Don’t you just love it when a plan comes apart?

The book, which will only publish in French, includes juicy details about the apparent theft of $300,000 by somebody who had acted as a bookkeeper to Options Canada, and an attempt to cover this up. Apparently, the bookkeeper and Options Canada signed a hush-hush agreement which allowed the bookkeeper to keep the money as long as he (or she) remained quiet about its origins. Lester got ahold of a copy of this agreement, and somehow, a copy of it was leaked back to Heritage Canada bureaucrats late last year. It was these bureaucrats who, in a CYA move, decided to call in the RCMP.
In other words, the thieves at the top needed to keep the thieves at the bottom from blowing the entire scam — and foolishly committed an agreement to paper. If this bears out, it would almost certainly mean at least one criminal investigation for corruption, and perhaps another for conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The rest at Captain Ed’s.

Updated – (and Im moving this item back up to the top)
Another day, another scandal. And all coming at such a inopportune time.
Do you get the sense that someone has been quietly waiting to see the “whites of their eyes”?

The RCMP has been asked to probe a Liberal consultant over a $380,000 contract she was awarded to lobby Ottawa for funds for the ailing firearms registry.
The five-month contract was awarded by the justice department to Kim Doran in March 2003 to lobby the federal solicitor general, Treasury Board and Privy Council, according to a detailed lobbyist report.
At the time, Doran was representing the Coalition for Gun Control. The group, which receives both government and private funding, claims to represent anti- gun groups and municipalities. It is a strong supporter of the gun registry.

Doran is listed as the deputy national director (Organization and Policy) of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Update – The pundits react.
Bourque summarizes it nicely: $380,000 –> CGC –> Kim Doran –> Capital Hill Group –> Liberal Party coffers ($136,000 in donations since 1993

Stephen Taylor takes a closer look at Options Canada and spots something the Globe & Mail may have overlooked;

“The report also states that Option Canada may have been a “bogus firm,” set up by its parent organization, the Council for Canadian Unity, to avoid problems with Revenue Quebec and Revenue Canada.”

We bloggers have had some experience with Government of Canada websites becoming slightly less user friendly – or disappearing altogether.
So, it’s curious when they reappear;

After the 2003 Liberal leadership campaign, the Liberal candidate disclosures, including those of Paul Martin, mysteriously disappeared from public view.
Now, for reasons I do not yet understand, Paul Martin’s list of donors is back online. Why would they suddenly re-appear? Why now?
Is Paul trying to pre-empt questions on this?

I had an earlier heads up on this, but was out when it went live. So, I’ll just save the bother and give you the links.
Ed Morrissey;

A source within Canadian political and media circles informed CQ earlier this afternoon that the media will break a story on an almost-forgotten scandal involving Options Canada, where $4.8 million disappeared without much oversight from the Liberal government in 1995. The money came from the Heritage Canada office, which disbursed the grant in three rushed payments on the eve of the 1995 referendum on autonomy for Quebec. The Ottawa Citizen
reported in 2000 that the Liberal government had buried the scandal and closed its investigation without ever determining what happened to the millions of dollars given to Options Canada, which later merged into the No campaign on the referendum:
The federal government has quietly closed the books on a controversial $4.8-million grant to an obscure Montreal federalist group, but how the money was spent is still a mystery.

The Globe and Mail makes it official; the RCMP have been called in.
Angry looks into Claude Dauphin;

” the senior advisor to the Minister of Finance and former president of Option Canada, who, two and a half years after the fact, still cannot tell the people of Quebec and Canada how, in the midst of the referendum period, he spent $4.8 million in 33 days.

Just click.
April 2005 SDA flashback. In response, Goodale cites an audit that representatives from Ernst and Young can’t remember “watering down”.
UPDATE– Kevin Steele is reporting that “word started to go around the media bus that Scott Reid had emailed a reporter informing him that the Prime Minister will no longer answer any questions on income trusts.”
That’s so going to make them stop.

Angry is digging into LIberal relationships so intimate, I hope he’s wearing protection….

Finance Minister Ralph Goodale had an hour-long meeting with senior representatives of Canada’s investment community — at which the issue of income trusts was discussed — only hours before his decision on the issue was announced, CanWest News Service has learned.
An official in Mr. Goodale’s office confirmed yesterday that the previously undisclosed meeting with the executive committee of the Investment Dealers Association of Canada (IDA) took place, but said those who attended left the morning meeting “no wiser” about the decision that was announced later that day after markets closed.

