George W. Bush be removed from office.

As far as I'm concerned, rabble.ca is supporting spam. It seems to fit the bill for "Unsolicited Bulk Email":

• The email is inappropriate. A newspaper or radio station is not empowered to remove a sitting president from office. Only Congress can do that via the impeachment process.


• The email is unsolicited.


• The volume of email is huge. Well, I expect the volume will actually be puny. But rabble.ca intends for it to be huge.


• The recipients have not signed up for these emails, but rather have had their email addresses culled from the web and aggregated into a mailing list to which they did not request to be added.


• The subject of the email is illegal, or comes close to it. Foreign interference in the workings of the US government contravenes many laws.


• The email will not include a means by which the recipient can de-list themselves from receiving further emails from this source.

About the only way this is not spam is that the subject matter is not commercial. Still, it seems to be a waste of bandwidth, and potentially a huge disruption for the media outlets on the list, assuming the rabble folks can get the numbers of emailers they clearly hope to get.

And by the way, each "3-minute action", which ideas suggested by readers, is approved by rabble.ca before getting on the list of actions. So I feel justified in holding them, and in particular publisher Judy Rebick, responsible for this bit of silliness.

Updated: Some more thoughts spurred by the comments this post has generated.

Surely the more intelligent among the rabble crowd must realize the futility of this exercise. Trying to coerce the US media to bring down George W Bush? What else have they been trying to do? The full weight of the liberal media came down against the president at his most vulnerable moment, the election campaign, simultaneously promoting and protecting his opponent. The result: a second term for President Bush, Republican gains in the House, the Senate, and in state gübernatorial races, and the most visible and popular leader of the leftist main stream press, Dan Rather, humiliated and his career destroyed.

So they are suddenly going to be energized into action by Rebick and company? To perform some deed, removing the President from office, that they have no power to do, either constitutionally or practically? Are the rabble people insane?

Probably, but not in the way I'm alluding to, that is, disconnected from reality. Indeed, the reality of the situation is quite apparent to them. To make it clear, imagine that rabble.ca gathered signatures on a petition instead. Imagine, as wildly unlikely as it would be, that they gathered 25,000 signatures from Canadian readers. They posted this petition that called on the US media to remove President Bush, and sent a single email to every press outlet on their list, listing a link to the petition, and inviting the US press to consider this call to arms from concerned Canadians.

Most, and I mean most, would dump the email immediately. A few might follow the link, and snort in derision. A handful, maybe less, might write a story about this silliness from north of the border.

Absolutely nothing would be accomplished.

But accomplishing nothing is not nearly as bad as being ignored as well. To be so completely ignored must be galling beyond belief to rabblers. I mean, they are intellectual giants who know they are right -- years and years of post-graduate work among professors who constantly confirmed how correct their way of thinking was means it must be true. They have the moral certitude that only comes from being a moral relativist -- who better to know that she has the moral high ground than a person who believes everyone, in the right social and cultural context, has the moral high ground.

So the petition is out, and the spam is in. Fundamentally they are equivalent. Each delivers 25,000 irrelevant opinions to hundreds of people who don't care. But the petition is easily ignored. On the other hand, 25,000 poorly written ranting emails clogging up the general mailbox catches attention.

In both cases, absolutely nothing is accomplished with regards to the Presidency of the United States. But with the spam, they get noticed. And for some people, getting noticed is not just a consolation prize, it's really the point of it all.

More missing money in Quebec?

I find the Public Accounts of Canada: Transfer Payments (2003-2004) to be a fascinating document. Whenever I decide to spend twenty minutes or so perusing it, I always find something interesting, usually disturbing.

Recall that this document is a list of organizations that have been given "transfers" by the federal government. A transfer can be thought of as another word for a grant. It is arranged by ministry, then by category ("Transfers to accomplish some goal X" or "Transfers to meet obligation Y"), then by a list of recipients. Each category has a dollar amount, and ideally, the amounts listed by each recipient should add up to that category total.

It usually does, but when it doesn't, you are to take it that the missing amount is made up of grants each of which is less than $100,000 in value. This document does not (usually) list these smaller grants.

Now that you understand that, consider this entry under the Ministry of Canadian Heritage. It is Minister Liza Frulla who runs this one -- the same Liz Frulla whose staffer John Welch was named in Gomery Inquiry as a staffer who was paid by Jean Brault of Groupaction as an employee, even though he was doing work for the Liberal Party. The same Liz Frulla who worked for Vickers & Benson, the advertising agency that later allegedly sought contract guarantees from the federal Liberals in order to ensure that a buyout by foreign concerns proceeded without a hitch.

But that's neither here nor there. What is important is that Liz Frulla's ministry provide money for this:

Grants to organizations representing official language minority communities, non-federal public administrations and other organizations for the purpose of futhering [sic] the use, acquisition and promotion of the official languages.

Now this is a coded phrase for promoting English in Quebec -- you'll just have to take my word on it. The promotion of French outside of Quebec is not a priority, while the promotion of English in Quebec is, because a strong English minority are guaranteed Liberal voters, and a thorn in the side of the separatists.

A total of $5,993,186 was spent on this strategically important activity. Now how exactly was nearly six million dollars spent? Here is the breakdown:

Quebec Community Groups Networks, Sillery, Quebec: $300,000

That's it. Over $5.3 million dollars, presumably spent in Quebec, presumably spent on promoting English, with no recipients identified in the accounts. If we are to believe that the grants were less than $100,000, then at best, there are about 50 grants for which we don't know anything about.

But with the Liberal track record with spending money in Quebec without oversight, one could be forgiven for wondering if the money was spent in some other...fashion.

And it should be mentioned that the QCGN is a group that works very closely with the federal government. For instance, in this memorandum of understanding in 2003, the federal government and the QCGN agree to form a common committee to carefully coordinate the strategies for promoting English in Quebec through the QCGN. And this is an example of the arm's length organization that receives money but does not get audited by the Auditor General?

The Conservatives have shaken the funk

After the body blow delivered by Belinda "Oooo, look at the shiny new cabinet post!" Stronach to the Conservatives, costing them the opportunity to topple the Liberal government, I think all involved on the Conservative side went into a bit of a depression.

But it sounds like Stephen Harper and the Conservatives have shaken it off, and are ready to push the Liberals hard:

The Conservatives have set the stage for a potentially acrimonious return to Parliament on Monday by blindsiding the government with three motions -- including one calling for indictments in the sponsorship inquiry -- for the first opposition day since the House of Commons showdown began last month.

The issue of the indictments stems from the mandate of the Inquiry. Justice Gomery must "perform his duties without expressing any conclusion or recommendation regarding the civil or criminal liability of any person or organization."

In other words, he delivers his report to the government, who then decides what happens next. But given that it is highly likely that the government receiving the report is the same Liberal government that is taking such a drubbing from the Inquiry from allegations that it set up a scheme to systematically move taxpayers' money through friendly adverstising firms and then into the party bank accounts, it is not unreasonable to be concerned that the conflict of interest might prevent effective action, and in particular, the allocation of criminal responsibility.

So the Conservatives want Justice Gomery's hands untied. The Liberals aren't going to like that, especially loyalists of former Prime Minister Jean Chretien. Mr. Chretien thinks Justice Gomery is biased against him, and has a date in federal court in June to try and prove it.

If the motion passes, it becomes "advice" from the House to the government, which can be ignored. So what is the point? The idea is to put those who supported the Liberals on the budget vote to the test. It is one thing to support the budget, if you really believe the programs in it are good for Canadians. But it is another to say that the Liberals should not be held to account, or that they should be allowed to judge themselves. Can the NDP and independents Carolyn Parrish and Chuck Cadman support the government on this question? The answer might show the shallowness and fragility of this government.

Another motion is a standard non-confidence vote. One would think it would lose, and the Conservatives don't expect it to pass, but who knows what cracks will be opened between the government and its supporters with that first vote? Already, the NDP have threatened to bolt if the budget is not implemented quickly.

The third motion challenges the budget. The Conservatives and the Bloc have a majority in the budget committee, and the thinking is that they will demand study and consultation on the budget, especiallly, the $4.6 billion of NDP spending that has slapped on top, described in all of a page-and-a-half of text. Given the Liberal's record with managing funds highlighted in the Gomery Inquiiry, the Conservative say, it is not unreasonable for the committee to demand that C-48 (the NDP add-on) be sent back for a much more detailed breakdown. That will drag things on, which will make the NDP antsy. If the delays reach June 23, the time for the summer recess, we might be in for another showdown.

This ain't over.

Blog Rankings Expansion

After some link mining, I've extended the list to 223 ranked Canadian blogs. This covers blogs of many political persuasions, as well as non-political blogs. After the last ranked blog, I've decided to include the list of Canadian blogs that are not ranked in the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. I've included them for two reasons:

• first, many of them are first rate blogs, and they deserve to be noticed


• second, many might be enticed to register in the Ecosystem and get numerically ranked

If you recognize a blog on the list, and it is not ranked, get in touch with the author and suggest that they register on the Ecosystem.

Note that the same changes have been made to the Blogging Tories sublist.

And don't forget to consider linking with this button:

You can link to my blog, or to this post in particular:

http://stevejanke.com/archives/083031.php

Canadian Blog Rankings updated

The rankings of Canadian blogs and of the Blogging Tories have been updated for today (Saturday, May 28, 2005).

If you are a Canadian-based blog, and you want to appear on the list, first register with the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Then send me an email with the name of your blog and the URL, and I'll add you to the lookup list for automatic extraction and ranking.

If you are a new member of the Blogging Tories and have added yourself to the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem, let me know by email and I'll updated the Blogging Tories lookup list.

Blogging Tories ranked

As per a request, I've created a new blog ranking just of the Blogging Tories. It appears immediately below the main rankings. Of the 112 Blogging Tories, only 60 make the list -- the rest are not registered on the TTLB ecosystem. If you want to appear on the list, get yourself registered.

You don't need to tell me when you register -- the program will pick you up once you start appearing on the list.

If you have registered, and you appear on the TTLB website, but you aren't showing up in the ranks, let me know. I might have a typo with your blog name (the ecosystem list does not always spell the name of the blog the same way -- it depends on what the person gave as a title when the blog was registered). If so, I'll fix it and refresh the list.

If you are concerned about where you are on the ranks (ie, very low) check to make sure that I've ranked the correct blog. Sometimes people move blogs (as I did from Blogspot to Mu.Nu) and they neglect to register the new URL. There is a method for moving blogs.

This might not be the permanent home of the Bloggin Tories rankings. Stay tuned.

Jacques Corriveau denies it all

Jacques Corriveau, closed friend to former prime minister Jean Chretien, and the man said to have handled most of the cash being moved between the ad firms contracted under the Sponsorship Program, and various Liberal Party functionaries, denies he touched any of the money:

Jacques Corriveau, a graphic designer and friend of Jean Chretien, said today two former Liberal officials lied when they told the sponsorship inquiry he diverted secret cash to the party.

Corriveau categorically denied allegations from the former directors of the party's Quebec wing, who said he gave the party more than $300,000 in cash under the table in 1997.

Corriveau asserts that Beliveau, the director general of the Quebec wing of the party at the time, is lying to the commission.

In a further conspiracy, two more directors general of the party, Daniel Dezainde and Benoit Corbeil, are also lying -- Dezainde about statements he heard Corriveau make about setting up the kickback scheme, and Corbeil about other money donations.

Marc-Yvan Cote is also a liar when he testified that the $120,000 he received from Beliveau came from Corriveau.

Lies, lies, lies -- all lies.

Well not all. Corriveau did admit to paying the salary of Liberal Party worker Serge Gosselin.Two other names appear in his books, though -- Philippe Zrihen and Jean Brisebois -- party workers that witness Gaetano Manganiello said were paid by Corriveau while working for the party. Manganiello says he was also paid under the table.

I guess Corriveau forgot about those guys. But the other stuff -- all lies!

We do know from the Kroll Report (page 129) that PluriDesign, Corriveau's company, received $430,370 from Jean Brault's Groupaction for no apparent reason. We also know that Jean Brault testified that he was browbeaten by Jacques Corriveau, Benot Corbeil, and Alan Renaud, to make large donations to the party. So we have testimony from Jean Brault that Corriveau went after Brault for money, then the auditor's report showing nearly half-a-million moving from Jean Brault's Groupaction to Jacques Corriveau's PluriDesign, then disappearing.

We do know that Jacques Corriveau paid himself $4.4 million from PluriDesign. More money was moved from PluriDesign to his investment company Jacques Corriveau Designer Inc, then from there to Jacques Corriveau as salary and dividends.

We also have testimony from various Liberals that Jacques Corriveau made hundreds of thousands of cash donations, which Corriveau denies.

What don't we have? Despite requests, the Kroll accountants we never given Jacques Corriveau's bank account information or cancelled cheques for those bank accounts (see page 133). So all we have is money disappearing into Corriveau possession for no discernable reason, no access to Corriveau's personal accounts to see if he made any suspicious cash withdrawals, and denials that any cash donations were made.

Sorry, he's going to have to do better than that.

Goodale: "I stopped spending money" -- give the man the Order of Canada!

I shouldn't be so petty, but to brag about closing the barn door after the horses had bolted (horses barely able to move, laden as they were with bags of taxpayers' money) goes to show how little good news there is in the Adscam mess:

Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said Friday that his sponsorship cleanup in 2002 was so transparent and thorough that he made exceptions for no one – not even his own boss, Jean Chretien.

Apparently the Prime Minister wanted to know if there was anyway money could be freed up for an event in the Prime Minister's riding.

Mr. Goodale said no.

Funny thing is, I bet that would have a been a legitimate event, inasmuch as the money would have been used for the event and nothing else.

But the tap had been turned off:

[In May 2002, after he was appointed Public Works Minister,] Mr. Goodale said he immediately froze all pending applications for two months, set up a quick-response team to conduct a review and worked closely with Auditor-General Sheila Fraser and the RCMP to examine suspicious files.

Ms. Fraser eventually referred several files to the Mounties that eventually led to criminal charges against Groupaction Marketing president Jean Brault and Chuck Guite, the former head of the sponsorship program.

Mr. Brault and Mr.Guite are accused of pocketing entire sums from a $330,000 contract related to the much-maligned gun registry, police allege.

Too bad his investigation didn't go further and reveal the kickbacks, but to be fair, Mr. Goodale is from Manitoba Saskatchewan, so he probably never saw any of the money, or was in the know about the kickback scheme.

Apparently none of his Quebec colleagues in cabinet informed him.

So this is a big yawn for me. Mr. Goodale is trying to appear decisive, and look like the man who defeated the nefarious cheaters. To give him credit, he was the minister who froze the program temporarily (but did not shut it down -- it is not clear if he had that power, but his description of what the Prime Minister charged him to do suggests the Sponsorship Program was supposed to go forward: “get in there, find out what's wrong and fix” the program). Mr. Goodale, who missed an opportunity to resign from Cabinet when his budget was ravaged by the Prime Minister and his new best buddies, the NDP, seems to have also missed an opportunity to take truly decisive action when he had the Sponsorship Program in his sights. But if Mr. Goodale wants bragging rights, he won't get them if all he did was tell the Prime Minister he couldn't have some bit o' cash. If he told us a tale of trying to shut the program down but being overruled by senior Quebec MPs, then resigning from the post as Minister of Public Works, then I'd be impressed.

But then resigning over matters of principle is not his style.

Too bad she has no idea what she's talking about

From the Ottawa Citizen, concerning the anti-Catholic cartoon on rabble.ca (see this post for details):

"I object to the Catholic church's position on homophobia," [prominent Canadian feminist writer Judy Rebick] said.

So what exactly is the Church's position on homphobia? From New Advent, the Catholic Encylopedia, excerpts from a 1986 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:

It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law.

Ah, here is the problem. This is what Ms. Rebick must be mad about. The way the Church abuses and...wait...let me re-read that bit...never mind, the Church says we have to love everyone and treat them with respect, and defend them from abuse and harm. And I thought I was onto something.

Who is it that wrote this letter? None other than Prefect Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. And for his trouble defending homosexuals against abuse and harm, he is treated to a scurrilous cartoon by a talentless hack, supported by some ill-informed woman who wants the Pope to change his position on homophobia.

But the Pope's position is that he is vigourously against homophobia, and has been for at least twenty years now. That is the position on homophobia that she is opposed to?

On reflection, however, maybe she does know what she's saying. What can be more annoying than an organization opposed to same-sex marriage at the same time committed to respectful dialogue and protection against harm of all God's children? Better if the Church burned homosexuals at the stake. It would make it so much easier for Judy Rebick to justify her little cartoons.

When you get away with it once...

Liberal whip Karen Redman stirred up a minor controversy when she said the Liberals would ignore confidence votes that might occur before the end of the summer:

[T]he government was considering ignoring defeats on matters of confidence.

"There are options," Liberal whip Karen Redman told The Globe. "Clearly if there was a loss, the government may decide to put forward another confidence motion when everybody was there to see if it held the day. Those options are available."

Given they already ignored four before they managed to buy Tory-for-sale Belinda Stronach and then decided the respect the next vote which they won, this should come as no surprise. However, they would be wrong, or so says Professor Andrew Heard of Simon Fraser University:

But Prof. Heard disagreed with such a practice and said as long as there was proper notice there is "absolutely no excuse" to ignore the results of a confidence vote.

"It's an illogical contradiction to say that we will respond to defeats on matters of confidence to say we will have our own vote of confidence," Prof. Heard said in a phone interview. "It doesn't make sense."

But here's the problem, and the article aludes to it. This rules concerning confidence votes are not written down. They are constitutional conventions based on tradition and precedence. The precedence was that when the government loses a vote of confidence, it must immediately resign, call an election, or hold its own confidence vote.

But what does immediately mean?

Based on recent events, we've established that immediately doesn't mean moments later, but can mean as much as nine days later. Nine days? How about three weeks? Or two months? Two months might seem absurd, but a few years ago, if I had described a situation in which a government lost a confidence vote, then spent nine days promising billions to every provincial premier and every interest group and any opposition party willing to listen, spent nine days wooing opposition MPs until it managed to buy one off with a cabinet post, spent nine days governing and spending money, then when the numbers in Parliament shifted, held another confidence vote and declared themselves vindicated, you'd say I was mad!

Paul Martin's Liberals have not just broken our faith by governing illegally, they may have broken out system of government. Time will tell if this prime minister or future prime ministers decide to ignore or modify beyond recognition other constitutional rules. Because if you get away with it once...

Canadian Blog Ranking button

This Canadian Blog Rankings seem to be a hit (thank to Political Staples for the original idea and for doing the original groundwork). I still get 4 or 5 emails a day from Canadian blogs asking to be added to the list. Slowly the list is expanding beyond coservative blogs to all political blogs to non-political blogs.

Slowly, of course, because my readership is primarily political, and so political bloggers are the ones most familiar with the list.

I'd like to get more non-political Canadian blogs onto the list. I will be pursuing some possible advertising approaches, but in the mean time, I've created a Canadian Blog Rankings button:

I'm going to ask everyone who is one the list, on a strictly voluntary basis, to add this button to their link lists, and to point it either to my blog, or to this post in particular:

http://stevejanke.com/archives/083031.php

The same request will be going out to anyone who wants to join this list going forward.

Some people are going to say, "Hey, Angry is just looking for an way to earn links and generate traffic!" My response is, "Hmmm, this person knows too much and must be silenced!"

No, my actual response is, sure, this is going to benefit me, but I figure since I've done the work in setting up the system and the ongoing maintenance, I'm not out of line here. But for those who think I am, you don't have to add the button -- it will not affect your position on the list.

PS: Please be bandwidth considerate and download the button image to your own server, if possible.

Uh-oh, it's those damn Christians causing trouble again -- but the left is ready!

From the Globe and Mail:

Christian activists have secured Conservative nominations in clusters of ridings from Vancouver to Halifax -- a political penetration that has occurred even as the party tries to distance itself from hard-line social conservatism.

I find it amusing how being an active Christian makes a person a Christian "activist", with all the subtle implications of bombed clinics and book burnings and such.

At least three riding associations in Nova Scotia, four in British Columbia, and one in suburban Toronto have nominated candidates with ties to groups like Focus on the Family, a Christian organization that opposes same-sex marriage.

But organizers say many more will be on the ballot during the next federal election, a feat achieved by persuading parishioners, particularly new Canadians, to join the party and vote for recommended candidates.

The suburban Toronto riding is mine of Ajax-Pickering.

Rondo Thomas beat former Conservative MP Rene Soetens for the nomination in Ajax, on the eastern edge of Toronto. Dr. Thomas is a top official with the Canada Christian College, which is run by Charles McVety, a senior director of the Defend Marriage Coalition.

I was at a public meeting with our current Liberal MP, Mark Holland, and I can tell you that his pro-SSM stand, which is a personal conviction for him, generated a lot of anger in that room. People walked out, angry at his stance, angry at his evocation of a new phantom right to marriage, angry at his empty promise that religious institutions would not be affected (something clearly none of them believed).

If this is happening is liberal Toronto, and ultra-Liberal British Columbia, you can imagine it happening in more and more ridings in the future.

So is this a problem, or is this democracy at work? Are Christians not allowed to participate democratically in government unless they behave as non-Christians? Is being against same-sex marriage OK if your position is based on sociological reasoning, but wrong if it is based on religious ones? Should motivations matter?

John Reynolds thinks this is all fine:

John Reynolds, the retiring Conservative MP who ran the party's nomination process, said the fact that social conservatives have won his party's nominations is simply a function of democracy.

"I don't believe in appointments and neither does our party, so we get some real battles," Mr. Reynolds said. "People say, 'Can't you do something about these guys running?' and I say 'Hey, you can do something: go out and sign up some more people.' "

And he makes an excellent point:

If reporters who write about Christian fundamentalists taking over his party were to "insert the word Jew everywhere you've put Christian, do you think they would let you print it?" he asked. "I doubt it."

He's right. Being anti-Christian is the last socially acceptable bigotry. Pope Benedict XVI has been called a Nazi in print and in satirical cartoons in all sorts of "respectable" left-wing publications, such as this one in rabble.ca:

Any outrage from the mainstream? Nope.

So these Jews blacks aboriginals Christians are going to throw their hats in the ring of Canadian politics and use the power of persuasion and of debate and of free speech to try and convince people of the correctness of their point of view.

And this is the reaction that they will get (drawn from a discussion about whether rabble.ca actually receives government funding, and if so, is that appropriate for a site that publishes cartoons like the one above):

Telling gays to have a civil discourse with the Catholic Church is like telling a rape victim to have a civil discourse with her rapist. We don't CARE about their stupid church and their religion. We want them to stay the hell out of our lives. We don't seek any discourse with them. [RealityBites]

How is this web-site anti-Catholic? [Papal Bull]

Look, I'm sorry if you're offended, but those bastards started this, we didn't. We are the ones fighting for OUR lives and our rights against those people. They can shut the fuck up, leave us the hell alone, or expect us to fight back with everything we've got. [RealityBites]

Hmphhh, I just think their upset because he is saluting the Mother Mary and not Jesus. [remind]

Did I say forget to mention: Fuck you! [Cueball]

[Update: small dead animals and Charles Adler weigh in.]

Canadian Blog Rankings Updated

The ranking of Canadian blogs has been updated for today (Friday, May 27, 2005).

New feature: The movement of the blog up or down the ranking since the previous day.

If you are a Canadian-based blog, and you want to appear on the list, first register with the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Then send me an email with the name of your blog and the URL, and I'll add you to the lookup list for automatic extraction and ranking.

A new blogger

Everyone welcome Jason Monteith from Mississauga, of Reasonable and Right. Another conservative who feels compelled to blog. A statement on the way the main stream media in this country ignores our concerns for the most part.

Some housekeeping

I've made a few changes to the blog layout. First, the graphic banner has been replaced with a straight text banner, no graphics. I don't know that the graphics were adding much to the blogging experience, and in any case, this will save on bandwidth and on loading times. The banner is also less deep, meaning more content will appear on the page when it loads.

Second, I've reworked the CSS definitions of the left, right, and middle ribbons. They are all elastic now, and will resize themselves more intelligently as people adjust their browser window size.

Third, there was a serious bug in the weekly and category archive templates -- a misplaced "/div". That has been fixed. For anyone who used the archive, I apologize for the odd presentation.

Any opinions about the colour scheme? I'm thinking of making the background a lighter grey, or go with white.

Canadian Blog Rankings Updated

The ranking of Canadian blogs has been updated for today (Thursday, May 26, 2005).

If you are a Canadian-based blog, and you want to appear on the list, first register with the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Then send me an email with the name of your blog and the URL, and I'll add you to the lookup list for automatic extraction and ranking.

Teen Oral Sex!

Now that's a title sure to get me some traffic!

From Michelle Malkin:

If "proper socialization" means teaching 14-year-olds about group oral sex, we can only pray that more parents choose to raise social misfits.

In the most exhausted voice I can muster, all I can say is "What now?"

Apparently, there is a new book "Rainbow Party" being published by Simon Pulse, the juvenile division of Simon & Schuster. It opens with a bunch of 14-year-old girls at the mall buying different coloured lipstick. So far so good, right? Well, it's for a rainbow party:

A "rainbow party," you see, is a gathering of boys and girls for the purpose of engaging in group oral sex. Each girl wears a different colored lipstick and leaves a mark on each boy. At night's end, the boys proudly sport their own cosmetically-sealed rainbow you-know-where bringing a whole new meaning to the concept of "party favors."

Oh...my...God.

Well, the party is called off, not because the parents intervene and give their kids a talking-to about sex and responsibility and morals and self-respect and so on and so forth, but because of an outbreak of STDs at the school.

The author, Paul Ruditis, wrote this book filled with profanities and graphic sex scenes in order to generate discussion between parents and children. The specific subject matter was chosen because:

Rainbow parties are such an interesting topic. It's such a childlike way to look at such an adult subject with rainbow colors.

Sounds like something a pedo would say -- hey, sorry if that's out of line, but that's my take on that.

Mr. Ruditis expects it to appear on library shelves soon. He might be right. His book sounds tame compared to this dissertation on queerness that was actually handed out to schoolkids in Massachusetts (again, at hat tip to Ms. Malkin).

Remember this -- in Canada, we pride ourselves on being more progressive than those uptight Americans. How long before this book is here? Too late, Simon & Schuster Canada is already selling it.

Homeschooling, anyone?

It's not the hidden agenda

From the Globe and Mail:

The Conservative Party's inability to overtake the Liberals may have more to do with its agenda than with Stephen Harper, according to a new opinion poll.

A Leger Marketing poll, conducted last week, shows the Liberals have gained an 11-point lead over the Conservatives.

And when respondents were asked whether the Conservatives would fare better under deputy leader Peter MacKay or New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord, two potential leadership contenders, the poll showed little change in the party's support.

Not good news, of course, for the Conservatives. But the Globe continues to push the hidden agenda explanation, though they don't use the phrase:

Part of the Conservatives' problem, the survey suggests, may have more to do with the number of Canadians, especially in Quebec and Ontario, who are mistrustful of Mr. Harper's stand on social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage as well as his pro-U.S. positions.

Mistrustful? Trust comes into play when you hope that someone is not going to surprise you and do something you didn't epect him or her to do. In other words, it is driven by the notion of a "hidden agenda" -- surprises that the Conservatives will spring on Canadians should they get into power.

What surprises? The Tories have said they will vigourously oppose same-sex marriage. They have said they support ballistic missile defense. They have said they want Parliament to tackle abortion and set laws in place. They have said they will institute a zero policy approach to child pornography without loopholes for artistic merit. They have said they want to radically reduce taxes and the size of government.

People might not like those policies. Fair 'nuff. People might like to pay lots in taxes and get some poorly run services in return. Well, it's a democracy. People might be willing to let the Liberals steal their money for years and yet keep them in power. Well...some people are stupid.

But for all that, the agenda is not hidden. If anything, the Conservatives are taking their lumps for being up front about these issues. The problem is not the issues. The problem is not the Tory position or the leader. The problem is that Canada seems to have gone past some sort of tipping point into socialism that now makes debate over these issues a non-starter. To suggest less socialism doesn't start a debate, it invites condemnation. To offer an environment in which Canadians are responsible more for their own lives, in which the federal government restricts itself to federal issues, in which the Charter of Rights is not bent and twisted by every special interest group looking to transform their pet project into a fundamental human right -- well, that's just not Canadian.

