Canada Scandal: Martin burns Chrétien

ANALYSIS: It's open war now, JEFFREY SIMPSON writes, because the scandal just wouldn't go away

OTTAWA -- Prime Minister Paul Martin declared the equivalent of open political war yesterday on his predecessor, Jean Chrétien. Nothing like this has ever happened in Canadian politics.

Yesterday's developments combined long-simmering anger and a degree of political panic. The Martin government is being roasted for the Quebec sponsorships scandal. An election call is pending in about seven weeks.

Mr. Martin's initial defence of ignorance was being breached by a common-sense question: How could this Prime Minister, a former finance minister representing a Quebec riding, not have known a great deal about this sordid affair?

The question would not die, in the House or the media. But the Liberals had to make it die to respect the first rule of political survival: Protect the Prime Minister.

If protecting this Prime Minister meant he had to tarnish the previous one, so be it. After all, the two men were barely civil to each other before. They never will be again, not after yesterday.

Prime ministers have sometimes put distance between themselves and predecessors. They have made a public point of doing things differently. They might not even have liked their predecessors very much, or they may have fought with them for the leadership. But new leaders tried, in the interests of party unity, public decency and turning the page, to wrap disagreements in a gossamer of civility.

That a prime minister would urge a public inquiry to investigate the former prime minister's top advisers -- and those of his friends and former colleagues, whom he appointed to run Crown corporations -- is unprecedented. That is what Mr. Martin did yesterday.

To those who doubted whether he might fail to make heads roll at Crown corporations if abuse of public trust be found there, he replied by using one of prime minister Pierre Trudeau's famous quips about the War Measures Act: "Just watch me." Mr. Martin said he would testify before the inquiry if asked. The inference for his predecessor was clear.

The result could be that Mr. Chrétien will become the first Canadian prime minister to testify before a public inquiry to defend his conduct in office, just as British Prime Minister Tony Blair had to appear before the Hutton inquiry.

Those who thought the transfer of Liberal leadership would bury the hatchet between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin were wrong. Mr. Martin banished almost all the Chrétienites from cabinet. He drove others out of politics. He sent one to New York as United Nations ambassador and suggested another become ambassador to Washington. He wanted none of them near the centre of power, to send a signal to Canadians that his government would be different.

Mr. Martin and his advisers, most of whom engineered his long and successful guerrilla campaign against Mr. Chrétien -- and who remain consumed by communications and politics -- are furious at what they consider the mess Mr. Chrétien left.

They accuse him of having prespent most of the federal surplus. They believe he did not act decisively in the Arar affair. They think he gratuitously soured Canada-U.S. relations. Worst of all, they have known for a long time that the Auditor-General's report was a political time bomb set to explode in Mr. Martin's face after Mr. Chrétien left office.

At first, Mr. Martin tried two sorts of damage control. The government adopted a tone of wounded virtue, established the public inquiry and sent the scandal to the public-accounts committee for study. Then the Prime Minister, who pronounced himself outraged by the scandal, tried to blame a group of civil servants and their minister of public works, Alfonso Gagliano, whom Mr. Chrétien appointed ambassador to Denmark. That didn't wash.

The opposition and media kept asking how Mr. Martin, a senior Quebec minister, could insist he knew nothing about the abuses the Auditor-General uncovered. Obviously alarmed by the continuous public fury, and worried about its impact on the Liberal Party's electoral fortunes, Mr. Martin turned on his predecessor.

At a hastily arranged press conference, Mr. Martin underlined repeatedly his previous disagreements with Mr. Chrétien over Quebec strategy. He painted himself as isolated from all Quebec files. He underscored their relationship's serious deterioration during his final years as finance minister. Normally, a successor would seek to let bygones be bygones. Mr. Martin deliberately wanted those bygones remembered.

Most telling, Mr. Martin stopped restricting the blame to a group of civil servants and Mr. Gagliano. He insisted that the inquiry should find out who gave the orders: questions that in the Canadian system of government, with its highly centralized methods of prime-ministerial control, must lead towards Jean Chrétien.

