A week ago, Charlebois noticed the devil in the details;

Poor Jack.� He thought he had a deal with the Liberals but instead he’s been made a fool.� On the NDP’s website, they proudly proclaim the “first ever NDP budget” passed in 2005, referring to Bill-C48, which sure enough has passed and received Royal Assent.�
[…]
But when Jack came out saying he no longer supported the government, did he do so knowing about the details of C-66 and the Liberals near- contempt for parliament?� Check it out.� In C-66, the Liberals have introduced legislation detailing how that $900 million will be handed out.� Part 2 deals with energy efficiency and Part 3 deals with Public Transit.� (e.g. in Part 3, they actually name the Minister who will requisition the money, and count out how much will be spent each year!)� Bill C-66 has only just gotten to first reading; no one has yet even spoken about it in the House.�
Once parliament has expressed its opinion on one subject you can’t go back and try the same thing again to get a different result.� Everyone thought C-48 was a fait accompli.� Now the crafty Liberals have stuffed enough new measures into C-66 that they will be able to dodge that charge (some good lawyers could maybe prove otherwise).� However, if C-66 isn’t passed, then that $900M Jack promised every Mayor in Canada and that his website claims to have delivered will not materialize.
Basically, with C-66, the gov’t lawyers will be able to say that all C-48 did was put $900M into the bank ready to be spent.� But C-66 is required to, y’know, actually spend it.� Heh and something tells me the gov’t won’t be in any hurry to pass C-66.� Surprise surprise, Jack’s been double-crossed.� Get used to Martin & the Gang everyone, they’re not going anywhere.

Today, Darcey had thoughts of C-66 dancing in his head in response to Paul Martin’s carrot and stick performance that promised to yank a $250 fuel rebate from shivering Canadians;

This rebate is a part of Bill C-66 so I wonder how sincere he really is:

“The bill was introduced on October 6th, 2005. No money will flow to any Canadian until the bill is passed by both the House of Commons and the Senate. To date, the Liberals have pulled Bill C-66 from the Order of Business three times � October 19th, 24th, and 27th � which seems to indicate that they are not interested in passing this legislation as a priority.”

Emphasis mine.

Beryl P. Wajsman isn’t impressed with the Gomery report. Or Martin. Or Sheila Fraser, or the media or nearly anyone, it seems. Though, I like this part;

We did not find out why there is no Inquiry into the reported $167,000 in Canada Steamship Lines contracts awarded during Mr. Martin�s tenure as Finance Minister being in reality $167,000,000. Nor why there is no Inquiry into the millions of dollars of contracts awarded to Earnscliffe Strategies where many of Mr. Martin�s political operatives worked. Nor why there is no Inquiry into the $1.5 billion dollars in guarantees awarded under Mr. Martin�s watch as Finance Minister in favour of Bombardier whose lobbyist was Mike Robinson, a principal in Earnscliffe and national campaign co-chair for Mr. Martin, who admitted on CTV to having talked with Mr. Martin�s Chief of Staff on this file. Nor why there is no Inquiry into the CSL affiliates transferred to the tax haven of Barbados that, according to Radio- Canada�s �Enjeux� documentary, avoided $300,000,000 of taxes by taking advantage of rule changes enacted while Mr. Martin was Finance Minister. But then one can reasonably conclude that Mr. Martin was not �mad as hell� about these matters since some of them touched very close to home and were beginning to appear almost daily in the press just before the Auditor- General�s report in February of 2004.

By the way, Wajsman was one of those “banned for life” from Liberal Party membership, though he states he wasn’t named in any wrongdoing. He wasn’t a member, either.
Give it a read.

Paul Martin has applied the “Public Safety and Anti-Terrorism” model to purge the the Liberal Party of Canada of Adscam suspects;

However, party officials admitted yesterday that only three of the 10 people that Mr. Martin banned for life from the Liberal Party of Canada for their role in the sponsorship scandal are still members of the party.
Nor does it appear that Mr. Martin can arbitrarily toss them out. Under the constitution of the party’s Quebec wing, the party’s board of directors can suspend or revoke a membership in the party, but only after giving the member notice as well as a hearing.
The party is also checking to see if it can even legally ban someone for life.