And we're Canadians, right? We can't be voting for something that is not Canadian. That would not make sense. From Paul Martin's speech of March 4, 2005:

The path to lifelong success begins in early childhood. Invest in children when they’re young, give them the chance to develop in those first five to six years, and they will enter school ready to learn and to excel. And they’ll get a head start that will benefit them their whole lives. This speaks to the values of fairness and equality of opportunity, values that define us as Liberals and as Canadians.

Notice how he suggests that to be Canadian is to share in the policies of the Liberal Party. If Liberal values do not drive government policy, then the government is not truly Canadian.

From Stephen Harper's speech of March 18, 2005:

When, in the very near future, we are called upon by Canadians to form a government, it will be a government that puts our country ahead of our party, a principled government, rooted in Conservative values, a government worthy of our confederation and of the country we will serve.

Conservative values are the basis of governing policy, not some sort of litmus test for being Canadian. For the Conservatives, government serves the people, it does not define them.

I know which one I prefer. I fear though that for many Canadians, especially in Ontario, they have bought into the notion that Liberal and Canadian are the same thing. They can't separate policy from patriotism, because for the last 30 or so years, everything worthy of patriotic pride has been ridiculed and thrown aside (recall the anger people expressed at the opening of the War Museum with its emphasis on military misdeeds instead of accomplishments). Canadians are taught that our history is nothing to be proud of, and our need for pride in ourselves and our country is now drawn from pride in our large bureaucracy and our expensive government programs.

That attitude has taken root in many parts of the country, and that means when the Conservatives offer a different sort of Canada, many people see it as a choice between Canada and not-Canada. I don't know how to fix this. I don't even know if it can be fixed.

$4.6 billion was just a downpayment

The NDP will be looking for more opportunities to inflict their policies on a country that did not elect them:

The NDP will seek a long-term agreement to prop up the Liberal government in exchange for a handful of concessions, party officials said Wednesday.

They will use their newfound clout to push the government on NDP priorities such as electoral reform, the environment, and protection for pensioners.

"In return for three or four items it is possible that we could certainly find an arrangement that would keep Parliament working," said NDP spokesman Jamey Heath.

So the $4.6 billion budget deal was just a downpayment.

Problem is, of course, there may be limits to how much the Liberals will do to hold on to power.

No really, it's possible the NDP will push the Liberals too far.

Stop laughing!

Seriously, if the Liberals see signs in the polls that the vote might go in their direction in a general election, they'll chuck the NDP and force a non-confidence vote. But that might be some time away, and may not happen before the promised election call to happen in December. In the meantime, we'll have to wait and see just how much the NDP will get away with.

But how much can they get away with? There isn't much time.

There are only a few weeks before the summer recess. When Parliament reconvenes, the Gomery Report will follow in short order, and then that promised general election. There won't be much time to craft NDP-friendly legislation, much less pass it. The lifetime of this government, even by Paul Martin's reckoning is so short that propping it up with NDP help is not really an issue.

Unless...unless...unless the Liberals have given the NDP some reason to believe that the government could be standing well beyond late fall or Christmas. Is there a plan to renege on the promise to hold an election in the late fall? If the NDP knew that the Liberals intended to govern well into 2006 before an election was called, that would definitely prompt them to start making these sorts of medium- and long-term plans.

Ever get the feeling I'm a bit too paranoid?

A break in the Liberal wall at Gomery -- and a sweet side story

From the National Post:

An aide in Prime Minister Paul Martin's office told the sponsorship inquiry Wednesday he was paid $28,000 under the table to work for the Liberals in the late 1990s.

He said the then-boss of the party's Quebec wing, Benoit Corbeil, approached him at the Montreal headquarters and said the party was in dire financial straights.

Corbeil said the party could no longer afford his salary but explained the Pluri Design graphic firm, owned by Jean Chretien's friend Jacques Corriveau, could step in to pay him, Manganiello testified.

He also identified Philippe Zrihen and Jean Brisebois as Liberal workers being paid to do Liberal Party work by Jacques Corriveau.

Now apparently the Liberals have had time to get their story straight, and the thing is, they have been looking for the real killer (sorry, OJ flashback) they have been investigating this terrible state of affairs:

Under cross-examination from Liberal lawyer Doug Mitchell, Manganiello said he agreed to testify after receiving a call from a top official in Martin's office.

Manganiello said he provided information on the alleged payments to Scott Reid, Martin's director of communications, who then forwarded the information to a Justice Department official.

Well, I suppose we don't need the Gomery Inquiry then. The Liberals are on the case.

In all seriousness, it is possible that Prime Minister Paul Martin and Scott Reid are actually finding this out for the first time, and are reacting as best they can. I would like to believe that. If Paul Martin had not spent all his reserve of goodwill on bribing the likes of the NDP, the mayors of the cities of Canada, most of the provincial premiers, and finally, Belinda Stronach, after blithely disregarding votes of non-confidence, in a transparent, though ultimately successful, bid to retain power, I would have given him the benefit of the doubt.

But now, even if Manganiello has accurately described the actions of Paul Martin and Scott Reid, it'll be difficult to convince me that these two are inspired by anything more than naked greed and the fear of losing their grip on power.

In the mean time, I guess the accountants can start tabulating the salaries of Manganiello, Zrihen, and Brisebois and putting that in the Liberal kickback column.

Meanwhile, I wonder if Philippe Zrihen is the same Philippe Zrihen who once worked for Paragon Capital Partners, the merchant bank in New York. Given that one of the two partners at the firm, David Adler, is a Canadian, it is not beyond the realm of possibility. Zrihen, if it was the same person, was the point man in the sale of Laura Secord, the chocolate concern, then owned by Archibald Candy Corp of Chicago. Gaetan Frigon, former head of Lotto-Quebec, (who happens to know Jean Chretien's daughter France Chretien-Desmarais as they both sit on the board of the Montreal Heart Institute Foundation, recipient of a $5,000,000 grant from the federal Liberals in 2003) was at one point the favourite to purchase the firm. He is an controversial figure in Quebec, having been subject to an investigation when he was head of the provincially-owned alchol retailer Societe des Alcohols. That investigation was initiated when an advertising agency was upset that its contract with the Societe was not renewed after Frigon took over. A private investigator attempted to dig up dirt on Frigon.

That advertising firm? Groupaction under president Jean Brault.

Nothing substantial was found, and Groupaction ended up lookng petty and vindictive. Worse yet, the revelations of what Groupaction had been doing came just as the first rumblings of a problem with the Sponsorship Program were being heard. Groupaction came under the scrutiny of the Auditor General for having being paid to deliver three reports for $1.6 million -- with two of those three reports being identical.

Of course, no one at the time knew where that would lead.

So what does this network of connections prove? Absolutely nothing!

But it does show how the same names keep coming up in Canada's, and especially Quebec's, political theatre.

And this side story also puts Jean Brault in a new light. We all think of Jean Brault as the man brave enough to tell the truth at Gomery, and who cried on the stand from the stress of his testimony. But this man will also stoop to the nastiest tactics to protect his investment and his wealth. Something to keep in mind.

Just how big a deal is Adscam?

One of the things that can happen to anyone following the ins and outs of the Gomery Inquiry is to forget the scale of the numbers. Over $300 million went through the Sponsorship Program. If Jean Brault is to be believed, the Liberals got $2.5 million back in kickbacks (see page 25 of the Kroll Report).

$300 million out and $2.5 million back in? Sounds like a pittance, doesn't it?

What is forgotten (or not understood) is how much money the federal parties have to work with. First, the financing rules for politcal parties at the federal level are very strict, having come into force in January of 2004. Corporations and unions are essentially barred from contributing, and under those circumstances in which they are allowed, they are limited to a donation of $1000. Individuals cannot claim a contribution greater than $5000 for a tax credit, eliminating the incentive to donate more than that.

Instead, parties depend on public funding. For those parties that qualify (having met minimum goals for votes cast at the last election), an allowance of $0.4375 is provided for each vote cast in the previous election, each quarter, adjusted for inflation.

In 2003-2004, the parties received the following amounts via this formula (actually, the variant that was in place that year, which was not substantially different):

• Liberal Party: $9,191,055


• Conservative Party: $8,476,872


• Bloc Quebecois: $2,411,022


• NDP: $1,914,268

Suddenly, an infusion of $2.5 million seems like a lot of money. It represents an increase of 27% in the size of the war chest, making it substantially larger than the funds available to the Conservatives, who presumably are not receiving kickbacks from anybody. Remember that when people like Liberal Party lawyer Doug Mitchell dismiss Adscam as not being "a great huge scam".

Softwood Lumber -- Another Quebec spending program

Taking a break from Gomery for a moment, I thought I'd browse the details of the 2003-2004 Public Accounts of Canada, detailing "transfer payments". The transfer payments are not just the big federal-provincial transfers (though they are on the list), but every grant given to every organization inside and outside of Canada by the federal that the government deems worthy of support. The formal definition (page 2):

A transfer payment is a grant, contribution or other payment made by the Government for which no goods or services are received.

Putting aside the notion that nothing is received from money spent, understand that these transfers are not subject to review by the Auditor General.

What caught my eye in the 250 pages of single-spaced listings of organizations that received cash was the Contribution Program for Softwood Industry and Community Economic Adjustment Initiative, known as SICEA.

Apparently, most lumberjacks are French.

Sponsorship Program -- Not a Great Huge Scam

The Liberals are laying the groundwork for paying pack a fraction of the money that disappeared into the Sponsorship Program, and that others have said went to the Liberal Party.

Their justification: the inability of the auditors to go back in time and watch envelopes and suitcases stuffed with cash being handed from person to person.

From the party lawyer, Doug Mitchell, via the National Post:

Doug Mitchell, the lawyer representing the Liberal party before Justice John Gomery's inquiry, said the $1.7-million identified by Kroll greatly overstates the amount of "improper or illegal payments" received by the Liberals.

Mr. Mitchell told reporters that the $750,000 placed in trust by the Liberals last week to reimburse the federal government for any improper payments is double what he believes will be needed when Justice Gomery delivers his conclusions.

"I take some comfort personally from the fact that this does not appear to have been, from what Kroll is reporting, a great huge scam."

Apparently we've been overreacting. According to the Liberals, we should all calm down and move along, there's nothing to see here. Just go about our business. The Liberals will take care of things, make sure the little bit of messiness here is tidied up.

Canadian Blog Rankings Updated

The ranking of Canadian blogs has been updated for today (Wednesday, May 25, 2005).

If you are a Canadian-based blog, and you want to appear on the list, first register with the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Then send me an email with the name of your blog and the URL, and I'll add you to the lookup list for automatic extraction and ranking.

Belinda Stronach moving to Sussex Drive

Don't panic...yet.

She's moving to some posh condo complex at 700 Sussex drive. From CFRA News Talk Radio:

Canada's newest cabinet minister has bought a new home just steps from Parliament Hill.

Belinda Stronach is believed to have paid one million dollars for her new condo on Sussex Drive.

Stronach is scheduled to move into her new condo next month.

The new Human Resources Minister had been living in the Chateau Laurier since being elected as a Conservative M-P last June.

I wonder if Paul Martin gets that prickly feeling at the back of his neck. You know, the one you get when someone is staring at you.

[Hat tip to the Free Dominion.]

Sample of how the government manages our money

From section 7.3.2 of the Kroll Report, a sample contract is deconstructed.

Out of a total of $46.32 million:

• $460,000, or 1%, went to sponsorship


• $8.34 million, or 18%, went to actual work done


• $26 million, or 56%, went to "unrelated or unknown parties"


• $11.52 million, or 25%, was unspent or the invoices were not found

Quite enlightening. 1% goes to sponsorships. 18% goes to work. 56% goes to stuff unrelated to sponsorship. And 25% they can't even find.

I wonder if the $11.52 million is under my desk...nope, not there. Oh well.

The Liberals are only willing to pay back the cheques, not the cash

When the Liberals set up their trust fund, they offered to put in $750,000 against what they might have to pay out to return money received illegally. I wondered how they came to the figure of $750,000 -- I figured someone knew ahead of time what money would need to be paid back.

I was right. But the truth is much more cynical than that.

From the National Post:

Kroll also attached a dollar figure to all contributions to the Liberals, registered and unregistered, heard during testimony at the inquiry.

The auditors said $768,000 was donated above board to the party and added, "if the amounts identified by Mr. Brault as payments for a political purpose are included, this amount rises to $2.5 million.''

Brault's alleged illicit contributions were pegged by Kroll at $1.76 million, but the auditors did not endorse the figure, listing it under the heading "payments suggested by Brault.''

The auditors were confident of $768,000 in donations because of the paper trail left behind. That matches up with the trust fund.

In other words, the Liberals always knew (despite all the protestations and waving of audits) that they had about $750,000 in bad cheques on the books. So they set up the trust fund in case the accountants figured it out. They knew they didn't have to go higher because they knew all the rest of the money was off the radar, stuffed in envelopes and suitcases. As it is, the accountants did figure it out, and the Liberals will have to cough up the money in the trust fund (probably -- they'll wait until a court case settles it, I'd bet).

The trick will be not to giggle as they write out they cheque.

The auditors found evidence of more illegal cash donations, "pegged at $1.76 million", but the evidence is murkier. For instance, they were able to find almost half a million in cheques that were probably turned into cash:

Kroll listed a series of cheques in the name of Brault, his wife or associates from 1996 to 2002.

"We have identified ... various Groupaction cheques totalling $406,514, which may have provided Mr. J. Brault with the opportunity to obtain cash amounts,'' said the 189-page report.

That cash, if Brault is to be believed, went into the pockets of the Liberal Party. But as with all cash payments, the evidence is indirect, often by elimination ("we can't find anywhere else the money could have gone to" type of argument).

Eventually, the Liberals will dip into their trust fund and pay back the $768,000. Belinda Stronach will probably have a big news conference and show how this is part of rebuilding confidence in Canadian democracy or something.

As for the other $1.8 million?

"Uhm, sorry, no one can prove that we have it."

Wanted: Liberal Party of Canada for theft of $2 million

$2 million -- that is the amount of taxpayers' money the Kroll accountants say they could identify entering the Liberal Party coffers. That's over two-and-a-half times the size of the so-called trust fund the party has set up to pay back stolen money.

What they can't account for is money being moved around in envelopes and suitcases.

Other tidbits: The accountants studied 28 million pages of documents, and over a longer period of time, in particular covering a time period after the Auditor General's report -- this is the primary reason they were able to identify nearly $100 million dollars more in taxpayer money being moved through the Sponsorship Program. Among the other discoveries, $51 million went into the pockets of the advertising firms.

More to come...

First bombshell from the accountants

From CTV:

The total amount of money lost in the sponsorship scandal now appears to be $355 million -- more than $100 million than was originally thought.

That's 40% more than we've been told. I used to find amazing that Jean Chretien could hide the spending of a quarter of a billion dollars from his finance minister, our current prime minister, Paul Martin.

Now my credulity is strained even further. Actually, 40% further.

Adscam allegations proven in court?

With all the sound and fury with Adscam, the constant chorus has been that nothing has actually been proven. Everything is an allegation, no one has faced a court, wait until the report before calling an election, blah, blah, blah.

That is about to change.

From the National Post:

Paul Coffin, the first person charged in the sponsorship scandal, may plead guilty to fraud charges when he returns to court May 31.

Reports indicate Coffin's lawyers have been in negotiations with the Crown and that lawyers and the judge have held two telephone conference calls.

No one has confirmed or denied anything, but if someone is willing to stand up in court and say they received money for no work and are given a sentence, the tone of the Adscam drama changes dramatically. For the others facing charges, Chuck Guite and Jean Brault, their lives have gotten much more complicated. And for all of us discussing the case, there is one less "alleged" we have to keep typing over and over again. Maybe soon, they will be even fewer.

Gomery vs Gagliano -- Fight called off

Alfonso Gagliano's lawyer could not persuade a federal judge to allow the disgraced former minister under Jean Chretien to join the former prime minister in an attempt to have Justice Gomery removed:

Both men have argued that Gomery is biased against them and should be removed from the inquiry.

But Federal Court Justice Max Teitelbaum said Gagliano's lawyer offered no compelling explanation for what he would add to the case.

Justice Teitelbaum is right. How much self-indulgent bleating along the lines of "He's against me just because I stole money from every single man, woman, and child in this country, and that's not fair!" can any person, or court room, take?

I actually hope they framed the argument better than that.

Managing the Adscam Trust Fund

From the website of the Liberal Party of Canada:

The funds will be managed by the Ottawa law firm of Perley-Robertson, Hill & McDougall LLP. The trustees have been directed to disburse the funds based on a decision of the National Executive of the LPC, to be made at the conclusion of the Gomery Inquiry and if necessary for further clarity, the criminal and civil actions related to the Sponsorship Program. Any decision of the National Executive with respect to reimbursement of these funds, and the rationale for it, will be made public.

Donations from Perley-Robertson:

• $2,248,31 to the Liberal Party in 1993


• $168.24 to the Liberal Party in 1994


• $1,479.63 to the Liberal Party in 1995


• $46,161.68 to the Liberal Party in 1997 (Wow!)


• $7,916.78 to the Liberal Party in 1998


• $3,991.20 to the Liberal Party in 2000


• $3,806.00 to the Liberal Party in 2001


• $289.00 to the Reform Party in 2002


• $5,212.70 to the Liberal Party in 2002


• $1,000.00 to the Reform Party in 2003


• $4,214.70 to the Liberal Party in 2003

Let me the first to say that I expect Perley-Robertson to perform their work in the most professional and ethical manner. But I would also suggest that given the ethical sensitivities at play with everything to do with the Sponsorship Program, I am surprised that no one thought at the PMO that the law firm selected to manage the trust fund should be one that has had no significant links to the Liberal Party.

But here is the scary thought -- what if they thought that would be a good idea, but couldn't find such a law firm?

Gomery Update

Today might be another red-letter day and the Gomery Inquiry. The much anticipated Kroll Report is to be delivered, or so I have heard reported on the radio this morning. The orginal Inquiry schedule had the report being delivered two weeks ago. But better late than never. Remind yourself about what the report will cover, and watch this space for updates...

A Case Study in Political Donations and Policy Decisions

A lot has been said about the appointment of Belinda Stronach to the post of Minister of Human Resources, and the role of the hefty donations made by the Stronach family to the Liberal Party and to Paul Martin personally had in making that decision. This would be so much noise if it were not so easy for me to find another example of political donations and policy decisions seeming to made in tandem. This is the case of Apotex Inc, Dr. Nancy Olivieri, Paul Martin, and some very sick children.

Canadian Blog Rankings Updated

The ranking of Canadian blogs has been updated for today (Tuesday, May 24, 2005).

If you are a Canadian-based blog, and you want to appear on the list, first register with the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Then send me an email with the name of your blog and the URL, and I'll add you to the lookup list for automatic extraction and ranking.

A moment of startling clarity

Unfortunately, this moment of clarity does not paint me in the best light. From David Frum's latest piece at the American Enterprise Institute (also published in the National Post):

We've been hearing for a month how popular all that new Liberal spending is. We've been hearing too how little the public wanted a new election. If that were true, would not Paul Martin have been smart to let the Conservatives and Bloc force a vote upon him?

Why didn't I think of that? Now I understand as well as I can understand anything about why he's a fellow at the AEI, and I'm a two-bit blogger.

Why wouldn't Paul Martin let the electorate punish the Conservatives and the Bloc by letting them have their election? Why not give Canadians a chance to confirm just how much they look forward to the new NDP budget and the billions of dollars in side-deals that the Prime Minister has been making:

This deal suggests that none of those things were true: that Martin's pollsters were warning him that the new spending was not working, that public reluctance to return to the polls would not translate into Liberal votes once they got there. And as members of Martin's own caucus absorb the implications of this unsavory deal, they are bound to wonder: Has Martin been misleading them about anything else?

And apparently, my concerns about Stephen Harper are "silly". Boy, I'm really getting reamed here:

A number of newspaper columnists have been asking whether Stephen Harper can survive Belinda Stronach's defection. That's a silly question. The Conservative party is more united this morning than it has been at any time in almost two decades. Belinda never had any supporters in the party, only employees. And those Conservatives inclined to agree with her views are the very Conservatives who feel the most outraged by her betrayal: She has made them all look potentially disloyal, and they will rally to Harper in response.

OK, so I guess I really don't get the subleties of politics.

Do yourself a favour and read the whole piece by Mr. Frum. It's brilliant, and put me to shame.

Not much of a compliment for Belinda Stronach

Captain Ed wonders why Belinda Stronach was campaigning for the Liberals in the Newfoundland by-election:

Her recent defection cannot have built much trust in her convictions, and her opportunistic elevation to the Cabinet only reinforces the garage-sale tactics of the Martin government. The Tories in the riding, already seething from her betrayal, will build even more momentum in getting out the vote.

But there is an obvious explanation. For all her opportunism and her rank unsuitability for cabinet, she is the only person in the Liberal benches that Paul Martin is absolutely sure could not be tainted by Adscam, given that she's been a Liberal for about a week.

I suppose it's not much of a compliment, but with Belinda Stronach, it might be the best you can get.

Favours in kind -- Follow-up

In this previous post, I described how the Magna family of companies was one of the top contributors to Paul Martin's leadership campaign. That is to say, Magna companies wrote out cheques to Paul Martin's personal campaign and not to some generic entity like the Liberal Party, and these are donations Paul Martin knew about (that is to say, they did not get deposited into a blind trust).

Let me provide some extra details. First, a helpful reader provided me with a list of Magna executives. None of the names showed up as personal contributors.

Second, the average donation was just over $3000. There are over 2900 names on the disclosure lists, spread over 9 files. Of these 2900, only 32 donated $50,000 or more. The Magna donations of $91,000 put it in 9th place overall, behind 8 contributors each donating $100,000. Since I won;t quibble over a measly $9,000, and since it's quite possible I missed a Magna donation done under a different name, I'd say Magna is a top direct contributor.

What a coincidence that Belinda Stronach turned out to be such an amazingly good fit for the position of Minister of Human Resources.

But a cynic would say that after having bought a Prime Minister, buying a cabinet post is relatively straightforward.

Favours in kind?

There is a government website for the Ethics Counsellor. Try the link if you like -- it seems to be down, along with all the information held inside.

But via Google caches, I've extracted the disclosure statements of Paul Martin. These are lists of donations made to his leadership campaign. Note that these are not blind trusts -- the donations are known to the candidate. Cheques that have "Paul Martin" written on them, and for the important ones -- who knows? -- maybe even delivered in person. One of the biggest donations? Magna International. Either directly or through subsidiaries, the company donated $91,000 (Magna: $20,000, $15,000, $20,000, Intier: $15,000; Decoma: $5000; Tesma $15,000; Cosmos: $1000) to fund Paul Martin's march to 24 Sussex Drive -- at least as far as I could tell. One problem is getting a list of the names of the board of directors for Magna, since more donations might have been made through individuals.

By contrast, the Royal Bank donated $4,000, of which $3,000 was returned at the instigation of the Ethics Commissioner.

In fact, the size of the donations from Magna and its family of companies ranks among the top contributors to give Paul Matin his current job. I wonder if the Stronach's were paid back in kind. But no, I'm sure Belinda Stronach as a university drop-out who was born into money and was given the top job at her daddy's company was the best choice for the government ministry dedicated to improving job skills and managing loans for formal education.

[See here for updates]

Pride goeth before the fall

The actual quote from Proverbs 16:18 is "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." (King James Version)

Keep this in mind as you read this:

Partying Liberals were treated Thursday night to the incredible sight of Belinda Stronach, Canada's new human resources minister, and Tim Murphy, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, dancing atop a speaker at an Ottawa bar.

The tune? "Material Girl," by Madonna.

BlackBerries were buzzing all over Ottawa bars on Thursday night with descriptions of the dancing scene. Some Liberals, especially the younger ones, were dazzled. Others, more seasoned, fretted that the display was just more proof that Martin's Liberal government thrives solely on adrenalin, celebrity and power for its own sake.

The article in the Star goes on to portray the Martin Liberals as reckless, and manages to ding Belinda Stronach ("Martin had snagged a shiny new cabinet minister").

But the image of Belinda Stronach dancing forever cements in me the image not of a person struggling with a difficult decision and suffering the pains of being forced to choose between conscience and loyalty (and love, for that matter -- let's not forget Peter MacKay), but of a scheming woman celebrating another act of cleverness that has earned her more power and brought her closer to her goal.

Too bad nobody snapped a picture.

Canadian Blog Rankings Updated

The ranking of Canadian blogs has been updated for today (Sunday, May 22, 2005).

Changes: I've removed the table format (which was always a temporary kludge and, not suprisingly, problematic -- Firefox and IE seem to have very different ideas of what to do with table tags), and replaced it with a simpler line-by-line listings. More blogs have been added, and I expect that the list will continue to grow. To help get all Canadian blogs listed and to help spur the growth of the Canadian blogosphere, let your readers know about this list, and encourage them, if they are bloggers, to get in touch with me and get themselves listed.

As always, if you are a Canadian-based blog, and you want to appear on the list, first register with the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Then send me an email with the name of your blog and the URL, and I'll add you to the lookup list for automatic extraction and ranking.

Canadian Blog Rankings Updated

Today's update is up. Coming soon -- the TTLB Rank Number will be a hyperlink to that blog's Ecosystem details page.

Too funny -- Belinda Stronach still ripping up the Liberal Party

Hat tip to NealeNews. Apparently, everyone in Newmarket-Aurora received a letter today from Belinda Stronach, their Liberal MP, in which she tears the Liberal Party apart over corruption and short-changing Ontario.

Of course, these were probably in the mail when she scurried over to the Liberals chasing after her new Cabinet post, like a rat lunging for a nasty piece of cheese, but I wonder how many constituents might decide to hold on to these flyers for future reference. Maybe to ask a few pointed questions during the next town hall. I assume she holds town halls. Maybe not. Having to press the flesh with the great unwashed -- must be such a chore!

On another front, Martha Hall Findlay, the frighteningly qualified Liberal candidate for Newmarket-Aurora who was pushed out when multi-millionaire Belinda Stronach came to take her job away, still has her web site up. Good for her.

D'oh! Forgot the most important blog of all

Looks like the Canadian Blog Rankings are going to be a popular addition to this site. It takes me about five minutes to regerenate the list (including time to rebuild the files) since my spreadsheet queries the TTLB system an extracts the necessary data for lookup. That's the hardest part, and the most important to get right. Automating it will mean keeping this list going should be a snap.

Adding new blogs is straightforward too. Just add the name to the lookup list, and extend the cells down one, resort, copy into the preformatted MS Word table, recast it as HTML, copy into the Movable Type subfile dedicated to holding the table, rebuild the site, and it's done.

Like I said, it's easy!

But for all my care, I forgot to include Captain's Quarters! He is now on the list, so I think the number one position will be locked up for quite some time to come.

Quote of the Day

Tony Valeri on yesterday's budget vote:

"I'm certainly encouraging my colleagues and my counterparts (in other parties) to respect the outcome of the vote."

Let's recall Tony Valeri's words on May 6:

But House Leader Tony Valeri shrugged [a Tory non-confidence vote] off, saying the motion is only a procedural matter that has no binding effect on the government and that the Liberals would not step down from power if it should pass.

"There is no non-confidence motion," Valeri said after the House speaker ruled the motion to be in order. "This is merely an instruction to a committee."

What a two-faced piece of...I bet he and Belinda Stronach will become best of friends.

Ministers to appear at the Gomery Inquiry

This could get interesting -- ministers to appear at the Gomery Inquiry:

The sponsorship inquiry has agreed to hear from several key Liberals, including a number of former public works ministers.

Among those who will be testifying for the first time in the coming weeks is Finance Minister Ralph Goodale.

He'll be appearing as a former public works minister, as will Don Boudria.

They are appearing to confirm that Jean Chretien started the RCMP on the trail of the problems in the Sponsorship Program 8 months before he left office.

I think he's worried about his legacy.

Funny thing is, once these guys are up on the witness stand, and have finished saying what a great guy Jean Chretien is, they'll be open to questioning themselves. I hope one of them doesn't blurt out something that tarnishes the Chretien legacy.

That would be a shame.

