Don Martin: Martin's reign of error & Marci McDonald: On Paul Martin

Update 1: Delightful -- a tour of the gaffes

Martin's reign of error Don Martin, with files from Kirsten Smith, May 21, 05, CanWest

OTTAWA - Finally, a bright spot of sorts for Paul Martin. A day with no tape-recorded vote-buying attempts to deny; no pivotal defections to buy; no whimsical independents to court; no election bus to board. [except for Labrador, to which he has sent Belinda Stronach, and CBC is doing its usual job.]

For a confidence-rattled Prime Minister recovering from his government's near-death experience, not having a major crisis to overcome meant yesterday was a very good day.

Until the PMO went strangely giddy over their election-dodging single-vote victory in passing along a contentious budget bill on Thursday, there hadn't been much to celebrate during Martin's 17-month reign of chronic error.

[. . . . Don't miss what's in between. ]

Perhaps the day is coming when this gaffe-plagued, star-crossed underachiever will reach the point when a day without bribes, inducements, defections or damage-control spending announcements is no longer the exception, but the rule.

Note: This is lengthy and full of details that are worth reading. It provides background on Paul Martin which might be of interest.

Blind Trust -- How much do we really know about Canada's next prime minister? by Marci McDonald, From the October 2003 issue of The Walrus.

Marci McDonald won a Gold National Magazine Award for her feature "Blind Trust" on Paul Martin and CSL, in The Walrus, October, 2003.

Part one of two.

On the third floor of a faceless commercial tower in Vienna, Virginia, a bedroom suburb of Washington, D.C., the directory prompts a double-take. Here, in this landlocked stretch of shopping malls, sits the unlikely nerve centre of the Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry, one of the offshore conveniences that allows the world's maritime moguls to fudge their ownership, hide their profits, and keep their fleets afloat with discount maintenance standards and cut-rate Third World crews. The fifty-five-year-old registry sells a ship's rights to fly the Liberian flag—an eye-catching riff on the U.S. Stars and Stripes with a single white star on blue in the upper left corner, befitting a country founded by freed American slaves. All that's required is a basic ten-cents-a-tonne fee and an annual flat rate of $3,800 per ship, plus an inspection with assorted costs. No need to visit Virginia, let alone bloodied, benighted Monrovia, in ruins from a decade-long civil war. Once the paperwork is complete, a fleet owner can stroll into any port and buy the flag at a store.

In the shadowy world of international shipping, Liberia is just one of more than two dozen countries that offer their national colours for sale. But, for the outcast regime of Charles Taylor, the Liberian registry proved a particular boon. With a roster of 1,900 ships, it is second in size only to Panama's, funneling $18 million a year into Monrovia's coffers—more than a quarter of the total foreign revenues of a nation isolated by United Nations sanctions.

Two years ago, a UN report traced some of Liberia's revenues from the registry to offshore accounts used to buy arms for Taylor-backed rebels in Sierra Leone, in flagrant defiance of those sanctions. Around the world, members of the International Transport Workers' Federation and the human-rights group Global Witness exhorted fleet proprietors to stop subsidizing the bloodshed and abandon the Liberian flag. No less than Lloyd's List, the bulletin of the British maritime insurers, observed, "Never has the proposition that shipowners bear no moral responsibility for what flag states get up to looked so flimsy." Which is why it seems noteworthy that Canada's most celebrated shipowner, Paul Martin—until late August the official proprietor of Canada Steamship Lines—continued to list five ships on the Web site of his company's international division that were flagged to Liberia.

At Canada Steamship Lines' Montreal headquarters, where senior vice-president Pierre Préfontaine rhymes off the vessels in Martin's international fleet, he doesn't mention those Liberian-flagged ships or seven others sailing under the flag of Vanuatu, a tiny South Pacific tax haven first made trendy by the money-laundering set. One reason for that lapse may be the dissonance between the company's iconic national image and its somewhat less patriotic reality. On the masts of all twenty cargo carriers owned or operated by csl International, as part of partnership agreements, there is nary a Canadian maple leaf in sight—nor, on board, a Canadian crew. [. . . . ]

I started to make a list of items to search and who are mentioned; it grew too long. Just read the whole thing. Note that at the top it says Part 1 so this may include Part 2 (which I did not notice), but check.