Mr. Martin carefully avoided fingering Mr. Chrétien. Instead, he extolled his predecessor's virtues and service to Canada. The cold political logic of Mr. Martin's strategy, however, could not be clearer: to finger Mr. Chrétien and a group of Quebec advisers as the ones ultimately responsible for the sponsorship abuses.

Also fingered were André Ouellet, a former ministerial colleague of Mr. Chrétien's and a Quebec political fixer under prime minister Pierre Trudeau, who is chairman of Canada Post, and Mr. Chrétien's former chief-of-staff Jean Pelletier, now chairman of Via Rail. Both Crown corporations were involved in promoting projects designed to enhance Canada's visibility in Quebec. Both corporations have denied doing anything untoward.

Jean Chrétien takes nothing sitting down, as Canadians will know after watching his political career. Nobody ever tried to punch Mr. Chrétien without getting a blow in reply. How Mr. Chrétien will respond to Mr. Martin's direct hit on his government, and the indirect one on his integrity, remains unknown. There will be a response. Count on it.

Mr. Martin has now attacked the very sponsorship programs Mr. Chrétien authorized and vigorously defended as assisting Canadian unity. The end does not justify the means, Mr. Martin insisted, a coded renunciation of the Chrétien defence.

The Prime Minister has expressed outrage at the abuses, trying to deflect public anger from his government. He has launched a public inquiry into the mess. And now, as part of damage control, he has targeted Mr. Chrétien and his friends, without, of course, admitting that they are the targets. The civil war within the Liberal Party continues.

Rome is burning!!! Guys - this scandal is huge news up here! As Conservatives, myself and all my friends are loving what's happening to the arrogant Liberal gov't up here.

They're imploding bigtime, just as both right wing parties are united and about to vote for what will hopefully be our new right wing Prime Minister.

They were interviewing people in the street, many of whom have been staunch Liberal supporters, and many voiced their outrage over the scandal and said that this would definately affect how they voted in the coming election.

Hopefully, all the left leaning Libs will vote for the New Democrat Party (who haven't a snowballs chance in hell of getting in) and all the right leaning Libs will vote Conservative.

Wish us luck

I happen to be channel surfing last night and came across the CBC news on Newsworld International. A couple of observations.

1) The Candaian conservatives in parliment that I saw had a heck aof alot more backbone than American conservatives in congress. They were passionate about this whereas American conservitves(IE Memogate and Orin Hatch)just try to pacify the Rats.

2) The issue is about a waste of $100 million on some kickbacks. We could only wish that government waste of $100 million would spark such outrage in this country. Alot of politicians would be jobless.

That 100 Million is just scratching the surface, my friend. The other part that's been unearthed is 1.2 billion dollars in Native land claims which the Liberals have mysteriously lost track of. There have been other fiscal scandals that will also come up, guaranteed. Oh, I think we'll be having a celebratory drink at the pub tonight for Chretien finally being revealed to the Canadian people for the rat weasel that some of us have suspected him to be for a long, long time.

Hope the public memory lasts until election time.

"They were interviewing people in the street, many of whom have been staunch Liberal supporters, and many voiced their outrage over the scandal and said that this would definately affect how they voted in the coming election>'

That's a big difference between American and Canadian liberals. American liberals still back their skunks over conservatives any day. They would pick Stalin over President Bush by large margins.

While $100 million may be a drop in the bucket in a country of 300 million, it carries a lot more wieght up here. Also, as another poster pointed out, there will be more. Hopefully it will wake people up here on the east coast to the err of their ways.

Your right about that. I hope this give Canadian conservtives a window to help Canada rid itself of liberal rot. Martin seems like a likeable fellow compared to the idiot Chritien that rule the roost for awhile up there.

If Candians are not shamed by the gun registry scandal, then they have no shame. That scandal alone should have caused a revolt. What's the deal up there? Too many Euro-scum French socialists?

Yep, we're overrun with them, and the sad thing is, a lot of them aren't even French.

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