Report criticizes ex-Canada PM for scandal (Jean Chretien)

ap on Yahoo ^ | 11/01/05 | Beth Duff-Brown - ap

[NormsRevenge]

TORONTO - An investigative report on a corruption scandal that nearly toppled Canada's minority government cleared the prime minister Tuesday of any wrongdoing but held his predecessor accountable for misspending tens of millions of dollars in public funds.

There is no evidence that former Prime Minister Jean Chretien was personally aware of a kickbacks scheme orchestrated by Quebec businessmen, Justice John Gomery concluded in a report released after a 20-month investigation. But Chretien must bear political responsibility for a program he created that allowed senior members of his Liberal Party to funnel millions of dollars into their Quebec coffers, Gomery said.

"The public trust ... was subverted and betrayed, and Canadians were outraged, not only because public funds were wasted and misappropriated, but also because no one was held responsible for his misconduct," Gomery said.

The scandal paralyzed dealings in Parliament for months earlier this year. Prime Minister Paul Martin survived a confidence motion by a single vote in May after he pledged to dissolve the House of Commons and hold new elections after Gomery's final report is released, now scheduled for February.

Although he was exonerated in Tuesday's initial report, the scandal has severely damaged Martin's Liberal Party and the opposition Conservative Party is likely to make even more gains in the next general election.

Canada's auditor general in 2002 determined that about $127 million from Chretien's national unity fund went to Liberal-friendly advertising firms for little or no apparent work in return. The program was designed to promote national unity in Quebec, following the narrow defeat of a separatist referendum in the French-speaking province.

Investigators have determined that the Liberal Party also funneled millions of dollars from the slush fund into their own campaign accounts in Quebec, infuriating Canadians who liken the "sponsorship scandal" as their own version of Watergate.

The scandal left a deep rift in the Liberal Party, particularly between Chretien and Martin, and the Liberal Party's minority standing after losing Parliament seats in elections in 2004.

Martin was never implicated and has reminded Canadians that the first thing he did when he took office was scrap the unity program and demand a federal inquiry. But his opponents have said he surely was aware of the problems in the program, and they say new elections must be held to give Canadians a chance to choose new leaders and start with a clean government slate.

"The Liberal Party used the sponsorship program to funnel tax money into its partisan operations ... all to fund the Liberal Party's election war chest," Stephen Harper, head of the Conservative Party, told a news conference in Ottawa.

"High-ranking Liberals cynically manipulated the sponsorship program to enrich their party and their friends," Harper said. Yet, he said: "The Liberals are still in office; no Liberal is still in jail. Political accountability will have to rest with the voters."

Martin, who scheduled a news conference for later in the day, immediately referred the Gomery report to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for possible criminal investigations. The government also said it would expand a civil suit seeking the return of national unity cash from a number of ad firms, boosting the total sought to $49.2 million.

Chretien, meanwhile, met with lawyers to decide whether to take action to clear his name. David Scott, a member of Chretien's legal team, said one possibility would be a Federal Court challenge to Gomery's conclusions.

Gomery found that Chretien chose to keep tight control of the sponsorship program under the prime minister's office and ignored warnings from a senior adviser that it would be better to shift the program to another department.

As Chretien's chief of staff, Jean Pelletier "failed to take the most elementary precautions against mismanagement" in a program that Gomery called an "open invitation" to profiteering by unscrupulous contractors.

"Mr. Chretien must accept responsibility for the actions of his (political) staff such as Mr. Pelletier," the judge said.

He was more generous toward Martin, declaring him free of "any blame for carelessness or misconduct."

[NormsRevenge]

Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien leaves his home in Ottawa, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2005. According to a report in the the Globe and Mail, Chretien will be blamed in a report by a federal inquiry investigating allegations of kickbacks and money laundering by the Liberal Party. The first report by Justice John Gomery's inquiry into the alleged misspending of tens of millions of dollars (euros) in public funds by the Liberal Party and federal bureaucrats, is to be made public Tuesday. (AP Photo/CP, Jonathan Hayward)

[Brooklyn Kid]

They may all be crooks, but they 'care'. Lol

[NormsRevenge]

Left photo

Canada geese take off from a farmers field near Oak Hammock, Manitoba, in this October 8, 2004 file photo. Thirty-three Canadian birds found to be carrying a kind of bird flu are unlikely to be suffering from the H5N1 killer strain which has spread from Southeast Asia to Europe, a top Canadian health official said on October 31. (Shaun Best/Reuters)

Right photo

Prime Minister Paul Martin arrives on Parliament Hill to chair a meeting with his cabinet in Ottawa Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2005. Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien will be blamed in a report to be released Tuesday by a federal inquiry investigating allegations of kickbacks and money laundering by the Liberal Party, the Globe and Mail reported. The report, to be made public Tuesday, puts blame on Chretien but not on Prime Minister Paul Martin. (AP Photo/CP, Fred Chartrand)

[Andyman]

Nothing will get better until the sheeple up north start thinking for a change and vote something other than Liberal.

[ikka]

Chretien's Fault!

Sorry, wrong country...

We had the Kefauver (sp?) report, which showed how corrupt Liberals bought cheap plasma from Bill Clinton's Arkansas, infecting thousands of innocent hemophiliacs and others with blood transfusions with AIDS, Hepatitis and what not. Now we have Gomery, and nothing in the Great White North will change.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Chretien's finest moment.



Jean Chretien grabs a protester in a throat hold in 1996.

[Sam Gamgee]

Gawd, Canadians are stupid. So what does it matter if Martin is innocent? In Canada we vote for the party. And it was the Liberal PARTY that oversaw this corruption. But we are slaves to a system of Mob Rule (Democracy) anyways.

[Fair Go]

You mean a PM grabs a protestor by the throat and people still vote for him?

[goldstategop]

Looks like Judge Gomery gave Paul Martin a clean bill of political health. Martin never liked Chretien and the result is he's likely to distance himself even more from his predecessor's tarnished ministry in order to win a majority in the next general election.

("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")

[goldstategop]

The perception with the Gomery fallout is the while the Liberals may not be pure driven as snow, the misconduct wasn't carried out by the entire party. This allows Martin to claim the sponsorship scandal rested with Chretien and a few bad apples in his inner circle. Like it or not, this report doesn't give Stephen Harper and his Conservatives the ammunition needed to dislodge the Liberals from power in a no-confidence vote much less than win in a poll next spring.

("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")

[aCDNinUSA]

The people will always vote for the hand that feeds them. Have you ever seen a skinny Frenchman on the beach in Florida? We all know that the squeaky wheel always gets greased and Quebec is very well greased. Unfortunately they are the wheel in Canada that is driving the nation into the ground, but Canadians are too quiet to speak out or they will be called racist, anti-french or any other number of names.

[Fair Go]

So political correctness raises its ugly head.

[aCDNinUSA]

Look what political correctness is doing to France at the moment. Canada will get theirs before long.

[Fair Go]

I think they will get it much sooner than they realise.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

"You mean a PM grabs a protester by the throat and people still vote for him?"

The protester ran through a bunch of little kids out for a photo opportunity with the PM & got right in Chretien's face. His RCMP bodyguards were lax -- if the protester had tried the same thing with a U.S. President, he wouldn't have made it within 10 feet of the President.

I, and most other men admired Chretien for taking matters into his own hands (so to speak) & throttling the protester. (It was kind of like one of those moments in hockey, where you have to drop the gloves.) Women were divided on the issue -- most would have been happy to let the RCMP do the throttling.