Captain's Quarters exemplifies the best of what blog reporting can be in its recent handling of the Canadian AdsScam case. To add context, the following analysis details more than a decade of potential corruption and media suppression by Canada's Liberal Party that likely set the foundation for such egregious abuse of power by the Canadian Government.
Beginning with the election of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in 1993, which crushed the Progressive Conservative opposition, Canada’s liberal Party has known over a decade of scandal coupled with a suppressive attitude toward the press unimaginable within the United States.
The first issue to arise went mostly unnoticed in 1994 and involved Chretien’s minister of the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) when it was discovered the minister had lobbied the commission he headed in support of a radio license for a supporter. A Chretien government that included Paul Martin dismissed it as inconsequential.
The next and perhaps most appalling scandal for Canada’s Liberal Party - one never widely reported within in the United States, involves the Krever Inquiry. Some may recall it as having been launched in the wake of the disastrous public blood supply issue that damaged the health of tens of thousands of Canadians by infecting them with Hepatitis C and HIV.
While the initial issue was widely reported, the inquiry drifted, at least in part due to government stonewalling, and the ultimate report left many dissatisfied, if they saw or heard much of it at all.
Questionable ethical behavior arises from the way the inquiry was handled by the Chretien government. At first, it was well supported by Chretien and the ruling Liberal Party - seen as a means of discrediting the preceding Muhroney administration, in office when the story broke.
But as time and inquiry went on it became clearer that the scandal had its roots in the late 1970’s and the 1980’s when the Canadian government contracted out blood services to a private contractor under the Liberals. When it became apparent that the tragedy would tarnish the Liberal Party, possibly even more so than the Progressive Conservatives, the Chretien government began stonewalling the public inquiry.
Justice Horace Krever, who headed the tainted blood inquiry, did not have access to audio tapes, files and transcripts from 1982 to 1989. Information Commissioner John Grace said Health Canada officials tried to "thwart their release under the Access to Information Act".
In the end this terrible tragedy ended with a whimper, not a bang or the assignation of genuine responsibility. Recommendations for change resulting from the inquiry went all but ignored by the governing liberals.
Similarly, the Somalia Inquiry did little to reaffirm broad faith in the ethics of the liberal government. The inquiry resulted from the deaths of three Somalis at the hands of Canadian Peacekeepers. It largely ignored government culpability for policy setting and establishing Rules of Engagement, or a clear political policy to guide the Canadian’s military involvement in Somalia.
The inquiry rested blame mainly with senior military ledership, assuming little if any responsibility for the Liberal Government's role in the tragedy. The result was a public undermining of the military and an embedding of similar sentiment within the country as a whole.
The report of the Somalia Inquiry, Dishonoured Legacy, was released to the public on 2 July. The media frenzy was predictable. But the Commissioners completely missed the point by failing to understand why things went wrong- and there were a lot- and focussing their venom on senior Armed Forces personnel- DND civilian personnel seem to escape the Commissioners' wrath- for quite the wrong reasons.
They were so convinced at the beginning that there had been "cover-ups" and that there had been mass failures of duty by senior officers, that they failed miserably at their analysis of the whole picture. We observed in the last-but-one issue of National Network News (January 1997): "The Inquiry has the possibility of doing incalculable harm by continuing its witch-hunting confrontational approach. It also has the possibility of providing some first class ideas for improvement of the Armed Forces."
Also see here:
The commissioners arrived at their harsh assessment after examining a series of specific negative incidents on an otherwise successful mission. The message conveyed to the public by the Somalia commissioners is clear. The Canadian Forces of the 1990's are poorly trained, incompetently led, badly equipped and full of barbarians and racists.
It seemed obvious that without immediate and radical government intervention the institution would decay to the point of absolute ineffectiveness. This message became embedded in Canadian popular culture in the 1990's.
October 2000 saw the breaking of yet another significant scandal labeled the billion dollar boondoggle.
In October 2000, after a year of insistence by the Official Opposition that there was something seriously wrong at Human Resources Development, the Auditor General confirmed what became know as "the billion-dollar boondoggle." Files representing roughly $1 billion in federal "grants and contributions" had been grossly mismanaged, with blatant favoritism being shown to Liberal-held ridings, including that of the prime minister.
Note: In Canada, a riding is a place or geographical area that is represented in the House of Commons by a member of parliament, or in provincial and territory elections an area represented by a member of the provincial or territory legislative assembly.
And yet another major controversy involving the liberals, particularly Chretien and some of his associates, became known as Shawinigan.
The controversy surrounding Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's involvement in two properties in his riding is rooted in events that are more than a decade old. But the details were only made public after a series of media reports, a lawsuit and a barrage of questions raised by a united opposition in the House of Commons.
The link above details a sixteen year history of dodging and deception on the part of several highly placed liberals in what, at best, are curious land dealings around a hotel and golf course.
Some excerpts:
May 1988 Jean Chrétien and two business partners buy the Grand-Mère Golf Course, located beside the Auberge Grand-Mère, a hotel in Shawinigan, Que., in Chrétien's riding of Saint-Maurice. They buy the golf course from Consolidated Bathurst for $625,000.
