This is the number one story across much of the nation.
(Apr.10…original G&M cover has moved, so replaced with another from the same day)
This is the front page of the CBC website this morning.
This is your explanation.
Update – A reader writes: “Our pals at the CBC, who stand on guard for We, waited until 9:17 tonight to post today’s bombshell that has testimony linking adscam directly to the PMO.”
Great post Kate: As far as CBC exec donations to the Libranos, I find it even more disturbing that Canada’s Desmarais family is heavily tied into the CBC. Cretien’s daughter married a Desmarais son. All PMs except Kimble Campbel works for Desmarais. And, Desmarais is the front figure in the Oil-for-food fraud in France. Adscam is just one small cog in the Librano gears.
Check this out for more info on the Desmarais family:
http://www.westernstandard.ca/website/index.cfm?page=article&article_id=542
Correction on my last post: All PMs except Kimble Campbel “worked” for Desmarais.
I emailed the CBC to ask them why there is no mention on the headline section of their website. Awaiting answer.
BTW nice going Kate, Nealnews has linked to your story.
We’ve all read that Steyn article 100 times. I need more smoking gun material before rises in status above the 57 1/2 alleged Bush-Cheney-Halliburton plots.
Bias would be comparing yesterday’s Globe and Mail NEWSPAPER headline to a radio and television outfit like the CBC. The Globe online, which is a melding of breaking news today, and yesterday’s print news, dropped Adscam stuff lower down early on. The CBC still has it top of page, right side. Oops, the Globe and Mail just dropped it lower, it’s off the bottom of my screen…. CBC now has more up on the first screen shot than the Globe.
No, this isn’t CBC bias, this is your bias.
Mark: You obviously didn’t read the Steyn article; or else you ignored it’s most obvious point. The trail to Desmarais and the PMO over the last several decades is many many times more solid than anything that links Bush or Cheney to Halliburton. And, owning controlling shares in the major bank and oil company involved in the Oil-for-food scam is in its very least a more direct line to Sadaam than anything anyone can conjure up concering Cheney and Halliburton. Coincidence alone can not account for a fraction of where Paul Desmarais’ name pops up. As far as Mark Steyn, I challenge you to find one example of where he has been wrong… except in his prediction that Bush would sweep the USA election.
As usual, the CBC is peddling the Liberal Party line: “Martin is squeaky clean; national unity is at stake; the Conservatives are barbarians who will bring down the country”. Frankly, I believe the CBC has lost all credibility as a result of its palpable bias in favour of its cronies in government. The anti-Americanism, anti-western, anti-Israel stance is lamentable, as are the openly left-wing sentiments of most of its commentators and journalists.
The CBC should be converted to a clutch of regional non-profit educational stations. Its self-proclaimed “guardian of Canadian values” delusion is a piece of hypocrisy quite in keeping with its adopted role as apologist for the one-party state.
Speaking of Paul Martin and Jean Chretien, who claim to not have known about the scandalous theft and are desperately trying to paint themselves as innocent victims of collossal fraud. I’ll use a metaphor here, ya can’t stand with a gaden hose pouring water down a gopher hole and watch as the gophers pop up out of the ground several yards away and not know that the two actions are connected. In other words Paul Martin as finance minister and had to see that money was going to the sponsorship program and also huge amounts of money was coming in to the Liberal Party of Canada. He may not have known exactly whose hands it passed through to get from point “A” to point “F” but he was either in collusion of incompetent not to recognise that there were points “B,C,D,and E. I should add here that as the Head of a major shipping concern, he wouldn’t stay in business if he was incompetent at financial matters. Jean Chretien,well he was Paul Martin’s Fagan. The term “plausible deniability” throughout the liberal party i’m sure has been the catch phrase, and standard method of operations, “if I don’t know specifics I sure as hell can bluff these stupid sheep into beleiving I didn’t know generalities.” I’ve heard it stated over and over today on the radio that we should boot the bastards out, while I agree with that on the surface, I also feel that we should try to get to the real bottom of this. The ad scam scandal was one vehicle for the laundry of money, how many others could there be, CBC?, indian affairs?, is the gun registry just dumb beurocratic bungling or is there something darker and deeper there that needs investigating? Personally I think we should freeze all the assets of the Liberal Party of Canada, and begin a forensic audit of all of their past budgets in all of the departments and if the scheming is found to as endemic as “I” suspect it is, fine the lot plus interest. That would be just, unrealistic but just. Imagine if you will, how much farther Canada would be ahead right now If we had not a government that potentially has been stealing us blind for the past 12 or more years. Which brings me to another point, what did Jean Chretien walk in on when the liberals took power from the conservatives, did they find the metaphorical hooker putting her fishnet stocking back on sitting on the side of the bed, and decide to put her back to work for their ends this time. We as Canadians need to raise the bar higher on our demands for accountability from our government, and generally pay a hell of a lot more attention to these things than our parents.
