0
Let's get back to business
26 April 2005
Prime Minister Paul Martin's brief speech to Canadians last week (April 21) was a muted mea culpa over the growing scandal in the Liberal Party that's been exposed in the media, commonly called "Adscam."
If you haven't been following Adscam (say, perhaps, living under a rock or rather preoccupied with the Cassini Mission'sreports from Saturn), then the story line is roughly this (and recall some of this is alleged, not yet proven): some members of the ruling Liberal Party under Prime Minister Jean Chretien, hired a bunch of their cronies and sycophants in Quebec (mostly in advertising and legal firms, an unsavoury mix) to promote Canada (the Liberal-Francophone-Federalist version thereof) to Quebecois, where the Liberals have increasingly lost support to the separatist Bloc, both federally and provincially.
Since most of Canada's last prime Ministers have come from Quebec, keeping a solid base of support in that province is critical to the personal ambitions of these men.
No big deal so far - every government rewards its supporters with contracts and business. Patronage is what happens when democracy and capitalism work together. It's sordid, dirty and cheap, but hey, that's politics.
But in this case, the Liberal buddies creamed a helluva lot more from the money that they deserved by any level of accountability. Huge commissions were taken, sometimes larger than the money they handed out. Sometimes they got massive amounts of cash for simply handing a cheque over, passing it from the government to the recipient. Nothing more. But then, since they were pressured to feed a lot of that money back to the Liberal party coffers, they needed to take more, to be sure the trough was full.
So in essence, Canadian taxpayers paid to fatten select Liberal-friendly Quebec companies (mostly an unsavoury mix of advertising firms and lawyers - two professions which do not encourage confidence in the public under the best of conditions). In return Quebeckers got a bunch of knickknacks and a few promotional events that sort-of promoted Canada and Canadian unity in a vague, unfocused manner, as if simply tossing money at it would somehow give Quebec more confidence in federalism.
Judging by the millions of dollars handed out during Adscam's time, every Quebecois must have a closet full of Canadian-flag pennants, pen knives, ashtrays and commemorative plates. Of the $250 million promotional campaign, about $100 million was siphoned off by the Quebecois companies and individuals chosen to manage the program. You can buy a lot of made-in-China penknives with Canadian flags etched on them for $250 million. Probably way too many, so the organizers must have felt they had a responsibility to keep Quebec's landfill sites free of such detritus. To prevent this crisis in provincial waste management, they creamed off 40 percent of the funds.
The real scandal doesn't lie in either the small-time corruption of the people who took the money and gave back little or nothing in return or in the time-honoured tradition of government rewarding its sycophants. It lies in having these companies and individuals funnel the money back to the Liberals in the form of "donations" to the party. Canadian taxpayers were paying directly for the Liberal Party, even if they didn't vote for them. The Liberals got a lot of your tax money to help promote themselves around election time, instead of putting that money into things like health care, education or national defence. No wonder they've had such a long tenure in power: you paid for it!
(Quebec, by the way, is no more federalist or compliant now than it was before the money was thrown at them. All the geegaws, all the promotional shindigs and all the glossy posters in the subways can't buy their respect or loyalty. The government would have been better to offer each and every Quebecois an equal share of the $250 million for their support - true, that's only $7.85 per person, but it wouldn't have lost any more votes than Adscam has...)
PM Chretien, under whose watch this all happened, treated Canada and its finances like a personal fiefdom. A lot like his predecessor, Brian Mulroney... Canadian politics have become very American in the last decade or two, and it's getting hard to tell the parties apart - all hogs look alike when they have their snouts in the trough. Chretien, of course, is trying to halt the Gomery inquiry. But Canadians have already determined what his legacy to Canada is... closing the barn door won't help get that horse back in.
The general theme of this government's response to the continuing exposure of corruption and fraud at the Gomery inquiry has been in essence like some little kid caught after an accident, "It's not my fault. It was broken when I picked it up." But the Gomery inquiry has made it very evident that this isn't just some peccadillo of power: it's deep-seated corruption at all levels of the party. The question is: how far up does it really go?
Last week, Martin accepted some of the blame - for his lack of vigilance - and ate some humble pie as he promised to do better in the future. He didn't go far enough though - Canadians want concrete assurances the guilty will be legally but satisfactorily punished, and expelled from his party (and while Martin promised to pay the money back, should it be proven to have drifted into Liberal coffers, he damn well better give it back with interest!).
Martin did, however, promise an election after the inquiry, which immediately began the tiresome campaigning by all parties. Bad decision. We don't want another election this soon: we want someone up in Ottawa to govern.