Canadian Ecosystem -- The Rankings for May 20, 2005

The blog rankings have been moved to a permanent home on my left side bar. Review it at your leisure, and visit these great bloggers. If you have a Canadian blog, and you want to appear, make sure you sign up with the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem, then email me with your blog name and URL, and I'll add you to the list.

Beyond next steps -- the future

Would the Conservatives have won an election if they could have forced one last night? On the basis of Gomery, probably. But that's a negative win in that the people are voting against something, not for something. I'm wondering how we get Canadians to vote for Conservatives, and not just against Liberals.

I keep coming back to Stephen Harper yelling "me too" to every promise the Liberals made. Maybe what I'm about to suggest is a recipe for disaster, but shouldn't the Conservatives have a different agenda from the Liberals? Shouldn't their platform be no Kyoto, no nationalized daycare, low taxes, less red tape, and no obligation to follow up on any promise the Liberals made?

At least the agenda would not be hidden.

Canadian Ecosystem -- Basis for Comparison

Taking my inspiration from Political Staples most excellent "Top Canadian Blogs" post, I decided to take things one step further, but at the same time, one step back.

Here's what I mean. I've semi-automated the process of extracting the data from the Truth Laid Bear ecosystem for Canadian blogs, making the generation of this list a 15 minute affair. As such, I might start posting a daily update to the list, probably first thing in the morning, by 9am or so.

That's the step forward.

Now for the step back. I'm driving this list from the "Links" ecosystem, which incorporates the quality of linkage. I'm doing this for two reasons. First, this is the intent of the Ecosystem. The Ecosystem also provides a "Traffic" list, but it is limited to sites that use Sitemeter. The "Links" ecosystem ranks blogs by their cross linkage to other high linkage sites. Cross-linkage, of course, implies higher traffic, but more importantly, suggests varied readership and a greater contribution to the blogosphere as a whole, binding it more closely together, and helping blog readers discover new blogs in their explorations of the blogosphere. It also has the side-effect of dropping erotic blogs down the list dramatically. These blogs tend to have high traffic, but little or no linking. This is not a judgment on the subject matter, but an evaluation of their role in the blogosphere. In engineering terms, they tend to be sinks, rather than network nodes.

The second reason is that the "Links" Ecosystem develops its own ranking on links based on its own crawl of the front page of a blog. It does not require a blog to be using a particular tool, such as it requires Sitemeter to be used for the "Traffic" Ecosystem. As a result, when I generated the rankings, I found most of the blogs were in the "Links" Ecosystem, and far fewer in the "Traffic" Ecosystem.

Why is this a step back? It is only in as much that if you want to appear in this list, you must enter your blog into the Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem. Since it is links driven and not traffic driven, I can't accept an email from someone saying their non-Sitemeter traffic tool says they get x amount of traffic. Traffic isn't the criteria, but link value is. And the only way to get link value is to get in the Ecosystem.

Having explained all that, here are the rankings.

If you are registered in the Ecosystem, and don't appear on the list, send me an email, and I'll correct my cross-referencing spreadsheet. I expect I missed more than a few, so this might take a few iterations to get everyone on the list.

It could have been worse

One bit of good news: at least Chuck Cadman is from BC. Imagine if he was from Ontario! Albertans would be going ballistic about how Ontario had again foiled the desires of the West to deal with the Liberals.

But then Belinda Stronach is from Ontario, and her defection made all this possible, so Ontario might still get blamed for this one. Damn!

In the end, no surprises

When all was said and done, everything went according to plan. Everyone voted the way they were expected, including Chuck Cadman, who had made it increasing clear he was going to support the government.

The Liberals won both budget votes, and claim the confidence of the House.

A few comments:

First, the Liberals don't have the confidence of the House. A majority of members do not support the Prime Minister. In fact, the House is divided equally, and under those circumstances, the Speaker votes for the government, so that debate can continue and the issue resolved. The Speaker made it clear in his comments that the issue of confidence has not been resolved in this vote.

As last week, the Prime Minister should call for a confidence vote, untethered to a budget, immediately, but he won't.

Second, Chuck Cadman followed his constituents after asking them whether they wanted an election. Of course, no one wants an election. It's like asking whether you want to take Buckley's cold medicine. Of course not. First, it tastes awful. Second, to take it is to be sick with a cold. An election is the same: they are a nuisance and they suggest a breakdown in government. But like foul tasting cold medicine, you don't want it, but sometimes you do need it. I wonder if Chuck Cadman made that nuance clear when he asked his constituents what they wanted.

Third, there will be other budget votes -- supply bills and what not that are required to actually implement the budget. Each is a vote of confidence. I don't expect there to be a showdown on these though. It'll look bad, politically, for the Conservatives.

Fourth, there will be Opposition Days. Well, we hope so. It may not matter anyway. The Liberals delayed all Opposition Days until May 31, a full week after the by-election in Newfoundland. That is a safe Liberal seat, so with Belinda Stronach, the Liberals numbers will be up by two compared to last week. With the NDP and Carolyn Parrish, they should be able to survive any votes after that.

So we may be facing a long summer. Gomery will reveal more shocking Liberal malfeasance, but short of a criminal act tied directly to a sitting member, the Liberals will get their wish and we'll all wait until the final report is tabled. Assuming Justice Gomery is allowed to finish the report, that is -- Jean Chretien and Chuck Guite are working to have him removed. I'd put even money on the the Liberals finding a way to weasel out of the Gomery Report election promise -- either because the report is delayed, or Gomery is removed, or the stars were not right, or something.

Stephen Harper said the Prime Minister had won a Pyrrhic victory. Perhaps, but I don't know what tremendous loss the Prime Minister suffered to eak out this victory. Maybe it'll be clearer tomorrow.

David Kilgour to vote against the government

Assuming everyone shows up who is supposed to show up (yeah, I'm talking to you, Efford), then it all comes down to Chuck Cadman.

They wouldn't dare -- Part 2

A follow-up to the post about John Effords being in Ottawa today. Recall that John Effords is the Liberal MP paired up with Darrel Stinson, the Conservative MP from Alberta who is in Alberta recovering from cancer surgery. John Efford was supposed to be undergoing treatment for diabetes. But he's not, and he's in Ottawa, and he could vote.

What if there is another Liberal MP missing today? For whatever reason -- family emergency, for example. We don't know about it yet. But strictly speaking, this MP's absence is not covered under the pairing agreement. Nevertheless, the Liberals trot out Efford, and the Conservatives cry foul. Not so, say the Liberals, saying that Stinson is still paired off, but the msytery Liberal MP Mr. X. The Conservatives point out that Mr. X is missing and that the Conservatives are not responsible for that -- the agreement was for Stinson and Efford, not Stinson and whatever MP happens to missing today.

Well, the Liberals say, you might be right, but the vote is over, and we win.

They wouldn't dare!

Here's a little bit of news to make everyone nervous. Everyone knows that Conservative MP Darrel Stinson has undergone surgery to treat his cancer and will not be on hand for the budget vote. But that's OK because the Liberals have paired Stinson with their own Minister for Natural Resources, John Efford who is undergoing diabetes treatment.

Problem is, he isn't undergoing treatment today.

In fact, Efford is in Ottawa:

But Efford, a Newfoundlander, decided to come to Ottawa to make a symbolic point. He wanted to be on hand to back a federal-provincial accord that will bring his province billions in offshore oil and gas revenue.

Now the Liberals are saying not to worry:

Karen Redman, the Liberal whip, said her party would honour the pairing by holding another member out of the House to make up for Stinson’s absence.

But it still makes me nervous. What if Carolyn Parrish is too sick to show up? Or another MP goes MIA? Would Effords suddenly appear?

The Liberals wouldn't dare renege on their promise, would they?

I'd get a second opinion

Carolyn Parrish, the independent MP who has said she would support the government in the budget vote, gave the Liberals a scare when she suffered abdominal pains this morning. The fear was that she would miss the vote tonight. But her doctor said it was not appendicitis, but rather an ovarian cyst or a kidney stone.

Well, it wasn't actually her doctor. It was Dr. Bernard Patry. Dr. Patry is also the Liberal MP from Pierrefonds-Dollard in Quebec.

Now I'm not saying that a doctor would ever misdiagnose a patient so that she could appear at a critical budget vote. Well, I guess what I'm really saying is that if it was me, I'd get a second opinion. Let's just leave it at that.

Benefit of the doubt -- Part 2

I posted my thoughts about the Vickers & Benson aspect of the Gomery Inquiry, and how I figured that this aspect of the case my be a dead end, crippled by contradictory testimony and no corroborating evidence.

I may have spoken too soon:

Justice John Gomery, saying no one gets special treatment at the sponsorship inquiry, rejected a Toronto ad firm's request Thursday to keep some of its financial information under wraps.

Gomery's ruling means Vickers and Benson will have to release executive and staff salaries to the inquiry, along with details of its acquisition in 2000 by a French firm.

Justice Gomery obviously thinks there might be something in those numbers that will suggest what really happened. Moreover, Justice Gomery doesn't trust Vickers & Benson:

Gomery also noted the way in which corporate restructuring allowed Vickers to remain 100 per cent Canadian owned after it was bought out by the French firm.

A shell company owned completely by Canadians was set up, retaining the Vickers and Benson name and handling all federal ad contracts.

The shell company had signed a service agreement with its French owner, allowing it to use staff at Havas subsidiaries to work on the Canadian accounts.

Gomery said the corporate rearrangement was "ingenious."

"I'm not suggesting that the letter of the law hasn't been observed, but the spirit of the policy, I think, probably hasn't," the judge said of the French firm's solution to Canadian-content laws.

So Vickers & Benson is going to have to show the Inquiry the numbers. Will they show a pattern that suggests Chuck Guite's testimony about guaranteed contracts was correct? Are more questions going to be asked of the Prime Minister? Stay tuned...

Gomery under more attack

This little tidbit tucked at the bottom of the news pile:

Also on Thursday, a lawyer for Alfonso Gagliano said the former public works minister has joined a move by former prime minister Jean Chretien to have Gomery removed as presiding inquiry judge.

Gagliano's lawyers filed documents in Federal Court on Wednesday, and will make arguments on June 6 and 7.

I grow more and more worried that the Gomery Inquiry will be derailed before it manages to deliver a report. If that's the case, and if the Liberals are still in power tomorrow, the chances are good that with no report, there will be no fall election. With the help of the NDP, the Liberals will remain in power for a year or two, ride out the anger from the allegations already raised at the Inquiry, and when the exhaustion sets in, go to the polls and win back full control of government.

It's a nightmare scenario, to be sure, but with Justice Gomery under constant attack...

A new twist to the bribery story

A go-between is now saying that Conservative member of Parliament Gurmant Grewal initiated the discussions with Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh in an attempt to trade his vote to defeat the government for a diplomatic posting or a Senate seat for himself and his wife.

Sudesh Kalia has told CBC News that Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh told the truth when he said the Liberals did not approach Grewal about helping the Liberals by abstaining from a key budget vote.

So far, only the CBC is carrying this story.

Asked for comment, Grewal disputed Kalia's account, telling [CBC reporter Eric] Sorensen he has a tape recording of a conversation with Kalia that backs him up.

Earlier, Dosanjh had told reporters that Grewal came back several times when the Liberals rejected his demands for high-level postings as a reward for switching allegiances.

Obviously, I want to hear all these tapes. It's hard to know what to think right now. Certainly, it's possible that Grewal thought he had an opportunity to move up and out. But I find it bizarre that the Liberals would not have jumped at the chance to peel away another Conservative vote (or even two, given that Grewal's wife is also a Conservative MP).

One explanation that I don't like but keeps coming up in my head is that this was a very clumsy attempt at a sting by the Conservatives, or more likely, by Grewal acting alone. The Liberals smelled something fishy, and kept putting Grewal off.

I hope this isn't the case. As we've seen in the past, the Liberals can be seen running out of banks clutching bags of money, but if a Conservative is spotted on the same street spitting on the sidewalk, the media will go ballistic covering the "criminal" acts of the Conservative. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's wait and see what other media outlets say about this story, and what we'll hear on the Dosanjh tape.

Benefit of the doubt

When Chuck Guite testified last at the Gomery Inquiry, he related a story that was quite shocking. The ad firm of Vickers & Benson was about to be bought out, but for the sale to proceed, guarantees had to be made that this firm, soon to be owned by American interests (in turn owned by French interests) would not lose lucrative government contracts with the Ministry of Industry and the Ministry of Finance.

Guite said he talked to Public Works Minister Alfonso Gagliano, then heard back from Pierre Tremblay, who told Guite that Gagliano had spoken to the ministers responsible and those guarantees were provided.

Problem is, Pierre Tremblay is dead. We only have Guite's word on what Tremblay said. Moreover, Gagliano and the ministers have denied ever having these conversations.

The ministers involved by the way: John Manley (now a private citizen) and Paul Martin, the current prime minister.

Well, the Gomery Inquiry has heard from John Hayter, the CEO of Vickers & Benson, and he denies ever asking for any guarantees.

So we are left with Chuck Guite's word on this. With all the dirt being revealed at the Inquiry, it would be easy to believe Guite's story. But there is no corroborating evidence or testimony, so I'm going to have to give the Martin, Manley, and Gagliano the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Unless someone comes up with something new, I'm putting this into the "interesting but that's all" bucket. Too bad -- it sure was a hell of a story.

Today's grammar lesson

Whatever happens tonight, there are going to be a lot of disgruntled people tomorrow. Presumably the other side will be filled with people who are very gruntled by comparison.

Gruntled?

Turns out that "gruntled" is not the opposite of "disgruntled", in the way "honest" is the opposite of Liberal "dishonest". From the Straight Dope:

Dis- isn't always used to negate; sometimes it's an intensifier. "Gruntle" is an old dialect word meaning "to grumble." So "disgruntled" means you're really grumbling. There are times when I can definitely relate.

Got that. Prepare for a lot of gruntling tomorrow.

Sounds vaguely rude. I bet Kate at small dead animals can compose something pithy around it.

A Liberal MP with some interesting thoughts

Some thoughts about changing the way things work in Ottawa, written in 2000:

The prime minister and his office used the people's money to seduce voters with choice handouts while rulling all government members, including Cabinet, with an iron fist. However, there is a desire amongst disenfranchised MPs and Canadians to start afresh.

Now that the election is over, the fear is that the prime minister [Jean Chretien] with his larger majority will become more dictatorial and shelve democratic change in favour of continued governance by the elite.

[Backbench MPs] will be left to play a ridiculously puny and insignificant role in making the laws of the land.

The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is the biggest obstacle to innovation. It's comprised of a tiny, unelected, unaccoutnable group that has taken decision and law-making roles away from the MPs. The PMO uses the Party Whip (an MP) to force MPs to do their bidding with a carrot and stick approach. Toe the party line and be rewarded or deviate according to the dictates of your constituents or conscience and face punishment.

We cannot allow Parliament to dissolve into the old game where the primary objective is the maintenance or acquisition of political power.

The author of this thought-provoking piece: Liberal MP Dr. Keith Martin for Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca.

Who knows? Maybe the budget vote tonight will be more interesting after all.

I thought Parrish wasn't a Liberal

Apparently independent MP Carolyn Parrish is feeling better.

And apparently she's a Liberal, too:

The Prime Minister's Office says Independent MP Carolyn Parrish "does not believe she has appendicitis" and "she is determined" to be in the Commons for a vote Thursday that could determine the fate of the Liberal government.

Nice of the Prime Minister's Office to do news releases for the independent MPs.

Even independent MPs who are less than impressed by Belinda Stronach's promotion to cabinet:

Parrish has said a poll of 9,000 constituents in her riding suggested 72 per cent didn't want an election now.

But she was upset about Stronach's instant promotion to cabinet.

"It disgusts me. Absolutely. I can't believe how low we as Liberals will go to hang onto this government," she said.

"We" as Liberals?

I know she was a Liberal until her mouthing off about the Prime Minister (the insults aimed at the US president and the American people weren't really the issue) got her booted from caucus. But all this suggests to me she'll be back in caucus not long after the budget vote passes.

The bribe, the audiotape, and reaction

I wish Warren Kinsella and I agreed on more things. He is a great writer, and I love it when we do agree, because he can frame my thoughts in such better words than I ever could. With regards to the allegations that the Liberals (specifically Paul Martin's Chief of Staff Tim Murphy) tried to bribe Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal into abstaining from the budget vote:

CTV News says it is the voice of Tim Murphy, Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister of Canada, making what he calls - and I quote - "a proposal." The link is found here.

"A proposal." Stay home, abstain, whatever you like. Afterwards, we can have a leisurely chat about a Senate seat. It's just "a proposal."

This isn't "a proposal," but it is my own truth: these people make me want to vomit. They're not Liberals. They're the people who are destroying the Liberal Party, perhaps for good. If given the chance, they will barter away the country, too, to satisfy their own ambition, and to satisfy their lust for a couple cheap headlines.

And from an earlier post on the same subject:

I am told I will have a recording of the fateful meeting shortly. If it is true - and I suspect it is, and so do you - I am not sure how any Parliamentarian, of any stripe, can in good conscience continue to prop up this hollow Versailles regime.

Will this make a difference? Who knows?

I wrote my Liberal MP egging him on about how lucky the Liberals were that they were able to snag univeristy drop-out rookie MP Belinda Stronach and make her a cabinet minister instead of having to dredge up someone from the loyal ranks of the Liberal backbench, like my MP with his degrees in politcal science and history, and with his years of public service at the municipal, provincial, and federal level. He wrote back that they were lucky, and that he looked forward to working constructively with her, as he had in the past. I commented that if they were friends, she might be able to give him some advice about promotion shortcuts.

Are the backbench Liberal MPs fed up with the goodies that should be going to them being dangled in front of Conservatives like Stronach and Grewal? Will one of them be mad enough, and perhaps offended enough like Warren Kinsella, to sit out the vote? Based on the email I got back from my MP, I doubt it. The few who might be angry enough and ashamed enough will swallow their bile and vote, and hope that they can clean up house during a leadership convention. They're fools, of course. The Liberals can never fix cleanse the party of the corruption and sleaze while remaining the government. The power that being the governing party conveys is what fuels that corruption and sleaze. First the fuel supply has to be turned off, then the process of cleaning up can begin.

The addiction to power is strong, however. I don't hold up much hope that any of them will be able to kick it before tonight's vote.

Belinda has to stop quoting people

Or perhaps it would be better if she stopped talking altogether.

From the Edmonton Sun:

Stronach implied in at least one interview shortly after her appointment to the Martin cabinet that she spoke to [Former prime minister Brian] Mulroney before breaking the news publicly.

Stronach told CBC's Newsworld, "Brian said to me, 'I'm your friend. This is a personal matter, it's not about politics and I support you.' "

Well, not exactly:

Through former senior aide Marjory LeBreton, Mulroney said Stronach called him at his Montreal home after the announcement and at no time did he say he supported her move to the Liberals.

"He simply said to her that she had made her own decision and she would have to live with it," LeBreton, a Conservative senator, said. She added: "He also said something to the effect that he considered her a friend and wished her well."

An incensed LeBreton, who spoke to the former Conservative prime minister Tuesday night, said, "He did not say he would support her in this decision."

Next up, the Papal Nuncio to Canada, the Most Reverend Luigi Ventura, will be holding a news conference to refute Belinda's assertion that Pope Benedict XVI personally called her to congratulate her on crossing the floor, and to comment on that stunning floral pattern she was wearing the day before last.

OK, now I'm just having fun. But the Mulroney conversation was far different than what she suggested:

Meanwhile, another Mulroney spokesman, Luc Lavoie, said the former PM, who is convalescing from a serious illness at his home in Montreal, was telephoned three times by Stronach after she announced her decision, and that the first two times he declined to take her call.

During the third call, he suggested her move was disloyal.

Lavoie quoted Mulroney as telling her, "I consider loyalty in politics a fundamental rule of the game."

At any other time, and with any other person, this in itself would be a scandal. But I doubt that today it'll count for much. Adscam has raised the bar so high for what counts as a scandal that I think things like this will be shrugged off as small potatoes.

Carolyn Parrish out? Miraculous recovery

CTV got lucky today. They had a planned interview with ex-Liberal independent MP Carolyn Parrish, but when she didn't show, they called, and were told that she might be suffering from appendicitis, and might not make it for tonight's vote.

But she seems to have recovered:

Now CTV's Robert Fife reports that Parrish is, in fact, well enough to attend.

If she was out because of sickness, the notion was floated that the Conservatives should pair off with her.

I disagree. Indeed, I'm going to quibble. First, the pairing agreement was with the Liberals, not with any independent. If she wants to pair, she can call Stephen Harper and ask all nice like. Second, as an independent, there is no guarantee which way she would vote. There is no caucus, no party whip, no party policy that compels her.

Is quibbling demeaning? Maybe. But then the masters at quibbling at sitting on the government benches. Opposition days? You can have them all at once at the end of the session. Tradition says you should have once a week, but the rules don't demand it. Non-confidence vote? It's really a procedural vote, so despite what the experts say and what common sense says, we don't have to follow it and use the extra week to try and wiggle out of this mess. Appointing a university drop-out to cabinet in order to deplete the opposition benches? Sure, she's not qualified, but the rules say we can appoint anyone we want from either the Commons or the Senate, from any party, so if it just happens that we took away one of your votes, well, that's just a happy coincidence.

It may all be moot if Parrish shows up, but I wanted my opinion on the record.

New allegations Liberal bribery

Breaking news from the CBC:

Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal alleges that the Liberals offered him plum posts if he helped their minority government survive.

Grewal said the Liberals promised him an ambassadorship or Senate seat for his wife Nina, also a Tory MP, if he didn't vote against their budget in a confidence vote on Thursday, the Canadian Press reported Wednesday.

But unlike previous allegation, names have been named, and recordings of the offer made:

Grewal alleges he made an audio recording of the offer, which he said came from Liberal cabinet minister Ujjal Dosanjh and Tim Murphy, Prime Minister Paul Martin's chief of staff.

The National Post has more details that suggest the Liberals were pressuring Grewal:

But Grewal said Murphy told him the Liberals were approaching "three or four" other Conservative MPs, as well.

I can hear Murphy now: If you're not interested, we can give this to someone else. In fact, my buddy here wants the other guy to have the job, but I like you, Grewal, and I think I can convince my bosses to go with you, but you gotta give me something in return, something that I can take back to them, and soon, because one of these other guys is going to jump at it.

Sounds like a cheesy police drama. Were three or four other MPs approached? Maybe, or maybe it was just a pressure tactic.

The budget vote is tomorrow, so there is little time to investigate these allegations. We can expect Dosanjh and Murphy to deny everything -- spokesperson Scott Reid has already denied it (well, he said that Grewal asked for the goodies and was told no -- to me it suggests that the Liberals are spooked by the recordings so they can't go for the straight denial strategy).

If the Conservatives can get some traction on this, it will be interesting to see it is enough to frustrate any backbench Liberals who are watching these plums go to non-Liberals instead of them. The Belinda Stronach story might get a new spin with the Liberals enticing her instead of her seeking them out. Perhaps the most likely thing that can happen is that these allegations might convince independents David Kilgour and Chuck Cadman to vote with the Conservatives.

There isn't much time, though -- it will all depend on what the main stream media does. They have the power to sit on this or to throw it on the front page above the fold. I guess we'll know tomorrow morning.

Liberal trust fund to be announced

Funny phrase, "trust fund". Inevitably comes up in situation where distrust is the order of the day.

This case is no different.

From CTV:

The Liberals will be announcing the creation of a $750,000 trust fund to cover any ill-gotten sponsorship money the party may have received, CTV News has learned.

Robert Fife, CTV's Ottawa bureau chief, told Newsnet the money won't be disbursed until Justice John Gomery tables his report, expected some time in December.

Asked how the party arrived at the figure, Fife said that might be the amount of money that made it into the Liberal Party.

"I'm assuming their lawyers have gone through the receipts and records ... but it could be less," he said.

I don't understand. The Liberals have been absolutely clear on this point -- no tainted money came their way:

The Liberals had appointed auditors Deloitte Touche and Price Waterhouse Coopers to audit the books of the Liberal Party in Quebec, to find out whether any of the money that went to Quebec advertising and communications firms in the sponsorship scandal made it back to the Liberal Party.

"Both Deloitte and Price Waterhouse Coopers . . . came back with audits saying all contributions made were properly handled and received," [Public Works Minister Scott] Brison said.

I can only assume that the lawyers looked over those receipts again, maybe this time with lights turned on. Or maybe when they took the books out to look at them a second time, they noticed lots of wadded up cash in the back of the filing cabinet.

Or how about this: Maybe the lawyers didn't look at the books. Maybe the lawyers looked Paul Martin or Scott Brison in the eye and asked point blank, "How much are we going to have to put aside? You know what the number is, now tell us."

And the number was $750,000.

But that is wild speculation only.

60 Minutes II gets canned

Is Dan Rather looking for a job? Not yet, but maybe soon...

How un-funny the left is

Don't take my word for it. Read the words of the creators of South Park.

Irony -- Belinda Stronach and Student Loans

We all know about how Belinda Stronach dropped out of York University after less than a year, figuring a formal education wasn't required for her resume.

Of course it wasn't -- daddy made her CEO of the company.

A formal education has value beyond merely what doors it can open for you in the workplace. The struggle to succeed academically builds character. The marks you get are based on your intelligence and your wits, and not on your wealth. You have an opportunity to meet many different people, and to form friendships that you might not have a chance to form in the business world.

But it's also hard work, and there is no guarantee that you'll succeed. Many people with less strength of character drop out early.

It is the ultimate meritocracy (and generally lives up to that ideal).

It is a measure of the perceived value of a formal education, however, that so many students take out student loans from the government in order to pay for that education (assuming they don't have fabulously wealthy parents who will pay on their behalf). For these students, graduation marks the debut of debt repayment, part of the struggle that is a formal education.

Given that the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development is in charge of student loans, do you really believe that Belinda Stronach, given her background, is the best person for the job?

I don't know about you, but if I had a student loan to repay, I'd feel like I'd been slapped in the face by Prime Minister Paul Martin.

[I posted this already as an addendum to a different post, but I decided it deserved it's own place in the blog.]

Pied Piper of Ottawa

More MPs being drawn to the pipings of Paul Martin?

Opposition Leader Stephen Harper's office says another Conservative MP was approached with an offer of a cabinet post in exchange for switching to the Liberals. Spokesman Geoff Norquay would not say who the individual is, but says Martin might as well hang a sign on Parliament Hill saying "Cabinet posts for sale."

If Paul Martin is the Pied Piper, doesn't that make Belinda and her ilk rats?

Don't feel too sorry for Peter MacKay -- the luckiest guy in Canadian politics

It's hard to see it when it's still fresh, but one day, and soon, Peter MacKay might come to see his former girlfriend Belinda Stronach in a whole new light. The former glam couple of Parliament Hill are, of course, spiltsville. Apparently, sophisticated Belilnda didn't feel the need to tell her backwoods beau from Nova Scotia what was happening until just before she went to her news conference with the Prime Minister. And she left him the task of telling Stephen Harper.

Nice piece of work. She did talk about "compassion" at her news conference, did she not?

Peter, you won't be reading this, of course. But I'll put it out there for you. You're not just better off without her. You just dodged a bullet. You have got to be the luckiest guy in the House of Commons.

Another silver lining...no more "Hidden Agenda" crap

How can the Liberals continue to say that the Conservatives have a "hidden agenda" with Belinda Stronach standing right there? I mean, now we can be told what secret plans the Conservatives have for the country, right? (Hat tip to CO)

David Kilgour: "Horrified" by Belinda Stronach

Ever see that move, "The Live", in which horrific aliens live among us, but we perceive them as normal (actually good-looking) humans, unless you get your hands on these special sunglasses?

I bring it up to suggest an explanation to David Kilgour's reaction to yesterday's news:

Kilgour said he was horrified by Martin's decision to appoint former Conservative MP Belinda Stronach to cabinet Tuesday.

Horrified? Yikes. What was he seeing?

Mr. Kilgour is not a happy man:

He is also still very disillusioned by recent testimony at the Gomery inquiry suggesting that Liberals benefited from financial wrongdoing as the sponsorship program was delivered in Quebec after the 1995 sovereignty referendum.

Finally, he's upset about the aftermath of Martin's decision to send troops to Darfur, something he fought for. When the Sudanese government balked at allowing non-African troops into the country, Kilgour said, the Canadian government backed down.

