“I have never had a lunch with Claude Boulay or anybody else to discuss the direction of contracts, directing contracts, intervening in contracts, that’s just simply not my style of politics,” he said, referring to the Montreal ad executive.
Asked if he had lunch with Boulay to discuss something else, Martin told reporters Thursday: “I can’t recall having had lunch with him since we formed the government.”

A long time was spent on crafting this answer…. and it shows.
Too many qualifiers. The safety valve: “recall”. “since”.
Paul Martin has just broadcast that there are skeletons in his closet.
This was not a man who had a question thrown to him from the blue. The details and personalities involved in this scandal have been on the public record for many months.
Paul Martin works closely with a team (teams?) of advisors. His people will have scoured every agenda book, every office record, every telephone log, to ensure that they are aware of any and every figure that Martin may have had contact with who is implicated.
When the question about Paul Martin’s lunch with Claude Bouley were asked in the House, he would have known instantly if there was truth in the accusation. A man who was completely out of the loop, who had no knowledge, would have known that his team had confirmed that. And he would have been able to state as much, without qualifiers.
He waited three days to answer, and then parsed his words extremely carefully. He waited because he couldn’t be sure if they had missed something. He stalled for a reason – they were checking their records.
He’s lying. He knew.

The Black Rod has been collecting federal sponsorship trivia – in Manitoba.

Canada’s National Ukrainian Festival was given $30,000 in 2001. However an access-to-information request showed that the festival had actually been awarded $34,500 by Public Works Canada.
Festival organizers were told that the other $4,500 was a commission to Compass Communications in Halifax. They were told to send a bill to Compass, but to make the bill out to Media/IDA in Montreal. The letter to the Ukrainian Festival was written by Pierre Tremblay, a very familiar name in the Adscam investigation.
Conservative MP Bill Casey asked the obvious question in the House of Commons:
“Does the minister have any idea at all why Public Works would tell a Manitoba organization to send this bill through one Liberal advertising agency in Nova Scotia and have it funnelled through another one in Montreal for an event in Manitoba to be paid for by Ottawa?
Did the government pay commissions to Media/IDA Vision in Montreal or did it pay commissions to Compass Communications in Halifax, or did it pay commissions to both of these Liberal advertising firms?”
He never got a straight answer. Nor has anyone.
Compass is owned by Tony Blom, a Liberal strategist who is also related to former Nova Scotia Liberal party president Gerald Blom.
Government records show it received $463,365 in commissions and more than $4.6 million for production costs related to events between 1998 and 2001.
The names Compass and Tremblay showed up again in documents surrounding sponsorship of the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg in 1999. Compass Communications billed $1.6 million in fees and commissions.
Objections were raised as to whether the sponsorship project met the government’s own rules. “Pay it,” said Tremblay, who overruled the naysayers.
NDP MP Pat Martin has invoices showing the Pan Am Games Society received $634,000. A letter dated May 1, 1999, from Games president Don MacKenzie to Blom indicates the group was expecting another $300,000 from Compass. He’s still wondering where that money went.
“I believe this sponsorship program blew way out of control,” said Pat Martin. “It appears to have turned into a cash cow. The abuse began immediately and the abuse extended it seems beyond Quebec’s borders at least to Halifax and now to Winnipeg.”

You can obtain a full copy of the article by email: Black Rod.

Ordinarily, I would scarcely be interested in an obscure, failed Liberal Party candidate from the west (where using words “failed” and “obscure” when describing Liberals place one in jeopardy of literary redundancy). Different strokes for different folks, though. Don at All Things Canadian seems to think Jim Travers take is worth reading today.

If paying party workers with taxpayer dollars worked in Quebec, then why not elsewhere? In fact, way back in 2002 The Toronto Star reported that similar tactics were allegedly used coast-to-coast.
In Atlantic Canada, a fantasy federal contract is said to have paid a provincial Liberal campaign organizer. Out West, a prospective candidate’s salary was allegedly reimbursed through inflated advertising payments.
Neither case has been tested in court or heard by Gomery, who is narrowly focused on Quebec. And it’s also true there is little incentive to break what until now has been a circle of silence protected with all the ferocity of junkyard dogs.
Will Brault’s surprisingly candid revelations finally expose all that noise as just the yapping of those with much to hide?

Unfortunately, Travers is factually incorrect.
Unlike most people who write about dogs or use them as colourful metaphors, I have actually trained a few – including, once upon a time, a personal protection dog.
Good junkyard dogs don’t bark. They don’t act ferociously. A professionally trained junkyard dog remains sleeping in the sun while you approach his compound. He snaps at a buzzing fly in response to that stick you’re running against the fence. When the wirecutters come out, he sits up, sends you a direct gaze …. and scratches an itchy ear with hind leg.
Until you’ve breached the wire and crossed that invisible boundary into the region of No Possible Escape (also know as the World Of Hurt) there will be no indication whatsoever that you’ve awakened anything more dangerous than someone’s geriatric pet.
No, Mr Travers – junkyard dogs don’t yap.
Poodles do.

MKBratten:

The Montreal firm that conducted the review (or audit if you talk to a Liberal MP) on the Quebec wing of the Liberal party’s finances, *Samson Blair Deloitte & Touche*, the same firm that has donated over $100,000 to the party, has previously employed MP Pierre Pettigrew, Minister of Foreign Affairs, as vice president.

It’s confirmed on his website.
Update: Sean just dumped a boatload of links in the comments on this. If they’re all as good as the first one…