Of course, it could have been worse – he might have created a Canadian Liberal Registry.

Busted;

For several years, an exasperated Abbotsford businessman has been getting misdirected e- mails containing inside information about the Liberal government. Bill Sadar has seen details of planned political machinations, draft press releases, an e-mail containing racial epithets and references to sex acts. He’s even received such sensitive data as credit card numbers.
But the final straw, he said, was a recent e-mail outlining a scheme aimed at discrediting two of Conservative leader Stephen Harper’s star candidates.
The message was from Ruth Thorkelson, a long-time senior Paul Martin adviser who recently left as deputy chief of staff, and who says she is now helping MPs and candidates as a volunteer.
Her message, to Liberal MP Judi Longfield, outlined plans to leak to “a friendly media outlet” accusations that Tory candidates Jim Flaherty and John Baird are violating the Canada Elections Act.
[…]
Among the e-mails Sadar shared with The Sun:
– On May 10, Jean Collins, of the federal Western Economic Diversification Canada’s Saskatoon office, sent Sadar a news release on a pending announcement, along with a draft copy of possible media questions and answers. It was intended for Gerry Maffre, assistant deputy minister at Infrastructure Canada.
– In June, the Liberal party’s Quebec wing sent Sadar an invitation to a Quebec Young Liberals “mega happy hour” gathering at a bar. It also sent him an e-mail around the same time outlining Liberal party defence of ethics of party volunteers at the Gomery Inquiry into the sponsorship scandal.
– An e-mail from Liberal-connected Vancouver lobbyist John Paul Fraser urges political staffers from Industry Canada, Transport Canada, and Infrastructure Canada to help arrange a meeting with the Fraser River Port Authority and a handful of top bureaucrats. The subject was the port’s demand for funds for dredging in order to prevent flooding.
– Sadar provided the racist and lewd e-mail to The Sun on condition that no details were published that would identify the government employees involved. However, it referred to sexual boasts by government employees and a reference to the sexual predilections of a person from a certain ethnic group.

Very nice.
While others concentrate on the leak of a planned smear campaign by the “Entitlement Liberals” using Government of Canada assets, I have different question – just who is this “friendly media outlet” Ruth Thorkelson refers to?
More, thanks to “Shaken” in the comments. Hansard;

Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland/Colchester, CPC): Mr. Speaker, Ruth Thorkelson worked in the Prime Minister’s Office for 10 straight years. She left only long enough to negotiate a $17 million grant from international trade to the Forest Products Association of Canada. Then a staffer in the office of the Minister of International Trade, Andre Albinati, followed that grant money to Earnscliffe which received $800,000 of the $17 million grant.
What is the point in having post-employment rules when the Prime Minister allows this abuse to go on?
[…]
When the Forest Products Association of Canada received the $17 million grant, it first gave $800,000 to Earnscliffe advertising, untendered. Then it gave approximately $8 million to the Burson-Marsteller agency. Now Burson-Marsteller is buying Earnscliffe.
Under the terms of the grant, they were required to produce four reports on how they spent the money. Will the minister make public the four required reports so we will know for sure that the grant money is not funding the purchase of Earnscliffe?

Paul Martin has forwarded the Gomery Report to the RCMP – and by the looks of things, they’re already on the case!

Great post by Stephen Taylor, who was on Parliament Hill for the post-Gomery action;

Yes, I heckled the former Prime Minister as he arrived to give perhaps the most serious press conference of his life and it got a good response from the press waiting out in the cold. Chretien bowed his head and grimaced as he walked into the building without a word. I guess that this perhaps one advantage of being a blogger instead of a full fledged member of the mainstream media; you get to rip into politicos when they deserve it while not risking your media clout.