Of course the opposition waded in right away. It's de rigeur in Canadian politics to trash the other side, regardless of the issue or the validity o the other side's position. No one works with the other side even in a minority government situation. There seems to be no common goals, no strategic thinking, merely party agendas and personal greed to remain on the lavish gravy train of federal politics. No wonder Canadians have such little faith in their national leaders.
As expected, Stephen Harper, the wannabe Conservative PM, took the opportunity to grandstand. Harper is trying to make his Conservatives the party of choice in the next election by illuminating every pimple and mole on the Liberal backside. No a terribly difficult task, mind you. Instead he should be working harder on applying makeup to his own credibility and smoothing out his own blemishes. Canadians are simply not willing to cast their vote that far right and he doesn't seem to be offering a milder version of himself.
Harper has tied his party to what looks like fundamentalist Christian politics in its opposition to same-sex marriage (an argument that sounds suspiciously like the same ones used to refuse women and blacks the vote a few decades back...). Under his leadership, the Conservative Party has become Canada's Taliban: rigid and repressive.
No thanks. I am too strong a supporter of the separation of politics and religion to give Harper's party my vote. There's too much of George Bush in Stephen Harper for my taste.
The NDP's Jack Layton also threw some wild punches, but he made a cogent point:
Layton is himself a curious mix; savvy street-smart politician, part terrier. Very bright, very canny, but sometimes just won't let go of the bone he's chewing on, to the detriment of the party. I used to be a staunch NDP supporter, back in the 1980s, but as the world changed and the NDP's policies remained mired in the 1950s, my support waned. They need a reality check: the world has changed, why haven't the NDP kept pace. The Greens have certainly overtaken the NDP in the environmental issues. But I digress...
The Bloc's Gilles Duceppe made a statement - I'm always baffled by that man. When he's not ranting about his separatist agenda or demanding more for Quebec than its fair share (which he constantly does), he is actually sane and makes considerable sense. Where Layton and Harper go on a tear like out-of-control chainsaws, Duceppe is often calm, reasonable and logical.
If Duceppe was the leader of another party, he'd likely get my vote (maybe he'll offer to jump ship and lead the Ontario Separatist Party the way Jean Charest, a staunch Conservative and heir to the Mulroney legacy - loud guffaws and chortles - became the leader of the Quebec Liberal party...
Nah. Duceppe has too much integrity.). But since his vision is limited by the Quebec agenda, the rest of Canada will likely dismiss his remarks no matter how relevant.
It has not been satisfactorily answered why Martin could not have made his six-minute statement in the House of Commons, but instead had to do it as a propaganda take on national TV. Sure the House is noisy and everyone gets interrupted by catcalls and booing. It usually seems more like a kindergarten full of raucous, screaming and very spoiled children than the venue for considered, intelligent debate by adults. But you helped make it that way, Mr. Martin. Your party is just as inconsiderate and churlish and puerile. If you don't like the way the game is played in that particular sand box, then make some new rules that show respect - do unto others, Mr. Martin, the way you'd have them do unto you.
Anyway, Martin grabbed six minutes of free political airtime to announce to the Canadian public something that might have better been said in the House of Commons. In that bit of propaganda, Martin also announced that, 30 days after the results of the Gomery inquiry into Adscam, Martin would call an election and let the Canadian people decide fro themselves if they still wanted a Liberal government. Either Martin's very confident, or the Gomery inquiry is going to run a long, long time.
Canada doesn't need another election this soon. It's a big waste of cash, time and energy. We want our politicians of all stripes and all parties to simply get back to their jobs. This is a Liberal crisis, not a national crisis. Let them fix it if they can.
Stop grandstanding, fix the problems and get on with things. An election won't make anything better, won't solve the problems of healthcare, housing, environment or what to do with the surplus cash Ottawa has (It's ours. Give it back!). My vote will be for "none of the above" if an election gets called this soon. I can't support any party that promotes an election over trying to run the country. That's just sloughing off their responsibility for another ride on the taxpayer's backs. An election now would be as big a waste of our tax dollars as Adscam - maybe even more!
Get back to business, all of you. There are more important issues at hand. Canadians in general feel that none of you - NONE of you - would be any better at the helm, any less corrupt, any more honourable or more accountable than the Liberals who created Adscam. Show some dignity, show some spine and go back to the business of the country. That's what we pay you for!
NB. There's an entertaining take on the scandal at Oh Kanadar!. Writer Rachel Marsden opens with... Worth reading.
