Well, congratulations to Ralph Goodale. In his few short months as finance minister, the innovation he has brought to the fiscal management of the Canadian treasury signal that, like the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Federal Budget is a “living document”.
After breaking new ground with the introduction of the Buzz Hargrove Paper Napkin Motel Room Amending Process, and giving the green light for nearly 6 billion in seed money for the new Department of Buying Off Ontario*, Ralph Goodale has created, with the approval of his Prime Minister, the “Government Of Canada Perpetual Liberal Re-Election Slush Fund.
Terence Corcoran in the National Post, explains;

Never Before has a Canadian government given itself such freewheeling fiscal elbow room. Certainly Don Drummond, former finance official and now chief economist at TD Financial, has never seen anything like it — a $4.5-billion slush fund that government can dip into at will. “For years government has wanted an instrument that would allow it to allocate spending without having to say what it’s for. This act will do it.”
Readers can check out this blank-cheque spending legislation below. Here’s how it works. Sometime in August, 2007, the federal government will check the final numbers from fiscal year 2005-6. If there’s more than a $2-billion surplus, that extra money above $2-billion can be spent. For example, if the surplus is $5-billion, the first $2-billion will be used to pay down debt, but the remaining $3-billion must be spent on the grab bag of unspecified areas. Same thing the following year.
As Don Drummond put it yesterday, this is the first time Ottawa has been able to “define the money before it defines the program.” The Layton list, sprawling over a dozen broad issues — environment, housing, transit, training programs, foreign aid, energy, education, aboriginal, tuition fees — is an open field. Not only are there no programs, Ottawa doesn’t even have a jurisdictional outlet for tuition fees, for example. (Oddly missing from the list is a $100-million union pension fund bailout, mentioned in earlier news leaks.)
Just to be doubly safe that the government’s ability to spend freely without parliamentary approval will be protected in future, Mr. Goodale threw in a clause giving the Cabinet power to “specify the particular purposes for which payments referred to in subsection (1) may be made and the amounts of those payments for the relevant fiscal year.”
In a brief news release, Mr. Goodale called all this “new investments” that build on the “fiscally responsible manner” Ottawa is spending money. Here’s how it works: Ottawa spends what it gets, when and how it wants, without parliamentary approval.

Librano Ralphie just taken the “lessons learned” through the experience gained in Sponsorship, and applied it to the federal budget. Simple? Simple.
Bruce Gottfred has more.

Beryl Wajsmann left a lengthy comment at Captain Ed’s and he’s republished it. Wajsmann is scheduled to appear before Gomery and is president of the Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal. It provides some insight into the relationship between the federal and Quebec wings of the party, and divisions within.

I specifically want to share some comments with you on Michel Beliveau’s testimony Friday at the Gomery Commission about a certain PMO meeting that occurred in 2001, and give you a heads-up on some of my upcoming testimony. Some news stories have reported that the meeting concerned “hidden” fundraising. That is not what Beliveau said. He testified that the meeting was held because the new LPC (Q) director-general Daniel Dezainde complained that I was not respecting his authority and freezing him out. The chain of command if you like. This is all in the record.
Just to set the matter straight, this was an incident I have spoken about many times. It is not new, and I addressed it in a Le Devoir article. But some reports still got the facts wrong.
Dezainde�s claims were utter nonsense. I briefed him regularly on all the work of our cultural communities� sectoral financing project. He simply wanted it shut down. Part of the reason was due to the fact that Gagliano had opposed his nomination as director-general in Quebec and Dezainde was doing everything to take complete control of the LPC (Q) headquarters.
It is always frustrating having to sit on evidence and wait to testify. I’ve been waiting to tell this story for four years. We knew about the PMO meeting in 2001. Percy Downe was new to his job as Chief of Staff to Chr�tien. Dezainde had just come in. The whole power structure had changed in two months and no one in the PMO or the party had the basic decency to call me, Benoit Corbeil or Joe Morselli to hear what we had to say. It was a set up. When I demanded from Gagliano that he set up a meeting for me with Chr�tien – that my 25 years of public involvement warranted that minimum courtesy – he refused and asked me to just keep working and be patient and let him handle Dezainde. I told him then his fecklessness would be his undoing. I still cannot forgive him that lack of courage.

Read the rest.

A couple of days ago Ezra Levant kindly emailed me a copy of some of the published reaction to the “Libranos contraversy”. It’s relatively long, so I’ve put it in the extended entry for those of you like me, who don’t subscribe to half the newspapers in the country.

