Ezra Levant;

I just received a note that Paul Martin went “bonkers” at a speech in Brampton today: “hoarse, shouting, chanting Belinda Stronach’s name, shouting back and forth with some wacko supporter in the audience.”

(I can’t run video on this computer, but I believe Toronto CHUM station Pulse24 has some video – don’t know if it includes the best parts. )
Oh, and while you’re at the Shotgun, here’s a nice juicy one – they’ve gotten hold of Alphonso Gagliano’s criminal record check. A teaser;

Commissioner Norman Inkster suggests that Gagliano be fingerprinted to prove or disprove the worst of his findings.

Via private email;

One would think that after the Gomery Report and during an election campaign, the governing Liberals would take extra care that all contracts awarded to the public are transparent and the awarding process is without reproach. In mid-2005, the Treasury Board Secretariat posted a call for tenders on the MERX for translation services (value of five million CAD) with a closing date of 19 Sept. 05. Bidders followed up monthly with the Contract Authority at PWGSC and were told (in writing) that the evaluation was ongoing and they would be contacted as soon as a winner was selected (two bidders were going to be chosen in this process – a primary and a backup). Imagine the surprise when bidders returned from Christmas vacation and read in the 2 and 9 January 2006 editions of the Ottawa Business Journal that the contracts had been awarded, with 3.6 million going to Lexitech International (headquartered in New Brunswick and owned by the Irving family) and another 1 million going to Les Traductions Tessier, a private Ottawa firm.
When queried, the response provided in writing by PWGSC on 11 January 2006 was the evaluation process was not over and bidders were thanked for their cooperation.
On 16 January 2006, bidders received a fax asking to extend the validity of their bid until 25 January 2006. Odd, however that bidders were asked to extend the validity of their bids for only 9 days and that it conveniently fell 2 days after the election. Normally extensions to bid validity are done in increments of 30 days – never 9 days. Further investigation on the MERX revealed that lo and behold the contracts had indeed been awarded on 21 December 2005 (a couple of days before Christmas when Ottawa is a ghost town – impeccable timing, eh wot?) and published on the MERX under Solicitation No. 24062-040011/A on 22 and 28 December 2005, again when most people were off and wouldn’t notice … Concerns brought to the attention of the Contract Authority were ignored and the Contract Authority was very cautious with the wording they used, stating that they could not discuss the situation and that a decision would be made by the end of next week. When pressed for more information the Contract Authority repeated that they could not offer any more details nor talk about it.
You don’t suppose someone in the Governing Party is afraid us dimwitted Canadians might put two and two together and smell a dead animal? After all, was the contract awarded or not awarded? Why wait until next week? There have been no cancellations issued on the MERX for these contracts.

Merx
I have no way to verify this – perhaps readers familiar with government contracing practices can provide more. My source does have documentation, if anyone in media is interested in following up on this.
Screenshot

$1.13 billion in secret pre-election spending?

Whereas the President of the Treasury Board reports that there is no appropriation for the payment of the sums mentioned in the annexed schedule, amounting in the aggregate to? $1,130,433,505, and the appropriate Ministers have reported that the payment of these sums is urgently required for the public good;
�
And whereas Parliament is not in session and there is no other appropriation pursuant to which the payment of these sums may be made;
�
Therefore, Her Excellency the Governor General in Council, on the recommendation of the President of the Treasury Board, pursuant to subsection�30(1) of the Financial Administration Act, hereby directs the preparation of a special warrant to be signed by the Governor General authorizing the payment, effective December�22,�2005, of the sums mentioned in the annexed schedule, amounting in the aggregate to $1,130,433,505, to be made out of the
Consolidated Revenue Fund.
SPECIAL WARRANT
�
Pursuant to Order in Council P.C. 2005?2337�of December�20,�2005, the President of the Treasury Board is hereby authorized to pay out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund, effective December�22,�2005, the amount of $1,130,433,505 for the purposes set out in the annexed schedule.

Christmas gifts!

It’s going to be a long week. Time for a little fun and one final turn at the Librano election sign generator. (meaning, if there’s another election in 18 months I’m just going to go out and kill something.)

Go here to make your own but please download your sign and host on your own space if you want to put it on the net.
Please do not write code that regenerates your sign on my bandwidth.

CBC: Encouraged by reports of strong support for his party in Canadian penitentiaries (where inmates voted on Friday), Paul Martin expresses solidarity with prisoners who painted red letter L’s on their heads to demonstrate their Liberal Party preference.

Angry has an unusual memo regarding constitutional advice given Anne McLellan – which she ignored.
The Globe and Mail discovers Tongsun Park, Maurice Strong, and the oil-for-food scandal. They don’t, however, discover Paul Martin’s connections to the Cordex Petroleum Inc. named. From the National Post, April 2005;

Mr. Park has apparently admitted that he invested US$1-million in a Canadian company associated with the son of a UN official. Mr. Strong himself immediately came forward and declared that he was the official, and that the company was Cordex Petroleums. Intriguingly, other investors in the company included CSL Group Inc., the holding company controlled by Paul Martin (which was at that time being managed in trust). Cordex’s directors included Bill Hopper, the ousted former head of Petro-Canada, the state oil company of which Mr. Strong was the founding chairman and CEO.