Time for a little reminiscing …

Translation and comments.
more…

With the Gomery report now in the hands of Librano Spin Central, it’s just a matter of hours before the public gets a refresher course on testimony the blogosphere has already hashed and rehashed over the past months. That’s probably a good thing. (Speaking of spin – it’s important to note that the decision to send the report to Paul Martin in advance of its release to Parliament was by the direction of, who else? Prime Minister Paul Martin – not Justice Gomery.)

If the past is any indication, the national media will seize upon a few quotable quotes and recycle, analyze and dissect those to buy time while they wait for the first poll results to come in – with the usual cast of Harper critics on “standby” should it appear the Conservatives are climbing in the polls.
This thread is for your Gomery related comments, trackbacks and links. I’ll try to update this post during the day, as work permits. For that reason, I’ll leave it at the top of the page until Wednesday.
(Speaking of which, it’s been a long day in the paint booth, so don’t expect much more from me this evening.)

---

Canadian Conservative sees a lose-lose situation for Paul Martin – because the “Little Guy From Shawinigan” isn’t going to take the fall for this without a fight.
Where’s Belinda?
Paul Martin, Jean Lapierre and Scott Brison are holding press conference at 1 PM to respond to the Gomery report, while Reg Alcock and Jean Lapierre are scheduled for another press conference at 4 PM .
From a CPC media release;

According to media reports, Martin last night met with a handful of select ministers, including Treasury Board President Reg Alcock, Public Works Minister Scott Brison, Transport Minister Jean Lapierre and Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan. (Toronto Star, November
1, 2005). Oddly, while the Transport Minister will be attending both press conferences and other ministers have been involved in shaping the Liberal government’s response to Gomery, no mention is made of Belinda Stronach, the minister supposedly responsible for responding to Gomery’s recommendations.� Why is Stronach not involved in the response if she is the minister who is supposed to be responsible for this file?�

[emphasis mine]
The Globe and Mail claims to have inside info on the contents of the report.

Ottawa � Former prime minister Jean Chr�tien will get hit with a finding of blame by Mr. Justice John Gomery today, but Prime Minister Paul Martin will not, The Globe and Mail has learned.
Among those receiving a negative finding alongside Mr. Chr�tien will be former bureaucrat Chuck Guit�, former minister of public works Alfonso Gagliano, Liberal fundraiser and Chr�tien supporter Jacques Corriveau, and Mr. Chr�tien’s long-time chief of staff, Jean Pelletier.

Does this mean Canadians can expect consequences, such an official investigation and punitive action against whoever leaked the contents? Or, will everyone just assume this is the same old, same old – the powers that be at the Globe stepping up to the plate to help Paul Martin pre-spin the report to blunt its edge?
Tough question, both organizations being equally trustworthy.

---

Looks like Gomery came down harder on Chretien & Co. than anyone expected, or at least, than the talking heads at CTV expected – a relief, in view of concerns that he’d soft pedal the report because of the restrictions of “Paragraph K” in preventing laying of blame.
I’m not going to attempt to live blog any of this. But I’ll point you to an article by Greg Weston that puts the Gomery report in context – and reminds the reader of the two heroes of Adscam, and of how this inquiry only touched on the massive and long-standing Librano reward system in awarding of advertising contracts across goverment.
If there’s anyting lacking from The Gomery Report, it’s a sub-title: “Tip Of An Iceberg”.
Listening to CTV right now, Gomery is stressing this point. Good job, sir.
LaFlamme is talking about the consequences for whistleblower Alan Cutler. Not one word that it had nothing to do with Sponsorship – that he blew the whistle on Paul Martin awarding an improper contract to Earnscliffe.
Report is here
A brief summary at Darcey’s.
“Gomery Pyle” takes a kick at Warren Kinsella.
Also – a very good roundup at Robot Guy. Stephen Taylor was at Chretien’s press conference heckling? That deserves a post of its own.

A story that begs an obvious question;

The Liberal party is preparing to return bags of cash purloined from the public purse.
Prime Minister Paul Martin is preparing a late-night huddle with a small circle of advisers on Parliament Hill on Monday…

What do they mean by “return”?