Continue reading →

Paul Martin signaled Thursday that Canadians will pay whatever price necessary to keep his corrupt Liberal government in power. With pre-election bribery of the cities and other useful fools at over $8 billion and rising, Martin is now promising to send the Canadian Armed Forces into harms way to corral David Kilgour’s vote. CBC:

The head of Canada’s military returned recently from meeting with leaders of the African Union peacekeeping force that Canadian units would support.
“This is a complex and relatively dangerous environment,” Gen. Rick Hillier told CBC News. Hillier said he has more than 30 officers working on the project but was mum on the specifics until he presents several options this week to Defence Minister Bill Graham. The minister wants military intervention to be only one part of an overall plan for the northeastern African country.
“We cannot invade Sudan. It requires United Nations action … it requires political as well as military and aid matters,” Graham told CBC.

“We cannot invade Sudan”.
I’ll allow the Monty Pythonesque absurdity of that disclaimer sink in for a moment…

The two-year-old Darfur conflict, stemming from the fallout of a peace deal to end the country’s decades-old civil war, has driven about two million people from their villages to live in camps and killed 300,000 others.

“Stemming from the fallout of a peace deal”. Well, that’s putting a shine on things. Let’s take a closer look at Sudan, courtesy of the BBC; Sudanese demand death for editor:

Angry crowds have demanded the death penalty for a Sudanese newspaper editor over an article allegedly questioning the parentage of the Prophet Muhammad. Hundreds of people waving banners and chanting “God is great” protested outside a court as Mohamed Taha Mohamed Ahmed was charged over the article.
[…]
Ali Shumi, the head of Sudan’s Press Council, said the article insulted the Prophet Muhammad. He denied the charges were an assault on press freedom.
“Freedom of the press stops when it comes to respect for religions. Not just for Islam – if you said the same things about Jesus there would be the same punishment,” he said.

Renouncing Islam in the Sudan carries the death penalty. I don’t know what the consequences are for painting over a concrete stain bearing the image of the Virgin Mary .

Khartoum has been governed by strict Islamic Sharia law since 1983 – but our correspondent says that in recent years courts have shown a degree of flexibility in their interpretations of Islamic law.
The introduction of Sharia exacerbated a rebellion that had begun in the south earlier that year. The war officially ended with a peace agreement in December.

Martin won’t allow Canadian troops into Iraq to support a post-war fledgling democracy, but he’ll send them into Sudan to prop up a post-democratic dictatorship in Canada.
So, get out your scorecards. Now that Buzz Hargrove is Finance Motel Minister, and Kilgour is in charge of Foreign Affairs, Chuck Cadman should step up and take aim at the Defense portfolio.
If the independant MP from British Columbia is a clever scamp, he’ll announce to waiting reporters that he can support the Paul Martin Liberals – if he reverses the government’s position on Canadian participation in Ballistic Missile Defense.

Benoit Corbeil is the next batter up. What he is expected to testify to may explain the desperation of the Libranos to prevent an immediate election call.
Via Greg Staples

By way of a commentor and Damian Penny at the Shotgun, CTV News is confirming that the Paul Martin Liberal Party will shortly announce that the Twelve Year Program begun under Jean Chretien to transform Canada into a full fledged Banana Repubic is nearing completion;

The Conservatives won a battle Thursday in their effort to force a non- confidence vote against the Liberal minority government, but it appears they could yet lose the war.
Minutes after the Tories won the right to proceed with an amendment later this month calling on the government to resign, the Liberals said they will simply ignore the call.
By tradition, the government must step down if it loses a vote on a money bill, such as the federal budget, but it’s not clear if the Tory amendment falls under that category.
The Speaker of the House of Commons ruled Thursday that the amendment, to a finance committee bill, was in order. That appeared to clear the way for a vote on the matter in about two weeks.
The Tories hold that if they win the vote, it requires the government to resign and call an election.
Not so fast, said government House leader Tony Valeri. He said the Liberals will refuse to recognize the amendment as a confidence motion and keep governing.

I speculated that the reason the Liberals have methodically eroded the Canadian Armed Forces, was to prevent the last hope of Canadians to remove them from power by military coup.
And people thought I was joking.

A Liberal party official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, revealed that the Liberal Party of Canada has chosen the Johnny Cash classic, “A Boy Named Sue”, as their campaign theme song.

Ezra Levant took on Joe Volpe on CTV last night.
Click on “Mike Duffy” and then the appropriate link under “related video”, and watch Joe Volpe claim he was talking about a different Klan…
Direct link here, thanks to Stephen Taylor.

