Greg Weston of the Sun Media, with whom I nearly always agree (unlike, say, Svend Robinson), says this corruption inquiry is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
The iceberg
It is an understatement to say this week’s shocking Adscam testimony from Montreal advertising executive Jean Brault was every taxpayer’s horror, the sponsorship program suddenly exposed as a reeking swamp of fraud, kickbacks and money laundering, all in the name of the federal Liberal Party in Quebec.
Now for the bad news: Adscam is likely just a puddle in a far wider, deeper and dirtier cesspool of corruption involving potentially billions of dollars in government programs unrelated to the sponsorship fiasco.
***
For years, lucrative government ad contracts have been treated like so much political pork by the party in power, dispensed to loyal firms as a reward for providing “free” ad services during elections.
Systematically fleeced
Piece it all together, and taxpayers have been systematically fleeced for millions of dollars of Liberal Party election advertising.
But the ad scams don’t end on election day. Investigations by the auditor general and now the Gomery inquiry point to potentially widespread bid-rigging.
It is a huge amount of money. In the same time the Liberal government squandered $250 million on the sponsorship program, over $800 million was spent on federal ad programs.
As it happened, a pile of that cash went directly into the coffers of the same Quebec ad firms involved in Adscam.
Were palms greased and favours granted? Hmmm.
***
The government also hands out billions of dollars a month in contracts for everything from military tanks to pencils.
[… and he explains in a little more detail—ed…]
None of these potential scum ponds of corruption—advertising, contracting, the gun registry, shakedowns—had anything to do with the sponsorship program.
Worse, they were business as usual in the Chretien government—a government in which Paul Martin was finance minister for eight years.
Martin can now try to run from the Adscam mess, but he cannot hide from the rest of the government he helped to run.
I always say that when it comes to these liberals, imagine what we don’t know.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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