Politics: Canada: 'Elite few routinely and for ruling party advantage abused a system that buckled and then failed'

A blockbuster article by Jim Travers in Toronto Star (Hat Tip to Norman Spector) outlines what he says we should expect in two weeks from the Gomery Commission in the first of its reports. In Justice John Gomery's target-scope are a gaggle of loyalists devoted to former Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, who apparently engineered the siphoning off of $250 million mostly to advertizing firms in Qubébec in cahoots around the Chrétien scheme to influence the referendum on the province's possible secession from Canada and, thus, to establish an independent French-speaking nation with its own state.

While many of us are quite glad that Québec is still among the Canadian provinces and its citizens still Canadian citizens, the pall cast by the so-called Adscam Scandal, bringing into question whether advertizing funds tipped the outcome of the vote and thus lessens the sense we have of its authenticity, the pall cast by that salient feature of l'affaire Chrétien is by no means the only one.

Part of the reason for additional and somewhat contradictory outcomes of the $250 millions' disappearance is that some significant part of the money did not pay for referendum advertizing by stealth, but actually bawt no product or service at all of a bona fide advertizing nature. Apparently, Chrétien's elite loyalists arranged for money to go to firms (and perhaps others) to be kicked back to the Feds who allocated it in the first place - that is, if not to top-tier loyalists in the Prme Minister's Office, then either to Liberal Party coffers directly or as donations to the Party via middlemen, bagmen of the Party perhaps. The net result could have been largely a way to pay people to work for the Liberals on the No side of the referendum (No to separation). In that case, the devious route of the funds would have been part of funneling the means to enhance the actual No Campaign. No excuse, of course, But still we mite note how the political will of the federal Liberals thru its PMO elite would stop at nothing to prevent separation of Québec.

On the other hand, it seems obvious from watching the hearings of the Gomery Commission on TV some months ago, that some companies also received largesse that slopped off to them - due to past financial support of the federal Libs, thru the ad companies' owners, or more simply due to the Fed Lib's need to keep everything in this would-be clandestine operation quite hush-hush.

Hush hush, slush slush. Apparently again, Gomery will have none of it. - Owlb


A crackerjack set of recommendations by Norman Spector on reforms in the lite of Adscam appeared yesterday. The recommendations need to be sifted critically, however; particularly Norman's notion that the Clerk of Privy Council (the key member of the Prime Minister's Office official inner circle) should be an official civil-service office, not subject to a new Prime Minister's appointment or re-appointment. This bizarre notion displaces the need for qualifications for the office, to the false unionization of what is a management job of the most delicate kind, demanding political service in loyality to the Prime Minister. Norman is over-reacting on this point to the Adscam mess. - Politicarp