If you haven't been following Adscam (say, perhaps, living under a rock or rather preoccupied with the Cassini Mission'sreports from Saturn), then the story line is roughly this (and recall some of this is alleged, not yet proven): some members of the ruling Liberal Party under Prime Minister Jean Chretien, hired a bunch of their cronies and sycophants in Quebec (mostly in advertising and legal firms, an unsavoury mix) to promote Canada (the Liberal-Francophone-Federalist version thereof) to Quebecois, where the Liberals have increasingly lost support to the separatist Bloc, both federally and provincially.
Since most of Canada's last prime Ministers have come from Quebec, keeping a solid base of support in that province is critical to the personal ambitions of these men.
No big deal so far - every government rewards its supporters with contracts and business. Patronage is what happens when democracy and capitalism work together. It's sordid, dirty and cheap, but hey, that's politics.
But in this case, the Liberal buddies creamed a helluva lot more from the money that they deserved by any level of accountability. Huge commissions were taken, sometimes larger than the money they handed out. Sometimes they got massive amounts of cash for simply handing a cheque over, passing it from the government to the recipient. Nothing more. But then, since they were pressured to feed a lot of that money back to the Liberal party coffers, they needed to take more, to be sure the trough was full.
So in essence, Canadian taxpayers paid to fatten select Liberal-friendly Quebec companies (mostly an unsavoury mix of advertising firms and lawyers - two professions which do not encourage confidence in the public under the best of conditions). In return Quebeckers got a bunch of knickknacks and a few promotional events that sort-of promoted Canada and Canadian unity in a vague, unfocused manner, as if simply tossing money at it would somehow give Quebec more confidence in federalism.
Judging by the millions of dollars handed out during Adscam's time, every Quebecois must have a closet full of Canadian-flag pennants, pen knives, ashtrays and commemorative plates. Of the $250 million promotional campaign, about $100 million was siphoned off by the Quebecois companies and individuals chosen to manage the program. You can buy a lot of made-in-China penknives with Canadian flags etched on them for $250 million. Probably way too many, so the organizers must have felt they had a responsibility to keep Quebec's landfill sites free of such detritus. To prevent this crisis in provincial waste management, they creamed off 40 percent of the funds.
The real scandal doesn't lie in either the small-time corruption of the people who took the money and gave back little or nothing in return or in the time-honoured tradition of government rewarding its sycophants. It lies in having these companies and individuals funnel the money back to the Liberals in the form of "donations" to the party. Canadian taxpayers were paying directly for the Liberal Party, even if they didn't vote for them. The Liberals got a lot of your tax money to help promote themselves around election time, instead of putting that money into things like health care, education or national defence. No wonder they've had such a long tenure in power: you paid for it!
(Quebec, by the way, is no more federalist or compliant now than it was before the money was thrown at them. All the geegaws, all the promotional shindigs and all the glossy posters in the subways can't buy their respect or loyalty. The government would have been better to offer each and every Quebecois an equal share of the $250 million for their support - true, that's only $7.85 per person, but it wouldn't have lost any more votes than Adscam has...)
PM Chretien, under whose watch this all happened, treated Canada and its finances like a personal fiefdom. A lot like his predecessor, Brian Mulroney... Canadian politics have become very American in the last decade or two, and it's getting hard to tell the parties apart - all hogs look alike when they have their snouts in the trough. Chretien, of course, is trying to halt the Gomery inquiry. But Canadians have already determined what his legacy to Canada is... closing the barn door won't help get that horse back in.
The general theme of this government's response to the continuing exposure of corruption and fraud at the Gomery inquiry has been in essence like some little kid caught after an accident, "It's not my fault. It was broken when I picked it up." But the Gomery inquiry has made it very evident that this isn't just some peccadillo of power: it's deep-seated corruption at all levels of the party. The question is: how far up does it really go?
Last week, Martin accepted some of the blame - for his lack of vigilance - and ate some humble pie as he promised to do better in the future. He didn't go far enough though - Canadians want concrete assurances the guilty will be legally but satisfactorily punished, and expelled from his party (and while Martin promised to pay the money back, should it be proven to have drifted into Liberal coffers, he damn well better give it back with interest!).
Martin did, however, promise an election after the inquiry, which immediately began the tiresome campaigning by all parties. Bad decision. We don't want another election this soon: we want someone up in Ottawa to govern.
Of course the opposition waded in right away. It's de rigeur in Canadian politics to trash the other side, regardless of the issue or the validity o the other side's position. No one works with the other side even in a minority government situation. There seems to be no common goals, no strategic thinking, merely party agendas and personal greed to remain on the lavish gravy train of federal politics. No wonder Canadians have such little faith in their national leaders.