He summarizes his position:

"At some point, you say to yourself, 'Does the government have any competence? Does it have any sense of what the correct thing is for the correct reasons?'

"And finally, when you get enough reasons like this, you say, 'Mr. Martin isn't a serious person.'"

This does not sound like a guy ready to vote for the Liberals.

Back to the numbers: the Liberals have 131 (already subtracting one sick MP) and the NDP 19. With Carolyn Parrish (ex-Liberal, now independent), that gives the Liberals 151 votes. The Conservatives have 97 seats (already subtracting one sick MP), along with the Bloc's 54, for a total of 151 votes. If Mr. Kilgour does vote with the Conservatives, that'll give the Conservatives 152 votes. The other independent, the undeclared Chuck Cadman, makes all the difference. If he votes for the Conservatives, or abstains, the government falls. If he votes for the Liberals, the vote is a tie, and the Speaker is duty bound to vote for the government, and the government stands.

We'll know is just over 24 hours...

Before the Belindanistas tear it down

Some Liberal hack had better get his butt in gear and head over to Martha Hall Findlay's web site.

Who is Martha Hall Findlay? She was the woman found run over yesterday. Forensic analysis of the evidence suggests two vehicles -- one was a Stronach Aspiration Special, outfitted with wide tread tires for extra grip in an environment of slimey and slippery power-grab politics, and the other was a Martin Desperation Wagon, the sort without doors so that anyone can just jump in as he drives by waving money and cabinet appointments.

Seriously, Ms. Findlay was the Liberal candidate for Newmarket-Aurora, ready to fight Ms. Stronach in a re-match of the 2004 election, which Belinda barely won (by a mere 689 votes).

Good thing the Liberals tossed Ms. Findlay. I've looked over her experience and skills, and I'd say she was far worse fit in the Liberal Party than Belinda Stronach was in the Conservative Party.

Read on, and you'll see what I mean.

Sneaky guy, the Prime Minister

At small dead animals, Kate has noticed the subtle hint that there will be no election after the Gomery Report, as promised:

Paul Martin: Ms. Stronach will assume responsibilities for democratic renewal and will help guide the implementation of the recommendations that flow from the Gomery Commission's final report.

Her point is taken: if there is an election within 30 days of the report, what guidance will Belinda Stronach be able to provide? It'll take weeks just to convene a committee and set the frames of references and hire limos for the members.

Maybe the Prime Minister meant that when they won that election he promised, she would be doing the work. Which requires two very confident predictions: the Liberals would win, and Belinda Stronach would win in her riding. Nah, too long of a stretch.

Paul Martin has no intention of holding an election.

Everyone has 5 seconds to feign surprise.

Still waiting on the accountants

A panel of accountants (Robert Macdonald, Pierre St-Laurent, and Steven Whitla) are still scheduled to appear before the Gomery Inquiry, representing the firm of Kroll Lindquist Avery, retained by Justice Gomery to conduct a proper forensic audit to determine where all the money went. The latest schedule of witnesses has the accountants third last, but the schedule is already out of date, it appears. But Paul Wells has some interesting insights while we wait:

Witnesses after Guite will include representatives of the forensic auditing firm Gomery himself hired to follow the Adscam money trail: Kroll Lindquist Avey. But here is something puzzling: last week, two sources said that, after all these months, Kroll's accountants haven't yet visited the Liberal Party of Canada's offices. Perhaps they think that relatively little of the Adscam money that lined the pockets of private-sector profiteers wound up in the party's accounts. Or perhaps they were simply arming to the teeth before laying siege to the Liberal books. The Gomery commission's most intriguing revelations are still ahead.

Looks like no one really knows what to expect from their testimony. Watch and wait...

What does she know? What would she say?

I dismissed my own concerns yesterday on the issue of whether Belinda Stronach's defection could potentially provide key insights to the Liberals about the plans of the Conservatives:

I have to assume that Belinda Stronach was in on all the planning meetings and strategy sessions that the Conservatives have been holding in the last few weeks. She might be giving Paul Martin and the Liberals all sorts of good information on Conservative plans and contingencies.

I came to think that she probably did not have all that much useful knowledge, but a report today suggests my worries might have been justified:

Her defection to the Liberals, dubbed a "gutsy" move by the prime minister, and a "betrayal" by Tory leader Stephen Harper, had her old party crying foul last night, arguing she could give the government key insights into Tory strategies and campaign plans to which she would have been privy to caucus meetings and through her relationship with Peter MacKay, the party's deputy leader.

"There's a fair amount of stuff she would have been privy to," said Rahim Jaffer, an Alberta Tory MP, who attended a meeting of Conservative MPs and candidates with Ms. Stronach over the weekend.

It seems like some people think she did not know much:

Some downplayed the information Ms. Stronach could have gleaned from last weekend, noting for example she has never seen the official campaign platform that is in circulation among a close circle of senior Tories. But Ms. Stronach's close friendship with some Conservatives, and her months-long tryst with Mr. MacKay, have many worried.

"I know that she's had conversations with members of our party which would appear by her own admissions to be in the midst of this decision she's been making, this negotiated deal," said Gary Goodyear, the party's Ontario caucus chair. "I'm very concerned."

Of course, some people in the position of switching parties might insist that they not be asked about confidential party matters, arguing that revealing such information would be tantamount to theft. It is a subtle point. We can speculate whether or not Belinda Stronach could grasp it.

Another great Belinda Stronach quote

From BlogsCanada:

A good friend of mine from Vancouver was in town last night, and we had drinks and dinner. We talked politics, and he told me about a Conservative Party event he'd been to for Belinda Stronach.

Belinda was working the room before speaking, and my friend was the only young brown person in a roomful of old white people, so she was sure to come and meet him, photographers in tow. My friend took advantage of the situation, and asked her a question. A complete transcript follows.

My Friend: What I'm really interested in hearing from you is how you plan to heal the rift in the Conservative Party. How can you bring the Reformers together with the Tories, and what is your plan to make sure that 5 or 10 years from now, the Reformers don't feel the need to splinter off all over again?

Belinda: I look forward to addressing your concerns. (Smiles, walks away)

I take back my earlier insistence that she be taken seriously. All signs point to ditz.

The "ditz" comment might be a bit harsh. The near universal disdain the Conservatives have felt has done much to unite them. And I have a feeling that her presence in the Liberal caucus as a cabinet minister might have an equally divisive effect.

New Tory Plan

From CTV:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper announced Tuesday night that the Tories would be voting in support of the federal budget on Thursday, but that they would still try to defeat the minority government on separate legislation.

The amendment in question proposes $4.6 billion in spending on housing and the environment and also proposes a delay in a series of corporate tax cuts. It is also scheduled for a vote on Thursday.

"It's our intention to support Bill C-43, the original budget," Harper said after an emergency caucus meeting Tuesday night, hours after high-profile MP Belinda Stronach defected to the Liberals.

"We'll oppose Bill C-48, which was the deal with the NDP, which is complete irresponsible fiscal policy," Harper added.

At least it's consistent. The Conservatives supported the original budget in February.

This is intriguing. Bill C-43 includes the Atlantic Accord that Premier Danny Williams is so concerned about. Supporting C-43 allows those two Newfoundland Conservative MPs to vote for the Atlantic accord with a clear conscience.

But if they kill C-48 (which incorporates all the changes the NDP wanted) in the same evening, then bill C-43 dies anyway, since it had not gotten Royal Assent yet. Will the Conservatives vote for C-43 to give political cover to the Newfoundland MPs, but then vote against C-48, but losing that vote? By supporting the first budget bill and then failing in an attempt to defeat the second budget vote, both budget bills pass, and the budget is implemented within days. Then the Conservatives work on a new plan to bring down the government on one of their Opposition days.

Assuming they get that Opposition Day of course.

Welcome to the team! (Sorry, we don't have your name tag ready yet)

It's been twelve hours already. You'd think someone would add Belinda Stronach to the Liberal Party cabinet web page already. I mean, they are proud to have her on the team, right?

This can't be a good idea

It looks like someone got hold of Belinda Stronach's personal cell number. The parallels between Belinda Stronach and Paris Hilton are scary, aren't they? Nevertheless, I can't suggest to anyone to call that number, or to submit it to every telemarketer and spam dialer on the planet. That would be a bad thing, so don't do it.

The Sophist's Saga

Check out the Sophist's Saga, a journal of suburban life in the 21st century. The focus is shifting to pre-election and election commentary, and I expect to be checking in as I look for ideas to steal to inspire me.

Bill Davis could not stomach Stronach

I have to wonder whether we're better off without Belinda Stronach. The more background I read, the more creeped out I get. This from veteran member of the Ontario legislative press gallery, Eric Dowd, about Ontario über-premier Bill Davis and Belinda Stronach:

Former Progressive Conservative premier, William Davis, has resigned from the boards of two companies dominated by auto parts manufacturer Frank Stronach, citing personal and health reasons, while they explained he wants “less corporate involvement.”

But anyone who knows Davis has been waiting for this other shoe to drop since he supported Frank’s daughter for leader of the new Conservative
Party of Canada.

Belinda Stronach was awkward and wooden. She could not answer key questions, including whether she would have sent Canadian troops to Iraq.
She is not the same shade of Tory as Davis — more to the right, while Davis is to the left.

Davis also believed politicians should work their way up and almost never gave a cabinet post to anyone who had not served an apprenticeship on his back benches.

Davis would never have freely endorsed Belinda Stronach for leader, but must have felt he had no choice, because her family’s companies paid him highly.

Davis was not seen lobbying for Stronach in her optimistic, losing venture.

On the other hand, Mike Harris was. This former Tory premier was on a Stronach board, closer to her philosophically and probably needed the money more.

But Davis must have been embarrassed, and concluded he could no longer be in a position where he had to give support, even lukewarm, to a candidate because her family paid him.

I have no philosophical problem with wealthy people succeeding. Even if they came by their wealth by inheritance -- that does not mean that they did not earn their subsequent successes. But professional nepotee Belinda Stronach seems to embody the worst of the sliver-spoon phenomenon. Hardly the embodiment of earn-it-honestly-not-by-handouts conservatism I think this country needs. But what is worse is the way the people around her seemed to be compelled to smile and say how great this woman who has had success thrown at her is. No wonder guys like Bill Davis couldn't stomach Stronach.

Albertans, stop worrying -- Belinda is on your side

From March 2004:

When asked what she will do to "reduce the power of Ontario and Quebec" and address Western alienation, Stronach appeared at a loss for words. After a few false starts and long pauses, she said she believes all regions of Canada deserve to prosper.

Got that? You deserve to prosper. So stop your whinging!

HRSDC Web Site already updated -- Stronach a plum choice for this ministry

That was fast. Isn't there a swearing in ceremony for cabinet ministers? I hate to be a stickler...

Funny thing is that Belinda Stronach's line on the web site is not a hyperlink. The webheads for the Prime Minister have not set up a page for Belinda as a cabinet minister yet. That might have looked a bit too planned.

Given that HRSDC is in charge of student loans, do you think it might have made more sense to put someone in charge who is not a multi-millionaire, and who actually went to university on her own dime (and not with daddy's money) and who did not drop out after one year? Someone who actually appears to appreciate the value of a formal education, not someone who took business studies for less than a year, dropped out, and somehow managed to become CEO of daddy's company five years later.

What inside information did she take with her?

I have to assume that Belinda Stronach was in on all the planning meetings and strategy sessions that the Conservatives have been holding in the last few weeks. She might be giving Paul Martin and the Liberals all sorts of good information on Conservative plans and contingencies.

Or she might have already handed that loot over during the last week, just to establish her bona fides before jumping ship.

Some classy anger

"Trickery and treachery are the practices of fools that have not the wits enought to be honest."
Benjamin Franklin

"There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour."
Benjamin Disraeli

"Tricks and treachery are merely proofs of lack of skill"
François de la Rochefoucauld

". . . treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies."
Emily Bronte

"Though those that are betray'd Do feel the treason sharply, yet the traitor Stands in worse case of woe"
William Shakespeare

Seemed appropriate. Feel free to email them to Belinda.

Respect, Integrity, Honesty -- The Wisdom of Belinda Stronach

From January 20, 2004:

Business leader Belinda Stronach today said that starting right now she is running to become new Leader of the new Conservative Party of Canada and Member of Parliament for the riding of Newmarket-Aurora.

"I want principled government, based on a foundation of values," said Stronach, who was born and raised in Newmarket, Ontario and lives with her family in Aurora. "In public service, as in business and all other aspects of my life, my core values are honesty, compassion, fairness, respect and integrity."

Stronach contrasted her background and approach to those of the old Liberal government that has held power for nearly 11 years.

"I am not a professional politician. But I have met a payroll. I understand what it takes to compete on a global basis," she said. "And I understand how the federal Liberal government is failing Canadians."

What a difference a year makes.

Earthquake in Ottawa

From CBC:

Belinda Stronach, the millionaire businesswoman who ran for the leadership of the Conservative party in early 2004, has crossed the floor to the Liberal party and will sit in Paul Martin's cabinet as minister of human resources and skills development.

She will also help the Liberals implement the recommendations in the Gomery report when it is delivered later this year, Martin said Tuesday morning.

I guess this means she and Peter McKay will be breaking up.

We all knew the Liberals have been hitting the Conservative ranks looking for that weak link that would fall for a promise of a Senate seat or a diplomatic post. I guess a cabinet seat will do fine, as well.

So Stronach will join Scott Brison amid the ranks of people who traded principle for power. The Liberal Party, of course, is the natural home for these kinds of people. The Liberals ignored a non-confidence vote last week and have rule illegitmately ever since, because the Parliamentary principle got in the way of power. We can only assume they were playing for time while Belinda Stronach was making up her mind.

If I had to guess, I would expect the Conservatives to pull back. There is no point now in going down in flames in a budget vote that they can't win. The Liberals and NDP now have 151 votes, minus the speaker. The Conservative and the Bloc have 152. Of the independents, Carolyn Parrish will vote for the government, and David Kilgour has been making noises of vote against the government. That leaves Chuck Cadman who has been waffling.

My money is on Cadman voting for the government -- the Liberals can offer him goodies too.

In a tie vote, the Speaker will vote for the government, as tradition dictates, and the budget passes.

The crooks stay in power by using power to entice and corrupt others. The Gomery Inquiry will get derailed over the course of the summer, and a neutered version of the report focused on a small band of rogue low-level Liberal party workers will be delivered into Belinda Stronach's hands with recommendations for her to implement.

Albertans will feel betrayed -- an Ontario MP has unilaterally taken away their best chance to have their voices heard. They will be sidelined again as the Liberals focus on Quebec to the exclusion of all else.

Canada will continue to devolve into a collection of bitter and estranged communities, sniping at each other, periodically mollified by cash thrown at them by the Liberal Party ensconced in power in Ottawa.

Thanks, Belinda.

Human shields protecting the Liberals

In 1990, in an attempt to fend off an attack by his enemies, Saddam Hussein of Iraq took groups of foreign nationals and moved them to strategic locations. These human shields would face injury or worse if the location was attacked by coalition forces.

In 2005, in an attempt to fend off an attack by his enemies, Paul Martin of Canada took groups of Canadians and made them strategic promises in a critical budget. These human shields would face financial hardship or worse if the budget was defeated by Conservative and Bloc forces.

The latest of Paul Martin's human shield are the people of Newfoundland. You can thank Premier Danny Williams for giving them this new role:

Two Newfoundland Conservatives are casting doubt on their intention to topple the government in a Thursday vote because they fear a backlash in their ridings if they are forced to kill a $2-billion Liberal deal for the Atlantic provinces.

Newfoundland's Premier Williams, a Conservative, has also sided with the government in this fight.

He said in a television interview that a vote for the federal budget is a vote for his province. An on-line petition urging Mr. Hearn and Mr. Doyle to preserve the revenue from offshore oil has only added to the pressure.

Of course, some people will always lose out if a budget is not passed. But the Liberals have been working hard to make certain this happens to as many people as possible. Ralph Goodale's original budget has had promises tacked on for Newfoundland, for daycare, for subsidized housing, for the environment, for funding for students, etc, etc, etc.

If the Liberals could find a way of making Christmas dependent on this budget passing, I'm certain they would do that too. Then you could add Santa Claus to list of people pleading to the Conservatives and the Bloc that the budget be left alone.

When Saddam played these games, the outrage was universal. But in Canada, ensuring and arranging that the maximum number of people get hurt if you are defeated is just politics.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP -- Watch out, that's Cotler backing up

[Hat tip to Andrew Coyne]

It's probably a good thing that Liberals aren't fitted out to beep loudly when they back up.

Justice Minister Irwin Cotler has called a meeting of experts to discuss how the selection of federal judges can be improved.

Talks with leaders of judicial advisory committees from across Canada are tentatively planned for early June.

But Cotler says he first requested the brainstorming session long before claims of related cronyism rocked the already teetering Liberal government.

"I asked for this some time ago - before all this broke," Cotler said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Before what broke? I thought nothing broke at all. Mr. Cotler assured us that everything was fine, and that we were bothering him:

When asked if he was bothered by [allegations of Liberal lawyers being favoured for judicial appointents], Cotler became impassioned.

"What bothers me is when I hear allegations of corruption of the judiciary...What bothers me is that people should make any kind of insinuation that any appointment is based on any other considerations than merit."

One way to get this bothersome issue to go away is to restrict appointments from the "highly recommended" list. Potential appointees are ranked unacceptable, recommended, and highly recommended. Justice ministers have always reserved the right to choose from the recommended and highly recommended list, since that gave the the most freedom to reward friends.

But I don't think that's enough. Based on what Benoit Corbeil told the French press, members of the selection committee were on the lookout for good Liberal lawyers. Under those circumstances, the committee member could sing the praises of the "right" choice without saying anything about politics, and sway an unsuspecting minister into rewarding the politically active lawyer. Worse yet, the selection committee insider and a less-than-honourable minister could conceivably agree on code words to highlight the politically driven choices.

The selection committee needs to be watched or sequestered, or perhaps candidate files need to be numbered prior to being evaluated in order to avoid knowing anything personal about them (including gender and race, for example). It is my level of distrust that makes me consider such unwieldy solutions. Somehow, I don't think Mr. Cotler has such a radical idea in mind. I think he thinks if he backs up just enough, this issue will pass him by.

Hey, if the trials have been delayed...

News is that the trials of Jean Brault and Chuck Guite have been delayed until October 3. Andrew Coyne has the details, including the effect this will have on the Gomery Inquiry report.

But people, there is a silver lining here. There is no reason for any of the testimony to be redacted. Captain Ed has printed some of that testimony, dealing with a sweetheart loan from Jean Brault to Chuck Guite, but there is no reason to be circumventing bans via US blogs. We should be allowed to see all the testimony, and immediately.

Number crunching the judges -- Prince Edward Island

Why review Prince Edward Island? Because of what Mr. Justice Gordon Campbell, a PEI Supreme Court judge, had to say about the appointment process:

A former provincial Liberal Party president and chairman of several election campaigns, Judge Campbell said that some critics cling to a "ridiculous" belief that politically active lawyers always keep one eye trained on a judgeship.

"I was involved in politics because I loved it," said Judge Campbell, who was appointed in 2001 by former prime minister Jean Chretien's Liberal government.

"In PEI, politics is in your blood. It's the provincial sport. Nobody is looking at whether they will get this or that reward...

"I find it really offensive when people say later that you did it for gain," he added.

Nobody is looking? Maybe not. Since 1995, 4 individual have been appointed by federal ministers of justice to the bench in Prince Edward Island. Of course, since 1993, the Liberal Party has been in power. Here is the break down of these appointments:

• total judges appointed: 4
• number of appointees making financial contributions: 3
• total amount of money donated: $1759.73
• total donations to the Liberal Party: $1759.73
• total donations to other parties: $0.00

I wonder if Justice Campbell would find anything offensive in these numbers.

Admittedly, PEI is a tiny sample, and I would normally not have done this analysis, because with 4 data points, any generalization is highly suspect. But then Justice Campbell had to say that this suggestion of political manipulation of judicial appointments is "ridiculous".

You can see why I had no choice.

Political appointment of judges

From the Globe and Mail:

Scanning a list of every judge on the Newfoundland bench, former Conservative justice minister John Crosbie rhymes off their prior political affiliations.

"Jim Adams, he was a good Liberal," Mr. Crosbie says. "Doug Cook, another good Liberal. Bob Wells, he was a PC elected provincially. I appointed him myself." And on it goes, until Mr. Crosbie sums it up: "I would say that just less than half were very active politically."

While Mr. Crosbie emphasized that most on the list became excellent judges, his summary highlights the fact that who you know and which party you support can be an inescapable fact of life when it comes to landing a federal judgeship.

While this looks bad at first glance, some people think the process is not as bad as all that:

But Mr. Justice Gordon Campbell, a PEI Supreme Court judge with an extensive background in politics, said critics of the appointment system are missing an important point.

A former provincial Liberal Party president and chairman of several election campaigns, Judge Campbell said that some critics cling to a "ridiculous" belief that politically active lawyers always keep one eye trained on a judgeship.

"I was involved in politics because I loved it," said Judge Campbell, who was appointed in 2001 by former prime minister Jean Chretien's Liberal government.

Perhaps he is right, but it still doesn't explain why the skew should be so heavy in favour of Liberal lawyers. If politically active lawyers were being selected on merit and their politics were not even known to the minister, then you'd expect a more randomized distribution of party affiliations.

But instead, you see Liberal affiliation in over 90% of the judicial appointments in Quebec and Ontario among judges who's political affiliation is known.

And the selection of good Liberals might make for mediocre judges:

For many critics, Mr. Justice Paul Cosgrove of the Ontario Superior Court stands out as a poster boy for the problem. A former Liberal cabinet minister, he was appointed to the bench in 1984 by the Liberal government of John Turner, and now faces a Canadian Judicial Council inquiry involving allegations of biased rulings.

Judge Cosgrove was one of a batch of appointments made in the dying days of the Turner government that were criticized for being blatantly political. The outcry led to reforms in the late 1980s to reduce the role of patronage. Few, however, would claim the system is immune to political manipulation.

Indeed, Mr. Crosbie said patronage provides indispensable oil to the machinery of a political party. "I don't think there is any real desire in government to completely eliminate it. If you are going to get people to support and work for you, there has to be some attraction for them," he said in an interview.

Some attraction? Since when was a seat at the bench, dispensing judgments that affect people's lives, something to be passed out as a reward? The American's have it right -- the judiciary is the third branch of government, equal to the executive and the legislature. In the British model, the judiciary is a tool of the executive, and even though words are said today about it being independent, the selection and appointment process show it to be otherwise:

The process does weed out the least competent candidates. But rather than being restricted to the names of the very best contenders, the final lists include everyone deemed either "highly recommended" or "recommended."

[T]here is nothing to stop the government from passing over top-rated candidates in favour of faithful party members who are less qualified.

Mr. Justice Jack Major of the Supreme Court of Canada explained how this can happen. "There may be 15 applications and they approve five or six," he said in a recent interview. "Eventually, you build a body of approved candidates who also happen to be supporters of the party in power. The committee endorsement makes it much easier for the minister to appoint a friend."

The Tories back off -- but not really

A level of fatigue seems to have been reached in Ottawa over the weekend:

The federal Conservatives, after a week of bitter parliamentary gamesmanship, now appear willing to pin their hopes for a spring election on a single, 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.

Hill signalled...that the Tories would likely back off if they can't topple Martin this week.

"If circumstances don't change I suspect we (wouldn't) see any further action prior to the summer recess," he told reporters.

It'll be close, and the Liberals might squeak out a vote. Why would the Tories let the Liberals off the hook, after nine days of ruling without the confidence of the House?

I can only surmise that they've been looking at the polls, and they see Conservative support as soft, and with the Liberals promising billions across the country, the Conservatives might be thinking that a lot of voters might be willing to put up with the crooks, as long as they get their stuff.

Sad, but true.

The plan would be instead to let the Liberals rule, and dig their financial hole. The Liberals either run up a deficit paying for everything, which makes them look bad, or back off on the promises, which makes them look bad.

Under those circumstances, the promise that the Conservatives had made to respect all these deals (who's bright idea was that?) could be safely ignored.

In the fall, Gomery comes out with the report, and the Conservatives hope that they can fan the flames again and ride voter disgust to a victory.

I don't like this plan -- too much time is being given to the Liberals to fix things up (or kill the Gomery Inquiry).

There is an escape hatch:

Hill wouldn't entirely rule out the possibility that the Conservatives could table another non-confidence motion somewhere down the road if they lose on Thursday.,

But he said it would be unlikely unless there are unforeseen circumstances - such as startling new revelations from the continuing Gomery inquiry into the federal sponsorship scandal.

Barring that kind of dramatic development, said Hill, "we want to honour and respect Thursday's outcome as much as possible."

We still haven't seen the Kroll report, Giuseppe "Joe" Morselli is testifying today, Alphonso Gagliano wants to appear before the committee again -- there are plenty of opportunities for more devastating testimony. I guess all we can do is watch, day by day.

More contribution weirdness? [Updated]

Honestly, I'm not sure what this means.

In 2000, the following contributions were made to the Liberal Party of Canada (courtesy of the Elections Canada database):

Liberal Party of Newfoundland & Labrador: $230.62
Saskatchewan Liberal Association: $6,339.42
New Brunswick Liberal Association: $17,091.25
Liberal Party of Canada in Alberta: $27,331.75
Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario): $42,809.34
Parti Liberal du Canada (Quebec): $847,676.54

How the devil did the the Liberal Party wing in Quebec outpace Ontario by a factor of 20?! Where did all that money come from?

Or is that a stupid question?

More follow-up -- looking back through the years for donations from different provincial chapters of the federal Liberal Party:

Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec)	1996	$540.24
Liberal Party of Canada (Alberta)	1997	$1,250.00
Liberal Party of Canada (NF)	1997	$1,978.35
Liberal Party of Canada (NS)	1997	$2,318.52
Liberal Party of Canada (PEI)	1997	$6,467.78
Liberal Party of Canada (BC)	1997	$59,931.16
Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec)	1997	$343,142.55
Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec)	1998	$693.83
Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec)	1998	$8,900.64
Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec)	1999	$129.52
Liberal Party of Canada (NF)	2000	$230.62
Liberal Party of Canada (Alberta)	2000	$27,331.75
Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario)	2000	$42,809.34
Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec)	2000	$847,676.54
Liberal Party of Canada (BC)	2002	$6,909.82
Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario)	2002	$15,410.45
Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario)	2004	$850.00

So in years when the Quebec branch is rocking, it's bringing down the house. Nothing else even comes close. Talk about your Big Red Machine.

But I'm sure everything is above board. Right.

Though even if it is all legit, and it just goes to show how concentrated Liberal power is in Quebec, you have to wonder how much the Liberals spend worrying about other parts of the country. Are you confused about how everything in Canada begins and ends in Quebec? Looks at those numbers, and you'll know why.

The view from the NDP

This NDP blogger just doesn't get it. From Dymaxion World:

Christ, they really can't wait a single week? The Tories and the Bloc shut down parliament today, and are threatening to do it until they get a confidence vote.

Unbelievable. I've never been a fan of Harper's, but this is really beyond ridiculous at this point. He's being asked to wait one single week, and the moron can't even look dignified in victory. I hope the voters give him and his party of rednecks the spanking they deserve.

He poses a question:

So, a question: What's the difference between Stephen Harper and a screaming two-year old throwing a tantrum? The two-year old has more dignity.

No, the difference is that not too many two-year-olds have friends dying of cancer. Funny thing is, for an NDP supporter, he doesn't seem to understand that basic fact, a fact that his own favoured party seems to get. No mention anywhere in his blog about the offer, accepted by the Tories, by the NDP to twin votes with any sick Conservative MPs.

Makes me wonder if the NDP offer is not going to play well with their constituency. That would be a shame, because the offer to twin votes was above and beyond, and worthy of respect and support from Canadians of all political stripes.

Of course, not all people will see it that way. From Dymaxion to Scott Brison:

However, Public Works Minister Scott Brison said he opposes the notion of giving up a vote for an ill MP.

"Any vote, some people can be there, some people can't be there," Brison said in Halifax.

"That's the case whether it's health or personal issues . . . those are a fact of life for any vote."

