Testimony at the Gomery inquiry into Liberal Party corruption, or as the Liberals call it, “oh shut up and let us change Canada quickly before we’re found out”, seems to once again link Paul Martin to allegedly unseemly decisions.
A man who helped Paul Martin in his leadership bids allegedly “earned” (or as normal honest people call it, “earned ha-ha-ha”) $75,000 for doing practically nothing (or as Liberals call it, “a month’s worth of employment, liberal-style”).
I imagine other things went on that we don’t know about. Or as Liberals call it, “nothing happened, Harper has a hidden agenda, Halliburton, let’s smoke pot”.
Prime Minister Paul Martin approved a contract amendment when he was finance minister that landed an ad man friend $75,000 for doing little work, say documents at the sponsorship inquiry.
Memos from January 1996 indicate Martin approved the boost in additional funding for a Canada Savings Bond direct mail campaign. The file, unrelated to the sponsorship program, was co-managed by Montreal firm Groupe Everest, headed by Claude Boulay, and resulted in the $75,000 commission.
Finance official J.P. Labrosse said in a January 2, 1996, memo that the contract amendment involving Everest was “approved by the minister (Martin) on December 21, 1995.” The contract was boosted to $2.6 million from $1.7 million.
Documents show Boulay’s ad firm was paid a 17.56 per cent commission for the campaign even though the bulk of the work was done by another agency, Pinnacle Advertising.
[…] The funding approval went ahead over the objections of Public Works official Allan Cutler, who later blew the lid off of the sponsorship scandal.
Cutler said in a memo to a finance official that Groupe Everest’s involvement in the contract was minimal or nil.
“Groupe Everest will presumably obtain a commission on the sub-contract without having done any work,” said the memo dated January 26, 1996.
Cutler also noted the funding increase had been approved even though all of the mailing and distribution work related to the contract had already been completed.
[…] Boulay, who continued his testimony at the inquiry on Thursday, had worked on Martin’s 1990 leadership bid as well as his 1988 and 1993 election campaigns.
[… ]Boulay is embroiled in a scandal over his relationship with Martin as well as Everest’s $67 million in sponsorship contracts.
[…] Ad man Jean Brault has testified to funnelling $1.1 million to the federal Liberals in exchange for sponsorship contracts.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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