[shoop]

From today's Globe and Mail.

http://tinyurl.com/ckmnp

The lead says it all.

"Ottawa — Mr. Justice John Gomery is concerned that federal officials may have corrupted the “non-partisan and professional character of the civil service” and tilted the sponsorship program in favour of “advertising agencies that donated to the Liberal Party of Canada,” inquiry documents show. In addition, Judge Gomery has indicated he may find that the sponsorship program was managed in a way that “lacked transparency and failed to optimize resources.” The information is contained in letters in which Judge Gomery has warned a number of bureaucrats and Liberal officials that he could slap them with a finding of misconduct in his final report, asking them to respond to his allegations."

So much for talk of the Liberals 'engineering' a defeat this fall. Gomery is going to be big news again.....

Thank you for the vindictiveness Chretien.

[mirror]

Dear shoop

Maybe somebody hasn't informed you Chretien has retired.

You seem to forget how things work in Canada. It was PM Martin who appointed Justice Gomery was it not? So Gomery will come out and say Chretien bad, Martin good, and life will continue along its merry way in Canada.

And the 2% of Canadians who care about this issue any more will thank you for commenting on it.

Cheers

[Montgomery Burns]

Mirror:

Quote

And the 2% of Canadians who care about this issue any more will thank you for commenting on it.

You sound proud of this.

I have seen many ideologues on the internet, but you take the cake.

[shoop]

Dearest Montgomery:

Please don't give our good friend Mirror's made up numbers creedence by not challenging him on them.

Where does this 2% number come from? It is still a big issue here in Quebec, which is a pretty populous province, not that I know how Canada works or anything here. Strange thing about public opinion, once a topic returns to the front pages of the newspapers people tend to become interested in it again.

Dearest Mirror:

Your naivete is shocking. True Martin appointed Gomery, but he surely must rue the day that he did. One would think that with a scandal as a large as Adscam has become that surely the blame will fall past the Pm of the day to the Finance Minister of the day, who happens to be our PM for the short-term, at lest.

[I Miss Trudeau]

If there is an exemplar of a Kangaroo court in contemporary Canadian law, the Gomery inquiry would be it.

We have a judge who has:

a. attempted to lead witnesses on the stand,
b. engaged in personal attacks on people involved in the inquiry, and
c. asked for public input into the inquiry, even though the public has been privy to only a tiny fraction of the evidence and testimony, evidence that was reported by the press on a ratings influenced agenda.

Apparently, people like Gomery seem to believe that trials and inquiries ought to be conducted, at least in part, by public opinion polls.

[Canuck E Stan]

When you have a democratic deficient government that is run by one individual , Gomery becomes a refreshing change.

[Argus]

I Miss Trudeau, on Sep 10 2005, 12:57 PM, said:

If there is an exemplar of a Kangaroo court in contemporary Canadian law, the Gomery inquiry would be it.

We have a judge who has:

a. attempted to lead witnesses on the stand,
b. engaged in personal attacks on people involved in the inquiry, and
c. asked for public input into the inquiry, even though the public has been privy to only a tiny fraction of the evidence and testimony, evidence that was reported by the press on a ratings influenced agenda.

Apparently, people like Gomery seem to believe that trials and inquiries ought to be conducted, at least in part, by public opinion polls.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well then, I suppose this calls into question Paul Martin's reason for appointing him, eh? Is Paul Martin so stupid he can't figure out who is and who isn't competent, just as he apparently can't figure out that the governor general ought not have strong seperatist ties?

[Minimus Maximus]

I tend to think that a great deal more that 2% of Canadians care about this issue. It will be in the media spotlight again soon enough, and the Libs will again try to distance themselves from it by claiming that it was perpetrated by a few rouge elements within the rank and file.
As far as Martin being the one who called for the inquiry, he simply had no choice. With the 2004 election looming over his head and the media coverage of Adscam during that period of time, he did what any good Lib would. Call for an inquiry and then before any truly damaging information got out call for the election.
This became part of his running platform, "look I was the one that called for the inquiry, so if you(meaning us) want a change from those dirty Chretien Libs, vote for Martin"( after all Martin is a wire brush that will scrub clean all of the wrongs that Chretien perpetrated on our dirty little souls.)

[Argus]

Let us not forget the timeline of this scandal

1 the sponsorship program is a bubbling stewpot of rumours and innuendo with numerous accusations in the House of Commons.

2 access to information requests by journalists yield startling information about us paying for a useless report at least twice and possibly three times.