I wonder if Scott Brison is merely willing to say what a lot of NDPers are thinking.

Number crunching the judges -- Ontario

Just before election day in 2004, the Liberals were polling 32% in popular support in Ontario (the data is found in one of the polling subpages of CBC's Canada Votes 2004).

Apparently Liberal popularity amount Ontario lawyers is much higher. Looking at the 152 names of judicial appointments in Ontario since 1993, I've found the following:

• 49% of the names of judicial appointees that I felt confident that I could resolve from the donations database donated to at least one party since 1993


• the total donation amount was $62,992.31, for an average of $850.30 per lawyer who donated


• the amount of donations to any party other than the Liberal Party was $7038.58


• since 1993, the Liberal Party was the recipient of 89% of the dollars donated by lawyers in Ontario who ultimately received judicial appointments

If Irwin Cotler is right and the decision is based entirely on merit, wouldn't you expect a more random distribution? As it is, it appears that you are either apolitical, or a Liberal supporter, if you are a judge in Ontario. Of course, we don't know how many of the judicial appointments that did not appear in the donations list might have donated time instead of money, or came from firms that boosted the Liberals.

Minister Cotler might be right, and the political donations of lawyers are not considered when judicial appointments are made. But even if that was true, it seems like the lawyers don't beleve it. It certainly appears that at least the lawyers believe that making a donation to the Liberal Party is the right thing to do if you want to be appointed to the bench. If that's the case, it doesn't look like the Liberal Party is trying too hard to clear up that misconception.

Of course, the other explanation is more sinister.

Is something odd here? You be the judge**. Personally, I think my idea for an Oxner Commission is looking better all the time.

** By that, I don't mean donate to Liberal Party!

Latest polls -- no surprises

From the Ottawa Citizen:

Prime Minister Paul Martin's Liberals have suddenly plummeted in public support -- particularly in their traditionally loyal regions of Ontario and Atlantic Canada -- and would likely be defeated if an election were held now, a new poll suggests.

I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised because, to be honest, I predicted this would occur. The Liberals had regained lost ground only by having the Prime Minister go on TV, by re-writing the budget, by running across the country making expensive promises. And for all that, they pulled into a tie, while the Conservatives were effectively idling, not doing much more than barking "Gomery!" after each meal.

From my post of May 2:

So unless the Liberals can somehow maintain this superhuman effort (and at some point they'll run out of money, if not chutzpah), this might represent a high-water mark for them. Similarly, once the Conservatives finish crafting their message and get fully engaged, their numbers might start to move up again -- in other words, this represents their starting point.

It looks like that might be happening. The Liberals have hit their high-water mark, and are receding. A lot can happen, of course, but frankly I'm not surprised by the polls showing the Liberals doing better a couple of weeks ago, and by the the polls showing the Liberals fading back.

And you shouldn't be surprised too.

Election time -- Let's get nasty

You know the Liberals have decided to toss in the towel and prepare for an election. How can you tell? Because it's time to smear the opposition:

Federal Immigration Minister Joe Volpe has asked the RCMP and Federal Ethics Commissioner to investigate two Conservative MPs, CTV News has learned.

CTV Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife reports that Volpe is alleging the two MPs offered to help immigrants in return for money.

Hat tip to Andrew Coyne.

CTV has "learned"? Dollars to donuts says it was a phone call from Volpe's office. That's all I have for now. Go to Mr. Coyne's post -- there is an active discussion going on about this.

Guilty of spreading a common misconception -- sorry about that

From the Globe and Mail:

"It's still the Governor-General," Ms. [France] Langlois [spokeswoman for the Governor-General] said, citing the 1947 letters of patent of King George VI, which transferred all the duties of the head of state of Canada to the Governor-General.

[John Aimers, head of the Monarchist League of Canada] also said, while those letters also don't preclude the Queen from acting, but her presence in the country doesn't automatically alter Ms. Clarkson's duties.

"There used to be a fiction abroad that, when the Queen was in Canada, the Governor-General ceased to exist almost," Mr. Aimers said.

"I don't know where that hoary old thing came from."

Heh-heh, uhm, I thought that was true. And I brought it up in this post. But I think the presence of the Queen in Canada complicates matters should an attempt to bring down the government goes horribly wrong. And though the presence of the Queen apparently does not automatically mean the Governor-General takes a break, if the Governor-General were to do something remarkably strange, I still think it within the realm of possibility that Her Majesty could be called upon to take charge of the situation (nothing in the letters patent preclude that).

It sounds like there is little chance of that happening, I'm glad to say.

We finally know who those "experts" were -- thanks to David Frum

I've written about my frustration that the Liberals keep saying that "experts" support their decision to continue to govern and spend money despite last week's non-confidence vote. See here and here.

But leave it to David Frum to tell us what the deal is:

The Liberals have lost a series of confidence votes in the House of Commons. On Wednesday and Thursday, the Conservatives won two votes to force adjournment. By long constitutional usage, a Westminster-system government that is forced to adjourn must either resign or call an election. But the Liberals, apparently taking their advice from the lawyers of Charles I, seem to believe that they can continue governing without the support of Parliament.

Of course, that all makes sense now. During caucus meetings, they are holding seances, and getting advice from the courtiers of Charles I of England:

Charles I (19 November 1600-30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland and Ireland from 27 March 1625, until his death. He famously engaged in a struggle for power with Parliament; he was an advocate of the divine right of kings, however some in Parliament feared that he was attempting to gain absolute power. There was widespread opposition to many of his actions, especially the levying of taxes without Parliament's consent.

Like Paul Martin, Charles I had all sorts of trouble with a bothersome Parliament:

In January 1629, Charles opened the second session of the Parliament which had been prorogued in June 1628. He hoped that, with the Duke of Buckingham gone, Parliament would finally cooperate with him and grant him further subsidies. Instead, members of the House of Commons began to voice their opposition to the levying of tonnage and poundage without parliamentary consent. When he requested a parliamentary adjournment in March, members held the Speaker down in his chair whilst three resolutions against Charles were read aloud.

Can you imagine Stephen Harper and Gilles Duceppe manhandling Speaker Peter Milliken!

The King still had to acquire funds in order to maintain his treasury. Relying on an all but forgotten feudal statute passed in 1278, requiring anyone who earned £40 or more each year to present himself at the King's coronation so that he may join the royal army as a knight, Charles fined all individuals who failed to attend his coronation in 1626.

Many attempted to resist payment, but Charles I's judges declared that the tax was within the King's prerogative.

Suddenly makes the rumblings of funny business in the appointment of judges seem almost like an act prescience on the part of the Liberals.

Well, let's just hope that current events don't take us along the same path that led to January 30, 1649, when Charles I was beheaded after the English Civil War.

Harper and Stinson both get a reprieve

In no small part because of the the offer by the NDP to twin for ailing Conservative MPs who might miss the budget vote, Stephen Harper has told Darrel Stinson to go home and prepare for his surgery on Wednesday:

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has told ailing Conservative MP Darrel Stinson to return to his B.C. riding where he is scheduled for cancer-related surgery on Wednesday. Despite forcing the government to adjourn the House early again on Friday, Harper conceded he failed to get get the prime minister to put forward a confidence motion on Monday.

Stephen Harper has gotten a break. If the NDP had not stepped up and offered to twin for Conservative MPs who are too ill to vote (meaning that for every Conservative MP missing because of illness, one NDP MP will abstain from supporting the government), Mr. Harper would have been put in the terrible position of sending his sick MPs home, and then watching as the Liberals proceeded to win a non-confidence vote. I still think the Liberals would have prorogued Parliament at that point, and sat out the summer, and the worst of the Gomery Inquiry falllout. That would have put them in a powerful position in the fall to win a winter election (assuming the Liberals kept their promise to call an election within 30 days of the final Gomery report, and that the Liberals didn't somehow derail the Gomery Inquiry during the summer break).

In such a scenario, I think it would be fair to say that Stephen Harper's political career might have been mortally wounded. Having staked so much on defeating the government, and then watching as the Liberals wiggled out and got away, Conservatives in caucus might be forgiven for having doubts about Mr. Harper's strategic skills.

Paul Martin -- About as compassionate as a vulture

The Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Liberals are still playing the shocked dismay card at the suggestion that they want to delay the budget vote until after one or both of the two Tory MPs stricken with cancer leave Ottawa for treatment:

"Mr. Harper's comments are simply beyond the pale and one would expect a higher standard from someone who is the leader of the opposition," Martin said.

"We talk about civility, we talk about the kind of debate that Canadians want us to have, and it is very clear that those remarks just go too far."

The problem is that Paul Martin is not really all that nice a guy. From the Canada Free Press:

It’s never-seen-before film footage taking you back to January 3, 2005 when Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and his entourage made an official visit to tsunami-ravaged Sir Lanka.

The film footage was shot by award-winning Canadian documentary journalist, Garth Pritchard, who was on the scene prior to Martin’s visit at the invitation of Canada’s mercy mission DART team.

It starts with the moment the Prime Minister’s helicopter lands in Kalumai, and coincides with the very moment that bereaved Sir Lankans are waiting for Padre Captain J.B. Hardwick to say a few words over their lost loved ones, laid out in 13,000 freshly-dug graves.

See for yourself how the film footage shows the padre being pushed aside and how overzealous members of the Martin entourage physically knock a Sri Lankan mourner to the ground–without apology.

See and hear for yourself how he shills the purified water of Zenon Environmental Inc., an Oakville-based company of which his lifetime mentor Maurice Strong is a board member.

See and hear some of the film highlights, including Padre Hardwick trying to do the job he was asked to do: namely honouring the dead. Padre Hardwick calls for a Moment of Silence. Fifteen seconds into the Moment of Silence, Prime Minister Martin ends it, saying, "Let’s go."

Swigging from a bottle of Zenon purified water, he says repeatedly, "C’est excellent!"

Martin passes the bottle to wife, Sheila, who swigs from it, pronouncing distinctly, "Better than at home!"

Callous. Tasteless. Shameful.

Ed Broadbent's last act

I wrote that despite Ed Broadbent's announcement that he would retire, the elder statesman in this Parliament might be called to perform one last service as our government spirals into chaos.

It looks like I was right:

Adding to the uncertainty, the NDP is offering to have one of its MPs sit out a vote on the budget next week to even the odds because a Tory MP who is ill won't be able to make it.

NDP MP Ed Broadbent says he will sit out and the Tories say they're happy to accept the offer.

Ironically, the last great thing Mr. Broadbent can do for the country he has served for so long is to do...nothing.

See what weirdness the Liberals have wrought.

Alain Renaud -- Unregistered Lobbyist?

From the Strategis website:

The Internet public application for the Lobbyists Registration System (LRS) was created as a result of the new Lobbyists Registration Act which came into force on January 31,1996. Prior to this, registrations were done manually.

I had heard about this tool before, and thought I'd give it a test drive.

We know Alain Renaud was a lobbyist for Groupaction, and that he had testified about Paul Martin knowing about contracts and discussing the details with Claude Boulay.

Funny thing is that, like Chuck Guite, it appears that Mr. Renaud neglected to register himself as a lobbyist, as required by law. And they are worried about the effect bloggers might have on democracy?

What experts?

Again, the mysterious experts are quoted:

Hon. Tony Valeri (Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, as I have said over and over again in the House, a reasonable proposal has been put forward that the vote take place on May 19. I do not understand why the opposition leaders cannot take yes for an answer. There is an opportunity to debate the budget bill. There is an opportunity to get the veterans bill through. There is an opportunity to get the DNA bill into the House and get that through.

It is not just the government that sees this as reasonable, but constitutional experts do also, so I would hope that the members would participate, but have that legitimate confidence vote later.

What experts?! Why won't he give the names of these experts so that the media and the public can hear their explanation of how the government is legitimate and how we are not in a crisis?

The Canadian addiction -- kicking the habit is what makes the Conservatives "scary"

Canadians suffer from an addiction, and for many people, this addiction is what defines us as Canadians. Anyone who suggests it is an unhealthy addiction is un-Canadian and should be run out of town.

Cynical Liberal tactics

Andrew Coyne has the skinny on the Liberals and the care with which they plan the dates for the confidence votes. Apparently, an unnamed Conservative has alleged that Liberals have been calling around British Columbia in an attempt to gain information on Darrel Stinson's cancer treatment, and the operation he has scheduled for Wednesday, the day before the budget vote Paul Martin has promised.

Mr. Coyne quotes colleague John Ivison:

Who out there believes that this Liberal government wouldn't boil their grannies down to make glue if it helped them stay in power?

Disturbing news from B.C. -- Blogs to be put under government watch

From the CBC:

Elections B.C. is having a hard time keeping up with a boom of bloggers who are publishing partisan messages during the current election campaign.

They're supposed to register themselves as advertising sponsors if they post a partisan position on a candidate, party, or referendum question.

What does this mean? First, the definition of advertising is open-ended in BC:

"Advertising" includes, but is not limited to:

(a) advertisements on television, radio or in newspapers and magazines;
(b) advertising on Internet web sites;
(c) brochures, signs, posters, billboards;
(d) mailing inserts;
(e) newsletters; and
(f) displays, exhibitions.

"Election advertising" means advertising used during a campaign period to:

* promote or oppose, directly or indirectly, the election of a candidate; or
* promote or oppose, directly or indirectly, a registered political party.

As a "sponsor" of advertising, you need to register. Once registered, the following rules kick in:

Anyone who is not registered with Elections BC must not sponsor election advertising. Registration is free.

Election advertising must not be conducted (or published) unless it identifies the name of the sponsor, indicates that the sponsor is registered under the Election Act and indicates that it was authorized by the sponsor. Also, the advertising must give a British Columbia mailing address or telephone number at which the sponsor may be contacted. For example:

Authorized by Jane Doe, registered sponsor, (604) 123-4567

Election advertising sponsors must file election advertising disclosure reports with the Chief Electoral Officer within 90 days after General Voting Day.

Furthermore there are restrictions on advertising on Election Day itself.

Is blogging advertising or talking? If I debate an issue with a bunch of my co-workers at the water fountain, that isn't advertising, but if I engage in an online discussion via my blog, it is advertising. David Frum nails the absurdity here:

Canadian governments so disdain the right of private citizens to have a say in the elections that choose their rulers that they have invented a marvelous phrase for those who try. The law calls them "third-party intervenors." The political parties, you see, are the principals. Private citizens who try to have an influence on their own with any device more sophisticated than a graffiti spraycan or a sandwich board are interlopers, "third parties," meddling where they do not belong. This is the path down which American campaign reformers would take the United States -- a path toward a two-class political system. At the top would be the politicians and the media, who may say whatever they please. At the bottom would be everyone else, whose rights to comment on their electoral choices would be regulated and circumscribed.

This might a significant side-issue during the next election. Stay tuned.

Deals and more deals -- the NDP and the Conservatives?

Rumours of a deal, between the NDP and the Conservatives:

Studio 2. 8pm tonight. Talks with NDP suggest that if our sick MP can't be there, one NDP would refrain from voting.

This is a fascinating development, if true. What is behind it? Here is my take:

• The Liberals are delaying the budget vote until May 19 precisely because they are hoping one or both Conservative MPs sick with cancer will be unable to vote, making real the possibility of surviving a budget vote, then proroguing Parliament before granting any Opposition Days.


• This is an open secret on Parliament Hill.


• Only the NDP are in a position to foil this plan.


• Having walked a mile with the Liberals, and watching the Gomery testimony get worse, not better, Jack Layton has decided that the Liberals are doomed and that he has gotten all the benefit he can from supporting them. He is looking for a way out that doesn't make him look untrustworthy.


• Twinning with the Conservatives (that is, removing one NDP vote in the House for every Conservative MP who is unable to vote) is ideal -- it appears to be statesmanlike, not traitorous.


• The Liberals have knowledge of the plan, but the shelf is bare. There is nothing left with which to bribe the NDP.


• Waiting until May 19 is now all downside and no upside. The Liberals will appear to be taking advantage of serious illnesses besetting fellow MPs, but the twinning means that they will still lose the vote.


• Now that waiting until May 19 is entirely a liability, the Prime Minister has begun talks with Stephen Harper and Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson about dissolving Parliament and calling an election.


• Rumours about the Prime Minister approaching the Governor-General have already been reported.


• No one has reported talks with Stephen Harper, but he has called for a confidence vote on Monday. Why not tomorrow (Friday)? If he has been told by Liberal sources that the Prime Minister is preparing to concede, and that he wants to do it Monday, there is little to lose by waiting, and nothing to gain by being obstinate. If the Liberals renege on a deal to close up shop on Monday, assuming such a deal exists, the twinning deal with the NDP makes waiting for May 19 acceptable (even desirable, since the Conservatives still win the vote, and the Liberals look really bad for waiting until after the sick MPs are forced to leave the House).


• This "reasonable" Stephen Harper makes sense only if a twinning deal exists.


• Finally, what do the NDP gain? They have already gained support in some quarters for having fashioned a budget, even if it is never implemented. They don't have to worry about criticism for the twinning deal from their hard-left supporters because the very existence of the deal makes the budget vote pointless, which means there won't be a vote, which means the NDP won't actually have to enact the twinning plan. Finally, they've seen the writing on the wall, and they know the Conservatives will probably form the next government, and it will probably be a minority. If they work with the Conservatives now, and repair some of the damage from the budget deal by helping out sick Conservative MPs who won't be able to vote, the NDP can expect a sympathetic hearing concerning their governing priorities, and can expect to get some of those priorities into the next Throne Speech.

Comments? Did I miss anything?

"Take back the Hill"

Just spreading the word:

Take back the Hill!

The Liberals have decided that they are going to ignore the fact that they have lost the confidence of the House.

I guess they need a little boost to get them to do the right thing…so let’s give it to them!!

Monday May 16th at 1:00pm
Parliament Hill
Take Back the Hill!

Bring something blue, and get out there to give them the message that WE WANT TO VOTE!

We need a huge crowd to get our message across. PLEASE spread the word, and help us make a powerful statement for democracy!

The Gagliano Crew -- the chief wants to talk

CTV has the scoop:

Former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano is asking for another chance to testify at the sponsorship inquiry, CTV News has learned.

The central figure in the sponsorship program has asked Justice Gomery to allow him to take the stand again at the inquiry looking into the sponsorship scandal.

It has not been a good week for Mr. Gagliano. The former ambassador to Denmark has been depicted as some sort of wise guy (in the mafia sense), with his close associate Giuseppe "Joe" Morselli being accused of terrifying the locals:

Daniel Dezainde, the former head of the Liberal party's Quebec wing, took the stand Thursday for the second time.

He said after an alleged threat from a close friend and associate of Gagliano in 2001, he was so terrified about testifying that he asked for the RCMP's protection last month.

Dezainde said he met the RCMP with his lawyer out of fear of Joe Morselli -- a man who allegedly pointed his finger at his face and declared "war" against him.

The "war" was over Beryl Wajsman, one of the fund collectors in Gagliano's crew, who Dezainde had fired in an attempt to wrest control of the party organization back. Dezainde described the state of the party as being held hostage:

He said the Liberal party was held hostage after control of its finances were handed over to Morselli.

He said every time a bill came in, he had to talk to Morselli. And often those bills were paid by a third party -- ad firms involved in the sponsorship program.

Another member of Gagliano's crew, Antonio "Tony" Mignacca, took the stand, but suffered from memory loss:

Brault broke down on the stand last month as he recalled the alleged threat by Antonio (Tony) Mignacca, Gagliano's longtime riding organizer.

Mignacca acknowledged meeting [Groupaction President Jean] Brault for drinks at a Montreal restaurant at the invitation of the stalwart, Alain Renaud. But he said the men only made small talk.

During his two hours on the stand, Mignacca denied ever discussing financial issues with Gagliano or Morselli and also cited memory loss as he failed to recall key details of several conversations and meetings.

It'll be interesting to see if the crew chief Gagliano is going to be allowed to testify. He can't control the questioning, and with his boys Morselli, Mignacca, and Wajsman talking or scheduled to talk, the chief might have some serious explaining to do.

My guess: Gagliano wants to get back on the stand because he is going to be more explicit in his finger-pointing. He's going to remember conversations and dinners with important Liberal executives and parliamentarians, and he's going to spill the beans in order to take the heat off of him and his crew.

But that's just a guess.

End game?

We might be coming to the end of this craziness in Ottawa:

Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson has spoken with Prime Minister Paul Martin and consulted constitutional experts this week as Parliament descends into chaos.

"The Governor General is monitoring the situation very closely," said an official.

Her role, of course, is mostly ceremonial. But "mostly" is not the same as "completely", and the time has come, it appears, to blow the dust off the constitutional powers that she has.

At this point, stop reading the article I've linked to above. There are mistakes which are discussed and corrected by Andrew Coyne. I encourage everyone to read Mr. Coyne's piece, and then watch as the next few days unfold. The events of this week past, and the events of the next few days, are historic. Only rarely do we get to witness political and constitutional issues like these come to life.

Canadian blogging credited in the House of Commons

Well, almost. Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper's speech to the House of Commons yesterday (11-March-2005):

Hon. Stephen Harper: The Liberals have undermined Canadians' confidence in our political system and even manipulated our judicial system.

The Liberal Party of Canada, like the Government of Canada, is a threat to Canadian democracy.

When this was raised in the House, the Minister of Justice said that he will hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. He is apparently not open to any investigation into this potential corruption of our judicial selection process. In fact the minister keeps claiming, in spite of the claims of his own party officials, that appointments are made strictly on the basis of merit.

I would point out that research by journalists and citizens has revealed that 60% of lawyers appointed to the bench in Quebec since 2000 made donations to the Liberal Party. It is frankly hard to take the Minister of Justice or the Prime Minister at their word when they say that politics has nothing to do with judicial appointments. [emphasis added]

OK, so neither my name nor the name of my blog are actually mentioned explicitly, but if Andrew Coyne says Stephen Harper was refering to Angry in the Great White North, then that's good enough for me.

For those who might not have been following it, Mr. Harper is refering to the report in the Montreal Gazette of 7-May-2005 (the journalists) and my report revealing the same pattern of donations and appointments two weeks earlier on 26-April-2005 (the citizens).

Wow, the politicians are reading my stuff. Now I'm just a bit freaked by that.

Paul Martin looking dumb in New Brunswick

The Prime Minister has been winging his way across this country, signing deal after deal with provinces, promising billions in pre-election spending, in anticipation of an election.

This includes the deal with New Brunswick for child-care funding.

I hate to be all picky, but it turns out there was no deal:

Prime Minister Paul Martin ran into his first pre-election faux pas on Thursday as he was forced to cancel a visit to New Brunswick to sign a child-care deal that doesn't exist.

But New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord said there is no deal to sign.

"There is no agreement with the federal government," Lord told the New Brunswick legislature when asked about Martin's cancellation.

"We're working to get an agreement. We're hoping to get an agreement and as soon as we do, we'll be happy to announce it."

How do you forget something like that? Political scientist Don Desserud of the University of New Brunswick thinks he has the answer:

He said it appears the federal Liberals are in crisis management.

"They recognize that the end is nigh and they have to do things as quickly as possible," Desserud said.

"They can't wait. So even if they smell a deal, they're willing to jump into action and formally announce that it's at least imminent. It speaks to the fact that the government is looking at a very short calender."

Let's hear again how the government is in control of the situation, and that we can afford to wait until next week before we can have another non-confidence vote.

How long will the Prime Minister continue to humiliate us?!

From the Kuwait News Agency:

A number of Canadian legislators from both the Senate and the House of Representatives Said on Thursday they were "impressed" with the work of the Kuwaiti National Assembly and the democratic system in Kuwait.

Describing the visit as "very important for the Kuwait side," Basil Al-Rashid said one major goal of the visit was to get acquainted with the parliamentary work in Canada and to learn more about the "democratic system from a country that enjoyed a rich history in the parliamentary life." "We in Kuwait are in need to learn more about the parliamentary and democratic systems of other countries and use that experience for the interest of developing our own democratic system," Al-Rashid said. [spelling, punctuation, and capitalization as per original]

Oh God! Well, uhm, you can certainly learn a lot of interesting aspects of democracy from looking at Canada, that's for certain. Indeed, Canada might become a case study for students of government theory all around the world.

Frankly, I'm just so embarrassed. And that just makes me even angrier!

Hey, we made CNN!

Canada is in the big leagues, news-wise:

Canada's two main opposition parties shut down the House of Commons for the second day running on Thursday to try to demonstrate that the minority Liberal government no longer has the confidence of Parliament.

And for the first time, opposition Conservative leader Stephen Harper brought the role of the Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson, who has the power to dismiss a government and call an election, into the political discussion.

CNN goes on to explain the role of the Governor-General, and then discusses the Darfur announcement, in the context of an attempt to sway David Kilgour's vote.

I think a lot of Americans are going to be quite surprised at what has been going on up here.

Paul Martin has gone this low before

Outrageuous!

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and one of his two cancer-stricken MPs are accusing the Liberals of delaying a non-confidence vote in hopes that illness will reduce Tory numbers in the House of Commons.

The Liberals expressed outrage at the accusation, saying the sniping in Parliament has reached a new low.

"It's very clear that these remarks just go too far," Prime Minister Paul Martin said during a photo opportunity with the President of Mali.

Who would stoop so low? Certainly not our Prime Minister.

Or would he? From Warren Kinsella's musings for May 12:

Well, I recall one Friday evening, a couple years ago, when I almost quit the Liberal Party of Canada. It was the night that the Martin cabal took over the riding association of former cabinet minister Herb Dhaliwal, knowing (a) Dhaliwal was out of the country and (b) his wife was dying of cancer. I had witnessed a lot political thuggery, to be sure, but I had never before seen anything as disgusting, and as inhuman, as that. It was only a friend in Ottawa who talked me out of quitting.

Herb Dhaliwal was a Chretien loyalist, and in November 2002, as part of his campaign to replace Jean Chretien, Paul Martin sent in his operatives Dave Basi and Robert Virk to work the Sikh community and sign up 600 new members. When Mr. Dhaliwal was out, the 600 showed up, voted as they were told, ousted the old executive, and a Martin-friendly team was installed.

Paul Martin played a similarly manipulative game in his fight against Sheila Copps for the leadership of the Liberal Party. In this case, he created 250 "women's clubs", where there were less than a hundred before, in order to outflank Ms. Copps on the women's vote.

Maybe Canadians need a reminder of exactly how Paul Martin plays the politics game. I for one don't buy his posturing for a second.

The Sgro Affair -- Maybe I spoke too soon

Earlier I expressed some happiness that the allegations in another potential scandal turned out not to be true.

I may have spoken too soon:

Today, Democracy Watch called the first investigation by federal Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro biased and flawed. The investigation into the actions of former Cabinet minister Judy Sgro and others was undertaken in response to allegations that Sgro violated federal Cabinet ethics rules (which are set out in the Conflict of Interest and Post-Employment Code for Public Office Holders).

To conduct the investigation into Sgro's and others' actions, the Ethics Commissioner hired (without a contract bidding competition) law firm Borden Ladner Gervais (BLG). BLG donated $165,000 to the federal Liberals between 2000 and 2003 (2004 donation figures are not yet publicly available); donated more than $25,000 to Paul Martin's campaign for the Liberal Party leadership; has three partners representing Liberals before the Gomery Commission inquiry (David W. Scott and Peter K. Doody representing Jean Chrétien, and Guy J. Pratte representing Jean Pelletier), and; in February 2005 hired Gar Knutson, former Cabinet colleague of Sgro.

The news release from Democracy Watch includes other concerns, such as the "secret advice".

The news release does not address the letter from Harjit Singh in which he withdrew his claim that he had meetings with Ms. Sgro to discuss his immigration status.

I doubt this story will go anywhere. The focus of the media will be on Gomery and on the fight in Ottawa. There will be little taste to resurrect the Sgro affair. That's too bad, because though Ms. Sgro might be innocent, the folks at Democracy Watch have brought up some interesting issues about the way Bernard Shapiro runs the Ethics Commission.

Hat tip: Polunatic via Bourque

David Kilgour -- unreasonable cry-baby or clever operator

Independent MP David Kilgour is being actively courted by the federal Liberals in an attempt to get his vote next week when the budget bill comes to the floor. His price? A Canadian military commitment to do something about the killing in the Darfur region of Sudan.

When does he want it? Right now!

He said the government's offer of 60 troops is inadequate.

