- TORONTO -- Barely in the
job three months, Canada's prime minister Paul Martin is at the centre
of the nation's biggest political crisis.
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- Usually a model of quiet respectability (barring the
odd libertarian outburst), Canada has never been a hotbed of corruption
or scandal. Yet, like the "weather bomb" that brought a state
of emergency to parts of the country last weekend, a political storm has
appeared from a blue sky and caused chaos.
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- Just months after finally ascending to the premiership,
Prime Minister Paul Martin has found himself being held technically responsible
for the biggest political scandal in the nation's history ñ involving
hundreds of millions of dollars of public money ñ and facing calls
for his immediate resignation, despite pleas of innocence.
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- A report written by Canada's auditor-general Sheila Fraser
and released earlier this month has revealed that $100 million (£40.4m)
of public money was given in "fees" and "commissions"
to advertising agencies with close ties to Martin's Liberal Party between
1996 and 2003.
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- "These arrangements, multiple transactions with
multiple companies, artificial invoices and contracts ñ or no written
contracts at all ñ appear to have been designed to pay commissions
to communications agencies while hiding the source of the funding and the
true substance of the transactions," reads the report.
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- Martin, who succeeded long-serving Jean Chretien as prime
minister in December, was heralded as an experienced parliamentarian with
Christian-based ethics. When he entered politics he put his ownership of
a shipping company, Canada Steamships Lines, into a blind trust. He had
reportedly turned control of the firm over to his three sons last year
to avoid charges of a conflict of interest. Yet now opposition members
have demanded answers for C$161m (£65m) worth of contracts, grants
and contributions the company received from the federal government since
1993.
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- At the Liberal Party convention where Martin was acclaimed
party leader, Irish rock star Bono delivered a passionate speech endorsing
him as a humanitarian. The pair had met eight years ago when the U2 frontman
urged Martin to join other nations in forgiving third-world debt.
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- Martin was then finance minister and vice-chairman of
the treasury in Chretien's government and his claim that he knew nothing
of the corruption is now falling on deaf ears. A letter from a senior Liberal
Party official warning Martin of the controversy and dated November, 2002,
was also made public last week.
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- "The Liberal Party spin-doctors are trying to have
the new prime minister portray himself as though he is in fact from a new,
completely different government and is indeed going to go to war with a
previous incarnation of himself," said Jack Layton, leader of the
New Democratic Party which has seen its popularity climb strongly since
the news broke.
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- "He was either wilfully ignorant, incompetent, or
complacent in the corruption. And the notion that he knew nothing and was
without any responsibility whatsoever frankly defies the whole concept
of responsible government."
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- The sponsorship programme was created shortly after the
1995 Quebec referendum in which the separatist movement was narrowly defeated.
Prime Minister Chretien allocated $250m (£101m) for federal projects
in the province to promote a united Canada. Last week the privy council
declassified documents which show that Chretien himself had personally
gone to Cabinet seeking approval of $61.8m (£25m) for three questionable
sponsorship projects in Quebec.
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- As the scandal gathers steam Martin has vowed to expose
those responsible. A parliamentary committee has been formed to investigate,
although opposition parties have pointed out that the committee is dominated
by government partisans. Earlier last week the government suspended the
heads of three crown corporations: VIA Rail, the Business Development Bank
of Canada and Canada Post, which were all named in the auditor-general's
report.
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- After the report was made public, Alfonso Gagliano, the
former minister of public works who was appointed Canada's ambassador to
Denmark by Chretien, was fired by the current government and returned home.
Gagliano is to be one of the first summoned to appear before the parliamentary
committee which has been postponed until March 15.
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- The scandal has virtually paralysed the government and
opposition parliamentarians have been relentless in their calls for resignations.
They claim that Martin had to have known what was going on. A letter written
by a senior Liberal Party strategist warning Martin of the widespread corruption
has been made public. Martin denies ever having read the letter.
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- "I think it is possible that a finance minister
couldn't know," said Monte Solberg, the Conservative Party's finance
critic. "But I think it is impossible for someone who had for years
been taking over the Liberal Party and who also served as the vice-chairman
of the treasury board. He had to have heard the rumours that were circulating
around the inside circles of the Liberal Party.
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- "It just strikes me as counter-intuitive. He is
someone who has worked so hard to cultivate contacts around the country
and ended up with 69 of 75 Quebec riding presidents supporting him and
it just doesn't make any sense that he wouldn't know something about it."
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- The parliamentary committee was originally due to begin
proceedings last week but Gagliano asked for more time as his lawyer was
overseas.
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- Meanwhile, Chretien has remained silent on the issue
despite accusations that he resigned as prime minister three months earlier
than originally planned to avoid the political fallout of the auditor-general's
report. The opposition parties and even his own party have been relentless
in their verbal attacks. Most agree that his legacy will be tarnished by
the affair.
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- "Well, former prime minister Chretien knew what
was in the report, obviously, because it landed close to two months before
he retired," said Solberg. "So I am quite sure he was aware of
the magnitude of the thing and, having the keen political antennae that
he has, I am sure he could see how damaging it was. I am sure he didn't
want to face that and I am sure that helped prompt him to leave when he
did".
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- "He will not escape this. Now he is in a position
where he is not here to defend himself day to day from attacks by the opposition
and the media. Even his own former colleagues in the Liberal Party are
levelling their guns at him. He is going to face tremendous criticism and
scrutiny over the next number of weeks while this whole thing unravels
and it will absolutely tarnish his legacy."
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- Almost defiantly, Martin is pushing ahead with his plans
to call a spring election. Arrogance and complacency, borne out of a decade
of majority Liberal governments led to the corruption which is slowly being
revealed. The question now is have Canadians reached a breaking point or
are they too complacent about massive government corruption? Paul Martin
may not like the answer.
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