Update 1: Gomery Fallout

Update 1:

There are excerpts from Hansard on Newsbeat1 -- very instructive on what is wrong with our Parliament.

Note whether Paul Martin or Scott Brison actually answer the questions posed by the Conservative Opposition MP's Stephen Harper and Peter MacKay.

It will be a frosty Friday before the government members actually treat Question Period as anything but a tour de farce with their scripted non-answers.




Is there one who got away?

Main adscam shyster living--loudly--on the hog in Costa Rica Judi McLeod, Nov. 2, 05

While frustrated Canadian reporters were finding no dramatic tidbits in yesterday’s tabled Gomery report, Costa Rica residents were hoping there’d be enough of a bombshell to rid their land forever of one Jean Lafleur, Canada Free Press has learned,

[. . . . ] Guards are tired of hauling cartons of empty liquor bottles away. [. . . . ]

Search:

here, or in some other Central or South American bank account."
Canadian lawyer and an assistant
San Andres Island, Brazil

Gomery Confirms Political Corruption

According to the long-awaited report of Mr. Justice Gomery, in the mid-1990s Liberal Party officials, with the support of senior bureaucrats in the Prime Minister's Office, created a complex web of financial transactions involving fraud, kickbacks and other illegal payments.

The amount of money involved totaled $332 million, $147 million of which was spent on fees and commissions paid to communication and advertising agencies, often for work not done. It is clear that not only did millions of tax dollars ultimately land up in the coffers of the Liberal Party through this process, but that the ultimate accounting of tens of millions of tax dollars cannot even be traced.

While Paul Martin and his Liberal followers had hoped that the report would show that it was only a small group of "rogue bureaucrats" involved in this corrupt program, in fact Gomery found that there was "clear evidence" of political involvement in the program's administration, including involvement by the former Prime Minister, a key cabinet minister and a former cabinet minister who was a key political advisor to the former Prime Minister.

The only saint in the brothel [Thanks to Rex Murphy for that phrase. NJC]

Yet, instead of the government taking responsibility for this outrageous abuse of taxpayers' money, Prime Minister Paul Martin is now claiming that this report exonerates him. While the report does state that the present Prime Minister was not responsible for the management and operation of the program, it does not in any way suggest that he should be free from any responsibility. Indeed, the evidence is clear that he participated in the creation of this program as Finance Minister and that from its inception it operated outside of the law.

Furthermore, while Paul Martin continuously tried to take credit for all of the government's accomplishments over the decade while he was Finance Minister because he insisted that "I know the numbers", the Prime Minister is now equally adamant in insisting that he knew nothing of the hundreds of millions of dollars funneled into the Sponsorship Program. As a senior cabinet minister and the political master of the Liberal riding associations in Quebec to which these stolen tax dollars were illegally sent, his protestations lack credibility.

Canadians must now ask whether this government deserves to remain in power. [. . . . ]

Take another look at the ethics of the party of Svend, the $64,000 diamond thief who did it because of a mental problem.

Does this indicate that the NDP will support corruption for a consideration? NJC

NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre Pat Martin has justified his support for the government as follows: "It is my personal belief that the Liberal Party of Canada is institutionally psychopathic. Its members do not know the difference between right and wrong and I condemn them from the highest rooftops. But before the last Liberal is led away in handcuffs, we want to extract some benefit from this Parliament and that means getting some of the money delivered to our ridings before this government collapses."

"A program seemingly custom-designed for monetary plundering"

Don Martin: "Paul Martin's gamble paid off" NP/CanWest, Nov. 2, 05

OTTAWA - The Liberal party got cash kickbacks; the Liberal leader gets a clean record.

A prime minister sets up a program seemingly custom-designed for monetary plundering; the chief architects in his office receive plausible deniability for any illegal consequences.

[. . . . ] No governing party, even under new leadership, should be able to survive what Gomery describes in his 438-page fact-finding report as "a story of greed, venality and misconduct both in government and advertising and communications agencies." [. . . . ]

Last night I checked for more news on the Gomery Report, JC, PM and the rest of the corrupt crowd.

National Post's group of articles:

Chretien to Gomery: See you in court
A Liberal culture of impunity
Stain on a legacy
Chretien blasts back at Gomery
Gomery Report

Gomery Report: Who Is Responsible? -- Highlights
David Akin, CTV News, Nov. 2, 05

Articles on the same website:

Gomery's first report lays blame with Chretien
Chretien taking Gomery to court over report [the last refuge of . . . ]
Martin refers Gomery report to Mounties
Opposition split on post-Gomery election timing
Sponsorship program whistleblower vindicated
Justice John Gomery seen as calm and collected

Allegations, only, of course:

Will work for judicial appointments April 20, 2005

Sing, little birdy, sing.

Benoit Corbeil, fingered by Jean Brault as one of the more importunate Liberal bagmen hitting him up for funds, has begun to talk.[. . . . ]

[He] says the same shadowy network of senior Liberals controlled both the raising of funds for the party and the awarding of government contracts. And he states unequivocally that everyone in the Quebec wing of the party knew about it. Everyone.

And then there's this shocking (ie completely unshocking) allegation: The same network controlled the appointment of judges. During the 2000 elections, the party had a stable of about 20 big-time Montreal lawyers working for them for free. Or perhaps, not quite for free: . . . . and, of course, advertising agencies -- all of them "volunteering" their services to the party in hopes of winning contracts. [. . . . ]

No racial profiling for SCOC? -- re PM appointing an aboriginal

PM would do politics differently? Hogwash!




Somehow, this keeps flitting through my mind:

The Second Coming -- W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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