Mr. Kilgour, who has recently returned from a visit to the Darfur region of Suday [sic], has said he wants to see rapid deployment of Canadian troops there before committing himself to backing the government.

"I am afraid if it is 60 Canadian military advisers announced in an hour, that are going to do not very much to stop a genocide taking place in an area the size of France," Mr. Kilgour said. "Would 60 troops have been an acceptable response in Bosnia or Kosovo? I think the answer is no.

He sure sounds unreasonable. Canada's military couldn't deploy rapidly to a Tim Horton's offering free coffee, much less to Sudan. Deploy on what? With what equipment? Heck, the US can deploy quickly, but only because it keeps carrier groups positioned in key positions in every major ocean, with full complements of Marines ready to go.

Can 60 troops make a difference? Of course not. And frankly, if the entire Canadian military somehow deployed, they still wouldn't make much of a difference in a place like Darfur.

But maybe David Kilgour is smarter than that. Maybe he's setting himself up to be able to say "No". Notice that he's complaining about the government's announcement an hour before the announcement is to be made. I think he wants to vote with the Conservatives, but for whatever reason he feels the need to play this game. Could it be related to rumours of bad-mouthing from the Liberal caucus?

I don't know. But I do know that it sounds like the Liberals might be down one more vote, and the Conservatives up by one, for the next confidence vote, whenever it comes.

CPAC to be running rock videos

OK, the Parliamentary Channel is not going to be running rock videos. But they are going to be rooting around for programming, now that Parliament is shut down:

The Conservatives have moved another motion to adjourn the House of Commons for the day, in a bid to paralyze the proceedings of government and force an immediate confidence vote in the government.

The motion is being voted on in the House of Commons.

Committees are off, too:

I another move to frustrate the activities of the government, members of the Conservative party and Bloc Quebecois are boycotting parliamentary committees.

What a disaster for CPAC! Right in the middle of Sweeps!

But wait, the news might not be all bad:

The Conservatives will continue, however, to attend at least one Commons committee: the one debating same-sex marriage, to which they are adamantly opposed.

So CPAC will be Gomery tapes followed by same-sex marriage committee wrangling followed by more Gomery.

Just one more reason we need to have a non-confidence vote right now!

Fishing for information on "good" Liberal lawyers

From back on April 29, a detail that I don't think was reported in the English language press. With regards to the appointment of lawyers to the bench in Quebec, Benoit Corbeil had alleged in a press interview that such appointments were made as a reward to Liberal party workers. From the Globe and Mail:

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

"They don't want to get paid right away, they want to get paid later," he said, noting that many of the lawyers have since been named to the bench.

But what wasn't reported was the process by which these lawyers were selected, and the role Corbeil played in it:

Benoit Corbeil, former general manager of the Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec, affirms that a member of the selection committee of the judges telephoned to him with some questions to know if a lawyer had militated well for the party.

"He asked to me whether such or such lawyer had devoted much time to the party," Mr. Corbeil during a discussion with la Presse indicated, this week. "When it was the case, I answered by the affirmative. A few weeks later, I noted that the lawyer in question had been appointed judge."

Mr. Corbeil must testify the next week at the Gomery commission.

This is an automated translation of the French article with some corrections by me. I know Justice Gomery is focusing on a narrow interpretation of his mandate, but if Corbeil has names, including of one or more people on the selection committee, he needs to be interviewed under oath in a public venue.

The idea that someone on the selection committee was pumping Corbeil and who knows who else for information about the quality of a candidate's political activities is frightening. Suddenly the words of Prime Minister Paul Martin and Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler that the selection of judicial candidates was "assessed and evaluated by an independent peer review" seem far less reassuring. Sounds like at least one person on this independent committee was working hard to make sure politics was factored into the so-called merit-based selection process.

An example for the Prime Minister

From Reuters:

A pizza shop owner who forced former Canadian immigration minister Judy Sgro to resign by claiming she had offered to help him avoid deportation has admitted he lied and has apologized, Sgro said on Tuesday.

Am I getting soft on the Liberals? Heck no. But amidst all the stench of corruption in Ottawa, it is nice to see at least one allegation turned out to be unfounded. Kudos to Ms. Sgro for taking the right step of removing herself from a position of power and responsibility until the allegations could be investigated and a judgment issued.

Perhaps her boss, Prime Minister Paul Martin, could learn something from that. I guess I'm just in a ridiculously optimistic mood today.

News from the National Enquirer

Hey, maybe it's true:

Michael Jackson has secretly sold his Neverland Ranch for $35 million, The National Enquirer can reveal. The scandal-plagued superstar is so wracked by financial troubles he can no longer afford to keep his trademark fantasy estate in Los Olivos, near Santa Barbara, California.

And now to business news: Unilever stock jumped half a cent in early trading when the company reported the largest single purchase of its flagship cleanser, Vim. Over two tons of the bleach cleaner requested in a single order. A spokesperson for the company said that the name of the purchaser must remain confidential, but did confirm that the order was placed by phone, and that the buyer said the cleaner was required to "scrub it down, scrub it all down, anything at all he might have touched, or, God help me, anything he might have sat on".

Hey, it worked on Al Capone

When dealing with organized crime, often the most effective tactics have been to attacked the syndicate in the wallet. The most famous case was the prosecution of Al Capone for cheating on his taxes. Responsible for countless murders, but insulated by several levels of organization between him and the street-level thug who actually committed the crime, Al Capone could not as easily hide the links to his money.

Well, the Liberals might have a similar headache. (Oops, have I suggested a parallel between the Liberal Party of Canada and the Italian Mafia? Sorry, Joe Volpe.) Thanks to reader John, this short, but perhaps very significant, report in the Montreal Gazette:

The Quebec revenue agency is following the Gomery inquiry closely, according to Quebec Finance Minister Lawrence Bergman.

Bergman said Wednesday that the agency was investigating and prepared to conduct a special review, in light of witness' testimony at the commission.

Several witnesses testified at the inquiry that large sums of money, both cash and cheques, changed hands. It is not yet known whether these sums were properly declared as taxable revenue.

You know, when the money changes hands in the form of envelopes stuffed with cash left on restaurant tables, I'm willing to be no one wrote up a T4 slip to cover it.

We might be treated to the sight of the Liberal Party of Canada, as a corporate entity, defending itself in court against tax evasion charges in both Quebec and Federal court. If they lose the upcoming election, they will not have access to public moneys with which to pay for a defense, or to pay for outstanding taxes, interest, and fines (which would be illegal anyway). And if they lose the election on the issue of corruption, and it looks like the party will be in for an extended stay in the political wilderness, I doubt there will be many private donors willing to fork over any money to help the party out of a jam.

So that means seizure of assets and forced bankruptcy.

This is the sort of thing that destroys companies. The repercussions on the Liberal Party might be as dire.

My blog is for sale...but just to the Liberal Party

I'm joining in the fun:

Stephen Harper and his Opposition Conservatives aren't the only party circling Prime Minister Paul Martin's injured Liberal caucus these days.

Premiers from across the country and even some interest groups have been poking and prodding the wounded minority Liberals for cash, seizing the advantage of a pre-election period.

Everyone is getting a piece of the action:

His recent revisions to the budget, adding an extra $4.5 billion in social spending to win crucial NDP support, touched off a rush by a variety of others to get a piece of the federal pie.

Earlier this week, Canada's air transport sector won a partial victory, wringing concessions worth $8 billion from the federal government.

The savings to local airport authorities will be spread over more than 50 years, so it isn't quite a clear win.

Dalton McGuinty, Ontario's Liberal premier, did better, winning a pledge of $5.7 billion for his vote-rich province from the beleaguered prime minister.

Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert says he's ready to hunker down in Ottawa this week, packing enough changes of socks to sit tight until he can negotiate a better energy revenue sharing deal with the federal government.

"I have a hotel room booked and I've got a few pairs of socks," said Calvert.

Right, bring extra socks. Good idea.

So I will vote Liberal and use my blog to sing the praises of the Liberal Party and the thief-in-chief Paul Martin for a mere, I don't know, $25,000. But none of this spread-over-50-years crap. I want my money up front. Preferably cash, in an envelope. Meet me at the McDonalds on the corner.

Ah, the French -- so sophisticated and civilized, but don't get them angry!

A television program in France crosses the line, and gets punished for it. Well, it's supposed to be a punishment.

Dezainde fingers Corriveau

Daniel Dezainde has today fingered Jean Chretien buddy Jacques Corriveau as the man who set up the kickback system in Quebec:

[Daniel Dezainde] said Mr. Corriveau told him: "In the past, I set up a system of kickbacks with communication agencies and I kept a part of it for my expenses and I made the rest available for the party."

Mr. Dezainde said he has since reported his conversation with Corriveau to the RCMP.

This supports the testimony of Jean Brault in which he said he had agreed to pay Corriveau half a million from the revenues Brault was receiving from the Sponsorship Program, money Brault was receiving for little or no work.

It is also consistent with the testimony of hunting and fishing show promoter Luc Lemay:

Hunting and fishing show promoter Luc Lemay testified Wednesday that he agreed to give Corriveau a commission on all government sponsorship contracts he obtained for Lemay's companies.

Lemay says contracts for his companies - Groupe Polygone and Expour - started to pour in after he met Corriveau.

Corriveau would send bills to Lemay, and Lemay would pay them without looking. That led to one of the most comical moments in the Inquiry:

Had Lemay looked at Corriveau's bills for regional outdoors shows he should have become suspicious. The description of the work on each of the invoices is nearly identical, referring to preparing venues at Olympic stadiums in Rimouski, Ste. Foy, Chicoutimi, Trois Rivières and Sherbrooke.

"To your knowledge is there an Olympic stadium in Rimouski?" Lemay was asked.

"No," he replied.

Corriveau blamed the bills on a printing error.

We've already had the ad executives point at Corriveau as the man you had to know if you wanted a piece of the Sponsorship pie. Add that to Michel Beliveau's testimony that he received an envelope filled with $100,000 directly from Corriveau to help pay outstanding campaign expenses.

And today, Corriveau is more than just a money skimmer, contracts fixer, and courier boy. Today he is the guy who set up the system. This is one of the oldest friends of the former prime minister. Will Jean Chretien defend his friend? Or will the Martinites designate Corriveau as the ultimate fall guy, hoping that the fallout will sully Jean Chretien and not Paul Martin?

It's hard to see where this is going while we're still in the midst of it. There are about a dozen witnesses left, and the Kroll Report from the forensic auditors. I bet there are at least a couple of twists and turns left in this story.

PM playing for time, but the opposition won't fall for it

From the Prime Minister:

"On Thursday, May 19, I will be in Ottawa," [Paul Martin] said. "I am proposing that there will be on that day a vote on the budget bill and that vote will be a matter of confidence.

"If the government loses the vote next Thursday I will seek the dissolution of Parliament."

Sounds reasonable, right? So why are the opposition parties playing hardball?

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe have turned down an offer from Prime Minister Paul Martin to hold a vote of confidence on the budget next week.

Both Harper and Duceppe called on Martin to hold a vote in the House on Wednesday afternoon or lose the cooperation of the two opposition parties.

"My simple response is, we're waiting for the government to have its vote today," Harper said after meeting his caucus.

"Until the government has its vote, it will not get any cooperation from the opposition."

The problem is that every day that goes by is another day for some Conservative or Bloc MP looking for early retirement, perhaps a Red Tory from the old Progressive Conservative party who doesn't like the Western-flavoured conservatism of Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada, to get a phone call from the Prime Minister's Office. Dangled in front of them is a plum Senate appointment, but the expiry date on the offer is measured in minutes. Even if just one opposition MP bolts, and the government has dramatically improved its chances. With the two missing ministers (Irwin Cotler and John Efford) back in the House next week, and independent Chuck Cadman back as well (on record as saying he will probably support the government), and with independent David Kilgour acting all wobbly (he voted against the opposition motion last night), the Liberals might get a clean win on a budget vote, or at least a tie (which the Speaker will break, and traditionally vote for the status quo).

What's even worse is that two of the Conservative MPs in the House last night got there from hospital where they have been receiving cancer treatment. There is no guarantee they'll be there in a week's time.

My prediction is that if they get the win on the budget vote next week, the PM will prorogue Parliament, and pick up the pieces in the fall. Stephen Harper and Gilles Duceppe know this is a possibility and this is why they're not willing to give an inch on this.

The Boss!

Just who exactly runs the Quebec arm of the Liberal Party?

Blast from the past

Cast your minds back to those heady days in September of 2004. Country music fans were listening to "Live Like You Were Dyin'" by Tim McGraw. Suits were making a fashion comeback in America's boardrooms and offices. And the American blogosphere was picking it's collective teeth after having savaged CBS and Dan Rather over the Rathergate affair. I bring this up because of the defense CBS put up at the time:

Rather and CBS News have insisted that the documents came from a "solid" source, that their contents were backed up by other reporting and that the memos had been authenticated by document experts.

It turned out that those "experts" had done nothing of the kind. When the unnamed experts were finally tracked down, each denied "authenticating" the documents. Emily Will and Marcel Matley both went on the record to say they had problems with the documents, problems they had shared with CBS, and were willing only to make minor statements (for example, Matley would only say that the signatures on the documents came from the same source).

I was given cause to recall this when I read these words of Prime Minister Paul Martin:

"The fact is this was a procedural motion, sending a report to a committee. A procedural motion, according to the expert opinion, is not a vote of confidence or lack thereof," he said.

Martin cited four academics who he said backed this opinion.

Which four? Unfortunately, the report does not say if the Prime Minister actually named any of these experts. It's too bad, because like CBS and the "experts" who backed their story, I wonder how solid the opinions of these "experts" really are.

Open Thread -- Non-confidence votes and next steps

An open thread for people to discuss the non-confidence votes, its validity, and what you think the next steps should be.

"No, you are!" -- Words of Idiocy from Ralph Goodale

Finance Minister Ralph Goodale has had a bad couple of weeks. He has been shown by his own boss, Paul Martin, to be a joke. Hired to put together a budget, he delivers. But when the Gomery Inquiry heat started to melt-down the government, Paul Martin started to buy votes by adding new spending wherever he could find a spot.

Ralph Goodale should have tendered his resignation. But he hasn't.

I don't know Mr. Goodale, but my opinion of him is starting to gel around this word: "idiot". Part of that has been influenced by things Warren Kinsella has said ("pretty much all of us, in the ancien regime, thought you were a nice fellow, but not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer"). Now his performance in Question Period has made me think that harsh evaluation is close to the mark:

Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, CPC): Mr. Speaker, the government's new do-over budget really sets a new low in fiscal responsibility. Essentially it gives $4.5 billion to the leader of the NDP as long as he can dream up some way to spend it. It is kind of like handing a match to an arsonist.

When will the finance minister admit that he is nothing more than an NDP puppet? When will he resign?

Hon. Ralph Goodale (Minister of Finance, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I would point out that Bill C-43, the budget implementation bill introduced after the budget speech on February 23, is a piece of legislation that was proceeding rather well through the House of Commons, until the Conservative opposition did a 180 degree flip-flop. The net result was that the government had to look for other configurations of support in the House of Commons.

Since that flip-flop on the part of the Conservative Party threatens to deprive Canadians of the great advantages contained in this budget, I would again ask the hon. member, when will he resign?

The Speaker: I am sure the hon. member appreciates the question, but now it is his turn to ask one. We will hear from the member for Medicine Hat.

Mr. Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat, CPC): Mr. Speaker, is that not cute; somebody thinks he is still relevant.

I wonder if Ralph Goodale gets it. He is being labeled a lame duck, and is being mocked by the opposition. When you are rendered into a joke, and by your own party, it is a shame. But when you don't realize it, and stand there day after day to be mocked by everyone else, by everyone who gets the joke (everyone except you, of course), it's no longer a shame. It's a farce, and Ralph Goodale is playing the role of the fool.

But in these dying days of this Parliament, we will watch as Ralph Goodale continues to defend someone else's budget, and demanding the resignation of anyone who disagrees.

Good news from Iraq

Hopefully it's true.

Budget vote to come Thursday next

From CTV:

Prime Minister Paul Martin will call a budget vote for next Thursday -- one that could decide the fate of his government, CTV News has learned.

The Liberal minority government held an emergency cabinet meeting this morning before its caucus meeting, Robert Fife, CTV's Parliamentary bureau chief, told Newsnet.

Around noon, Martin is expected to announce the budget vote, expected for May 18.

That gives the Liberals one week to peel away Conservative votes by handing out plum diplomatic posts and Senate seats, or bribe opposition MPs with money for pet projects.

Can they pull it off? Sure -- the vote was that close.

Remember that 153 voted to bring down the government last night, and 150 voted against. That was with two missing cabinet ministers (Justice Minister Irwin Cotler and Natural Resources Minister John Efford). If they had been there, the vote would have been 153-152. Independent Chuck Cadman was also missing (in hospital for cancer therapy). He will probably be back next week, and he would have voted with the government. That makes it a tie.

Independent MP David Kilgour voted for the government, but has said that he would vote against it in a "real" non-confidence vote. I don't know where he will go.

So the vote is on the razor's edge. The Liberals are giving themselves one week to push this one way or another. If they survive the budget vote, which might happen, I expect them to prorogue Parliament and thus stay in power until the fall.

Any other predictions?

Warren and I agree

From Warren Kinsella's musings on May 11:

The House of Commons is the voice of the people, or at least it used to be. And, last night night, the people said enough is enough.

Enough! If they had left any sense of shame, they would end it now.

They won't.

Paul Martin's "stupid but honest" shtick is losing traction

The wisdom has been that the longer the Liberals wait before calling an election, the more likely they can fight an election on something other than Adscam. Instead, the Liberals could campaign on the budget, or against the Conservatives "hidden agenda".

The problem with that analysis is that is assumed that the Gomery Inquiry was essentially static. It isn't. Testimony continues, and as hard as it is to believe, even more damaging material is being revealed.

Not surprisingly, it is the budget that is fading into the background as the Gomery Inquiry comes back into focus. As that happens, Liberal fortunes sink:

The federal Conservatives have edged back in front of the Liberals in a startling new poll that finds Canadians questioning Paul Martin's honesty and ready to make the sponsorship scandal the foremost election issue.

The acidic effect of Gomery on the reputations of everyone involved has finally burned a hole through:

But perhaps the most stunning finding shows that 61 per cent of Canadians surveyed believe the prime minister is the federal political leader most likely to tell a lie if it would help him politically. Only 26 per cent believe that of Conservative Leader Stephen Harper.

Paul Martin's greatest asset has always been his reputation for honesty, earned with his years as finance minister, delivering on promises to bring out balanced budgets year after year. But with Adscam, Paul Martin has had to play the stupid card. I was finance minister, but I didn't know about this quarter-billion slush fund. I was senior cabinet minister from Quebec, but I had no knowledge of the workings of the Sponsorship Program. My ministry had huge contracts with Vickers & Benson, but I had nothing to do with illegal guarantees to hold contracts.

For weeks now, Canadians have been asked to swallow the notion that their Prime Minister was an idiot. An honest and nice guy, but irredeemably dense.

Perhaps it has become too much to swallow. Perhaps it is easier to imagine that we wouldn't have elected a moron, because that reflects poorly on us. But having been fooled by a manipulative liar? Sure, that doesn't sting so much.

But it was voters attitudes to the leaders themselves that appear the most disquieting for Mr. Martin.

When asked which party leader is the most hypocritical, 54 per cent chose Mr. Martin, compared to 29 per cent for Mr. Harper.

In a similar vein, 63 per cent thought Mr. Martin the most dishonest, compared with 20 per cent for Mr. Harper.

Forty per cent of those surveyed had a favourable view of Mr. Martin, compared to 46 per cent for Mr. Harper.

The challenge now for the Conservatives, and this is hard to believe, is to convince Canadians that honesty matters:

Fifteen to 25 per cent of those surveyed would vote Liberal, yet are still prepared to ascribe "really, really awful attributes to Paul Martin," he said.

"Honesty, and trustworthiness and lying really isn't much of an issue any more," [Allan Gregg, chairman of the polling firm Strategic Counsel] said.

Maybe the pollsters need to ask that question. "How important is honesty and integrity in a politician?" Make Canadians think about their answer. If the answer comes back that it isn't important, then we deserve whatever government we get.

Was it a confidence vote?

Last night Canadians were treated to the spectacle of the opposition, denied "opposition days" by the government during which to propose proper motions, sneaking in a procedural motion directing the public accounts committee to rewrite a report so that it called for the resignation of the government. They argue that despite the two levels of indirection, it still amounts to a confidence vote.

Not so, say the Liberals, and despite losing the vote 153 to 150, the government refuses to resign.

Yeah, it's a mess. As Captain Ed points out, nothing by tradition and convention can force the Liberals to accept the vote, and they seem to lack the honour that makes our sort of system work.

On the other hand, if it really wasn't a confidence motion...

For an answer to that question, reader Mike Riordan sent me this link to an analysis by Andrew Heard, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. Here are some highlights:

What makes a vote one of confidence is the content of the motion. In order to qualify as a confidence vote, a motion has to contain wording that either states the lack of confidence explicitly, calls upon the government to resign, accuses the government of gross impropriety or incompetence, or questions the authority of the government to remain in office. However the the motion is worded, the essence of a confidence motion is to embody the House's judgment that the government is unfit in some way to govern. That specific wording can take many forms, and examples of this variety are found in Canadian provincial and federal precedents.

The wording of the motion passed on May 10, 2005 indicates that it should be considered a clear vote of confidence. What is important in this motion is that the House had to collectively is express its view on whether the government should resign. One could not vote for the motion without agreeing that the government should resign, which is the essence of a non-confidence vote. While the wording of the motion is convoluted, the essential content is a clear expression of non-confidence.

And apparently, this is not the first time this sort of motion has been used:

The current motion is also strikingly similar, in procedural terms, to that proposed by H.H Stevens on June 26, 1926. That motion also recommended that a committee report be amended and precipitated the whole King-Byng crisis, when the Governor General refused a dissolution to King on the grounds that he should not avoid a confidence motion then before the House but not voted on; this was the Stevens' motion. For information on those events, see: House of Commons Debates, 1926, Vol.V, June 22 to June 25.

In light of the past precedents, and especially the relevance of the 1926 motions on the Customs Affair, the current motion appears to be clearly a vote of confidence which would normally require the government to resign or call an election after losing the vote. It is a fundamental blow to the government's authority for a majority of the House to agree on a motion that it should resign.

Sounds like Paul Martin, Tony Valeri and company are skating on thin ice. Worse than that, I think it's going to be clear in a very short time that Canada is being ruled by an illegitimate government. The Prime Minister will have to table a vote of confidence of his own and soon, like tomorrow, to prove that the Liberals should be allowed to continue as the government. If he doesn't...

Shenanigans in Shawinigan

Briefcases filled with cash, going back to 1997:

Jean Chretien's hometown was the drop-off point for a briefcase packed with $60,000 in cash for eastern Quebec Liberal candidates in the 1997 federal election, the sponsorship inquiry was told Tuesday.

Former party organizer Marc-Yvan Cote told the inquiry he brought the briefcase of $100 bills to Shawinigan, where the cash was handed out to at least nine candidates who had gathered to kick off the 1997 campaign.

Mr. Cote's testimony suggests Jean Chretien's hometown was the centre of the corrupt practises. That makes sense only if you believe that former Prime Minister Jean Chretien himself managed the scheme.

The date is interesting as well -- with each testimony, it seems like that the corruption reaches farther and farther into the past. Now we have illegal cash donations during the 1997 campaign. Have the Liberals ever won anything fair and square?

But how did something like this go on for so long and yet no one leaked it?

[Quebec wing boss Benoit Corbeil] said the Liberals ran their Quebec campaign in 2000 with two parallel staff - only one of which was on the payroll at their Montreal headquarters.

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 on loan to the party.

"There were two sections at the headquarters - there was the registered section, where I worked, and there was the unregistered section," 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 truth. Can I be any clearer?"

Corbeil said he saw a similar setup in Chretien's riding, but he was cut off when Gomery said the Liberal staffing practices were outside the commission's mandate to probe the sponsorship program.

I wonder if the secret staff had a cool name, like "Section X".

So we're left with this tantalyzing reference to shenanigans in Shawinigan. Briefcases stuffed with cash. Secret cadres of election workers. Working for "da boss", former prime minister Jean Chretien, who the current prime minister Paul Martin is sure "knew nothing". I wonder how long before the weigh of innuendo and implication forces Paul Martin to stop defending his former boss.

I give it a week.

Kakistocratic Canada

The Liberals have shown themselves in the last week to be unsuited for government. But not just a poor choice. They should not, under any circumstance, be allowed to form a government with the current slate of MPs, and under this Prime Minister.

Corruption, kickbacks, budget bribery, secret ruling cabals, handing out judicial appointments as gifts, ignoring democratic votes: if there is anything left to do to disqualify them from government, I'm hard pressed to imagine what that might be.

There is a word for a form of government in which the worst and least qualified rule: a kakistocracy. There's a word for everything if you look hard enough.

The Liberals make an offer

An offer has been made to the opposition parties:

The Liberals are offering the opposition three days at the end of the month when they can try to topple the government in the Commons.

House Leader Tony Valeri said the government will propose the dates to the opposition later today, one for each party, when they can introduce formal motions of non-confidence in the government.

The "opposition days" Tony Valeri is offering are the same days he cancelled back in April, to the fury of the opposition parties.

Needless to say, I don't know that the opposition trusts the Liberals to deliver these days either. In any case, the move smacks of desperation:

"We're not afraid to be held accountable," Valeri said at a news conference. "There will be legitimate confidence votes."

Valeri made the offer as a deadline approached for a Commons vote that the opposition considered enough to turf the government.

But the Liberals remain adamant that the motion being voted on at 5:45 p.m. ET this afternoon is not a confidence motion and will not affect the government, Valeri said.

Meanwhile, a tide of Conservative MPs is descending on Ottawa:

Conservative MPs were arriving in full force to vote on the motion, which asks a Commons committee to recommend that the government resign.

At least two seriously ill MPs left their sick beds in Alberta and B.C. to show up for the vote.

By 6pm tonight, the vote will have been taken, and events will have moved to the next phase. Assuming the government is defeated, and assuming the Prime Minister refuses to call an election, there will be a lot of grim faced Conservatives and Bloc MPs giving news conferences. A few hotheads will be given enough leash by the party leadership to vent their spleens in front of the camera, but by and large the response will be measured and sobre.

Starting tomorrow though, the work of Parliament, which has progressed at a snail's pace, might grind to halt altogether. The Liberals will be forced to bring forth their budget for a vote. Do the Conservatives defeat the budget? Or do they wait for the opposition days that Tony Valeri has promised?

If the Conservatives defeat the budget, they will have handed the Liberals a campaign theme. On the other hand, if they wait, the Conservatives run the risk of the Liberals reneging on their promise to provide opposition days. With a budget in hand that keeps the government running through the summer, the Prime Minister could prorogue Parliament, arguing that the House has ceased to function because of the behaviour of the opposition, and that there is no point in sitting through the hot summer. He'll announce magnaminously that Parliament will reconvene as the first Gomery report is tabled.

It'll all sound very reasonable. Meanwhile, through the summer, they quietly help Jean Chretien's lawyers get Justice Gomery removed from the case. With him gone, the Inquiry shuts down, and even if another Justice is assigned, he or she might decide to start the process from scratch (especially if the Justice is a pro-Liberal judge). Paul Martin promises to call an election within 30 days of the final report, but since that won't happen until sometime in 2007, the Liberals continue on their merry way. With all summer to find one or two opposition MPs willing to take a ambassador's posting or a Senate appointment, the Liberals could improve their minority position.

We live in interesting times

Cartoon of the Day

Check it out.

The Doo-Doo Analysis

I can't add anything to this. For an analysis of the confidence vote tonight, including the first use of the word "doo-doo" by a serious political scientist (suggesting to me that my 4-year-old daughter could to this job), check out The Tiger in Winter.

Updated the Recommended Reading List

I've added a new book to the list of recommended reading -- "First Nations? Second Thoughts" by Tom Flanagan, a major thinker within the Conservative Party. It tears apart all the comfortable assumptions we have about how to treat First Nations, and suggests a different solution to their social problems -- assimilation. It was a book that created a great deal of controversy, so if you do pick it up to read on the subway or in the park, I suggest you put on a bland dust jacket.