Revisiting 2004, and the Public Eye’s look at former Liberal candidate David Lobay’s donations & billings.
And the Surley Beaver has a story on a virtual university?;

September 1999, a virtual university was founded in Fredericton, New Brunswick to grant �E-MBA�s.� The university was given $600,000 in taxpayers money – $375,000 from Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and $225,000 from Human Resources Development Canada. This private, for-profit university was and is a subsidiary of Learnsoft Corporation. Sometime later, Mike Gaffney sold his shares in Learnsoft for – you guessed it – $600,000.

Update: Also noticing – the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
It’s getting pretty bad when you need to do your Librano news in multiple quick link posts….

Potent Pew is reporting there’s another version of the Liberal Red Book on an unlinked page.
Heh. Google.
(Update: It’s an earlier version.)

Via Maz2 in the comments;

Date Posted: 09:36:38 01/10/06 Tue
Wait for Duceppe to confront Martin on
Making Quebec a Nation
On Option Canada file where gov’t broke the law
Name the names of the candidates who got the dirty money
Be prepared to see Martin collapse on stage -it is going to be a hoot.

I might watch the debate after all.
Update – well, real life does interfere around here. I’ve been out of computer range most of the day, but I see the comments are filling up with content from the debate in French.
The Liberals have already pulled an attack ad that smeared the Canadian Armed Forces. If anyone knows where a copy can be found, let me know.
Update – CTV has it – look for it at “Liberal attack ad about Harper and military presence�0:30” link.
Bourque describes the Duffy vs Duffy moment everyone is chattering about in the comments;

After it was learned that the Liberal Party pulled one of the 12 ads they released Tuesday – the one saying Harper would put soldiers in cities, CTV cable news guy Mike Duffy blew up at Martin Liberal spokesperson John Duffy during a live post-debate broadcast. “We will not be intimidated!”, barked Mike, as he rebutted the Liberal Duffy’s attempt to block broadcast of the despicable ad, one that, earlier in the evening, Liberal leader Paul Martin shrugged off as part of the game in a post-debate scrum in Montreal

The file is a bit large, and it’s taking down hosting sites, so several mirrors are already up. I’ve included a few that are listed in the comments of the “Flanders Fields” post.
If you have highspeed, it’s a clip, that along with the original ad, has the potential to “go viral”.
Try here,
here,
, or here for starters. a whole thread of them at Free Dominion. One of them should work.
I get the suspicion the Liberals have written off this part of Saskatchewan. The ratio of Liberal ads to those of the NDP and Conesrvatives seems quite low. Speaking of which – driving around Saskatoon both yesterday and today, I’ve yet to see my first Liberal lawn sign. Or billboard. I’m not saying there aren’t any. But there weren’t any on the main thoroughfares I took – though I actually saw two for Christian Heritage!
Also – a reader reminds me, what was Martin trying to pull by turning his back on Duceppe during the debates, in full view of the cameras? I saw it played on CTV news, I’m told he did it twice. Is that supposed to be subliminal or something? Looked contrived to me, and I only saw it once.
I’ve copied a transcript of the Duffy VS Duffy moment in the extended entry.

Continue reading →

Reader “Anterior” asks;

Hate to jump in here off topic but can anyone tell me if Allyce Herle, running for the Libs in Sask. is related to [Earnscliffe partner and Liberal campaign tactician�]�David Herle. Just wondering.

The answer, I believe, is yes.. sister!
(In the pursuit of general good taste and discretion, I hereby refrain from using the usual metaphorical adjective “incestuous” as it traditionallly applies to the topic of Saskatchewan politics.)
Search Herle on SDA.
Followup: I’m told that when she resigned from her job with the City of Regina she sued the city and was awarded $91,000.00

“Vote Liberal or the kid gets it.”

(This message has been authorized by the registered agent for the Federal Liberal Party of Canada)
Update: gif version here.

In the Montreal Gazette, the story of documents left beside a dumpster;

Questions about the money given to Option Canada before the 1995 sovereignty referendum have been floating around for 10 years, since Gazette reporter Claude Arpin broke the story of the group’s existence and funding. Although the original amount given to Option Canada has been reported as $4.8 million, a press release announcing Monday’s launch says the new book will show it was actually $5.2 million that was spent.
“At last we know where all the money went, almost down to the penny, and it will be in the book,” Lester said.

Also, Pettigrew finds himself sucked into the controversy. ( Bourque developing….)
Also: Google translation – Claude Dauphin’s bio.

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.”