Fuzzylogic to save you the trouble of having Mark come back at you, I can tell you that Mark Steyn once said Osama was dead, shortly thereafter Osama proved he was alive with a video in which he spoke about things that had just occurred, and Steyn predicted the violence would stop in Iraq soon after the Americans took control. It didnt. But who could predict any of these things. But I would still give him over a ninety percent rating which isn’t too bad in my books.
To those who would ask why Paul would open this closet full of skeleton if he did infact know what was in there, like any other mob boss who wants to go through the motions of legitamacy. He overestimated the loyalty that he thought he bought.
Gabriel, (Gaby), J. Chretien’s elder brother, was named by Brault as receiving cheque $4,000. Cheque had Gaby’s SIN on same, placed there by Brault.
Could be…
But, ya know, he’s old, senile, in a home, but, den da proof is da proof , so prove it. He has dat oltimers ting…. memory gone…. da proof is… gomery gone too….
Boss Tweed: “So, what are you going to do about it?”
What is the official CPC position on the CBC? Are they going to privatize it, keep it the same or let it die slowly by small funding cuts every year?
I hope they privatize it or shut it down as is it less then useless.
Communist Party of Canada’s position re CBC & etc.
We shall complete the revolution first; we shall re-name it as, The Truth, aka Pravda; We shall appoint E. Margolis/L. Axworthy co- chairmen; Small Dead Animals will not be allowed to link. Norm will be censor. Editor: Please send resume. /sarcasm off.
This whole sad tale underscores the need for a revision of the entire structure of the Canadian federal government if it is to be a truly representational democracy. There need to be constitutional reforms, which ensure a much higher degree of public scrutiny, accountability and checks and balances. Some suggestions: 1) Election dates should be fixed: 2) Election of the Prime Minister should be separated from election of MP’s: 3) MP’s and senators must be free to represent the majority view of their constituents without fear of retribution from their party if they represent views that do not follow the party line: 4) The senate should be re-constituted as an elected, representational body: 5) Cabinet member and federal bench nominees ought to have to be vetted before multi-party public hearings: 6) The executive and director nominees for any and all public corporate entities should also be required to be vetted by all-party committees in a public forum: 8) Closed-door sessions of the executive/directors/boards of any publicly funded entity should be illegal: 7) It should be law that there must be a clear and publicly available accounting audit trail for any and all expenditures of all tax revenue.
I agree with everything “rob” says, but will change my name to trash so he doesn’t get accused of my bad grammer and spelling… 😉
CBC Trusted,Connected,Canadian.
Well its canadian, connected in the sense the mafia uses the word, but trusted – nah.
WTF Rob?!? are you some kind of Albertan heretic. watch out man those kind of sentiments will have the likes of Anne MacLellan bursting your eardrums with her shrill indignation. Common sense, well shit man that’s just anathema to Ottawa in general. Go crawl back under the reform party labelled rock you just crawled out from under. I would just like to add that senators, although not elected for life should not be elected along party lines and should be elected for a longer term than MP’s. I feel they should be the non-partizan house of sober second thought, and enforced as such. Include in this possibly a ban on political party membership to all senators, as well as a ban on things like donations and other tacit support. It wouldn’t be perfect but then I haven’t written this in stone either.
So is it the Parlimentary system itself that is preventing any form of accountability and did the charter add to all this abuse of the system. I suppose if there was any kind of challenge to all this, it’d be blackball city for that party by the east and the left wing media and justice system.
So based on the fact that there will never be any change in the existing system, and from what I read above, the only permanent way to resolve this is to split up the federation of Canada.
This sucks, no matter how far forward you go, your still in the same place.