With the publication ban finally lifted on testimony by chief Adscam mechanic, Chuck Guite before the Gomery Inquiry, the first direct connections have been drawn to both former PM Jean Chretien and current PM Paul Martin (then Canada’s Finance Minister.

CG: Because I met with Mr. Gagliano. �
ROY: What exactly did you tell him and what did you get by way of an answer?
CG: I told him what was happening, and I wanted assurance that the volume of business that V&B had from the government would be maintained. We probably talked about it and so forth, and he said �I will look after that.� So I don�t — if he spoke to Mr. Manley — I think he was at Tourism then —
ROY: He was responsible for Tourism Canada —
CG: — and the Bank —
ROY: — as Minister of Industry.
CG: And I think Mr. Martin was at the Bank at that time.
ROY: In 2000?
CG: Yes, I would think so.
ROY: He was Minister of Finance?
CG: Minister of Finance.
ROY: Yes.
CG: And I got a call from Pierre Tremblay about a week later.
ROY: Saying what?
CG: Saying that �It will be done.�
ROY: What will be done?
CG: The interfe — I don�t want to use that word — the Minister had spoken to both ministers and the volume of business would be maintained

Much, much more at Andrew Coyne. I’ve linked to the main page, as he has multiple posts – one which points out that the government owned CBC is not mentioning the Martin “smoking gun”. Most curious – unless one is aware of the tight group of Liberal patronage appointees on the corporation’s board.
This isn’t the first time Martin has been accused of interfering in advertising contracts in favour of Martin-friendly firms, though the Earnscliffe case falls outside the limited terms of reference for the Gomery Inquiry.
For his part, Paul Martin’s office has issued a blanket denial – and off to Holland he goes, in a reversal of an earlier decision not to attend VE Day ceremonies.
In a final twist, the company mentioned in the Guite testimony – Vickers and Benson – has tangled ties to the Canadian owned Power Corporation of BNP Paribas, Oil-For-Food, Maurice Strong, Paul Vocker, Jean Cretien, Paul Martin connections.
Woohoo!

It is clear however that Vickers & Benson contributed $93,852.44 from 1993 to 2003 to the Liberal Party, including a whopping $13,933.40 in 2000, the year of the sale. John Hayter, the chairman and CEO, donated $1000 in 2000 as well.

The mention of “Limpex Trading” in this post about the suspected entanglement of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (read the comments) in the oil-for-food scandal, has sent a Canadian blogger on a digging expedition. (His earlier research here.)
It seems he’s pulled up some unlinked pages listing oil-for-food contracts put “on hold” from a domain that fronts an anti-Iraq war website. I’d suggest someone get in and capture the source code on these pages before they go *poof*. A quick Google search suggests these are the only copies on the net.
Is it significant? Too soon to tell, but this looks worth following.

On April 3, 2004 I introduced The Libranos theme to small dead animals, complete with my own version of the logo from the popular HBO show, The Sopranos.

I also asked;

Corruption in the highest levels of government, with tentacles reaching into crown corporations, into the RCMP. Career beaurocrats ignoring the rules. Secret accounts. $100 million missing. Falsifying receipts. Shawinigate. Untendered aircraft purchases. TotalFinaElf-Desmarais-Chr�tien. Drug raids. Money laundering.
At what point does government wrongdoing cross the line into organized crime?

The Western Standard asked to borrow my meme, and came out with their own version of the logo, in the form of a cover story and a poster.

Canadian Press:

The Conservatives want an apology from Immigration Minister Joe Volpe for comparing them to the Ku Klux Klan. The Opposition party is made up of racists, Volpe said Tuesday, calling members recognizable “notwithstanding that they don’t have their cowl and their cape.”
“The Klan looks like it’s still very much alive,” the minister added.
Volpe made the comments in response to a poster prank in which two Conservative MPs refer to the Liberals as the The Liberanos, a mocking reference to the television Mafia show The Supranos.
“I think these are a couple of fine, upstanding members of the new Conservative Klan,” Volpe said, referring to a picture of Tory MPs Lee Richardson and Werner Schmidt holding a copy of the poster. [no spellcheckers at CP? – ed]

Oh Volpe … send me your fired up, your curious, your teeming masses Googling to be free…
Man. This blogging thing is getting to be a lot of fun.
(By reader request, video of Volpe. The remark occurs at around the 40min mark)

119. (1) Every one who
(a) being the holder of a judicial office, or being a member of Parliament or of the legislature of a province, corruptly
(i) accepts or obtains,
(ii) agrees to accept, or
(iii) attempts to obtain,
any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment for himself or another person in respect of anything done or omitted or to be done or omitted by him in his official capacity, or
(b) gives or offers, corruptly, to a person mentioned in paragraph (a) any money, valuable consideration, office, place or employment in respect of anything done or omitted or to be done or omitted by him in his official capacity for himself or another person …

….is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

This is radioactive.

