March 2004 - Page 4 of 6 - Stephen Taylor

Martin-Adscam link found?

Adscam whistleblower and Public Works official Allan Cutler tabled many documents in his testimony to the Committee of Public Accounts on March 11th. Among those documents is a memo dated January 26th, 1996 where he questions a $909,000 amendment to a department of finance contract with Groupe Everest. In his memo, he writes “Groupe Everest will presumably obtain a commission on the sub-contract without having done any work.”

Groupe Everest is one of the Liberal-friendly advertising companies that is at the centre of the Sponsorship Scandal. The firm donated $71,321 to the Liberal Party of Canada between 1997 and 2001. Groupe Everest was founded by Charles Boulay who also happened to have worked on Paul Martin’s 1990 leadership bid. Boulay’s name has also not been foreign to the House of Commons where members of our Conservative party criticized then-Public Works Minister Don Boudria for having a family stay-over at Boulay’s lavish cottage. The minister was later demoted.

An exerpt from the Calgary Herald on March 12th with a section of the interview between the Committee of Public Accounts and Charles Guite:

When pressed again to answer why finance officials had issued at least four contracts without going through proper channels Guite replied: “I mean, it’s no different than, OK . . . you go down Hwy. 401. There’s always someone speeding. A lot of them don’t get caught. All of a sudden you get caught, you get a speeding ticket. This is the same policy. We have a new policy that is working very well. Some people are not following that policy. Some of them are probably still getting away with it today. The ones that get caught on the radar trap, to use that analogy, we address the issue.”

Interviewer: “Finance got caught in your radar trap?”

Guite: “They did.”

It is rather unfortunate that the mess that these people have made will have to be cleaned up by the next government that is formed. The House of Commons has become a theatre for criminal investigation rather than a legislative body. Let’s sweep out the gritty dirt, establish and enforce proper practices for government contracts and then start legislating as intended.

In other news, Alfonso Gagliano is set to testify to the committee on March 18th. It will be interesting to watch.

Another day, another scandal

There are reports today (here, here and here) that another scandal has come out for Paul Martin’s Liberal Party. It appears that Hewlett Packard has overcharged the Department of National Defence $160 million for hardware services not provided. CTV reports that “HP denied any wrongdoing, saying that the problems were located within DND. A civilian employee of the department was fired last year over the controversy.”

Defence Minister David Pratt asserts that Canadians will get every tax dollar back from HP.

I don’t know of any connections between the executives at HP and the Liberal Party so I assume that this is merely incompetence of the Ministry of Finance, instead of corruption by government officials.

Fellow Conservative Jay Hill is correct to say that the military can not afford to waste such money and that Prime Minister Paul Martin should have known about the problems when he was finance minister.

“The prime minister keeps talking about transparency so instead of waiting for the scandal of the day to be made public, will he come clean today and tell us: How many other departments were swindled while he was the finance minister? … As finance minister, the Prime Minister was on duty when at least $160-million dollars went missing from the Department of National Defence in phony invoicing by Hewlett-Packard or its subcontractors … A money manager who doesn’t notice that amount of cash disappearing gets fired.” — Jay Hill, Conservative MP

Deborah Gray also weighed in on this latest scandal:

“Yet it is only when they learn that they get caught, that the media is about to expose these things, that they even bother to acknowledge this latest theft … We have no idea whether this DND computer scandal is the end or if it’s just the beginning. I think we have uncovered only the tip of the iceberg.” — Deborah Gray, Conservative MP

Here’s an interesting excerpt from a Globe and Mail article (August 20th, 2002)

Last month, U.S. President George W. Bush sought to restore confidence in Wall Street and in his country’s corporate culture by introducing tough new measures designed to clean up Corporate America and punish white-collar offenders. To date, no such legislation has been passed in Canada.

After the speech, Mr. Chrétien told reporters that the federal ministers of justice and finance are looking into the issue of white-collar crime.

“As I said in my speech, there is no indication of a serious problem,” Mr. Chrétien said. However, he added that provincial and federal governments are “working on that because you never know … it’s not done publicly when they do that kind of crime.”

Thomas d’Aquino (president of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives) said the council, which represents the CEOs of more than 100 of Canada’s largest corporations, is “urging government not to overreact.”

Paul Tsaparis, president of HP Canada, one of the country’s largest technology companies, issued a similar warning, saying: “You cannot legislate trust.”

I believe that it is essential for the Liberal government to immediately perform forensic audits of each department to figure out how many of our tax dollars have inappropriately gone to line the pockets of their friends and of other CEOs. There should be more transparency in government and contracts non-essential to national security should be made available for public review. Was the finance minister (Paul Martin) paying any attention to the books?

Sheila appeals…

She’s not done yet folks. Sheila Copps just announced that she will appeal her nomination loss in the riding of Hamilton East-Stoney Creek. She’s taking her case right to the RCMP with sworn statements from her supporters who suspected “dirty tricks”. Her mother, the Liberal riding president and Warren Kinsella are among those who claim that they were turned away from the nomination meeting.

Now, as an observer from the outside and particularly as a Conservative Party observer, I must say that Sheila’s bold last-ditch move against Paul Martin is refreshing. When the Conservative Party was going through the pains of formation, the Liberals were laughing smugly as a small minority of members wondered if they’d stay or go. This week, as I’ve said, has proven to be a dirty internal war within the Liberal Party and it appears that Sheila is about to become a bigger headache for those Liberal MPs seeking re-election. A party in turmoil is not fit to govern and Canadians are starting to realize that, as Conservatives, we’re ready to form the next government.

We have already learned that the Liberal government is not in order. Now we’re starting to see that the Liberal house is not in order.