"Heads will roll...just watch me"

[Asher]

http://www.canada.com/national/story.asp?id=12852765-91E0-4C8B-A1BB-A28D78CCC8DF

Heads will roll ... just watch me
Via Rail - Business Development Bank of Canada - Canada Post - RCMP among Crown agencies in Martin's line of fire

Anne Dawson
CanWest News Service

Friday, February 13, 2004

Prime Minister Paul Martin said Thursday he believes "political direction" was given to the small group of rogue civil servants who perpetrated the $250-million Quebec sponsorship scandal and vowed "heads will roll" at the Crown corporations which he said were also "accomplices" in the scam.

"I do know that clearly there . . . had to be political direction," Martin told a news conference. "It's a small group of people and the auditor general talked about the 12 or so people who worked for Public Works, but there certainly has been other people in Crown corporations who were accomplices, and at the same time, it is impossible to believe there was no political direction."

Martin said he will leave it to the public inquiry to find out which Crown corporation officials were complicit in the scam cited in auditor general Sheila Fraser's report, but he left no doubt he intends to make those people pay.

"To quote another prime minister, 'You just watch me,' " he said.

Fraser revealed that five Crown corporations -- Via Rail, the Old Port of Montreal, the Business Development Bank of Canada, Canada Post and even the RCMP -- were involved in funnelling $100 million to Liberal-friendly ad firms in Quebec to pay for work that was incomplete or did not benefit Canadians.

Martin praised his predecessor Jean Chretien as a "man of great integrity" but declined to speculate what he knew about the sponsorship scam, saying that would be up to the inquiry to discover. He said he takes "personal responsibility" for the sponsorship mess and is prepared to testify, but it would be up to Chretien to decide if he would testify if asked.

"I'm not going to speculate. I happen to believe that the former prime minister is a man of character, is a man of integrity and he's made a great contribution to the country," said Martin.

He also said any ministers who knew about the scandal and did not act to stop it should resign, and he demanded anyone with information to come forward. He also suggested a "few" Quebec cabinet ministers may have known more about the real dealings behind the sponsorship scandal than he did.

Martin dismissed a CanWest News story on Thursday that quoted his senior advisers laying the blame for the scandal at Chretien's door.

However, a senior Martin adviser repeated similar allegations to CanWest again Thursday, saying that although they do not believe Chretien knew about the millions of dollars worth of fake invoices and the huge commissions paid out for little or no work, they believe he initiated the "culture" that allowed the culprits to do whatever was necessary to address the Quebec post-referendum crisis.

While Martin was on the defensive, auditor general Sheila Fraser testified before a Commons committee that Parliament was misled and misinformed about what was going on in connection with the government's $250 million sponsorship program.

"The role of Parliament was not respected," Fraser told the public accounts committee. "It was either not informed or misinformed about the management of this program."

Many of the questions Fraser faced were designed to tie political players to the scandal and determine just where the money went.

Fraser also faced questions about her own office and why it hadn't caught the sponsorship scandal earlier.

However, Fraser said her office can only audit a fraction of the government's transactions, chosen on the basis of risk.

As much as I don't like the Liberals, Paul Martin seems like a good guy.

Chretien is still scum, obviously.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

wait wait wait...you guys got a new Prime Minister?

[St Leo]

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
wait wait wait...you guys got a new Prime Minister?

He wasn't elected and I'd never vote for him, but yes.

[Sava]

what was bad about Chretien?

what is good/bad about Martin?

[Asher]

Chretien was involved in many scandals, he was generally clueless on the foreign relations angles too.

Paul Martin was his finance minister when they had a respectable budget with surpluses. He's now replaced Chretien as leader for a couple months.

He's more right-wing than Chretien is.

[Wezil]

"Paul Martin seems like a nice guy"


WTF? What have you been smoking?

Political thieves and crooks are NEVER nice guys.

[notyoueither]

Peter Warren just broadcast a joint statement from the Mafia and the Hell's Angels.

The spokesman denied any ties with the Liberal Party of Canada, and insisted that anyone who said otherwise would be 'fixed up'.

[Wezil]

Liberals don't want to be connected to the Liberal Party at the moment. Witness the lying and squirming Martin all week (finally blaming it on the old boss but refusing to say as such..).

Shameful.

[notyoueither]

Yeah, and from the looks of it heads will roll, but some of them may not be the one's Mr. Martin had in mind.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1076732020475_24///?hub=TopStories

Scandal drives Liberal popularity down: poll

CTV.ca News Staff

The sponsorship scandal has dealt a punishing blow to the Liberal Party's popularity -- and one casualty could be a spring election, a new poll suggests.

On Jan. 15, the last time Ipsos-Reid conducted a survey for CTV and The Globe and Mail newspaper, the Liberals enjoyed the support of an estimated 48 per cent of Canadians.

In a poll released Friday - three days after Auditor General Sheila Fraser released a damning report on spending abuses in a now-terminated federal sponsorship program in Quebec - the Liberals fell nine percentage points nationally, to 39 per cent.

The Conservative Party rose five percentage points to 24 per cent, while the NDP gained two percentage points, rising to 18 per cent support.

The Bloc Quebecois and the Green Party didn't really change.

It is one of the most sudden plunges ever experienced by a sitting government outside an election.

"This is an issue Canadians are paying attention to. They're making judgments about this government and they're basically finding it wanting in a very short period of time," said Darrell Bricker, president of Ipsos-Reid.