Did the judge know? I call for the Oxner Commission

Quebec Justice Claudette Tessier-Couture has already been named by Gilles Duceppe of the Bloc Quebecois as a judge that needs to be investigated. The implication is that she is one of the lawyers that Benoit Corbeil said was rewarded for all their work for the Liberal Party with a judicial appoinment.

He name has come up in the testimony of Benoit Corbeil, but in a different context:

Mr. Corbeil said he informed the co-presidents of the Quebec wing's electoral commission Mr. Gagliano and Claudette Tessier-Couture, that the workers in question had been paid. He said he did not specify where the money came from [the money came from Groupaction president Jean Brault, who was flush with cash he received from the Sponsorship Program], but said it would have been clear to them that the money did not come from normal channels. ''People in the electoral commission knew very well that we had financial difficulties,'' he said. Ms. Tessier-Couture has since been named a Superior Court judge.

If she knew prior to being sworn in as a judge of a major criminal undertaking that had yet to be reported, I can't imagine she would be considered eligible for the position. Moreover, Mr. Corbeil is insinuating that Ms. Tessier-Couture gave tacit approval for these criminal acts by not expressing concern.

And now she's a judge.

I expect more and more media interest to be directed at Ms. Tessier-Couture, and then at other judges. This is not a good time to be a judge anywhere in Canada.

We may need yet another commission since the Gomery Inquiry's mandate does not extend over judicial appointments.

If I might suggest someone to lead it: Judge Sandra Oxner, President of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute in Halifax. She's done a lot of work with third world countries which have required help in setting up independent judiciaries (in places like the Caribbean, the Philippines, in several Arab countries).

I hate to say it, but I think Canada might need to consider calling on Judge Oxner and her skills in helping countries emerging from their status of corrupt kleptocracies with compliant judiciaries. As humiliating as it is, Canada seems to be not much better shape right now.

Trying to silence the witnesses

Corruption and now intimidation:

A former high-ranking Liberal who yesterday offered more evidence of sponsorship cash being diverted to the governing party said Alfonso Gagliano called him three weeks ago and warned him not to come clean with the Gomery inquiry.

After acknowledging he planned to link the commission, the Liberals electoral readiness committee over which Mr. Gagliano had presided, to the scandal, the former minister issued a threat, according to [former Liberal Party (Quebec) director-general Benoit] Corbeil: ''Listen Benoit, people are going to come out against you, and you are going to lose your reputation and you are going to lose several friends.''

For those of us with "real" jobs, the threat of losing your friends seems a bit lame. But when your job is in politics and is defined by the fact that you have these specific friends, the threat is real. It's like telling a piano player that he's gonna get his fingers broke. (The Captain has more on this, including some analysis from upcoming Gomery witness Beryl Wajsman.)

$5.75 billion to buy Ontario votes -- all a scam

From the Toronto Star:

Premier Dalton McGuinty's much-celebrated multi-billion-dollar deal with Ottawa to address Ontario's funding complaints began to unravel yesterday.

Most of the $5.75 billion promised the province by Prime Minister Paul Martin is money that was already slated to go to Ontario, the federal government revealed two days after striking the deal with McGuinty.

And who is revealing that this "big deal" was really just an old deal? None other than Finance Minister Ralph Goodale, who saw his budget savagely reworked by his new boss, NDP Leader Jack Layton, in the deal that got the NDP to promise to support the Liberal government. I wonder if Mr. Goodale didn't feel like trying all that hard to defend this deal.

Federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said only one-third of the $5.75 billion is "new" money the province wouldn't have received anyway.

And that $1.9 billion won't appear until 2007, assuming the federal budget has enough "flexibility".

So the next time you hear a Liberal supporter say that if you bring down the government, you'll lose this "great deal" for Ontario, tell 'em it was no great loss. Literally.

Red Ensign Standard XXI

The Red Ensign has been raised at the London Fog.

Crises have a way of sneaking up on you

A first class crisis is the one that is as big as a locomotive, just as noisy, and that somehow you had no idea was sneaking up on you. We've got one of those in the works for tomorrow:

The House of Commons erupted in a fiery debate over an opposition effort to topple the Liberal government as early as Tuesday.

The Conservatives tabled a motion Monday that calls for the government to resign. The Speaker of the House ruled it was in order despite Liberal arguments to the contrary.

Still, it's unlikely the government will consider the vote a matter of confidence.

But if the opposition agree that it is a vote of confidence (including the NDP), then it is a vote of confidence, especially the vote on it is clear and unequivocal.

But what happens if the Liberals ignore the result of a vote that goes against them?

They will probably do little. There is nothing to be gained by images of Conservative MPs is various stages of apoplectic rage. It would be especially bad if nothing comes of it. Nothing worse than impotent rage.

Better to wait. This vote may be more of a trial balloon. The Liberals ignore it as promised. The Conservatives and the Bloc give news conferences, grim faced but in control of themselves. Then they wait and watch. How do the editorial boards react? The columnists? The pundits and talking heads?

Heck, how do the blogs react?

The opposition watch and wait, study the polls, and use this to fine tune their message for the next vote. Meanwhile, the Liberals take their lumps and maybe lose more than a few supporters. Add another aspect of their "legacy" goes into the history books.

But we did it because we like you!

Stephen Taylor has today's oddest post. Apparently the same Liberals who are trying so hard to swing David Kilgour to vote in support of the government, spent a great deal of time bad-mouthing him to the Conservatives.

And they did this while Kilgour was still a member of the Liberal Party!

How does Taylor know this? Apparently he was told by a Conservative insider.

Now why would the Liberals have done this? Maybe to poison Kilgour in case the Conservatives were thinking of luring him back? Make sure that if Kilgour asked to Conservatives to take him back, they would turn him away?

Maybe to make sure he had only one home, and that was with the Liberal Party.

That's my theory anyway.

If I was David Kilgour, I wouldn't be having a sit-down with the Prime Minister. People who operate like that are capable of, well, all just about any of criminal act, as we have seeing week after week at the Gomery Inquiry.

Assuming any of this is true, of course.

Fair treatment

"I would caution the member not to go on one more time with unsubstantiated allegations. The reality is there are process in place to look at these things. We will listen to the evidence, talk to the individuals, and make our decisions in due course," said Treasury Board President Reg Alcock.

That was in response to a demand by Opposition members that Irène Marcheterre, director of communications of Transport Minister Jean Lapierre, should be fired, as a result of being named in the Gomery Inquiry by Benoît Corbeil as having been a recipient of an envelope of money.

My position is that she should not be fired. She has not been found guilty of anything. But she should be suspended with pay, and her paycheques should be paid out of the coffers of the Liberal Party of Canada. Until Ms. Marcheterre successfully dispells the cloud that now hangs over her, she cannot be trusted in a position of responsibility. It may be that a less sensitive position can be found for her, but I doubt it. I think she needs to be removed from the halls of power until this is cleared up. But she has bills to pay, so suspension with pay is considered a fair compromise until such time the allegations are proven.

I also think that the Canadian taxpayer should not be held responsible for paying her while she is not working. Given that the actions of the Liberal Party are at the heart of this mess, the Liberal Party should be compelled to pay her while she remains sidelined. I don't know if I'm on solid legal ground on this point, but it sounds fair to me.

Of course, she might resign, which is what we'd expect from high-level government officials with any sense of honour and public duty.

Poll Analysis

Check out this excellent polling analysis by Stephen Taylor.

The Names

Benoit Corbeil has named the following people as recipients of envelopes stuffed with thousands of dollars of cash, stolen from taxpayers, to be used to defeat the opposition parties in the 2000 election:

• Irène Marcheterre, director of communications of current Transport Minister Jean Lapierre ($5000)


• Richard Mimeau, Mr. Lapierre's special assistant for Quebec ($6000)


• Daniel Dezainde, press secretary of Jacques Saada, the minister for Canada Economic Development ($5000)


• Bruno Lortie, Quebec deputy executive director ($15,000)


• Luc Desbiens, past spokesman for the Quebec wing and aid to Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Lucienne Robillard ($5000)


• Pierre Lesieur, an aide to former Public Works Minister Alfonso Gagliano ($6000)


• Claude Lemieux, currently an aide for Jean Charest's provincial Liberals ($6000)


• Michel Joncas, the president of the Liberal organizing committee in Quebec ($2000)

So it looks like Minister Lapierre has some trouble on his hands. His Director of Communications (Marcheterre) and Regional Office Special Assistant (Mimeau) are probably going to have to tender resignations. Minister Saada is also going to lose his press secretary (Dezainde) and Robillard her aide (Desbiens).

Or as Captain Ed suggests, Prime Minister Paul Martin might have to fire them outright.

Every cabinet minister, including the Prime Minister, will now look at each staffer and wonder if he or she received an envelope jammed with money sometime in their past. Each staffer is a potential time bomb, especially if they worked in Quebec at some point.

But the Prime Minister thinks he can govern effectively until the end of the year.

Pre-emptive Strike

May 18 -- the day the balloon goes up on Parliament Hill.

That is the day a non-confidence vote will be held. Right now, it does not look good for the Liberals. Independent David Kilgour is sounding like he is leaning to supporting the opposition. With independent Carolyn Parrish voting for the government, that leaves independent Chuck Cadman, 132 Liberals, 99 Tories, 54 Bloc, and 19 NDP. The Liberals+NDP+Parrish garner 152 votes. The Conservatives+Bloc+Kilgour total 154 votes. So even if Cadman goes with the government, the government will still fall.

Or not. The Liberals have already said they would ignore that vote, arguing it is not a proper confidence measure (an argument even their NDP allies don't buy). They may be technically correct, but politically, they would be igniting a firestorm.

But that storm might ignite as soon as tomorrow:

Tory Leader Stephen Harper said there will be consequences for the Liberals after the politicians return home Tuesday. He didn't say what those consequences would be.

"The government cannot decide whether it has or doesn't have the confidence of the House. Only members of Parliament can decide that,'' Harper said.

"That (Liberal) decision is unacceptable now, and there will be consequences as soon as we return for that kind of attitude.

"Don't think we're going to wait until the 18th or 19th to deal with that problem.''

We watch and we wait and we try to read the tea leaves.

More names at Gomery Inquiry

Politics Watch has put up a tease post:

Benoit Corbeil, the former director of the Liberal party in Quebec, told the Gomery inquiry on Monday he handed out $50,000 in cash payments in envelopes to nine Liberal party officials before the 2000 election, including $3,000 to someone working in the PMO at the time and $6,000 to a party organizer who was a supporter of Paul Martin.

More to come

Dammit. Who in the PMO?!

Corroboration at the Gomery Inquiry

The testimony of Benoit Corbeil has been keenly anticipated, and he has begun to corroborate allegations that the Liberal Party executive in Quebec was handing secret cash payments out to support of candidates in stiff fighters against opposition parties:

A former Liberal executive told the sponsorship inquiry today he handed over a $5,000 secret cash payment in 1997 to the riding of Denis Coderre, who went on to become a cabinet minister under Jean Chretien.

Benoit Corbeil, who once headed the party's Quebec wing, said the payment was one of two cash contributions totalling $9,000 that he made to Quebec ridings during the 1997 election campaign when he was assistant director of the wing.

Corbeil said Monday he gave $5,000 in cash to organizers in Coderre's Montreal riding of Bourassa after receiving the money in a sealed envelope from Michel Beliveau, then director of the Quebec wing.

Corderre is a backbencher now, havin been shuffled out when Paul Martin took over from Jean Chretien. Bet he'll say he knows nothing about it. Might even be true.

The article does not say who the "organizers" in the riding were who received the envelopes.

Where did the money come from? The Sponsorship Program give millions over to Jacques Corriveau, key ally of Jean Chretien, nearly $7 million in total. Corriveau in turn hands over thousands to Michel Beliveau, then director of the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada. Beliveau gave his then-assistant Benoit Corbeil as much as $100,000 in an envelope for several ridings held by opposition parties, or so he claimed last week under oath. Corbeil hands out envelopes with five thousand or so dollars to riding organizers as straight cash -- no messy cheques to track with Elections Canada.

Liberals win key ridings.

A problem, however, is that Beliveau talked about 6-digit dollar figures, while Corbeil was handing out little dribs and drabs of cash. Where did the rest of the money go?

The Prime Minister continues to lose fans -- but maybe not votes

Paul Martin can be castigated by Liberal supporters, and still he'll get their votes. They want him to get his act together. Or else.

Or else what? They'll thrust the ballot they cast for the Liberal Party in the next election into the ballot box while wearing a really, really, nasty frown?

Independent MP not satisfied with Sudan deployment

It has been suggested (including by yours truly) that the decision by Prime Minister Paul Martin to send troops into Sudan was motivated more by the desire to secure the support of ex-Liberal (now independent) MP David Kilgour rather than a legitimate desire to help.

It'll probably fail on both counts, which in itself is so suggestive of how effective our government is today.

From the point of view of helping in Sudan, 150 Canadian troops, assuming they ever get there, will probably make little difference.

As for David Kilgour:

In an interview from Ottawa early Monday, Kilgour said the move is a good one, but falls far short of his expectations.

That means he remains far from decided how he would vote should the spectre of a non-confidence vote materialize in the House of Commons.

In fact, Kilgour told CTV's Canada AM, there's little chance of any deal with Martin's Liberal minority securing his vote. The 10-item to-do list crafted when he quit the Liberal party last month, he explained, is nowhere near completion.

Among the items on his list:

• The mad cow crisis
• Retaining the traditional definition of marriage
• Senate reform

I guess we'll see if there is movement on any of these fronts next.

Terrorists "back" in Canada

From the National Post:

A number of "jihadist returnees" have arrived back in Canada from other countries and some may intend to commit acts of terrorism, according to a declassified intelligence report.

Back in Canada? Who let them back in, if we knew when they left, or found out while they were gone, that they were terrorists?

"They may also use their documentation to gain access to Western diplomatic missions, or other interests, for the purpose of terrorist attack," says the report, released under the Access to Information Act.

So what do our leaders tell us? From last May:

Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan said yesterday there is "no reason to believe" that al-Qaeda has a cell of operatives in Canada, after the United States issued a warning about an apparent plot to attack U.S. targets this summer by a group of suspected terrorists that includes two Canadian citizens.

And with the government now paralyzed because of Adscam, I have to wonder just how carefully the government is watching for these people.

I need a white board...

...just to keep track of all of this. As we all know, the Liberals and the NDP have entered into a deal. In exchange for NDP support for the budget and against any non-confidence motions, the Liberals took their carefully fine-tuned budget and reworked entirely on the back of a napkin, jamming in $4.6 billion in socialist spending priorities.

That comes out to $242,105,263.16 per NDP MP. That has to be a record.

Well, it might all be moot, after all:

[T]he NDP disclosed it has suspicions the Liberals may be attempting a double-cross over the deal and said if the Grits attempt to delay the new budget bill, it could lose New Democratic support in the House of Commons.

You see, the Liberals might filibuster their own budget, putting up as many MPs as possible to give speeches, in order to delay a vote. The longer they wait, the theory goes, the more likely they would be survive the vote, or the better prepared they will be for an election, further removed from the worst of the Gomery Inquiry.

The NDP is not likely to give the Liberals as much time as they would like to have. Maybe the NDP really wants to have an election, after all. They want to go into it having managed to change a budget, and blame the Conservatives and the Bloc for defeating it. That will give their campaign some juice, and might translate into some extra seats for the next go-around.

Politics.

The Queen's visit

Here's a scenario. Let's say on May 18, a non-confidence vote is held, and the opposition wins, and the government falls. But as pointed out, the Liberals have threatened to ignore such a result, and Canada is thrown into a crisis.

Meanwhile, on May 17, the Queen has landed in Canada to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the entry of Alberta and Saskatchewan into Confederation.

The leaders of the opposition, faced with a government that they believe is illegitimate, go to see the Governor-General to convince her that she must call the Prime Minister in and make him understand that Parliament must be dissolved.

Here's what I'm wondering. What if Paul Martin, who is hosting Her Majesty, tries to pull her into this. The Governor-General just stands in for the Queen -- if the Queen is in the country, she performs those functions such as Throne Speeches that the Governor-General normally takes care of. This should be the same, right?

Could Paul Martin get the Queen to say something that could be spun into supporting the Liberal position? If he tried and failed, what sort of scandal would that ignite?

Or maybe it plays out the other way around. The Governor-General, Adrienne Clarkson, has strong ties to both the Liberal Party and to Paul Martin personally. What the Prime Minister convinces her that the government's position is correct and that the non-confidence vote is illegitimate. The opposition leaders could go over Clarkson's head, arguing that while the Queen in is the country, the Governor-General is essentially on holiday, and that it is the Queen's opinion that matters. Could they get her to talk to the Prime Minister?

Are the Queen's people prepping her on the possibility that any of this could happen?

[Update: Excellent discussion of "reserve powers" at the Observant Astronomer, hat tip to Instapundit.]

Worrying about the right things

John Aimers of the Monarchist League is working hard to protect the upcoming Royal Visit from being disrupted by a potential election:

The head of the Monarchist League of Canada is warning Canadian politicians not to turn the Queen's visit this month into a campaign stop.

If the federal government collapses during the May 17-25 royal tour of Alberta and Saskatchewan forcing a snap election, Prime Minister Paul Martin and Opposition Leader Stephen Harper should agree to "de-federalize" the visit, according to League chairman John Aimers.

The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh are coming to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the entry of Alberta and Saskatchewan into Confederation. The government could fall on a non-confidence vote on May 18.

Hence the high level of concern.

I wonder, though, if Mr. Aimers needs to be concerned about something else altogether. Already, the Gomery Inquiry is revealing problems that in part could be blamed on a system in which a great deal of power is concentrated in the Prime Minister's Office, while the legislature (the House of Commons) and the executive (the Governor-General standing in for the Queen) are essentially spectators. Perhaps we need a new system, some people will say. The Americans have a system with far more checks and balances, other people will point out.

That sort of talk would make Mr. Aimers break out in a cold sweat.

The other Gomery event this coming week

Focus this week will be on Benoît Corbeil, who has already given a great deal of his story to the press in interviews. It was from him that we first heard of bench appointments being given out as rewards for work for the Liberal Party.

As important as his evidence will be, I will also be looking forward to the delivery of the Kroll Report, which is also expected this week:

For months, a crack team of top forensic accountants in Ottawa and Montreal has been following the Adscam money from the public purse through the elaborate money-laundering schemes of fraud and kickbacks at the heart of the sponsorship scandal.

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

Was it a political slush fund to pay for Liberal election campaigns in Quebec? Or did the cash just stay in the bank accounts of the Grit bagmen, a fraud on a fraud? Did some of the loot perhaps find its way to others in high places? If so, who got the money, and who else knew about it?

The answers could further rock the Liberal Party, and have a profound effect on the timing and outcome of the next federal election. So far, the accounting firm is keeping its findings under tight wraps.

But sources elsewhere tell us the investigators have pieced together literally tens of thousands of pages of financial records, everything from personal bank accounts to phone bills of companies and key players in the Adscam mess.

The result, we are told, is pure political dynamite.

Unlike witness testimony, which ultimately has to be weighed against issues like credibility, conflicting testimony from other witnesses, and so forth, this report will be hard to refute. It will certainly be hard to Anne McLellan or Scott Brison to give their standard line about believing in the testimony of people under criminal investigation. As far as I know, the folks at Kroll Lindquist & Avey are squeaky clean.

The venality of Paul Martin

When I wrote about the attempt to sway independent MP David Kilgour into supporting the government in any non-confidence votes by getting more involved in Darfur, I thought they were talking about more aid money or more lobbying efforts at the UN.

Again I have underestimated the venality of Paul Martin.

He is willing to send Canadian troops into a civil war in order to cling to power.

Since no swing votes hinge on supporting the US in establishing a democracy in a strategically important nation beset by Islamic fundamentalist irregulars, Canadian troops aren't going to Iraq.

But Sudan? That's important. That's worth a vote.

It's too bad because I'd rather have Canadians serving alongside of, and benefitting from the protection of, American, Australian, and British troops, rather than serving under a UN command and who knows how many rapists and pedophiles posing as undereqiuipped soldiers from third world kleptocracies that form the African Union.

But then Sudan is worth a vote.

I wonder how many Canadian boys might die, either at the hands of Sudanese fighters, or at the hands of ill-trained troops from the African Union. I wonder if in speaking of their sacrifice, Paul Martin will mention how personally touched he was by their bravery, and how saddened he was when received the news, firmly ensconced as he was at 24 Sussex Drive.

But I know one thing he'll never say out loud. "The late and lamented Private Smith -- he was worth a vote."

The Bloggy Hinterland Who's Who

Any Canadian above the age of 35 probably remembers the Hinterland Who's Who spots on TV. With that fluting musical backdrop, each spot highlighted a denizen of Canada's wild. Greg Staples of Political Staples has undertaken to catalog the strange creatures who populate Canada's virtual wilderness in the blogosphere. Check out his list of Top Canadian Blogs (the "Hinterland" analogy is just mine). If you have a Canadian blog, and you get at least 200 visits a day, see if you are on the list. The list is extracted from the TTLB Ecosystem, so if you haven't registered your blog there, go do that immediately, and you can be on the list in short order.

That's rich

Frustration at the possibility, not in the least remote, that the Liberals could be re-elected in spite of the revelations of the Gomery Inquiry has brought Alberta separatism to the fore:

Bob Mills, Tory MP for Red Deer and the party's environment critic, said some of his constituents are contemplating separatism and may have no other choice should the federal Liberals win the next election.

Asked if he was referring to thoughts of separatism, Mills confirmed there are musings.

"You hear that. You hear ... 'How could they continue to elect criminals?' That's the step right now. What might happen later, who knows."

Of course, the Liberals, as defenders of the unity of Canada, have to respond. Perhaps not with an Alberta-based version of the Sponsorship Program, but with next best thing, firm words from Deputy Prime Minister, Anne McLellan, MP for Edmonton-Centre, who said separatist views are "irresponsible and unprincipled".

Well, she's a Liberal, and she should know "irresponsible and unprincipled" better than most people.

Another link between the PM and Adscam? I'm not sure...

The Blue Maple Leaf has dug up another interesting connection, but I'm not all that sure what it means...

One last service

Ed Broadbent, former NDP leader, current MP, and one of the senior MPs in today's Parliament (if not the most senior), announced he would not run in the next election in order to spend time with his ailing wife. Regardless of his politics, any decent person would wish Mr. Broadbent and his family only the best in the future, and for Mr. Broadbent in particular, happiness and success in private life.

That announcement on Wednesday could have been the end of it, but for the Liberals' contention that they could ignore a vote of non-confidence. That assertion has brought Mr. Broadbent back into the spotlight, as he takes his allies to task:

But on Friday, Broadbent, whose party has agreed to support the Liberals on all non-confidence votes until a new budget with increased social spending receives Royal Assent in the senate, said his party saw things differently than Valeri.

"We do not agree with him," Broadbent said. "We think it is a confidence vote. Thinking it's a confidence vote, ourselves, the government is mistaken on that. We have taken the position that until the budget is finished we will not be voting non-confidence in the government. So we'll vote against the motion." [emphasis added]

And if there is a crisis?

When asked what the NDP would do if the motion passes and Prime Minister Paul Martin decides to ignore the will of the House, Broadbent said, "We'll have to see what happens at that time."

At that time, Canadians of all political stripes might be looking to one of the most well-known and respected MPs in the House of Commons for the leadership that Prime Minister Paul Martin is unwilling, or unable, to provide. These last weeks of Ed Broadbent's public service could go down in Canadian history as the most exciting that any retiring MP has ever had to experience.

The school was very understanding...not!

Another example of bureaucratic insensitivity, and how cowards hide behind rules.

Joke! Joke! Joke!

Go quickly and read -- I'm still laughing.

Liberal Party worker admits to wrongdoing -- not his first time?

More testimony and more tears at the Gomery Inquiry. But I'm not feeling very sympathetic.

Why is that? Well, Michel Beliveau is no stranger to scandal, having been a key player in another one of Jean Chretien's other money schemes.

Oh no! The air is...cleaner

Springfield is saved when the comet about to smash into it instead disintegrates as it passes through the hazy atmosphere:

LISA:
I can't believe that extra-thick layer of pollution that I've picketed against is what burned up the comet.

Well, it might be that we won't be so lucky. Apparently, the atmosphere is getting clearer. It's been happening since the collapse of communism when their horribly inefficient centrally-managed heavy industries went out of business. But you'll never hear an environmentalist give thanks to Ronald Reagan.

In fact, the news is dire. You see, the smog trapped heat which caused global warming. Now with the clearer skies, more sunlight is reaching the ground, creating...global warming.

Everyone take a moment to roll their eyes, then go to A Word from the Right for more details.

Update to the satellite radio story

Let me be a bit more clear about why I'm angry. It's not that the CRTC is restricting our choice as consumers. It is because the CRTC is preventing us from being consumers in the first place, and if we aren't consumers, we are powerless.

Here's what I mean.

What is it that commercial radios sell? Music for us to listen to? No, because we're not paying anything, so we clearly are not the ones buying something from the radio stations. The money flows from the advertisers to the radio stations. That means the advertisers are the consumers (and thus have the power all consumers have to choose where to spend their money), and the radio stations are the producers.

So what do the radio stations produce? Music? No, because advertisers don't care about music. But they do care about ratings and market share. You and I form the market share. So that means we are the product, being generated by the radio station, and sold to the advertisers.

How does it feel to be a commodity?

With satellite radio, the money flows from you and me, straight to the satellite radio company. We are the consumer, and the content (ie, the music) is the product, and the satellite radio station is the producer. Our choices in our listening preference is directly tied to revenue, which in turn affects the programming choices of the satellite radio stations. That empowers us, and forces the producer to listen to us.

Well, except that the CRTC is making it clear that is not interested in allowing into Canada any system which allows us to make programming choices, a power jealously guarded by the CRTC as ultimate overseer of "Canadian content" rules. The notion that a Canadian satellite radio company might fill this market niche is an unlikely one -- the expense of setting up such a system for such a small Canadian market would mean the system would never be competitive or profitable. Instead, Canadian consumers would have to be an adjunct to the massive US market.

The CRTC is never going to allow that, of course. So that means no satellite radio, the CRTC maintains complete control, and commercial radio interests will not be threatened. Everyone wins. Well, not you and I, of course.

Forget Adscam, this is important!

Time to take the CRTC and politely but resolutely toss it into a deep mine, followed by a years worth of "output" from the Toronto Zoo:

The Globe and Mail recently reported that two Canadian car makers won't be offering satellite radio in their 2006 models because the CRTC refuses to approve the radios for sale in Canada.

The broadcast regulator has steadfastly refused to allow two American satellite radio providers, Sirius satellite radio and XM satellite radio to operate in this country and will prosecute Canadians who dare to operate or sell these products in Canada.

I'm...getting...angry!!!

Satellite radio is not allowed into Canada because it has the potential to put Canadian commercial radio stations out of business. Canadian commercial radio stations derive their revenue from advertising sales and if their audiences decline because of satellite radio then they risk going out of business as advertising revenues fall.

I'm...getting...very...angry!!!! Remember what happened with satellite TV:

In 1997, under pressure from Canadian cable and satellite providers who were losing hundreds of thousands of subscribers, the CRTC did an about face, and deemed grey market satellite systems illegal. This set off a series of RCMP raids and lawsuits that drove grey market providers out of business and rendered close to a half a million U.S. satellite systems in Canada worthless. Satellite systems that in many cases, homeowners had spent thousands of dollars on.

In addition, laying waste to millions of dollars of equipment, the RCMP raids and government prosecution, resulted in many grey market subscribers into the black market. Prior to 1997, there was no black market in satellite dishes yet by 2004, industry trade groups there were over 1,000,000 black market satellite users in Canada.

I see plenty of DISH satellite dishes up and down my street. Criminals? At least they spent their own money to buy the systems, instead of stealing money from taxpayers. Stealing money from taxpayers -- crime. Using your own funds to pay for music instead of downloading ripped MP3s from the internet -- not a crime.

The reality is that rather than stopping Canadians, the decision in 1997 to prosecute vendors and consumers actually led to an unprecented rise in criminal activity anlogous to what happend to alchohol during prohibition. Rather than stopping the practice, it merely drove it underground.

