Keeping St.Boniface In Winnipeg

The Black Rod has been collecting federal sponsorship trivia – in Manitoba.

Canada’s National Ukrainian Festival was given $30,000 in 2001. However an access-to-information request showed that the festival had actually been awarded $34,500 by Public Works Canada.
Festival organizers were told that the other $4,500 was a commission to Compass Communications in Halifax. They were told to send a bill to Compass, but to make the bill out to Media/IDA in Montreal. The letter to the Ukrainian Festival was written by Pierre Tremblay, a very familiar name in the Adscam investigation.
Conservative MP Bill Casey asked the obvious question in the House of Commons:
“Does the minister have any idea at all why Public Works would tell a Manitoba organization to send this bill through one Liberal advertising agency in Nova Scotia and have it funnelled through another one in Montreal for an event in Manitoba to be paid for by Ottawa?
Did the government pay commissions to Media/IDA Vision in Montreal or did it pay commissions to Compass Communications in Halifax, or did it pay commissions to both of these Liberal advertising firms?”
He never got a straight answer. Nor has anyone.
Compass is owned by Tony Blom, a Liberal strategist who is also related to former Nova Scotia Liberal party president Gerald Blom.
Government records show it received $463,365 in commissions and more than $4.6 million for production costs related to events between 1998 and 2001.
The names Compass and Tremblay showed up again in documents surrounding sponsorship of the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg in 1999. Compass Communications billed $1.6 million in fees and commissions.
Objections were raised as to whether the sponsorship project met the government’s own rules. “Pay it,” said Tremblay, who overruled the naysayers.
NDP MP Pat Martin has invoices showing the Pan Am Games Society received $634,000. A letter dated May 1, 1999, from Games president Don MacKenzie to Blom indicates the group was expecting another $300,000 from Compass. He’s still wondering where that money went.
“I believe this sponsorship program blew way out of control,” said Pat Martin. “It appears to have turned into a cash cow. The abuse began immediately and the abuse extended it seems beyond Quebec’s borders at least to Halifax and now to Winnipeg.”

You can obtain a full copy of the article by email: Black Rod.

11 Replies to “Keeping St.Boniface In Winnipeg”

  1. i sure hope it was NOT $463,365 million. those are carl sagan-like numbers. reduce it by several orders of magnitude and it still reeks.

  2. i sure hope it was NOT $463,365 million. those are carl sagan-like numbers. reduce it by several orders of magnitude and it still reeks.

  3. i sure hope it was NOT $463,365 million. those are carl sagan-like numbers. reduce it by several orders of magnitude and it still reeks.

  4. We apologise for the slip-up, the phrase should have read
    “(Blom and Compass) received $463,365…”.
    Thank you for your support.
    The Black Rod

  5. LOL… My eyes have glazed over so badly from reading this stuff that it didn’t even register. Thanks – will fix that.

  6. Will the electorate be grossed out?
    “…the Liberals have woven the legal rope from which they may soon be hanging. …….., their anti-gang legislation, delivered in a pre-election publicity scramble eight years ago, and now written into the Criminal Code as section 467, may prove the means by which even the slipperiest and most exalted characters could be brought within sight of a jail.
    ….. The Crown need only prove that the people at the top knew what the people at the bottom were doing.
    This is a government that has, in the arrogance of power, lost sight of the elementary standards of decency that still pertain among a considerable portion of the Canadian electorate. Unbeknown to the Liberals, we are still capable of being grossed out.” ………read it all, by David Warren

  7. shoot! posted that comment (above) 3 times. apologies. and i know what you mean, kate, about eyes glazing over. i am beginning to think that putin will be involved in this before martin even considers resigning the pmship. how unseemly is it for a multi-multi-millionaire to cling to power for the sake of power? bloody awful. if he had an ounce of dignity he would resign and then prove himself innocent. ummm, assuming he is innocent. which i doubt.

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