Within hours or days of its release, the party plans to dip into a $750,000 trust fund it recently set aside to refund taxpayers.
“We know we will have a responsibility to reimburse the government of Canada,” said the Liberals’ national director, Steven MacKinnon.
“Anyone convicted of wrongdoing – we don’t want that money. We don’t want any part of it.”

The ADSCAM cash has been long spent – some of it winning the last election. And with the donation-challenged Martin Liberals now dependant on new rules that automatically refill campaign coffers through the public purse (on the basis of numbers of votes cast), Paul Martin is going to set matters right – by paying us back with our own money.

Tune into Peterwarren.ca if you can’t pick him on on radio. He has a former high-ranking official from the Canadian Mint on at the moment, who is disputing the Liberals claims that David Dingwall was responsible for “turning around the fortunes” of the Canadian Mint.
Initial point: the price of gold has skyrocketed since Dingwall took the posting. (From $330 – $475)
(The media can sound a collective “D’oh!” now.)
Listen live here. If you catch this post after the fact, the show keeps radio archives.

Ralph Goodale makes it official – the only Canadians who are allowed to shield income and retirement savings from the insatiable vacuum of Liberal government taxation are those with holdings in the shipping industry. CPC candidate for Wascana, Brad Farquhar has the dirty details;

It all started with this report from Canaccord Capital, in which they tell Ralph Goodale that he screwed up, and that he’s hurting every Canadian.
Canaccord Capital: Trust Reform Hurts Canadians
Wow! The feds are worried about $300 million in tax leakage, and as a result, they wiped $23 billion out of the retirement funds of Canadians. Only a Liberal would call that a good return on investment.
So then the Media picked the story:
National Post: Trust backlash mounts
Globe & Mail: Canaccord goes on attack over trusts

At one time I had a lot of time and respect for Ralph Goodale. Regardless of what one thought of his choice of political affiliation, he had a reputation for being an honest and committed MP, serving his riding well. As I said – at one time.
I know the exact moment when that respect evaporated. Unlike most Canadians, I’ve actually read much of the testimony to the Public Accounts Committee regarding the awarding of improper contracts predating “Adscam” that placed then Finance Minister Paul Martin’s personal leadership campaign team – aka “Earnscliffe” – on the public payroll.
When challenged on this testimony in the House of Commons, Goodale cited a 1997 audit by Ernst and Young in Martin’s defense. The very same audit that he, as a central figure in Paul Martin’s cabinet and current Finance MInister had to have known had been “cleansed” and subsequently discredited in testimony given before Justice John Gomery.
Perhaps the “Honest Ralph” schtick was an act from the get go. Or perhaps he’s feeling the pressure in having realized, a little too late, that he’d traded in his own personal integrity to serve the interests of a wholely corrupt organization. Whatever the case, it seems to be getting to him. Ralph’s on a short fuse these days.

Finance Minister Ralph Goodale lashed out Thursday at a Bay Street investment dealer’s efforts to rally public opposition to Ottawa’s controversial review of the booming income trust sector.
Goodale accused Canaccord Capital Corp., of playing “partisan politics” and following the wishes of Opposition Conservatives with its call for Canadians to lobby their MPs to fight Goodale’s plans to reform the sector.
The report was first shown to him by Conservative MP John Reynolds, whose son is a senior employee at the Toronto-based brokerage, Goodale said outside a regular meeting of the federal cabinet.
“Obviously this particular firm has chosen to take a very political, a very partisan approach,” Goodale said.
“It was John Reynolds. . .the former interim leader of the Conservative Party, that presented the document to me, while he was informing me. . .that it was his son that basically runs the company – which I thought was an interesting partisan comment on his part.”
One day earlier, Canaccord – a well-known Bay Street investment dealer – issued a condemnation of Goodale’s review of income trusts, suggesting it threatens billions of dollars in retirement income by potentially destroying the sector.
“We question whether the consultation process with the Department of Finance will be balanced or is it just a sham,” wrote Canaccord Capital analysts.
“Bay Street cannot protect your investments on this issue, as it alone does not carry political weight,” adds the report, which includes the names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of every Member of Parliament.
“The intentional or unintentional destruction of the existing trust market does not need to happen.”
The comments weren’t politically motivated but instead designed to warn the Liberal government the review is creating huge uncertainty for global investors, added Chris Rankin, one of the authors of the Canaccord report.

