It's a legal matter now
Terry O'Neill - Monday,12 December 2005
Western Standard
Immediately after Justice John Gomery released his blockbuster report about the sponsorship scandal on Nov. 1, Prime Minister Paul Martin sprang into action. He announced that 10 former and current Liberal party members, fingered by the judge for their roles in the massive scheme of theft and kickbacks, were banned for life from the party. The prime minister also announced that Ottawa was pursuing legal action to recover $57 million in government funds from 12 companies and individuals named by Gomery as having defrauded Ottawa in the sponsorship scheme. He then ordered the heads of Crown corporations implicated in the scandal to discipline employees to whom the judge had assigned a measure of blame.
Martin is surely hoping all that tough talk will convince voters he's taking strong, swift action in response to Gomery's report, and, with a federal election looming, put the worst of the $250-million scandal behind him and his party. In a final flourish, Martin turned over the report to the RCMP for possible criminal investigation. Now that the cops are involved, it's possible the scandals may stick around for awhile. That is, if the RCMP is allowed to do its job. But that's something critics say may not be possible under this government.
Mounties based in Montreal have actually been investigating the sponsorship scandal since 2002, in response to initial complaints filed by Auditor General Sheila Fraser. So far they've charged four individuals. Advertising executive Paul Coffin pleaded guilty in May to 15 counts of fraud, and in September received a conditional sentence of two years less a day. Ad executive Jacques Paradis was hit with fraud charges in October 2004. And advertising executive Jean Brault and bureaucrat Chuck Guité were arrested on fraud and conspiracy charges in May 2004 and are scheduled to stand trial in May 2006.
More heads may roll, yet. According to a Nov. 2 Toronto Sun report, RCMP investigators were close to laying additional charges against "either more Montreal advertising executives or former Liberal party operatives--or both." The force's Quebec spokesman, Sgt. Patrice Gelinas, says only that, "the RCMP probe is continuing. It's a full-scale investigation.
It's a priority investigation." He won't disclose whether additional officers were added to the team following the release of Gomery's report, nor whether the investigation was broadened. The report was actually turned over to RCMP headquarters in Ottawa, not investigators in Montreal, confirms Staff Sgt. Paul Marsh in the nation's capital. Beyond that, he says only that they "will take the appropriate action after having reviewed it."
Based on Gomery's revelations and Fraser's prior investigations, the Mounties should have plenty to sink their teeth into, says criminal-law expert Gregg Goodfellow, a Crown counsel in Chilliwack, B.C. Goodfellow says fraud and theft charges are likely to flow from the police investigation, along with possible breach-of-trust and corruption charges. Section 122 of the Criminal Code, dealing with breach of trust by public officers, is clearly worded to make it easy for prosecutors to obtain convictions against public officials, he notes. "Your average Mafia kingpin, in other words--you'd have a harder time convicting him than you would a government official, in theory," Goodfellow says.
And the Mounties should, theoretically, be able to look in places where Gomery wasn't. While the Gomery inquiry was limited, by Martin, strictly to the sponsorship program, Fraser's own audits found that money misappropriated from sponsorship accounted for just a fraction of the funds spent on questionable federal contracts. Initial probes by the auditor general, for instance, were prompted, in part, by unusual contracts coming from the Finance Department years before the sponsorship program existed. Paul Martin was finance minister at the time, and the contracts in question went to Earnscliffe Research and Communications (now Earnscliffe Strategy Group). Several of Martin's friends and colleagues were then senior executives at Earnscliffe, and many were hired by the Prime Minister's Office once Martin took over the federal Liberal leadership. Any investigation into the Martin/Earnscliffe contracts could prove more politically devastating for the Liberals than even Adscam, which Martin has attempted to portray as the responsibility of his predecessor, Jean Chrétien.
But the RCMP is already facing limits in its ability to press charges against the government that oversees it. The funnelling of millions of dollars from sponsorship funds to the Quebec wing of the federal Liberals during the 1997 and 2000 federal elections was, by all accounts, a violation of the Elections Act. But Elections Act regulations in force at the time stipulate that any charges related to such irregularities must be laid within 18 months of the violations. That statute of limitations has now expired.
That Liberal party rogues will escape prosecution thanks to a technicality is enough to fuel public cynicism over the justice system's ability to hold the government to account. That the RCMP has been tied to the sponsorship scandal, and has been shown in the past to be vulnerable to political interference from the Liberal government, adds to the concern. Fraser's report implicated the force in the "inappropriate use of sponsorship money." An inquiry into the 1997 "peppergate" scandal, in which protestors at Vancouver's APEC summit were assaulted by Mounties, found the RCMP had been given orders from the Prime Minister's Office to crush any protests that might embarrass attendees, including then Indonesian strongman General Suharto, a habitual human rights violator. And earlier this year, Martin's chief of staff, Tim Murphy, was caught on tape by MP Gurmant Grewal, seemingly offering to call off an RCMP investigation of Grewal if the Tory MP would back the minority Liberals in a confidence vote. "The police and the authorities have to do their job," federal Conservative Leader Stephen Harper recently told reporters. "But I have a sneaking suspicion that this job would be done much more effectively and much more quickly if the Liberal party were not in power."
Conservative justice critic Vic Toews says there's an easy way for the Liberals and RCMP to ensure justice will not only be done, but be seen to be done: by turning the investigation over to a police force beyond Martin's reach, such as the Ontario or Quebec provincial police, or even a municipal force. "There is now a perception of conflict of interest," Toews says. "It's not a question of not trusting the RCMP. ... My concern is that, as thorough a job as the RCMP may do on this matter, many Canadians will not be satisfied by any conclusion." Perhaps if Canadians really want satisfaction, they may have to write their own conclusion--when next they go to the polls.