April 1993 Chrétien and his partners sell the Grand-Mère hotel to Yvon Duhaime, an old friend of Chrétien's and a well-known Liberal.
November 1993 Chrétien sells his share of the Grand-Mère Golf Course to Jonas Prince, a Toronto real estate tycoon.
January 1996 Chrétien learns Jonas Prince hasn't paid for the golf course and notifies Howard Wilson, the federal ethics counsellor responsible for upholding the code of conduct among public officials.
April 1996 Chrétien phones François Beaudoin, president of the federal Business Development Bank of Canada, about a $2 million loan sought by Yvon Duhaime, who bought the Auberge Grand-Mère. Duhaime wants the money to expand the hotel. Chrétien meets with the BDC president again in May to talk about the loan.
September 1996 The Business Development Bank rejects Duhaime's loan application, saying it is too risky. Also in September, a company owned by Claude Gauthier, a businessman and Liberal supporter, buys some land beside the golf course for $525,000.
February 1997 Chrétien phones Beaudoin about a scaled-down version of the Auberge expansion plan. The bank later approves a loan of $615,000 to Duhaime. Duhaime also gets a $164,000 grant from the Human Resources Department.
May 1999 The federal ethics counsellor rules Chrétien did not violate cabinet conflict-of-interest rules in regards to the federal aid received by Duhaime. But the ethics counsellor doesn't know about Chrétien's personal contacts with Beaudoin at the time.
November 2000 Chrétien admits he spoke to the BDC president but says he didn't do anything wrong. He says that, by helping Duhaime secure a mortgage, he was just doing his job as the MP for the Shawinigan riding. Canadian Alliance Leader Stockwell Day calls Chrétien a criminal. Conservative Leader Joe Clark says Chrétien should apologize to the Canadian public for abusing power. NDP Leader Alexa McDonough calls Chrétien morally bankrupt. And Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe says the whole thing "still smells like something."
Feb 23, 2001 During question period, Clark holds up a letter written by François Beaudoin in 1999. In the letter, Beaudoin complains of political interference in the hotel loan. He says he was fired as the president of the Business Development Bank of Canada after suggesting the bank call in the loan (Beaudoin's wrongful dismissal suit begins in Montreal in September 2003).
March 2, 2001 The ethics counsellor again clears Chrétien. The opposition use it as more proof the prime minister is too cozy with the ethics counsellor because Chrétien announces the counsellor's latest findings in the House of Commons 90 minutes before they're released.
Sept 2, 2003 Caisse Populaire de Grand-Mére files legal notice threatening to auction off the inn owned by Yvon Duhaime. The BDC would only be permitted to take what's owed to it after the credit union takes its money. If the inn were sold for less than the amount owing to both institutions, taxpayers would absorb the loss. The BDC lent a total of $615,000 to the Auberge Grand-Mère.
Feb. 6, 2004 Beaudoin wins his lawsuit against the BDC. The judge orders his $200,000 annual pension and $245,000 severance package reinstated.
Sept. 14, 2004: The Business Development Bank of Canada reaches a settlement to end its dispute with Beaudoin. The details of the settlement are not released.
And another source reveals even more significant and damning details of the scandal here.
In 1996, Louis Leblanc, a vice-president with the Quebec accounting firm Levesque Beaubien Geoffrion, set up a meeting between Jean Chretien and Gordon Fu of Imperial Consultants. Leblanc deals primarily with immigrant investor funds and has extensive Liberal connections.
Imperial Consultants has been the subject of several police inquiries both here in Vancouver and in Hong Kong, and in fact came up several times in the investigations of allegations made by former foreign service officer Brian McAdam relating to the issue of fake immigration receipts.
In 1996, brothers Robert and Gordon Fu were charged with trying to bribe two immigration officials with $50,000 each. The case was stayed by the Crown in 1998, partway through a preliminary hearing.
Ten days after the meeting, $1.75 million was invested in the Auberge Grand Mère by a group of immigrant investors including, according to the Canadian Alliance, Gordon Fu.
Added to the $615,000 loaned to the Auberge Grand Mère by the Business Development Bank after Chretien lobbied the president of the bank, Francois Beaudoin, a total of $2.36 million went to the financially strapped hotel formerly owned by the prime minister and now owned by his friend Yvon Duhaime.
All of which is very interesting and decidedly suspicious. But it becomes even more interesting when we take a look at the federal government public accounts.
Those documents reveal that Levesque Beaubien Geoffrion received a mind-boggling $3,359,282 from HRDC in fiscal year 1999-2000. Unfortunately, the documents don't indicate what that money was for.
In the wake of the questionable ethical behavior detailed above, this latest episode involving the Sponsorship issue becomes more understandable and can be seen as the result of a long legacy and not the exceptional missteps of a few bad politicians.
To enable such a long run of, at best, questionable ethical conduct among the leadership, Canada’s Liberal Party has also worked very hard at controlling news outlets and the media at large. The second part of this series detailing those efforts will follow in a subsequent post.
This post also available at Blogger News.
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