I suppose it’s time the investment industry started looking into stashing your retirement savings into foreign-registered shipping lines and offshore tax havens and just be done with it.
Be sure to read all of Brad’s post. And if you’re in his riding, be sure to get him elected.

COPPS: But I think the differentiation is a bit of an Ottawa myth, because I don’t think for the public, whomever is responsible, whatever comes out of the Gomery inquiry, I think there are some people on the hill who think they can build this huge wall between the current administration and the previous administration. And most Canadians go, hey, you were there.� You were part of the government.� It’s not going to wash.� So I think whatever comes out of Gomery, you know, take a page from the David Dingwall book.� There were an awful lot of people last week saying all kinds of horrible things about David Dingwall, most of which have proven to be unsubstantiated or, or unable to prove.� So, I’m a little skeptical because I was told during the course of Gomery that there was a very close connection between the questions that were asked by the chief counsel and indeed some of the, the people who are working in the current administration.� Blackberries work very well between people.
DUFFY: So you were told that some of the people here in the Paul Martin PMO were feeding lines…
COPPS: Yeah.
DUFFY: …to the chief counsel of the Gomery Commission, lines of inquiry to follow up?
COPPS: They were Blackberries.� And I’d love to get access to those Blackberries.� Now that I’m a reporter I think I’ll put in an access request to get the Blackberries.
DUFFY: So again, this would be the Martin camp trying to besmirch the Chretien camp.� A settling of old scores.
COPPS: And I don’t think. You know what?� I don’t think it’s a question of besmirching.
DUFFY: I mean we have no proof of this though.
COPPS: I think what they want to show, what they want to show is, vote for us because we’re a new team.� And when a government’s been around for four years or potentially five years, five terms, they have to differentiate themselves and show newness.� So that was the strategy.� They didn’t wake up one morning and say I’m going to go after the previous guys.� I think it was more, how do I survive.� I survive by trying to show that I’m not them.

National Post;

Prime Minister Paul Martin says the Americans have an obligation to help stop the smuggling of guns into Canada.
Martin made the comment Monday as his government prepares a series of gun-control initiatives aimed at curbing a wave of violence in Toronto. Those measures, which sources say could include suing U.S. weapons manufacturers, will be announced next month. But the prime minister used a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to press the issue immediately.
He said the Americans expect Ottawa to help keep their borders secure and Canada expects the same in return.
“The Americans ask us to do things in terms of the border; I think there’s an obligation on their side to work with us to prevent gun-smuggling into Canada,” Martin told a news conference.
The prime minister said up to half the gun crimes in Canada involve weapons smuggled from the United States.

Spokespersons in the Prime Minister’s office refused to confirm that Paul Martin plans to meet next with Jamaican officials about working with the Federal and Ontario governments to staunch the flow of trigger-pullers into Canada.
It seems to me that the Liberals are going about this all backwards. With clear evidence that crime rates in the United States are inversely proportional to the rate of gun ownership, the solution to the problem of “gun crime” in Canada is obvious – smuggle in more Americans!
update… a McLellan-Martin flip flop?

I usually leave these opportunities to other blogs to have fun with, but I’m making an exception for this one.

I’ll announce the winners on Wednesday.

On the Abotech comments thread below, I caught this entry by “Justzumgai” in response to news that Reg Alcock has announced $40 million in new annual spending to hire up to 300 new auditors. (As an aside – I’ll remind readers that this is the same Liberal government that slashed the number of auditors across government, including the Dingwall/Gagliano/Guite Department of Money Laundering Public Works.)

