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