The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Scandals anyone? "What we need is a good scandal," a top provincial Tory aide told the Corner a few months ago. He was complaining about the lack of press and public interest in any wrong-doing by the NDP Ð real or imagined so far in their second term. The aide was correct in that political scandals have a nasty effect on sitting governments and often trigger a change in voter preferences. As before mentioned in this column, even a small-time scandal like "Tarasgate" helped destroy the Filmon government's credibility in the 1999 campaign, and undoubtedly some will emerge to dog the NDP administration down the road. Saskatchewan had a larger scandal at the end of the Devine era which destroyed the PC party in that province. However, none of these small-time provincial scandals come close to new Prime Minister Paul Martin and the Liberal party for waste, mismanagement, and out and out theft of taxpayer's money from 1993 to the present. Wanna-be NDP leader Bill Blakey said he thought he had seen everything in the Mulroney years "But I want to reassure the liberals that they have regained the title when it comes to scandals". There have been a number of political wrong-doings since Chretien was elected in 1993, but four stick out and, combined, are providing a real threat to the Liberal's re-election prospects. One of note was the 1999 "Billion dollar boondoggle" of Human Resources Minister Jane Stewart of Brant, Ontario. Jane could not account for a billion dollars in job creation money, some of which had been funneled to projects in Liberal ridings that did not qualify for such funding. Stewart was protected by Chretien but was quickly dropped when Martin took over. Apparently she is leaving politics for a new job with the International Labor Organization in Geneva. Let us hope she is not in charge of I.L.O.'s money. Second is the much written about gun registration program introduced in the mid-90s by Allan Rock and later shepherded by Anne McLellan. A recent CBC report claimed the billion dollar waste of money is now up to two billion. Readers will remember that Rock claimed the cost would be 2 million but things like a $750 million computer system, which still doesn't work, have ballooned the costs, estimated in late 2002 to be $1 billion. Critics claim the program is worthless, tracks the wrong people Ð honest hunters not the criminals Ð and is an entire waste of money which could be used for health care or to help farmers. To date, Paul Martin has refused to scrap the plan but has promised to review it. One good thing it has done is that it has eliminated most Liberal MPs from the west. A screaming headline at the end of January said that the forensic audit (which itself took three years and cost $2 million) discovered that the president of the Virginia Fontaine Addictions Foundation received $12 million in vacation pay and other payments he approved himself. The audit raises new questions about the lack of Federal Government controls over the tens of million dollars Health Canada shipped to the Foundation. Facing court charges are president Perry Fontaine and Paul Cochrane, former Assistant Deputy Health Minister, for fraud of millions of tax dollars. An additional interesting bit of information came out about Native leader Phil Fontaine, cousin of Perry Fontaine, who negotiated a $1 million funding agreement for an Aboriginal hockey school he ran. Apparently he arranged it with Paul Cochrane to have Health Canada funds diverted to pay for the school, although there is no evidence that he actually received the money. NDP MP from Winnipeg, Pat Martin, claimed any criticism of Phil Fontaine was "racism". Readers will remember Martin as the one who used foul language in replying to his Christian critics objecting to his support of gay marriages. A Winnipeg broadcaster claimed Martin has a "brain problem". The hard question is who was minding the taxpayer's bank account? Wasn't Paul Martin the Finance Minister? However the "big momma" of a scandals hit the Grits like a lightning bolt with the Auditor General's released report on the $250 million sponsorship fraud. Auditor General Sheila Fraser called it "a blatant misuse of public funds". The program set up in 1997 by the Chretien government was designed to increase the Fed's profile in Quebec after the 1995 referendum on independence. It was under disgraced minister Gagliano who Martin recently fired from his position as ambassador to Denmark. Sponsorship money poured into Liberal Ðsupporting ad companies, a reported 40% fee for often doing nothing, except donating to the Liberal party. In all, over $100 million was siphoned off to such firms. Martin blames Chretien and a small group of civil servants for keeping he and the Cabinet in the dark, but the opposition and the Canadian press aren't buying his innocence, After all, he was Finance Minister and approved the expenditure. Martin has called an inquiry which he promises will reveal the truth. Could it be he wants to delay further criticism until after a spring election? Pollsters report the Liberals in freefall and headed for a minority government or worse, as the new Conservative Party prepares to usher in a new leader and a new party. The honeymoon is over for Prime Minister Martin and he claims it's not his fault! It promises to be an interesting spring.