Read all about it.
UpdateFrom the comments;

Joseph Oliver, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Investment Dealers Association (IDA), has written a letter today to Larry Elford confirming that “the matters referred to in his letter are under investigation by the RCMP, and therefore we cannot comment.” Larry Elford’s January 2, 2006 letter to Joseph Oliver had made the following request:
“The IDA, as a self-regulator of the investment banking industry, should publicly disclose who attended the IDA meeting with Finance Minister Goodale on the morning of November 23rd. Since a subset of IDA Member investment banks were active in the unusually high volume and price up ticking in income trusts and dividend paying common shares that began at about noon that day, it is reasonable to anticipate that the RCMP will be reviewing communications and conducting interviews surrounding this IDA meeting with Honourable Minister Goodale.”
Joseph Oliver’s letter further indicates that the IDA is not participating as a collaborating investigator in the RCMP’s investigation of income trusts. This statement is not qualified by any conditions such as “not participating at this time” or “would consider participating if asked by the RCMP.”

(If anyone has a link for that, I’ll add it)

You can be forgiven for finding it hard to keep them all straight… Michael Geist on the emerging Sarmite Bulte fundraiser story;

The problem with the fundraiser is not that the President of CRIA is a host and that his partner is providing the entertainment.� The problem is that the Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage, the former chair of the Canadian Heritage Standing Committee, the chair of the Ontario Liberal caucus, and the key player in the Bulte Report should not be having any fundraisers with any copyright stakeholders four days before a national election.� The perception is that this is pure influence peddling, a perspective that is only fuelled by Bulte’s appearance at the head table at CRIA’s National Press Club event in the fall, of Bulte and Graham Henderson together in Washington, DC in September, etc.

Via Bourque, who’s been doing a bang up job lately.
More here and background at Boing Boing.

The boundaries in the Culture of Entitlement are getting a little blurry;

… [N]otwithstanding the fact that [Liberal party spokesman Ken]Polk’s explanation raises more questions�than it does solve them, does it not seem odd to you that the Liberal party is speaking on behalf of Medisys, providing to the media explanations to the unusual stock activity?�If there is no correlation between the PMO, the alleged Income Trust leak, and the�Medisys’ unusual trading activity,�then why did the Liberals need to have an explanation prepared?�
If the Liberals are asserting that the PMO and the CEO of�Medisys are at arms length, for optics sake wouldn’t it be a better idea to have a Medisys spokesman give the explanations to the media? It sure seems odd to me that the Liberal party is speaking on behalf of Medisys, a company linked to the Prime Minister, explaining why Medisys’ stock volumes increased suddenly the day before a government announcement (an announcement which is currently under�criminal investigation for a potential insider leak)�which would benefit the stock price of the said company. It just seems, well, pre-planned and contrived.�
[…]
So one must ask, why would the Liberal party know the day-to-day activities of the CEO of a public company? Come to think about it, why would they care? One may speculate that�some Liberal insiders contacted the CEO of Medisys to find an explanation for the unusual trading activity to mitigate potential�media blowback if questions were asked. If this is the case, did they contact Medisys to find explanations or to get their stories straight? If it’s the former, then the issue could be written off as strategists preparing for baseless accusations, but�if it’s the latter, it would suggest someone�was�covering someone’s behind.�Irregardless, this question remains unanswered: why is a Liberal spokesman speaking on behalf of the CEO if the two parties are at arms-length of each other?

The comments are a must read.

“Have a look at Medysis’s list of Directors- it includes Liberal Senator (and former party bagman) Leo Kolber. He holds a sizeable equity interest in the enterprise. Also look at the most recent AIF to discover that revenues derive principally from three sources – two of them are Crown Corporations and the other a major Canadian Bank. Kolber chairs the Senate committee on Banking.”

Bourque;

Bourque has learned that embattled Finance Minister Ralph Goodale is being pressured to give up his Cabinet seat for an indeterminate period of time, this in light of devastating news first revealed to the nation here yesterday that the RCMP has launched a criminal investigation into leaks from his department regarding rulings relating to the growing income trust scandal. According to senior sources inside the Paul Martin Liberal Party who spoke on condition of anonymity, “the official party posture is that Ralph didn’t know anything and therefore shouldn’t have to resign, but the public perception is devastating, it’s killing us, and we need to move firmly to squelch the stink.” Incredibly, Prime Minister Paul Martin has refused to comment publicly on news of the RCMP criminal probe, though it is understood that he has had a few choice words with key staff about this file. ..