(Hat tip to NealeNews)

A crisis in the making?

What if they called an election, but the Liberals didn't come?

That's what might be shaping up:

The Conservatives won a battle Thursday in their effort to force a non-confidence vote against the Liberal minority government, but it appears they could yet lose the war.

Minutes after the Tories won the right to proceed with an amendment later this month calling on the government to resign, the Liberals said they will simply ignore the call.

The amendment is attached to a finance committee bill, and the issue seems to be whether a finance committee bill constitutes a "money bill". Such bills, such as budgets, are automatically votes of confidence. The government seems to be saying that this committee bill is not the same thing:

Not so fast, said government House leader Tony Valeri. He said the Liberals will refuse to recognize the amendment as a confidence motion and keep governing.

I don't know who is right here, and I don't want make matters worse by tossing the Liberals out on what later might be seen to have been a mistake. This is the problem with our byzantine Westminster system. Elements of it are excellent, sometimes better than the American republic (for instance, forcing the Executive Branch's advisory committee, the Cabinet, to submit to Question Period and defend their policy in public debate), but at other times, like this, when everyone is scratching their heads, well...

So are there any constitutional and parliamentary experts out there who can enlighten us? What is a finance committee bill, and is it a confidence measure? Even if it isn't, can the government defy an explicit vote of non-confidence? To me, it doesn't matter what the bill is -- the confidence amendment is explicit. If there was no amendment, and the finance committee bill was defeated, then there would be a debate about this, in my view. But as soon as the members of Parliament are bluntly asked to vote about their confidence in the government, and the vote is ruled to be in order, should it matter what sort of bill might have ushered that question into the House? I wouldn't have thought so, so I think the government is on shaky ground here.

Regardless of my opinion, the potential is for a fight that will dwarf everything we've seen in the last few weeks:

Tory House leader Jay Hill maintained the vote is a confidence matter, but didn't say what he would do if the government refuses to step down.

I suspect Mr. Hill didn't say because he didn't know. This could turn into one of those mouth-open-staring-dumbly-into-space moments. Is the government legitimate? If it isn't, what do we, the Opposition, do?

You know, there's a reason the distance between the Government benches and Opposition benches are set a traditional two sword lengths apart.

Forgive and forget

An apology has been issued:

The Conservatives have won an apology from a cabinet minister for what they characterize as a racial taunt.

Treasury Board President Reg Alcock says he sent a letter of apology to Inky Mark because the Tory MP took his comment Wednesday as a racial slur.

Alcock had told The Canadian Press on Wednesday that if he was going to recruit a Tory, he'd pick someone "higher up the gene pool," than Mark.

At first Mr. Mark shrugged it off, but the next day he had come to think that the remark demeaned all Chinese-Canadians and demanded an apology. Fifteen other Conservatives backed him.

The Conservatives had demanded that Mr. Alcock resign -- though I'm not certain if they wanted him to resign just from the Treasury Board, or from his seat altogether. But that's not important. He has apologized, and the Conservatives should accept that apology. People from all sides have been slinging mud over the last week (some nastier than others, to be sure). The right thing to do is to put the issue behind them, and never speak of it again.

Paul Martin continues to buy votes

In an attempt to cling to power just a bit longer, and to extend the lifetime of this moribund Parliament, the Prime Minister is making a deal with an independent MP concerning Darfur.

Darfur?

But apparently it's important to ex-Liberal David Kilgour:

Parliament Hill is buzzing with speculation the minority Liberals have managed to secure one more vote in the House of Commons.

Reporting from Ottawa, CTV's Mike Duffy says rumours swirling around the capital suggesting Prime Minister Paul Martin has brokered a deal with Independent MP David Kilgour.

"He [Kilgour] basically made a pitch to the prime minister for more money for the Darfur region," Duffy told CTV Newsnet, adding that Kilgour was promised more money and attention to the issue.

"As a result of that, I think we can mark David Kilgour down as one of those who will vote in favour of the budget when the government faces a non-confidence motion in the House."

To be fair, the Prime Minister is concerned about Darfur, and he spoke about it when he addressed the United Nations in late 2004:

Darfur is a human tragedy of immense proportions. We welcome the Security Council’s support for expanded African Union engagement there, though we think the international response should be more robust. The African Union has agreed to lead this effort. Canada is offering $20 million to assist, and we call on others to join in. It is good that the international community is finally moving, but it has taken far too long.

$20 million is good money, but when you look at the $6.7 million Jacques Corriveau received via Adscam, it's not so impressive. Moreover, the Prime Minister said in the same speech:

We must not let debates about definitions become obstacles to action. We should not have to go through such painful debates to figure out how to respond to humanitarian catastrophe.

To me it seems like the most painful...no, tortured...debate is exactly what we are going through right now in order to get this promise of extra cash from the Prime Minister. He wouldn't have given Mr. Kilgour the time of day if it weren't for a looming non-confidence vote. But that vote is looming. If Mr. Kilgour's pet project were mittens for kittens, Paul Martin would have had his knitting needles out in a flash, and not a penny for Darfur would have materialized.

Or at least that's what I think.

Karl Littler? A vaguely familiar name

From the Globe and Mail today:

Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Liberals moved closer yesterday toward a strategy to engineer their own defeat on the $4.6-billion budget deal they crafted with the NDP as the government signalled debate will begin on its new budget bill next Tuesday.

At the same time, Karl Littler, a key Martin strategist in the Prime Minister's Office, is poised to leave the office to begin working full-time on the election campaign, according to a senior Liberal source. He is to act as the national campaign director.

Karl Littler? I've heard that name somewhere. Oh yes, I remember now. It was way back in March of 2004:

Pointing to the memo from a Finance Department lawyer to Karl Littler, Martin's legislative assistant, MPs in the House of Commons daily question period demanded Paul Martin admit what he knew of the scandal.

Acting Conservative leader Grant Hill said the memo explains how a Finance Department contract to Groupe Everest was inflated by a million dollars -- for a commission of $170,000.

"And guess what work they did for it? Zip," he said.

You can read an excellent summary of this by Andrew Coyne. I wonder why Karl Littler was given such a high profile job. Would he not be considered damaged goods? Maybe the Liberal's bench is pretty thin right now, with few people to go in as replacements.

Just how mad do you have to be to act so stupid?

From Idaho:

A 2-month-old baby girl was doused with pepper spray in a feud between two families in a Wal-Mart, police said.

Lorlie M. Gantenbein, 36, of Sagle, was charged Tuesday with felony injury to a child. She was released after posting $5,000 bail.

Police said Gantenbein's 16-year-old daughter sprayed the infant's grandmother and aunt, one of whom was holding the child.

Gantenbein then took the canister and sprayed the baby, authorities said. The juvenile was cited with two counts of battery. [emphasis added]

The baby was released from hospital and is recovering at home.

Ponderay, Idaho, place where this took place, is a small spot of a place, population of 638. Not typical for small town America, right?

Crime in Ponderay (2002):

• 0 murders (0.0 per 100,000)


• 0 rapes (0.0 per 100,000)


• 0 robberies (0.0 per 100,000)


• 2 assaults (302.6 per 100,000)


• 9 burglaries (1361.6 per 100,000)


• 81 larceny counts (12254.2 per 100,000)


• 2 auto thefts (302.6 per 100,000)

City-data.com crime index = 694.4 (higher means more crime, US average = 330.6)

Weird, but I feel safer in the big city.

Final Witness Phase of the Gomery Inquiry

We're in the home stretch. Now that Chuck Guite has finished testifying, we're down to the last 17 witnesses, who will cover "facts pertaining to Liberal Party of Canada and/or Liberal Party of Canada (Quebec)".

Here is your program. You can't follow the action without a program.

We foot the bill for Liberal TV spots, too

Apparently, the Liberals weren't satisified with just kicking money back to themselves from Sponsorship Program contracts. Bills for partisan TV spots were directly paid for out of the government's pocket (which is my pocket and your pocket), too:

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

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

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

Financial documents show that Gagliano billed the House of Commons for the exact amounts that he paid Cameo.

The article does not mention the name of the MPs, nor is it suggested that these MPs knew what was going on -- I'd bet they did not.

That might be the saddest part. A lot of honest people, low-level Liberal MPs, for example, are going to have their careers in politics damaged, if not destroyed, by all this. One wonders what potentially great future politicians (and yes, there might be some great future politicians in the ranks of the Liberals) we are losing.

It'll be interesting to see, assuming these MPs are named, what effect that might have in House votes. Or how many may decide not to run in the next election.

Does an Alberta bench appointment cost $30,000?

Controversy continues to swirl around the possible use of judicial appointments by the federal Liberals as a means a rewarding loyal Liberal lawyers. The focus has been on the Quebec judiciary, but now allegations have been made in Alberta.

Loyalty is a hard thing to measure. But then maybe not:

A LIBERAL-FRIENDLY lawyer who was called to the bench six months after helping run the Grit Alberta campaign also pitched in financially to the party.

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

The monetary contributions might seem smallish, but then the free time he volunteered could not have been cheap. And there's more:

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

The article does not mention the amount, so I checked. Between 1993 and 2003, the Liberal Party received $31,644,55 in donations from McCuaig Desrochers. No donations in 2004 and 2005, but by then, John Gill was a judge.

Between 1995 and 1998, the firm donated $535.90 to the Progressive Conservatives.

Justice Gill attempted at allay fears:

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

Hardly a denial. Hardly much of anything.

What's significant about this is that in Alberta, Liberal support is spotty, so Liberal-friendly appointment with such timing is unusual. In Quebec, assuming the Liberals don't pick too many separatist lawyers to be judges (which itself is a questionable practise), the only option left is Liberals. In Quebec, however, that does not explain why you don't see more judicial appointments from the ranks of lawyers who are not politically active at all -- suggestive that it helps to put your time or money in with the Liberals if you want to get tapped for the bench.

How many more judges will have doubts raised about them? And in how many more provinces? Though the fears of politically-motivated appointments may ultimately be unfounded, at least for most judges, the time and expense to figure it out, and the danger of the system being clogged with appeals from every litigant who lost a ruling in front of one of these judges, can now be added to the legacy of the Liberal Party.

Did Saddam save the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool?

From reader John, this article in the NY Sun about the current state of the investigation in the Oil-for-Food scandal:

The fresh clues to the money trail are emerging from a House hearing that focused last week on BNP Paribas, the French bank picked by the United Nations to service the bulk of the U.N.-supervised deals

Payments rerouted inside BNP - against U.N. rules but evidently without protest from Turtle Bay - totaled at least $470 million, documents in the possession of Congress indicate.

At last week's hearing, it turned out that BNP's New York branch redirected at least 403 payments from the U.N.-held oil-for-food account, sending funds in these cases not to the contractors approved by the United Nations for specific deals but to third parties. Why exactly BNP did so, and why the United Nations did not stop it, are questions into which investigators are still delving.

There are 80 as-yet-undisclosed third-party payments still under review by BNP that, according to Mr. Rohrabacher, "BNP does not fully understand." The bank's own auditors found that the flow of oil-for-food paperwork was "irrational."

One of those irrational flows of cash might indeed be the $29 million BNP Paribus re-routed to the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool in 2000. That extra bit of money must have helped. The Pool went from a disappointing report in 2000 to a far brighter 2001:

The Pool generated earnings of $9.3 million in the 4th quarter, growing 21% over the same period last year. "It has been an extremely important year for the Pool," says Chief Executive Officer, Mayo Schmidt. "We achieved what we set out to do. We posted stronger year-over-year improvements in each quarter of fiscal 2001 and we exceeded our cost reduction target of $21 million from our consolidation and restructuring efforts, eliminating $25 million in costs over the past 12 months."

Hmmm, no mention of Saddam's millions. Their balance sheet does show no cash or short term investments in 2000, and then $18 million in 2001, and bank indebtedness of $9.2 million in 2000 and $0 indebtedness in 2001.

That adds up to $27 million.

But I'm no accountant.

Is this just a case of a foreign bank's shenanigans in Canada? Consider this:

In fact, Power actually once owned a stake in Paribas through its subsidiary, Pargesa Holding SA. The bank also purchased a stake in Power Corp. in the mid-seventies and, as recently as 2003, BNP Paribas had a 14.7 per cent equity and 21.3 per cent voting stake in Pargesa, company records show.

Who runs Power Corp? The Demarais family. Andre Demarais is Jean Chretien's son-in-law. Pater Paul Desmarais Sr. made our current Prime Minister Paul Martin a rich man when he faciliated his ownership of Canadian Steamship Lines. And let's not forget that former Power Corp president Maurice Strong is at the centre ot the Oil-for-Food investigation, and was the life-long mentor and guide to Paul Martin.

I guess the people at the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool should be happy to have friends in high places.

The ban is off

OK, the ban is off, again:

A Quebec judge has lifted his brief ban on publication of testimony by the retired bureaucrat who ran the federal sponsorship program.

And now everyone will know that names have been named:

Throughout his week testifying in Montreal, Guite named names, including the prime minister's.

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

Martin vehemently denies the allegations.

The first taste of Chuck Guite's testimony -- Paul Martin is named

With the ban on then off then on again, there is no guarantee that we will ever hear about what Chuck Guite said until the fall. So don't come here for any details.

Go away.

That means you.

Update: Never mind. A half-hour has passed, so inevitably the rules have changed again, and the ban is off. Now the main stream media is running with it, so there is no danger of the ban coming back.

The ban is back on!

For the love of... More breaking news:

A Quebec judge overseeing a criminal trial has ordered a ban on revealing sponsorship testimony shortly, after the inquiry judge lifted his publication ban.

Justice John Gomery ruled that the testimony could not be released until 3:30 p.m. EDT because of a related court case involving Guite and ad man Jean Brault.

So there was a reason to wait until 3:30pm. So much for my theory.

[Superior Court Justice James] Brunton said he will hear arguments on the publication ban and his decision will be made well after the 3:30 p.m. deadline Gomery suggested.

So we're back to where we were. The ban is essentially back on (apparently there is a small portion not being disputed by Justice Brunton).

Ban partially lifted at 3:30pm -- Time for the main stream media to get ready?

More news fresh off the presses:

Justice John Gomery partially lifted a publication ban on the testimony of Chuck Guite, who headed the sponsorship program in the 1990s.

Gomery announced the ban would be lifted beginning at 3:30 p.m.

The main reason is that the jury trials of Jean Brault and Chuck Guite have been delayed until September and October.

An odd element here is the time -- the ban will be lifted at 3:30pm, but Justice Gomery has already let the media know what "small" portion of the testimony is still off limits. Why? Why not release the raw data, minus the banned bits, right now?

I can only surmise that this will give the main stream media a chance to package their stories against what is now understood to be banned and not banned, and publish ahead of the blogs. I know I'm being a bit arrogant here, but this has all the earmarks of giving the main stream media an hour's head start.

[Update: I was being arrogant. The delay was so that a parallel ruling from Justice Brunton, who is overseeing the criminal case of Guite and Brault can be made. Until that happens, the ban is on. And that ruling is not expected by 3:30pm.]

More news on Chuck Guite testimony

In the last few minutes:

A Quebec Superior Court judge has agreed to delay the fraud trial for Jean Brault and Chuck Guite, the two men at the centre of the sponsorship scandal.

The move comes as Justice John Gomery is set to announce whether he will lift a publication be on the testimony of Mr. Mr. Guite, who has been appearing before the commission the past few days.

If their trial has been delayed, the need for a ban disappears (if you bought into the original reason -- the need to avoid tainting the jury pool -- in the first place). Now will Captain Ed deliver his source's material before Justice Gomery lifts the ban? And how much of the ban might remain?

NEWSFLASH: Stay tuned for banned Chuck Guite testimony

From Captain's Quarters:

Thanks to a new source, I have received an extensive amount of the testimony given by Chuck Guite 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.

More analysis from yours truly if I think I have something of value to offer.

The State vs Parents -- The State 2, Parent 0

In our society, parents and the state share responsibility in raising children. This arrangement has again put these two parties at odds, in two very different cases.

More Liberal in-fighting

Warren Kinsella and Finance Minister Ralph Goodale are at. From the May 3 musings:

Good old Ralph Goodale just called me a liar in the privileged forum of the House of Commons. Boy, am I ever glad I helped to get him elected, going back to 1993! What a great guy! He sure is swell!

Here's something that isn't being said on a privileged occasion, Ralph-baby: pretty much all of us, in the ancien regime, thought you were a nice fellow, but not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. None of us would have stood by and watched our budget get gutted in a backroom deal, like you did, without immediately offering a letter of resignation. That's for sure.

You know, on this point, Mr. Kinsella is absolutely correct. Not on calling him a liar -- I'll let the Liberals get into mutual slappy fights all they want. But on the question of personal integrity.

In an interview Mr. Goodale said:

"You can't go on stripping away the budget, piece by piece..." he said then. "That's not the way you maintain a coherent fiscal framework. If you engage in that exercise, it is an absolute, sure formula for the creation of a deficit."

But when the piece-by-piece dismemberment exercise was undertaken to gain the support of the NDP, Mr. Goodale was all smiles. Frankly, I think he would have done his personal political ambitions a huge favour if he had resigned from cabinet and moved to the back-benches. Sure it would have looked bad for the Liberals, but Mr. Goodale would always be remembered as a man of principle in a party that seemed so lacking. And with that reputation he could write his own ticket in the post-Martin Liberal Party, perhaps making a run for the top spot himself.

An opportunity missed, I think.

Scooping the bloggers?

I've noticed the lack of excitement about the pending public release of the Chuck Guite testimony compared to the intense media interest to the Jean Brault testimony at the Gomery Inquiry. I wonder why. Is it because they, the media, are focused on the pre-election moves and counter-moves in Ottawa? Is the testimony just not that interesting? Or is it because they want to avoid hyping the testimony for fear of the pressure then forcing a leak to the blogosphere?

I wonder how much there is to that last point. When the main stream media held complete control on the dissemination of information, you could play games like that. Tease the public with what is yet to come. Reminds me of Kent Brockman from The Simpsons:

Kent Brockman: I'm Kent Brockman, on the eleven o'clock news tonight...a certain type of soft drink has been found to be lethal, we won't tell you which one until after sports and the weather with Sonny Storm.

Today, when the press threatens to withhold information (either because they are forced to, as with the Gomery Inquiry publication bans, or to drum up ratings), bloggers take it as a challenge to find the information first and get it out there. The more intense the interest in the hidden information, the more effort from the blogosphere.

The response from the main stream media is predictable -- stop hyping stories. Keep it under the radar, until they are ready, then put it out there to scoop the bloggers. Scoop the bloggers?

Isn't that backwards?

Making lemonade out of lemons

From the Globe and Mail:

The federal government will go to court to fight an effort by Chuck Guite's lawyers to maintain a publication ban on their client's testimony at the sponsorship inquiry.

Yup. Read it again. Lawyers for the federal government are fighting an attempt to maintain the publication ban.

The reason is simple. The lawyers for Chuck Guite are making their motions in Quebec Superior Court, and it'll be a cold day in hell before the federal government allows a provincial court can make rulings on a federal inquiry. So with more contortions than, well, a contortionist, we are treated to the sight of a federal attempt to make sure no one interferes with Justice Gomery's decision to reveal (or not reveal) Chuck Guite latest testimony. But when life gives you lemons lemons, you try to make lemonade:

Beyond that, he said, there is a public interest in keeping the Gomery inquiry as open as possible.

“The federal government has continuously stated that it wanted proceedings before the Gomery commission, and the result of the Gomery commission, made public.

“That's the whole point of having an inquiry.”

Hey, maybe they really believe this. Maybe it's just spin. But either way it's fun to watch.

Liberal MP and the "The Stupid Gomery Inquiry"

Conservative MPs are nervous. By comparison, Liberal MPs are downright manic:

"The media are probably the major problem with what's going on in Ottawa," said Liberal MP Rose-Marie Ur (Middlesex-Kent-Lambton, Ont.), who sounded flustered when reached in her riding on Wednesday by The Hill Times.

"You tell me what Rose-Marie Ur has done to you to be allowed to say the Liberal Party is corrupt. Because I'm part of the Liberal Party. When a person embezzles money in a company, the whole company isn't bad, it's just that person and that's why we have the stupid Gomery Commission to find all the people."

Yeah, if it weren't for the meddling media and the stupid Gomery Inquiry. Of course, Ms. Ur, the corrollary is true as well -- you cannot try to bask in the reflected light of Liberal successes. I suspect, though, when things are good, the whole Liberal Party is good. When things are bad, it's just "that person".

Here's another Liberal frustrated with the media.

Liberal MP Beth Phinney (Hamilton Mountain, Ont.), who won her seat by 996 votes last year, also blamed the media for the looming election when reached by phone last week in her riding.

"First of all, we're thinking that the media is driving this because the media must want an election because they're the ones that keep phoning and phoning and talking about it. And as far as we're concerned there wouldn't be an election if the media wouldn't be behind it all," she said.

There wouldn't be an election if it weren't for the media? Sounds like a person in denial.

Are ambassadorships up for sale in order to save the Liberals?

The government fire sale continues:

The Conservative party's deputy leader claims federal Liberals are calling opposition MPs to offer them plum appointments in an effort to keep Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government in power.

Providing no names, [Peter] MacKay told reporters in Ottawa on Monday night that "a number" of Conservatives had been approached to take seats in the Senate and other positions.

Inky Mark, a Conservative MP from Manitoba, said a Liberal cabinet minister had phoned him and offered him an ambassadorship to resign his seat in the House of Commons.

Now before you you think this is a gag, the MP's name is really "Inky Mark".

But back to the real issue -- as with judicial appointments, appointments to the Senate and to diplomatic posts rests entirely with Cabinet, with no oversight from Parliament. That means the government can play these games of trying to deplete the opposition benches by handing out these plums -- there is no independently-minded Parliamentary committee dedicated to the integrity of the Senate or to Canada's diplomatic corps to get in the way and reject a nomination on the basis of the purely political nature of the appointment.

There are so many things that need fixing in this country.

Liberal Militancy and Judicial Appointments

Though the allegation of judicial appointments in Quebec have made little impact outside Quebec, inside Quebec, the French language service of the CBC is working the story hard.

Questions about Maurice Strong raised in the House

The Conservatives raised questions about Maurice Strong, senior man at the UN, architect for Kyoto, cheerleader for global governance, advisor and mentor to Paul Martin for four decades, and one of the people at the centre of investigations into UN malfeasance, including the Oil-for-Food scandal:

"Mr. Speaker, will the minister ... to fix Canada's international reputation, which is being hurt by the sponsorship scandal, will he ask for an investigation of any Canadian implication in the oil for food program?" asked foreign affairs critic Stockwell Day.

The Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew jumped to the defence of the Prime Minister Canada's foreign policy the integrity of the PMO Maurice Strong:

Mr. Pettigrew demanded that the Tories respect the fact that Mr. Strong has denied the allegations ”and not resonate them across this country.”

"I can tell you that Mr. Strong has absolutely denied these allegations and this country should be very proud of the role Mr. Maurice strong has played over the years working systematically for making progress at the United Nations institutions."

He warned the Tories against jumping to conclusions despite the fact that none of the allegations are proven.

In some idyllic alternate reality, the Foreign Affairs Minister would report to the House the that the agencies of the Canadian government were conducting their own independent investigation, in order to ensure that the nation is not blind-sided if any of these allegations turn out to be true. But in this reality, Maurice Strong said he had nothing to do with it, and that's good enough for Pierre Pettigrew.

Tennis, anyone?

Apparently, we will be treated to a back-and-forth of motion and counter-motion as the Liberal-NDP alliance tries to hold off an election:

To that end, the procedural chess match began in earnest Monday.

Chess, tennis, whatever.

The Conservatives planned to seek concurrence - essentially force a vote - on making May 19 a supply day for the official Opposition. That supply day could be used to bring in a non-confidence vote in the government, forcing an election.

But the Liberals were expected to introduce their own concurrence motion Monday on an unrelated matter - pushing back the Tory motion to another day.

The Liberals have a number of potential motions they can use to similar effect in the coming days.

Unfortunately, I haven't found more details on this plan yet. Nevertheless, expect a raucus House over the next couple of weeks.

Why the Sponsorship Program was a good thing

From the May 1 musings of Warren Kinsella, Jean Chretien booster:

Sponsorships work. Sponsorships are worthwhile. Sponsorships are effective. And they’re cost-effective, too. Nobody is pulling your leg. And don’t just take the word of this die-hard Chretien-era Liberal, either. Flip through the pages of this newspaper, or any other newspaper. Watch a local TV station broadcast. Listen to the radio in the car. You’ll read, or see or hear, plenty of proof, and soon enough.

That’s why the media – more than government – generally spends more on sponsorships than any other organization, by a long shot. Some years, the media pays for seventy per cent of sponsorships in Canada. Other big sponsorship spenders, historically, include brewers, distillers, and tobacco companies.

Is that how Liberals see Canada? The publicly funded equivalent of a beer company, requiring an advertising budget for fear of the consumer forgetting about it?

Behind the numbers

With a hat tip to Rempelia Prime, we have new numbers from polling firm Angus Reid (which, to best of my knowledge, is not employing any current party re-election co-chairs):

The opposition Conservative party keeps a slight advantage in Canada’s federal political scene, according to a poll by Ipsos-Reid for CanWest Global. 33 per cent of respondents would vote for the Tories in the next election, while 30 per cent would support the governing Liberal party.

The New Democratic Party is third with 17 per cent, followed by the Bloc Quebecois with 12 per cent and the Green party with five per cent.

What, if anything, can we say about these numbers so early in the game?

More wisdom from Team Chretien

More musings from Warren Kinsella, ex-executive assistant to former prime minister Jean Chretien (entry for May 1 -- Mr. Kinsella does not provide permalinks):

That’s why Jean Chrétien personally called in the Auditor General, and then the RCMP. (And those two phone calls, by the way, aren’t the actions of a guy who is trying to cover up anything.)

Those of us who loudly opposed the creation of the Sponsorship Inquiry did so because we felt, one, there was nothing Justice John Gomery could do that the Mounties couldn’t do better, or weren’t doing already.

Right, the Mounties. Warren Kinsella thinks the Mounties would have done a better job. From back in 2004, February to be exact:

The RCMP is seriously considering whether it can be part of the federal sponsorship program investigation after being named as one of the players in the scandal.

Auditor General Sheila Fraser named the Mounties as one of the Crown corporations that broke federal rules and mismanaged funds as part of the sponsorship program, designed to boost Ottawa's profile within Quebec.

Chief Superintendent RCMP Bernie Corrigan told Canada AM Thursday the federal police force is now mulling over advice received Tuesday from the Quebec attorney general's office on whether the force would be in a conflict of interest by continuing the probe or whether it should withdraw.

Please, people, stop listening to Liberals. Just stop.

K is for "Kidding" -- Paragraph K and the Gomery Inquiry

Gin and Tonic (those two go together?) has the scoop on the until now unnoted "Paragraph K":

k) the Commissioner be directed to perform his duties without expressing any conclusion or recommendation regarding the civil or criminal liability of any person or organization and to ensure that the conduct of the inquiry does not jeopardize any ongoing criminal investigation or criminal proceedings;

Read the whole post -- the mandate is broken down in quite good detail. But paragraph (k) makes the whole exercise rather toothless. Justice Gomery can only report factual findings, but that cannot include the "fact" that so-and-so committed a crime. He delivers the report to the "Governor in Council" -- not to the RCMP -- and then...what? Charges? Maybe. Maybe not.

Those decisions are left to the discretion of the office of the Solicitor General, who is a cabinet minister in the government. If we listen to the Prime Minister, that person will be a Liberal.

If we listen to the Prime Minister.

Chuck Guite -- The Buzz

Greg Staples posts to the Western Standard about the Chuck Guite testimony being heard at the Gomery Inquiry:

The buzz is starting to build around the testimony that Chuck Guite is providing at the Gomery inquiry. It could be yet another insane week on "The Hill".

He quotes Norman's Spector's blog:

If you read between the lines of the Le Devoir reports, you'll see that Guite's testimony is more explosive than Brault's.

More explosive?! But we bloggers have already used words like nuclear (just do a Technorati scan on "Brault" and "nuclear" if you don't believe me). More nuclear?

Damn. Bad planning on our part.

Angry in the Great White North by Steve Janke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. Based on a work at stevejanke.com.