Herb,
so the fact that all of the other news sites maintains the story of adscam far longer than CBC (our national broadcaster) means nothing to you. As for “searching for conspiracy theories” – that’s a bit rich. Here we are in the midst of the greatest political conspiracy in our country’s history and you mock Kate for “searching” for them.
A centrist you ain’t. A barking moonbat you are.
You mindless drones. Go look at http://www.cbc.ca. If you jump right to the news page you miss the fact that the sponsorship scandal is right front and center on the main page. Take everything with a grain of salt.
Kate spelled it out quite well. Here we have Canada’s most odious political scandal, one that’s shaken our democratic process to its core, and we’ve caught much of the media in the middle of a yawn.
And with regards to the CBC donations, the media is supposed to act as a cheque on government, not write a cheque to it.
Herb,
Hobbes and ebt understand the essential difference. I suggest you re-read my post to understand it.
Daryl,
We do need a better system for senators than we have now. The senate as it operates within Canadian Federalism is a dead organ, a graveyard and retirement reward for loyal party hacks and friends of whatever party is in power. That just doesn’t cut it for me. Fine, don’t elect, but at least challenge why they should be there other than the reasons I mention they really do end up there
“you mindless drones!!!”
You forgot the exclamation marks so I added them.
Back to the Democratic Underground or Indy(Nazi)Media with you mister! THe power of Christ compels you, The power of Christ compels you,…
yuk, yuk..
There’s another Adscam headline front and center now at CBC (8 p.m. EST), and on CBC’s front page.
It’ll last a few hours, or until morning, and then they’ll replace it with whatever. And so on.
The CBC is a news service for Canadians. Lots of stuff deserves a head.
This isn’t CBC bias, its your bias.
And the story just changed. It went from “Political parties gauging impact of sponsorship revelations” at http://cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/04/08/gomeryfallout050408.html
to “Inquiry told PMO involved in sponsorship contracts” at http://cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/04/08/gomeryt050408.html
and so it goes.
Really good timing Mark. Launch it on a Friday night when no ones going to read it. That’s usually a political tactic for when you want an issue ignored.
Mark,
You’ve been going to every trackback link in an attempt to discredit the issue. That’s fine, but your not going to convince anyone here that the CBC is the unbiased piece of crap propaganda machine that it really is.
We stand by Kate’s assertions, and if your a raving moonbat or a CBC employee trying to justify your position, that’s your problem.
Capt Joe wrote
“Fine, don’t elect, but at least challenge why they should be there other than the reasons I mention they really do end up there
Posted by capt joe at April 8, 2005 08:45 PM”
I presume mainly because the bit got edited out of my post for some reason.
It went here � rock you just crawled out from under. I would just like to add that senators,�
I have always, since I was old enough to understand the concepts, been in favour of a triple EEE senate. I just don�t hink we should clone the US system of gov when we can take bits and pieces from everywhere to make a system that really works well. Yes I do agree that as it is now, it is a plum position and exactly as you mention, which is why a triple E concept is a good one. We can debate the definition of effective, the length of term they are elected, and by what statistic equal should be judged, but we are still talking about a triple E senate.
Also I just reread my original post, and �Not elected on party lines� should be clarified, what I mean by that is that a senator should be neither conservative in his platform nor liberal or any other stripe of political orientation, he should simply be the senator representative of his constituency, county or whatever else we call the place and people he represents. A true direct representative to the long term goals of the people. Where a short term politician may be swayed by the immediate desire to be reelected before the long term effects of silly policy show up, a longer term senator would (well ok, lets be real here, should) look more at the longer term implications of policy.
I hope this clears up the confusion, I�m just wanted to make sure it ISN�T thought that I am actually AGAINST Rob�s commentary or, dread the thought, FOR Anne McLellan.
TTFN
Daryl.
What the hell? do pointy brackets not work Here?
An “end Sarcasm” statement was supposed to go between “rock you just crawled out from under” and “I would just like to add that senators,”
Bloody hell, I hope this has not caused too much confusion in the past here.
Daryl.
oh, and Mark, you ARE a moonbat. Nice try though
The CBC shouldn’t post Friday’s news on a Friday night?
This is Friday’s news, not Thursday’s.