Meanwhile, Greg Staples has examined his own conduct and found no evidence of wrongdoing. (he also has the link to video of the Mansbridge interview, in case you live in Regina and missed it….)
Ralph is on local radio right now, repeating his assertions that he investigated himself to his own satisfaction. He sounds more than a little rattled. In addition to several ringing endorsements of his own integrity, he closed the interview adding that he was confident that the Liberals would return to government, with a higher number of seats in Saskatchewan.
And daffodils will poke their heads out of the snow any day now.
Flashback MK Braaten;

According to STOCKTRENDS.ca, the day before the Goodale income trust announcement, the trading volume of Medisys Income Trust was 226,500, with a value of $2,604,750, average trade was $37,750, and a total of 68 transactions. According to StockTrends.ca, this stock was listed as trading at �Unusual Volumes�. Click here for the report.
The volume of shares traded for Paul Martin linked Medisys Income Trust shares the day before the Income Trust announcement seems way to high to be a �co-incidence�. The volume increased 3400% from the prior day, and the following day, dropped back down about the same amount.
Its said that Paul Martins personal doctor started a medical company called Medisys Income Trust, a chain of private health care clinics located across Canada.
The day before the Goodale income trust announcement, the volume of Medisys shares traded for the day went from 5,714 on November 21, to 203,953 on Novemeber 22. On November 23, the shares traded dropped back down to 6,220.

Conservative Life has a $400,000 untendered question;

On January 14, 2005, almost four hundred thousand dollars went to “the Honorable Bryan W. Williams” from Public Works. The contract, #FP858-040018/001/SS was “non competitive”. The government is not allowed to hand out contracts of this size without competition. The government is required to give a reason. The reason given…”Extreme urgency”.
Who is Bryan Williams? What was the big emergency?
I didn’t know either so I began to search.
Bryan Williams, it turns out, is a lawyer with the firm of Miller Thomson. Miller Thomson is former Liberal Prime Minister John Turner’s law firm. Miller Thomson is a big financial backer of the Liberal Party, donating over $16,000.00 in 2000 alone. Miller Thomson wrote to revised the constitution for the Liberal Party of Canada in BC. Definitely a firm with shining Liberal credentials.
[…]
So what was the non-competitive, urgent government contract for?

Read on.

CTV;

he RCMP will conduct a criminal investigation into an alleged leak of changes to income trust rules, the NDP are saying.
Back on Nov. 30, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, the NDP’s finance critic, requested the RCMP review the Nov. 23 announcement and see if anyone in the federal finance ministry tipped off any Bay Street insiders.
“The NDP is demanding that Finance Minister Ralph Goodale step aside while this investigation is going on,” CTV’s Roger Smith told Newsnet.

That’s all they have for now, but expect an update at the link later.

Stephen Taylor has the storyboards.

Paul Martin will be out if he fails to win a majority.
Other headlines In today’s Star: “Dogs Bark”, “Water Runs Downhill”
Astute commentor “MGK”;

Travers has a pipe into the PMO. Without it, he would be just like all of the other ink-stained wretches who crawl on Parliament Hill.
But the significance of what he is saying is not obvious on its face. For that, we travel back in time to the year 2000. During that federal election, Chretien was bleeding support and some thought he might lose huge numbers to the Alliance. Overnight, a new lie appeared on all doorsteps across Canada, spoken by all Liberal candidates, namely that Chretien would step down immediately after the election and be replaced by the then more popular Paul Martin.
So, Travers’ story, planted by Paul Martin’s Liberals, tells you two things: First, that the Liberal campaign is aware that it is in desperate trouble. Second, that Paul Martin is repeating Chretien’s deceptive strategy – of promising a new leader tomorrow if you vote for the old leader today.
Of course, if you think that Martin will ever voluntarily step down, you don’t understand Liberal politics or the people who make their careers betting on one man.

Greg Staples;

So what do I learn by watching Countdown tonight? That the Liberals are so broke that they are going to send their paid campaign staff back to their government jobs, from which they were on a leave of absense during the Christmas week off.

That may help explain the reported elusiveness of the Liberal party in providing evidence that their $1.4 million Sponsorship “loan repayment” cheque has cleared the bank.
A link to the video at ATC.