Whether you have more auditors or less auditors, the waste and theft will continue. The very programs themselves whose alleged integrity the auditors are trying to protect are nothing but nasty and dishonest attempts to buy votes. All of these programs are based on the premise that ordinary citizens and their own voluntary, private and local associations are somehow too ineffective to ever manage anything as complicated as a visit to a doctor’s office; planning for retirement; educating one’s children; and so on.
How do you “protect the integrity” of a health care system, the only two major products of which seem to be (a) rich doctors and unionized staff and bureaucracies, and (b) sick and crippled patients sitting at home waiting for an MRI, a radiation treatment, an angioplasty, or whatever. Oh yes, I forgot – you protect the integrity of the system by establishing “scientifically valid” waiting-list baseline measurements, and you use the rest of the money on a propaganda campaign to blame the victims for being too fat.
And are the auditors to protect the taxpayers so that education money is spent on even higher teachers’ and bureaucrats’ salaries, and even more trendy but useless computers and software? So that an even higher proportion of illiterate and innumerate graduates can be turned out into an even bigger wasteland of lost jobs?
So, Dear Canadians, I would have advised you all to roll up the Gomery Report and related Liberal Party policy papers, and stick them in your pipe and smoke them – but I understand that the government is soon going to start using taxpayers’ money to buy people crack cocaine and heroin.
So instead, just ignore the judge’s, auditors’ and politicians’ reports, drop out, quit, take a out a second mortgage on your house, max out all your credit cards, and sit back and wait for your government to take care of you in the way that you truly deserve.

A cynical conclusion, but given how many Canadians in the ridings of Gimme’-Gimme’, Ottawa Pork and Entitled-N’How embrace the nanny state approach to failure and criminality in this country, perhaps it’s not such bad advice. After all, it’s what they’ve been voting for – with the full expectation that others have a “moral obligation” to foot the bill.

A quote from the latest in a series of posts on Liberal MP David Smith at Angry At The GWN;

So David Smith maintains his links with Jaguar and ASM, which are closely linked to each other.
They both seem to make a good living off of federal contracts, especially those intersecting aboriginal concerns and territories.
Then he splits off to work out of his home for Abotech, a company with no apparent employees or facilities, landing hundreds of thousands in government public works contracts dedicated to aboriginal companies.
Here’s my theory. Abotech is a front for non-aboriginal companies like Jaguar. The government hires “aboriginal” company Abotech to do the work and thus meets its own goal for supporting aboriginal companies. But Abotech is a shell, and after David Smith takes his cut, he passes the work off to Jaguar or to ASM, which are legit, though non- aboriginal, computer firms.
Neither Jaguar nor ASM are listed in the Aboriginal Business Directory, though Abotech is.
It works because David Smith is a status aboriginal

Go read the whole thing.

The judgement is now online.

Here’s a letter that’s bound to set off the conspiracy theorists in the ranks of conservatives…

Paul Martin did some pre-election Oktoberfest visiting in Kitchener-Waterloo on October 12th and how coincidental is it that on the day before he arrived regular gasoline was priced at 95.9/litre and on the day of his visit gas dropped to 85/litre? Earlier in the week the gas had been as high at 103.
The PM flew to Owen Sound that day and their gas matched Kitchener’s. I had an appointment in Owen Sound so I saw they had lowered the gas prices. It’s a 2 hours drive between Kitchener and Owen Sound and the gas was high in all areas between the two cities. I drove back to Kitchener the next day after the PM’s visit and gas was up to 99.9 cents per litre.
Just a note on the side: Harper had visited the area a week earlier and visited a local private gas bar, had a press conference and pumped some gas – but the gas didn’t drop on his visit.

Announcing an RCMP investigation into who is responsible for the leak of contents of the Gomery ADSCAM report to the media?

Justice John Gomery will report in less than two weeks that the Quebec sponsorship scheme was a narrowly held secret with broadly dangerous implications for government integrity.
After months of conflicting testimony, the Quebec Superior Court judge will load much of the blame for the mutant $250- million program on a group of loyalists clustered around former prime minister Jean Chr�tien.
But in the first of two reports, Gomery will also conclude that controls to protect taxpayers failed under political pressure, making it child’s play for rogue civil servants to direct contracts to Liberal-friendly advertising firms.
Gomery will lay bare what many Canadians suspect: An elite few routinely and for ruling party advantage abused a system that buckled and then failed.