They posted the revealed Adscam testimony as it happened thursday afternoon. Were they supposed to wait until Friday morning to keep to the slow pace of the newspapers, like the G&M? Are they then supposed to keep that head up there while other news goes by?
You all seem to be missing the point. We don’t need the CBC. We don’t need state-operated media. Period. If we don’t need it, we should not have it. End of discussion.
“There need to be constitutional reforms, which ensure a much higher degree of public scrutiny, accountability and checks and balances.”
No amount of scrutiny and accountability will fix this problem. There are lots of conservative and independent senators and dozens of non-Liberal MPs who are supposed to be attending committee hearings and asking questions. There are comptrollers and auditors in every single government department, and there are the entire mini-empires of the Auditor General and the Comptroller General. There are whole buildings full of knobs in the dept. of Finance who are paid to watch where the cheques go. There is a federal police force with a large white-collar crime unit. There is a free press, many of whom hate the Liberals. Yet hundreds of millions were stolen anyways, and billions more were wasted. Why? Because you, suckers that you are, trusted them with half of every dollar that you make, and sat there like fat, dumb, cud-chewing farm animals as they took your money and found ways to steal it and waste it.
And now you’re wringing your hands trying to think of ways that you can keep your bloated, unresponsive, brain-dead government and all its useless, spoiled bureaucrats and welfare queens at the trough, yet “be more accountable”.
Assuming that all attempts to reform the corruption machine will be unsuccessful – and I think that’s a pretty safe bet – how long do you think we can go on like this?
OK, once more and pay attention:
The sworn testimony of Jean Brault at a public inquiry recounting extortion, corruption and possible organized time ties is not “just another Canadian story to interest Canadians.”
It is not a lesser story than the Pope’s funeral.
It is not a story one cycles through a dozen headlines during the day.
The publication ban on Brault’s testimony – hours of it – was under 24 hours old, and the CBC was no longer headlining it on their website.
When a corporation is headed by a board that was appointed by the same Prime Minister who has now been directly tied to the largest corruption scandal in Canadian history, it is going to come under scrutiny for conflict of interest. This is one of those scrutinizing events.
The CBC top stories online keep changing. The sponsorship story is, once again, the lead on their page. nealenews.com, however, has bumped it for a story about Anna Nicole Smith cancelling a trip to Newfoundland. I guess Brian Neale is now just another Liberal toady too?
I guess the Newfs got their quota on the seal hunt.
Everybody Knows – 4: Clip and Save!
As I understand it, the partial lifting of the Brault testimony ban is sufficiently broad to cover everything sloshed around the internet so far. Just in case this is still news to any of my 3-digit traffic, here is the…
Neale is a private news aggregator, not a tax–payer funded state media corporation that is obligated to perform its duty without political bias or interference.
Notwithstanding the fact that he is headlining 6 Gomery related items, plus an archive of others, he isn’t funded by the taxpayer or bound by regulations that prohibit political activity.
The CBC is.
Imagine for a moment, if you can, that the CBC simply ceases to exist. What am I missing? How am I worse off?
To this outsider, looking in from Texas, much of what ails Canada should be attributed to the threat of Quebec’s separation, hanging over its head.
Doing a bit of research, I have noted that the Supreme Court, in 1998, declared that:
“Neither the Quebec government nor legislature have a legal right under Canadian constitutional law or under international law to unilaterally secede from Canada. However, the court also emphasized that the rest of Canada would have a political obligation to negotiate Quebec’s separation if a clear majority of that province’s population voted in favour of it.”
http://www.nelson.com/nelson/polisci/quebec.html
A political obligation to “negotiate,” coupled, presumably, with Quebec’s having a political right to enforce “negotiations.” This is crazy – the creation of some sort of political purgatory where no one knows what the rules are, where the actual rules will be made up as the parties go along.
Nonetheless, by this ruling, Quebec has some semblance of a right to secede. This is much akin to where the US stood prior to the Civil War, when the right of secession had not been resolved and the South held the threat of secession over the head of the North, prompting Lincoln to say:
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.
http://www.historyplace.com/lincoln/divided.htm
So long as Quebec holds its leverage, Canada cannot hope to have a true sense of national union. The thing is being held together with baling wire, as was the US prior to the Civil War.
Quebec’s leverage inures to the benefit of the Liberal Party, as it enables the party to present itself as the broker of peace between the factions – the last bulwark between order and chaos. Adscam reveals the Liberals for what they are – bag men delivering the extortion payoff, while skimming their percentage off the top. Meanwhile, the BQer’s use the scandal to increase their leverage, not for the sake of ultimately separating, but rather for the purpose of ultimately dominating the national scene. “Look here, Boy, do as we say or we will hold you up to ridicule. Henceforth, you must pay us off legally, not under the table. All of Quebec must be bought off, not just the advertising executives and the politicians.”
Would it make sense for conservatives of the West to commence a separatist movement of their own, thereby playing the same game? No. This would enhance the status of the Liberals as the brokers of peace and tranquility.
The Conservative position should be to call the bluff of the BQer’s. “If you wish to separate, then have another referendum. If separation is approved, then let us proceed with negotiation of the terms of separation.” Quebec must be told that the rest of Canada will not pay blackmail in order to preserve a fictional union.
A trump card holds value only so long as it has not been played. Once played, it goes into the discard pile.
The sad point here is WILL we lean anything from this? When we do go to polls the East will decide
again to vote the liberal in. Just my thought.
The longer it takes bring the liberals down the more
time they will have to convince Ontatio that right
is the Evil force, against Canada and has a hidened
agena.
WELCOME HOME PAUL
DID YOU REALLY KISS THE GROUND??
Kate, my reply was just too long to just post here. I placed it posterity at http://section15.blogspot.com/2005/04/once-more-with-feeling.html
Why do we need the CBC anyway . There are private broadcasters out there that are already in place.
Change it into a PBS OR ACCESS type entity and I’ll be happy.
I know I’d cry if the CBC was gone. I’d never know for sure what the next Liberal party line would be without it.
Just yesterday on Newsworld’s Politics, the host (not Don Newman) was hyping a poll that said Liberal support hadn’t budged. Only after Conservative prodding did they begrudgingly admit that the poll was taken before the Brault testimony leaked.
“The government is a huge parasite on the backs of the electorate.”
Jeb Bush
Brightleaf, justsomegai and texan, good one,eh!
Bury the CBC and cut the size of guvment.Every time that the guvment comes in contact with our 51 % of every dollar earned they are and will always steal it.
Let me repeat that,…they will always find ways to steal it.
Our only defense is to limit the contact of schemeing elitists at ever being tempted, by minimalizing the flow, not by putting more of them to watch the increased flow of $$$.
The CBC has something like a 6% share of Canadian viewers, so perhaps some of the posters are right. It doesn’t really matter what the CBC is showing, the question is why are we spending $1 billion a year keeping it afloat?
“Our pals at the CBC, who stand on guard for We, waited until 9:17 tonight to post today’s bombshell that has testimony linking adscam directly to the PMO.”
From Friday night, 9 a.m., the story CBC ran was: ‘Inquiry told PMO involved in sponsorship contracts’
This new claim of bias would be interesting if compared to other news sites. Thing is, I was monitoring several then in coinjunction with this issue, (G&M online, CNews, CTV) and CBC was the first place I saw that news.
CBC was slower putting up an earlier Adscam-related head at 8 a.m.: ‘Political parties gauging impact of sponsorship revelations’, which I first saw a few hours earlier on G&M online.
Perhaps some other news sites carried the revelation sooner, but I didn’t see it. Perhaps the sites I was monitoring buried the lead so I missed it, but I severely doubt it.
I was only ever monitoring the first screenful of each site, keeping with the accusation that Adscam had to be a major headline to not be considered bias.
I believe I mentioned Mark, that this wasn’t the only example.
BTW – the whole Saskatchewan weather story was non-story – as I type this, it’s snowing. Last night there was a winter storm watch for the south west. The fact is that there is no such thing as “untypical weather for April” on the prairies. Not only did CBC keep Brault testimony rotating through the headlines at a low frequency, they were placing using weather trivia to bolster their pro-Kyoto stance.
Only the CBC and the Lieberals and David Suzuki can save the world from the 2% of the pollution that Canada looses on the world every year. That’s 2% of the total pollution around the globe. C’mon Canada, sign on to Kyoto, Lose a Ton of Money to China and India. You’ll feel good. C’mon Canada, you’re up for a challenge, aren’t you? Pay Russia to pollute. You’ll feel better.