Bourque and Neale are both giving high exposure to the Captain’s Quarters post on the Income Trust trading scandal that shines a spotlight on the lack of action by chief of the OSC – and consistant Liberal party donator- W. David Wilson .

The Medisys trades may only have been the tip of the iceberg, according to a CQ reader with knowledge of Canadian financial markets, and a check on the winners from the run on income trusts on November 23rd might demonstrate why Canadians may not get an investigation at all — at least until the Americans decide to check into the action.
[…]
It turns out, however, that David Wilson has more reason to recuse himself than just his party affiliation. Wilson received his appointment as chairman of the OSC after working as CEO of Scotia Capital Markets until his official appointment to the OSC on November 1, 2005, just twenty-two days before this event. Why is this important? One of the revelations to come out in the last couple of days is a previously undisclosed meeting that Finance Minister Ralph Goodale held with Investment Dealers Association earlier on the 23rd. Shortly after this meeting ended, unusual volumes began trading in income trusts such as Yellow Pages, Aeroplan, Superior Plus, and BCE (a dividend equity).
A look at the trades for November 23rd shows that Scotia Capital played a large role in moving the shares of these products. Look at Yellow Pages as an example; in the PDF, Scotia Capital is broker #85. SC starts off by selling large chunks of Yellow Pages at $14.12 right from the opening bell. Through 10:30, they’re still primarily selling even though the price has moved up to $14.36. Beginning at 11 am, they suddenly begin buying in small amounts, and then at 11:26 start buying in higher volumes — almost 20,000 between 11:26 and 11:29, even though the price had moved up to $14.50. SC sells off a couple of thousand shares later in the hour at $14.65, and then nibbles most of the next couple of hours. At 14:22, SC suddenly starts selling again at $14.60, dumping several thousand shares while the price drops a few cents. Starting at 14:57 and continuing through the end of the session at 16:00, the stock explodes in volume, with a number of players pushing the stock price over $15.00 by the closing bell.

Do you have a financial advisor? Ed’s post might be worth printing off and sending to them, along with a question asking why you should have confidence in Canadian investments.

Stephen Taylor is back with his graphs for a closer look at 6 income trusts that had a “massive (and very unusual) volumes prior to Goodale’s announcement, showed a massive “buy” preference, and showed relatively few transactions.”.

The question I look to answer here is this: Does the data show that the volume is indicative of publically available information, or were only a select number of individuals aware of the details of the finance minister’s announcement?

Take a look.

As Stephen Taylor and MK Braaten examine links between “friends” of the Martin government and Income Trust insider trading allegations (Martin linked Medisys Income Trust stock volume increased 3400% the day before Goodale announcement) , Toronto Tory is providing Paul Martin’s Investment Holding Disclosure to enable further exploration of the issue – a blog project of sorts. See if you can help out.

Sounds like an election slogan to me!


The Librano Election Sign Generator is here.

A commentor responds to the Michael Ignatieff controversy;

Incredible irony is that the riding association secretary travelled to Ukraine (on her own dollar) as an election observer during the Orange Revolution.
A year later she experiences political machinations right here at home, courtesy the Canadian government that presumed to teach Ukrainians about democracy.
Maybe we should demand the government bring over election observers from Ukraine. Maybe conservatives should start wearing orange?

Speaking of Ignatieff, Herman Goodden appears stricken with a serious case of intellectualitis.

At a dinner party over the weekend with fellow fulminating reactionary types of the conservative persuasion, the subject of Michael Ignatieff came up. The son of a diplomat and a painter, this classically educated and unfailingly thoughtful writer, scholar and broadcaster is regarded as a great leadership hopeful for the Liberal party.
Possessing Trudeau-type levels of charm and erudition, Ignatieff would certainly be a change from such uninspiring leaders as the hopelessly dithery Paul Martin and the thuggish Jean Chretien. For a couple of years now, Liberal party canvassers had been seeking to persuade Ignatieff to run for office, and he has finally taken the bait.
It remains to be seen whether a man of such refinement and integrity can retain those qualities once he’s been thoroughly processed through the crude sausage-making machinery of party politics.

In other words, a man who’s never earned an honest dollar in his life.

Such strong-arm machinations are just business as usual in party politics, but they don’t fit so comfortably with a man whose writings have constantly expressed solidarity with the down trodden and those shoved aside.

Or an honest nomination.
Ideal “leadership” material – if you belong to (or long to be accepted by) the class-obsessed culture of ruling Ottawa elites.