"We've seen polls and polls and scandals and scandals and finally it's taken," said Conservative MP John Reynolds. "People are seeing here this is not just Jean Chretien, this is the Liberal Party."

Prime Minister Paul Martin knows the scandal, which had its origins when Chretien was in charge, is hurting his government.

In an interview with CTV's Question Period, to be aired Sunday, Martin said, "I am mad as hell that some people did this," adding, "What I think is really important here is to get to the bottom of the matter."

An election had been expected for this spring. But when asked Friday whether that was still the plan, Martin would only say an election would be called "when it is appropriate to do so."

To form a majority government, a federal party needs about a 40 per cent share of the popular vote.

The polling was conducted between Feb. 10 and 12. It sampled 1,055 Canadians and is considered accurate within plus or minus 3.9 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

The regional and other sub-groupings tell an interesting story, but the because the sample sizes are smaller, the potential for error increases.

Prime Minister Paul Martin was hoping to end Western alienation, but Westerners seem to have taken the news about the scandal particularly badly.

Here is a breakdown:


B.C. - 27 per cent, down 15 points from 42 per cent
Alberta - 28 per cent, down seven points from 35 per cent
Saskatchewan/Manitoba - 33 per cent, down 13 points from 46 per cent

Ontario dropped 10 points, down to 47 per cent from 57 per cent.
In Quebec, support for the Liberals went from 45 per cent to 40 per cent, a drop of five points.
Atlantic Canada barely blinked. Liberal support fell from one point, from 43 to 42 per cent.

Rural support for the Liberals plunged by 17 points, falling from 45 to 28 per cent. Conversely, it went up by 11 points for the Conservatives, rising from 25 per cent to 36 per cent.

B.C.'s support for the Conservatives shot up by 15 points, going from 20 to 35 per cent.

Alberta, already a Conservative bastion, only saw Conservative support rise three points, going from 47 to 50 per cent.

Conservative support only rose three points in Saskatchewan/Manitoba, going from 20 to 23 per cent.

Ontario will be a key battleground in the next federal election. If the Conservatives want to form the government, they will have to break through there.

However, while the Conservatives went up seven points in Canada's most populous province, they only went from 18 to 25 per cent.

Quebec is the second-most populous province, and the Conservatives are barely on the radar there. The party did rise three points, going from two to five per cent.

In Atlantic Canada, Conservative support actually fell four points, dropping from 37 to 33 per cent.

Saskatchewan is the birthplace of the NDP, and the party gained nine points there, going from 24 to 33 per cent. In Ontario, the NDP went up five points, going from 17 to 22 per cent. It gained three points in Alberta, moving up to 16 from 13 per cent.

The party also experienced slight rises in Quebec and Atlantic Canada. However, it fell by five points in B.C., going from 27 to 22 per cent.

[Wezil]

I heard those numbers last night.

Sadly, most Canadians don't really give a damn when it comes time to vote. Martin will be reelected despite his sleaze.

Surely we have some Liberal voters here at ACS. Come on guys, let's hear the defense of this crook.

[FS*]

I don't think it's as much that Canadians don't care as it is a lack of any reasonable/credible alternative.

Being so close to this, could Martin have been completely ignorant? Enquiring minds wish to know.

[notyoueither]

I'm sure a lot of people in Cabinet at the time who were in a position where they could have known did in fact not know exactly what was going on. I find it difficult to believe that you would find many people willing to participate in a conspiracy to commit criminal acts.

Until I hear facts to the contrary, I am prepared to accept that Martin and others may have been aware that some good old-fashioned pork barreling was going on, but they did not know how outrageous the rip offs were.

However, that does not mean that I think we should keep the same party in power for consecutive majorities running into decades of time in power. That is simply begging for this sort of thing to happen, frequently.

What is really interesting... if this hurts the Liberals sufficiently to prevent a majority in the next election, which party in their right minds would prop them up in a minority? How do you think a Bloc-Tory-NDP minority government would hold up.

We may be entering interesting times.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by Sava
what was bad about Chretien?

what is good/bad about Martin?

First, I hate the liberals.

Still, I think Chretien was underestimated. Chretien is a 'streetfighter' kind of politician, cynical and corrupt. Contrary to popular belief, he's a very astute man. His social policy was center by Canadian standards, and definitely left by American standards.

Martin is the typical corporate scum, lowering the rich's taxes, and interfering against fiscal laws that would make tax evasion harder. Plus, he won't ever answer a single question. He's way too hypocrit to state his opinion on anything other than obvious, widely-accepted facts.

[Fake Boris]

Originally posted by notyoueither

What is really interesting... if this hurts the Liberals sufficiently to prevent a majority in the next election, which party in their right minds would prop them up in a minority? How do you think a Bloc-Tory-NDP minority government would hold up.

We may be entering interesting times.

We shouldn't count on it. At best, the Bloc will damage the Liberals enough to let a Tory victory slip in.

[FS*]

Originally posted by notyoueither What is really interesting... if this hurts the Liberals sufficiently to prevent a majority in the next election, which party in their right minds would prop them up in a minority? How do you think a Bloc-Tory-NDP minority government would hold up.

We may be entering interesting times.

If only the Conservative/exAlliance/Whatever could get it together, there might be some chance of opposition. Certainly hasn't been much happening with the NDP...

But if Martin can't turn this around- assuming he isn't implicated- it could get very interesting, indeed.

Rhinos, anyone?