Random Notes has an cautionary post up about the history of the Krever (tainted blood) Inquiry;

What is interesting about the Krever case is that after years of legal wrangling, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, Justice Krever’s right to assign blame was ultimately affirmed (see Mapleleafweb for a useful overview of the powers of public inquiries and a summary of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Krever case).
But what the Krever case also shows is that if misconduct is found, named parties are prone to engage in legal tactics to prevent or delay the release of an inquiry’s report. The timeline of the Krever Commission is quite revealing:

Krever’s report was finally brought down – after 4 years. With Chretien already challenging Gomery in the courts, and lawyers for those charged criminally arguing for a delay in their trials, might the Paul Martin Liberals be pulling the “Krever play” from the handbook?

Greg Staples blogged an interview of Paul Martin by Roy Green.
Isn’t the blogosphere cool? Now a dithering politician’s non-answers to real questions on local talk radio can go nationwide!

Andrew Coyne has a briefcase full of documents about Paul Martin’s interference on behalf of Earnscliffe during his years in Finance. Check it out.

With the white noise of Liberal Party money dumps across the nation, not as much attention is being paid to the Chuck Guite testimony at the Gomery inquiry. However, what little news is trickling out hints that Guite’s testimony is as explosive as that of Jean Brault.
So, watch for the Liberal mantra to “wait for Gomery” to intensify. This is crucial to their game plan.
If the Liberals can survive long enough for public rage to subside, and extend his government’s life the full length of Gomery’s mandate, he’ll be in the clear – for Paul Martin is fully aware of the fact that Judge Gomery is prohibited from assigning blame under his terms of reference.
paragraph K;

The Commissioner be directed to perform his duties without expressing any conclusion or recommendation regarding the civil or criminal liability of any person or organization and to ensure that the conduct of the inquiry does not jeopardize any ongoing criminal investigation or criminal proceedings;

So, with the report effectively pre-sterilized and a national media overwhelmingly in his corner, Paul Martin is virtually assured of a report he can “take to the bank” when it comes to denying civil or criminal wrongdoing on the part of the Liberal party.
Jean Brault, Paul Coffin, Chuck Guite – it won’t matter what they testify to, or if they implicate the highest elected officials in the land – Gomery cannot lay blame. Neat, eh?

Just a reminder of where Gomery fits in the grand scheme of things…

And that doesn’t include Indian Affairs or the Crowns.
On the topic of Crown Corporations, and converging with a Montreal Gazette article on Gagliano and Canada Lands featured by Andrew Coyne today, a couple of background items landed in my inbox this morning;

Every two weeks between 1996 and 1998, a well-heeled Montreal businessman would breeze into the downtown offices of Canada Lands, the federal Crown corporation that sells surplus government land.

Plus, this press release from 2002;

The former Quebec headquarters for the Canadian Army, located at 3530 Atwater Avenue in Montreal was appraised in 1995 at $9 million, but later sold in 1999 for $4 million!� At the time of the transaction in 1999, when the land was actually sold, the market value was conservatively estimated to be worth $12 million.�

Keep that in mind when you hear “wait for Gomery”. Concerns that Gomery will whitewash what happened are misplaced.
Gomery is the whitewash.

A great post at Gin and Tonic that peels away the layers of misrepresentation by Paul Martin about the powers of Justice Gomery – that ” Only he can cut through the partisan politics. Only he can tell us what happened and who was responsible.”
Well, it turns out that he can’t. He’s not actually permitted to do that under his terms of reference. Go read the whole thing, and then raise some hell with your national news broadcaster of choice. Ask them why they haven’t called Martin out on this?
h/t Strongworld.
BTW – does anyone have an email for Robert Fife?

Bono fans boo Paul Martin. He’s working hard to make up for that, though. Today he’s in Winnipeg and Regina, making spending announcements #80 and #81 – of the week. About 6.3 billion worth, when you tack on Buzz Hargroves budget amendment.
BTW – if you want to track how quickly Paul Martin, Jack Layton and friends are shovelling your money away, bookmark this page… today’s entries: