In what must be a Canadian first, the news aggregator Nealenews.com has directly linked to Captain’s Quarters on the Brault testimony. Technorati is showing the post is creating heavy linkage on both sides of the border.
The blogosphere has obliterated the publication ban in an electronic mushroom cloud, and more remarkably, bypassed the mainstream media in its entirety in doing so.
A snap election will completely back fire if Canadians have a general idea about the depth of this corruption and the number of people involved. Thank you Captain’s Quarters!!!
How many Liberal corruption scandals have we seen since 1994? The only way this could have traction is because of Martin’s fecklessness.Harper has to make the case, just like Mike Harris did in 1995, that it’s time for a change.
Don’t forget…this is Canada. All the Libs will have to do, is get the CBC, the Toronto Star, and the Globe and Mail to start raising the alrarm about those “evil and extreme Conservatives” and the anti-Christ, anti-Canadian Values-Stephen Harper”
Canadians prefer the corruption they know, to the party they do not….Just ask Joe Clark. I’m sure Joe Who would still tell folks to vote for Martin.
Remember, Canadians no longer value integrity or honesty. They just want to know they’ll continue receiving their Payola.
So what’s the possibility of with the publication ban being broken, the judge up there just doesn’t say “a fair trial isn;t possible, case dismissed”?
Who cares if the judge says case dismissed against these little fishies. I think they should be offered a deal now, so that their testimony can be made public now. Imagine if we lived in a real country. Right now the media would be discussing a constitutional crisis, who should take over the government from the criminals pending the next election, will Paul Martin pardon Jean Chretien (Like Ford with Nixon). Instead in Canada we are left to wonder if fixing the last 2 or 3 elections by stealing campaign funds from the taxpayer is enough of a scandal to wake up Toronto.
Theres’a good possibility that the Feds chose now to charge the “little fish”, so that they could then argue for the ban. Has anyone else not noticed the startling coincidence that the most explosive testimony of all the past weeks, just happens to be the testimony under ban?
That is _not_ accidental. It was not engineered by Gomery, but by the strategy machine of the Liberal party.
Howie Meeker is right: the Conservatives have had Liberal scandal after Liberal scandal heaped in their laps, and yet amazingly have been unable to use the info to their advantage.
So I am not hopeful on this one.
Mark Steyn started writing about TotalFinaElf eons ago, and soon after I remember Crouton daring Stockwell Day to repeat similar accusations outside of the house. Never read anything further about the connection from the great Canadian media, of course.
Speaking of Steyn, here’s a letter and Steyn’s response from November of 2003:
I�m a pretty hardworking guy. So are you. How is it that the �Little Guy from Shawinigan� turns out to be stinking rich after 40 years of making an average of about $100,000 per year? Is he an investment wizard in his spare time or just another Quebec politician with his well manicured claws in the backs of the Canadian people?
For Christ�s sake Mark, get off your butt and demonstrate to us all how this bastard, and his innumerable cronies have made Canada look more like Mexico or Louisiana than the country we all are so proud to be part of.
(name deleted)
Edmonton
It�s certainly – how shall we put this? – striking that a fellow who�s spent 40 years in the House of Commons with the exception of a brief time-out in the late Eighties is, by Canadian standards, so phenomenally wealthy. A few years ago, when Jean Charest, as Tory leader, offered to release his tax returns from the last decade, M Chr�tien was very touchy on the subject of whether he would follow suit.
So, unlike, say, Dick Cheney, much of what we know about the Prime Minister�s financial affairs is a matter of guesswork, augmented by the occasional comment from the man himself: asked how fast he was making money in the private sector, he replied, �I�m beating them all, even Trudeau.�
One is also struck, not for the first time, by the Canadian media�s lack of curiosity about the extraordinary ease with which a man born the 18th of 19 children of a Quebec mill-working family and someone who claims to have devoted his life to �public service� should have wound up a multi-millionaire.
It�s true that M Chr�tien looks after what he has very carefully: the benign explanation of the Grand-M�re business is that his intercession with the Business Development Bank ensured that, whatever happened to the �resort� (a big flopperoo) or the taxpayers� investment in it (an all too typical example of �managed capitalism�), he�d at least get out from under. It�s also the case that, when he temporarily quit the House of Commons in 1986, the private sector seemed unusually anxious to acquire his services. Aside from his then government �pension� of some $60,000, he was earning around half-a-million for a very light load at the law firm Lang Michener, another hundred grand from the brokerage firm Gordon Capital, where he was an �advisor�, and various other sums from boards, investments, etc. He was also a director of Viceroy Resources, a mining company in which he held options on 50,000 shares and whose boss, Ross Fitzpatrick, Chr�tien later appointed to the Senate.
What were all these high-rolling clients paying him for? �Judgment and experience,� he said. �I have seen so much in government, Trudeau got me involved in so many areas, that I know what is necessary for them to do.� That�s one way of putting it.
Who were his clients? Well, at Gordon Capital, he handled negotiations with Power Corp, whose co-chief executive is his son-in-law.
Let�s just pause there for a moment. In the modern Canadian state, it is not necessary for M Chr�tien to do anything illegal. As he has said, after years in government, he�s a well-connected guy with a fat Rolodex who knows the wheels that have to be oiled: he can tell his clients �what is necessary for them to do�. That�s something folks will pay for, as out-of-office politicians in many western democracies have discovered. But very few have the opportunities of patronage that exist in Canada: unlike M Chr�tien with Senator Fitzpatrick, Mr Bush cannot install a boardroom buddy from his ball-team days in the US Senate.
Second, there�s no way of knowing at what point the relationship between M Chr�tien and the Desmarais clan of Power Corp crosses from mere family friendship to something more. The amount of hospitality the Prime Minister has enjoyed at, say, the Desmarais fishing lodge would be regarded differently if his daughter hadn�t married into the family. On the other hand, he seems to be a lot closer to his daughter�s parents-in-law than most parents are to their children�s in-laws.
Given Power Corp�s proximity to so many issues before the government � not least the fact that they�re the biggest shareholder in the oil company with the closest ties to Saddam � his closeness to the company would attract attention in any other circumstances.
Third, it�s interesting to see how M Chr�tien�s business deals � like the Grand-M�re – circle back to the government, in the form of one agency or another. He was able to tell M Duhaime �what it is necessary for him to do� � ie, put him touch with the BDC � and also able to tell the bank �what it is necessary for them to do� � ie, pony up the dough to M Duhaime. In a one-party state, he is in the fortunate position of being able to tell all parties �what it is necessary for them to do�.
Fourth, the justification for this nexus of politics, business and patronage is that, well, M Chr�tien has spent his entire life in �public service�, which, as we all know, is very poorly paid, and one shouldn�t begrudge him making a little money while he can. Granted, M Chr�tien is not a wealthy man by comparison with M Desmarais, but then 99% of all Canadians are not wealthy by comparison with the Prime Minister – not the PM as loaded down with his various investments and private-sector income, but the PM as defined by his basic salary: 260,000 bucks a year. That puts him in the top 1% of Canadian earners, and in real terms a little higher, since most of those high-earners don�t enjoy the car, driver, public housing, tax perks, etc. So the idea that politicians are making some huge sacrifice for the country and are entitled to take a couple of years to work their contacts and make some �serious money� is not one that would resonate with most Canadians.
Let me develop that a little further. You might think that M Chr�tien is such a uniquely gifted figure he�s a bargain at a quarter-million plus per year. But these income inequities carry on right down the scale. For example, Lyle Vanclief, the Federal Minister of Agriculture, earns a little less than M Chr�tien � $216,000. Mr Vanclief says that�s only so politicians� salaries remain �competitive� with the private sector. It would be interesting to know who�s competing for Mr Vanclief�s services. Your average Canadian employed full-time in the private sector earns about $40,000 per. In the industry for which Mr Vanclief is responsible, the average farm manager earns $26,000, the average farm worker $18,000. Mr Vanclief�s remuneration seems entirely unrelated to pay scales in Canadian agriculture. Members of Parliament are supposed to be representative of the people, and there�s nothing very representative about Mr Vanclief�s paycheque.
Here�s another example: Denise Tremblay, formerly a Liberal Party riding secretary to � who else? � M Chr�tien. Two years ago, Mme Tremblay was appointed to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, a position that pays a salary of $100,200 per annum � that�s the big time in Shawinigan terms, but evidently still not enough to keep a riding secretary riding high. In the 26 months she�s been on the board, Mme Tremblay has run up expenses of over $160,000 – $106,000 in transportation expenses, $34,747.55 for accommodation, $13,317.95 for meals, etc. This seems an unusually high rate of expenses for the position Mme Tremblay holds.
The 29-member board is charged with hearing appeals of the decisions of the Minister of Veterans Affairs. Three million dollars in member salaries for a board that hears about 6,000 appeals a year from persons of modest background sounds a little excessive to begin with. And, while Mme Tremblay runs up her tab, the government has decided it can�t afford to accord 23,000 veterans� widows the benefits of the Veterans� Independence Program.
But who cares about veterans� widows, right? They�re too old and lame to march, never mind rampage through the streets. So you can screw �em over with impunity.
Here�s another comparison: remember last year when Her Majesty The Queen dropped the Golden Jubilee puck at the Canucks game? It subsequently emerged that the cost of this event had been calculated at a hundred thousand bucks � for the Royal hotel room, laundry bill for the red carpet, etc. The Montreal Gazette and other papers were so scandalized they splashed this outrageous cost across the front page. A hundred grand for a once-a-half-century celebration of Canada�s head of state is a public scandal, but a hundred grand in �transportation expenses� for a minor Liberal patronage appointment is business as usual.