As expected, Stephen Harper, the wannabe Conservative PM, took the opportunity to grandstand. Harper is trying to make his Conservatives the party of choice in the next election by illuminating every pimple and mole on the Liberal backside. No a terribly difficult task, mind you. Instead he should be working harder on applying makeup to his own credibility and smoothing out his own blemishes. Canadians are simply not willing to cast their vote that far right and he doesn't seem to be offering a milder version of himself.
Harper has tied his party to what looks like fundamentalist Christian politics in its opposition to same-sex marriage (an argument that sounds suspiciously like the same ones used to refuse women and blacks the vote a few decades back...). Under his leadership, the Conservative Party has become Canada's Taliban: rigid and repressive.
No thanks. I am too strong a supporter of the separation of politics and religion to give Harper's party my vote. There's too much of George Bush in Stephen Harper for my taste.
The NDP's Jack Layton also threw some wild punches, but he made a cogent point:
Quote
The corruption scandal is not a national crisis. It’s of deep concern, but it is a Liberal crisis, not a national one.
Layton is himself a curious mix; savvy street-smart politician, part terrier. Very bright, very canny, but sometimes just won't let go of the bone he's chewing on, to the detriment of the party. I used to be a staunch NDP supporter, back in the 1980s, but as the world changed and the NDP's policies remained mired in the 1950s, my support waned. They need a reality check: the world has changed, why haven't the NDP kept pace. The Greens have certainly overtaken the NDP in the environmental issues. But I digress...
The Bloc's Gilles Duceppe made a statement - I'm always baffled by that man. When he's not ranting about his separatist agenda or demanding more for Quebec than its fair share (which he constantly does), he is actually sane and makes considerable sense. Where Layton and Harper go on a tear like out-of-control chainsaws, Duceppe is often calm, reasonable and logical.
If Duceppe was the leader of another party, he'd likely get my vote (maybe he'll offer to jump ship and lead the Ontario Separatist Party the way Jean Charest, a staunch Conservative and heir to the Mulroney legacy - loud guffaws and chortles - became the leader of the Quebec Liberal party...
Nah. Duceppe has too much integrity.). But since his vision is limited by the Quebec agenda, the rest of Canada will likely dismiss his remarks no matter how relevant.It has not been satisfactorily answered why Martin could not have made his six-minute statement in the House of Commons, but instead had to do it as a propaganda take on national TV. Sure the House is noisy and everyone gets interrupted by catcalls and booing. It usually seems more like a kindergarten full of raucous, screaming and very spoiled children than the venue for considered, intelligent debate by adults. But you helped make it that way, Mr. Martin. Your party is just as inconsiderate and churlish and puerile. If you don't like the way the game is played in that particular sand box, then make some new rules that show respect - do unto others, Mr. Martin, the way you'd have them do unto you.
Anyway, Martin grabbed six minutes of free political airtime to announce to the Canadian public something that might have better been said in the House of Commons. In that bit of propaganda, Martin also announced that, 30 days after the results of the Gomery inquiry into Adscam, Martin would call an election and let the Canadian people decide fro themselves if they still wanted a Liberal government. Either Martin's very confident, or the Gomery inquiry is going to run a long, long time.
Canada doesn't need another election this soon. It's a big waste of cash, time and energy. We want our politicians of all stripes and all parties to simply get back to their jobs. This is a Liberal crisis, not a national crisis. Let them fix it if they can.
Stop grandstanding, fix the problems and get on with things. An election won't make anything better, won't solve the problems of healthcare, housing, environment or what to do with the surplus cash Ottawa has (It's ours. Give it back!). My vote will be for "none of the above" if an election gets called this soon. I can't support any party that promotes an election over trying to run the country. That's just sloughing off their responsibility for another ride on the taxpayer's backs. An election now would be as big a waste of our tax dollars as Adscam - maybe even more!
Get back to business, all of you. There are more important issues at hand. Canadians in general feel that none of you - NONE of you - would be any better at the helm, any less corrupt, any more honourable or more accountable than the Liberals who created Adscam. Show some dignity, show some spine and go back to the business of the country. That's what we pay you for!
NB. There's an entertaining take on the scandal at Oh Kanadar!. Writer Rachel Marsden opens with...
Quote
Here's a fun little game. See if you can correctly identify the following country: Government cronies looting the public treasury. A de facto one-party state without any viable opposition, and a government that fancies itself the 'natural governing party' as a result. A party that stays in power because one region of the country keeps it there, to the overwhelming opposition of all others. A state-run media that operates to the tune of over a billion dollars annually in public money and spews out pro-Palestinian and anti-American propaganda that makes Al Jazeera look fair and balanced. Judges appointed directly by the government in power, without any confirmation process or real scrutiny.