Of course, the inquiry was set up to achieve precisely this result. By narrowly limiting Judge Gomery to testimony about transactions involved in the Sponsorship program – and only the Sponsorship program – Paul Martin has been able to protect himself from embarrassing disclosures of how the Public Works audit that uncovered ADSCAM was triggered by events involving the rigging of an unrelated contract by the Finance Department.
None of this clumsy obfuscation would be possible in a country with a diverse and independant media. (I’ll also suggest that none of it would be likely in a country where Senators and Governors General were elected, instead of plucked from the “journalistic” whorew ranks.)
For that reason, expect the leak to be breathlessly seized upon for its disclosures and not the more curious question about who did the leaking, and who stands to gain from it.
And as you listen to the chattering classes debate the findings, remember that we would have remained forever in the dark about Gagliano and Guite and envelopes stuffed with cash, had not Public Works employee Alan Cutler blown the whistle – on Paul Martin’s desire to place his own personal Liberal party leadership team on the public payroll.

The Fraser Institute has released a summary of federal government waste, mismanagement and outright misrepresentation based on Auditor General reports from 1992 to 2005;

20 separate instances in which contract or parliamentary rules were broken, similar to the current circumstances surrounding the sponsorship scandal.

11 instances of government failure dealing with sensitive information such as Social Insurance Numbers (SINs) and immigration information. For example, more than half of current SINs have no supporting documentation and there are 5 million more SINs for Canadians over the age of 20 than there are people in that age group.

22 problems were investigated at the Department of National Defence (DND), more than any other identified department. One example of the many problems at DND was the department?s eight year development of a $174 million satellite communication system, which DND concluded was less efficient than the commercial system it had already been using.
A more recent example is a $220 million radar system, originally estimated to cost $43.1 million, which only works during daylight and calm weather.

A startling 65 examples were found amongst the 284 cases of government failure involving some type of capital misallocation, indicating large-scale inefficient use of resources.

The full report is here. (PDF)
It’s not just the Fraser Institute digging. At Black Rod they’ve discovered this intriguing passage from “Money on the Run-Canada and How the World’s Dirty Profits are Laundered” (Penguin) by investigative reporter Mario Possamai.

“On April 19, 1970, a handful of Canada’s most powerful businessmen met privately at the elegant Montreal home of financier Paul Desmarais. What brought them together was the worrying rise of the Parti Quebecois, a growing force in the Quebec provincial elections that were about to be held.”
“Within days of the gathering, a secret anti-separatism fund was up and running. It was controlled by a trusted Liberal Party bagman. The fund came to light more by accident than design – as a result of theft charges laid against the bagman. It briefly illuminated a usually murky side of Canadian politics-how confidential pools of money are (often legally) raised, laundered, and spent.”
The group raised $55,000, “a hefty sum in the days before the inflationary ravages of the lates 70s and early 80s.”
“The money did not go directly to the separatist-fighting Liberal Party or into its regular account at Montreal Trust. Instead the money went to veteran Liberal bagman Louis de Gonzague Giguere, Pierre Trudeau’s first Senate appointee.”
Giguere was known (affectionately, they say) as “Giggery Bill” on account of his backroom skills. He was Chief Liberal Party Organizer for Quebec in the 1963, 1965 and 1968 elections. He was eventually charged with influence peddling and with theft of left-over slush fund money. He was acquitted, reluctantly, by the judge who said he couldn’t be sure who, if anyone, had been defrauded. (Watch for that defence in Adscam.) Giguere died in June, 2002 at the age of 90.
“According to Giguere, the contributions stocked a secret fund to “fight separatism in all its forms.”
Within days of getting the money, he quickly began dispensing it.
“On April 27, 1970, a cheque for $3,000.50 went to JEAN CHRETIEN, then a federal cabinet minister.”

Think of it as the “Sponsorship Scholarship”.
Read the rest.