Those of us on the right tend to look at the Canadian scene in terms of high-cost social programs vs a more dynamic society that rewards enterprise and effort. If that were the choice, we�d be much better off. The real scandal is why the high-cost social programs don�t trickle down to the intended beneficiaries because the dough�s being siphoned off by the Liberal hacks and time-servers and suck-ups. If I were an NDPer I�d start hammering the Grits from the left � on the grounds that they�re enriching themselves at the expense of the elderly and ailing.
Canada�s �national identity� is supposedly to be found in its �social programs�; Canadians are supposedly willing to pay higher taxes in order for a more equitable society. Quite where the 50% of income the government takes winds up is hard to see: I can�t help noticing that I see far more beggars on the streets of Toronto and Montreal than in Boston, New York, Chicago, or any other American city I�ve been in recently, whether run by Republicans or Democrats. The hospitals in Canada are so overloaded they�re unable to observe even basic hygiene procedures, a basic failing which covers everything from the Ontario health system�s incubation of SARS to Labrador�s gift of Chlamydia to its gynaecological patients. M Chr�tien lectured Wall Street that, while Canada had fewer millionaires than America, it also had fewer poor people. But what you can�t help noticing is that the plutocrats we do have are almost all well-connected Liberal Party types or businessmen whose businesses are either subsidized or regulated by the government. That�s why in the one-party state we wind up not just with one party but one bookstore chain, one media chain, etc.
Meanwhile, the gap in income between the governing class � in its broadest sense � and the governed grows ever wider. After 40 years as a guy who knows �what�s necessary� for others to do, M Chr�tien is merely the most prominent exemplar of the system.
There are words to describe the kind of society that kicks veterans� widows out on the street while giving the former riding secretary who approves the decision a $160,000 expense tab, that lavishes billions on corporate welfare on Lib-friendly businesses but can�t wash the instruments between pap smears: �Welfare state�? �Just society�? Try �kleptocracy�.
STEYNONLINE November 28th 2003
Truth is stranger than bad fiction
I write a little and have had some success. I also am a “first reader” for some familiar names. That means I help vet a novel before it is submitted to the publisher. If anyone sent me the following scenario I would laugh in their face.
A small…
the stuff on the captain site seems really mafia-ish… i really wish it didnt have that sopranos feel, because i might be able to take it more seriously if it seemed plausible.
I’m not sure why you would discount organized crime involvement out of hand, in view of the evidence outside the alleged testimony to support it?
I can’t believe how short-sighted you right-wingers are. Who benefits most from a snap election? The Liberals — and it won’t be the fault of the media, it will be entirely due to the ineptitude of the Harperites and the Reform remnants who are still trying to pull the strings in the Conservative party. How? Bear with me.
What the Conservatives need to win an election is enough time to persuade Canadians that they really have moved back to the centre and are now something other than the Alliance in respectable drag. Despite your fond pipe dreams, the hard-right agenda will never fly in Quebec, the Maritimes or — especially — Ontario (not after Harris; if you don’t believe me, just ask John Tory).
So how does Martin deal with the scandal in a snap election? How does he snatch victory from the apparent jaws of defeat? He does what he couldn’t do last year: he comes out swinging against Chretien. He says that the inquiry — the inquiry that he himself insisted on setting up, when other people were telling him not to — has now done its work and uncovered the ugly truth, which is that the scandal was entirely the fault of Chretien and his circle of cronies in Quebec, and the law will now deal with them. If people want to get all emotional and take it out on the Liberals, they can do that, but only at the risk of losing public health care, getting into bed with George Bush, and all the other potential consequences of a Conservative victory that give most Canadians nightmares.
A year or two from now, Harper might be able to neutralize those attacks, but he can’t now, for the simple reason that they’re still pretty damn plausible. He needs more time to purge the last remaining vestiges of Reform. Right now is too soon.
The proof? Peter Mackay on TV, desperately trying to dampen expectations that the government will fall this week.
Canada Slips Further Into Oligarchy
It looks like anyone linking or handing out the address to CQ in Canada will be held in contempt of court. The further degradation of freedom in Canada continues… UPDATE: Canadian “Enn” opines on the subject: [Captain’s Quarters,] A source…
First, the media gag is there because Brault, Guit� and Coffin have already been accused to the “criminal court” of crimes related to this AdScam and they have the right to a fair trial. Imagine if “joe Blow” can read all this information then gets selected to be a jury… well…
Now that their trial as been post-poned to June (about a month), Mr Gomery might lift the gag (We’ll know at 2 PM today).
Last, remember that nothing said at this commission can be used against any of them…
Mr Gomery is a juge, but remember that he’s only a “commissioner” at this commission, at the end, all he can do is write a report and issue suggestions…
Gazoo
A 34 years old french Canadian loves Quebec within Canada