Terry O'Neill - Monday,12 December 2005
Western Standard
Immediately after Justice John Gomery released his blockbuster report about the sponsorship scandal on Nov. 1, Prime Minister Paul Martin sprang into action. He announced that 10 former and current Liberal party members, fingered by the judge for their roles in the massive scheme of theft and kickbacks, were banned for life from the party. The prime minister also announced that Ottawa was pursuing legal action to recover $57 million in government funds from 12 companies and individuals named by Gomery as having defrauded Ottawa in the sponsorship scheme. He then ordered the heads of Crown corporations implicated in the scandal to discipline employees to whom the judge had assigned a measure of blame.
Martin is surely hoping all that tough talk will convince voters he's taking strong, swift action in response to Gomery's report, and, with a federal election looming, put the worst of the $250-million scandal behind him and his party. In a final flourish, Martin turned over the report to the RCMP for possible criminal investigation. Now that the cops are involved, it's possible the scandals may stick around for awhile. That is, if the RCMP is allowed to do its job. But that's something critics say may not be possible under this government.
Mounties based in Montreal have actually been investigating the sponsorship scandal since 2002, in response to initial complaints filed by Auditor General Sheila Fraser. So far they've charged four individuals. Advertising executive Paul Coffin pleaded guilty in May to 15 counts of fraud, and in September received a conditional sentence of two years less a day. Ad executive Jacques Paradis was hit with fraud charges in October 2004. And advertising executive Jean Brault and bureaucrat Chuck Guité were arrested on fraud and conspiracy charges in May 2004 and are scheduled to stand trial in May 2006.
More heads may roll, yet. According to a Nov. 2 Toronto Sun report, RCMP investigators were close to laying additional charges against "either more Montreal advertising executives or former Liberal party operatives--or both." The force's Quebec spokesman, Sgt. Patrice Gelinas, says only that, "the RCMP probe is continuing. It's a full-scale investigation.
It's a priority investigation." He won't disclose whether additional officers were added to the team following the release of Gomery's report, nor whether the investigation was broadened. The report was actually turned over to RCMP headquarters in Ottawa, not investigators in Montreal, confirms Staff Sgt. Paul Marsh in the nation's capital. Beyond that, he says only that they "will take the appropriate action after having reviewed it."
Based on Gomery's revelations and Fraser's prior investigations, the Mounties should have plenty to sink their teeth into, says criminal-law expert Gregg Goodfellow, a Crown counsel in Chilliwack, B.C. Goodfellow says fraud and theft charges are likely to flow from the police investigation, along with possible breach-of-trust and corruption charges. Section 122 of the Criminal Code, dealing with breach of trust by public officers, is clearly worded to make it easy for prosecutors to obtain convictions against public officials, he notes. "Your average Mafia kingpin, in other words--you'd have a harder time convicting him than you would a government official, in theory," Goodfellow says.
And the Mounties should, theoretically, be able to look in places where Gomery wasn't. While the Gomery inquiry was limited, by Martin, strictly to the sponsorship program, Fraser's own audits found that money misappropriated from sponsorship accounted for just a fraction of the funds spent on questionable federal contracts. Initial probes by the auditor general, for instance, were prompted, in part, by unusual contracts coming from the Finance Department years before the sponsorship program existed. Paul Martin was finance minister at the time, and the contracts in question went to Earnscliffe Research and Communications (now Earnscliffe Strategy Group). Several of Martin's friends and colleagues were then senior executives at Earnscliffe, and many were hired by the Prime Minister's Office once Martin took over the federal Liberal leadership. Any investigation into the Martin/Earnscliffe contracts could prove more politically devastating for the Liberals than even Adscam, which Martin has attempted to portray as the responsibility of his predecessor, Jean Chrétien.
But the RCMP is already facing limits in its ability to press charges against the government that oversees it. The funnelling of millions of dollars from sponsorship funds to the Quebec wing of the federal Liberals during the 1997 and 2000 federal elections was, by all accounts, a violation of the Elections Act. But Elections Act regulations in force at the time stipulate that any charges related to such irregularities must be laid within 18 months of the violations. That statute of limitations has now expired.
That Liberal party rogues will escape prosecution thanks to a technicality is enough to fuel public cynicism over the justice system's ability to hold the government to account. That the RCMP has been tied to the sponsorship scandal, and has been shown in the past to be vulnerable to political interference from the Liberal government, adds to the concern. Fraser's report implicated the force in the "inappropriate use of sponsorship money." An inquiry into the 1997 "peppergate" scandal, in which protestors at Vancouver's APEC summit were assaulted by Mounties, found the RCMP had been given orders from the Prime Minister's Office to crush any protests that might embarrass attendees, including then Indonesian strongman General Suharto, a habitual human rights violator. And earlier this year, Martin's chief of staff, Tim Murphy, was caught on tape by MP Gurmant Grewal, seemingly offering to call off an RCMP investigation of Grewal if the Tory MP would back the minority Liberals in a confidence vote. "The police and the authorities have to do their job," federal Conservative Leader Stephen Harper recently told reporters. "But I have a sneaking suspicion that this job would be done much more effectively and much more quickly if the Liberal party were not in power."
Conservative justice critic Vic Toews says there's an easy way for the Liberals and RCMP to ensure justice will not only be done, but be seen to be done: by turning the investigation over to a police force beyond Martin's reach, such as the Ontario or Quebec provincial police, or even a municipal force. "There is now a perception of conflict of interest," Toews says. "It's not a question of not trusting the RCMP. ... My concern is that, as thorough a job as the RCMP may do on this matter, many Canadians will not be satisfied by any conclusion." Perhaps if Canadians really want satisfaction, they may have to write their own conclusion--when next they go to the polls.
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