3 Auditor General announces investigation of sponsorship group, then cuts it short saying she has found massive evidence of mismanagement, fraud, and probable criminal corruption.

At this point what are Paul Martin's options? He has been portraying himself as Mr. Clean, a big break from the Jean Chretien years. Is he supposed to just shrug this off? He has no real option but to order an independant investigation. But he orders it to begin nearly 10 months in future - after, he believes, he'll have called and won an election with a majority, giving him 5 year to let the electorate forget.

4 during the parliamentary investigation of the House Public Accounts Commitee Liberals are obstructionists. They take up masses of time lobbing softball questions to those they have allowed to be called, oppose every attempt to subpoena documents, even recall trustworthy witnesses to use up more time, and then close down the committee before the any of the unreliable players can be called to testify.

5 Martin calls an election

This is where things went wrong for the Libeals. Instead of being safely returned with a majority they have a shaky minority. They can't close down the Gomery inquiry as they had intended. They start making noises about how much the inquiry is costing, and suggesting it has already heard all the evidence it needs - a clear effort at justifying a shut down, but the opposition isn't buying it (though some people on this site did). It is about a month after this that some of the most damning testimony is heard.

No one but a fanatical supporter of the Liberals can honestly take the position that Martin has been open and honest in trying to get to the bottom of this, or that he should be credited with being honest and trying to get to the bottom. He has clearly been doing everything within his limited power to make this go away.

[shoop]

Argus, on Sep 10 2005, 11:10 AM, said:

No one but a fanatical supporter of the Liberals can honestly take the position that Martin has been open and honest in trying to get to the bottom of this, or that he should be credited with being honest and trying to get to the bottom. He has clearly been doing everything within his limited power to make this go away.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think there is a slightly larger group minimizing the value of Gomery. That's the fanatical Martinites plus the hardcore NDs. They see the writing on the wall that Canadians knowing the true facts about Gomery means a CPC government.

The CPC will not be buying ND votes in parliament with taxpayers money.

Therefore, the principled ND supporters would rather Martin get away with frittering hundreds of millions of taxpayers money in Adscam so he can buy the votes of ND Members of Parliament for a few billion here and there.

[August1991]

From the article above:

Quote

Judge Gomery's comments are contained in his letter to Jean-Marc Bard, who was the chief of staff to former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano from 1999 to 2002.

All we have is one letter leaked by the person it was addressed to.

Martin is clearly trying to pin this scandal on somebody - the public needs a guilty party - and Gagliano seems a likely fallguy. There may be others but I'll bet none of them are directly associated with Martin.

Let's wait for the report.

[Riverwind]

August1991, on Sep 10 2005, 10:54 AM, said:

Martin is clearly trying to pin this scandal on somebody - the public needs a guilty party - and Gagliano seems a likely fallguy.  There may be others but I'll bet none of them are directly associated with Martin.

The possibility that, in fact, Gagliano _is_ the primary guilty party is irrelevant since partisans like you need Martin to be guilty and want him to be the fall guy. You seem to think that facts and evidence are not important as long as the politicians you support benefit and the politicians you dislike are hurt.

[Minimus Maximus]

We will never know how far up knowledge of Adscams workings went as documentation was not kept in order to be able to determine its origins. It may of went right into the PMO it may not have. Martin may have known or he may not have.

If I was the PM and considering such a scheme I would make sure it could not be traced beyond the beaurocratic level. We would be fooling ourselves if we did not believe this did not go further that Gagliano.

[Riverwind]

Minimus Maximus, on Sep 10 2005, 12:09 PM, said:

If I was the PM and considering such a scheme I would make sure it could not be traced beyond the beaurocratic level.

A more plausable explaination is Martin had nothing to do with the scheme because he wouldn't have wanted to damage his reputation. It is illogical to suggest that someone with such grand ambitions as PM PM would have even considered being party to a scheme that offered him no advantages but risked everything if it was found out.

Minimus Maximus, on Sep 10 2005, 12:09 PM, said:

We would be fooling ourselves if we did not believe this did not go further that Gagliano.

Why? You seem to be assuming that all Liberals must be guilty until proven innocent.

[I Miss Trudeau]

Sparhawk, on Sep 10 2005, 03:49 PM, said:

Why? You seem to be assuming that all Liberals must be guilty until proven innocent.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The real issue is that the conservatives, and their supporters, need something like this to ever have a shot at forming the government. When your policies are so far out of whack with what Canadians want, over zealous mudslinging is your only kick at the can.