INDEPTH: SPONSORSHIP SCANDAL
Gomery: the players
CBC News Online | June 9, 2005
From The National | June 8, 2005 | Reporter: Leslie MacKinnon
First it was just a program, then it was a scandal.
Now it's both of those things and an inquiry that's gripped the country. The allegations that have emerged from the sponsorship inquiry are deadly serious, but driving the tale of contracts, invoices and ad campaigns were some truly memorable personalities. They turned anonymous hearing rooms into stages. They turned the inquiry into the stuff of a TV soap opera.
The story of the sponsorship scandal live on television has most of the elements of grand theatre. Emotions are laid bare, grown men weep, there are moments of high comedy. There's the excitement of a hint of violence. Sex, a love story? Well, no. But there is money, lots of it, and tantalizingly some of it is envelopes of cash. Above all, some of its characters with just a hint of the underworld about them have given the story a fascination that other dry inquiries cannot match.
Like all great stories, the sponsorship saga should have a moral. Perhaps it's just that eventually, the bad guys do get caught out. It's just that here, there are so many of them. There's the advertisers who made millions, the political types who flouted laws to gain power, and then there are all those who knew something was wrong or suspected something was wrong and did nothing.
 Allan Cutler
"I started documenting the records and the problems partly because of who I am and what I am. I'm meticulous in that way. For example, they're going to get paid for little to no work, and I would photocopy all of that and take it home so that there was one on the file, which is where it's supposed to be, and then I had a backup record at home in case it disappeared off the file," Cutler said.
Cutler also began to keep a diary.
"In the two months that I had been reporting to Chuck, I have discovered that I am expected to cover up deals made and not use good procurement practices learned over 20 years," Cutler said.
Allan Cutler eventually made a formal complaint. He almost lost his job, but he hung on at Public Works until he took early retirement last year. An internal audit backed up everything he'd said. If he'd been listened to, perhaps the worst excesses of the sponsorship program could have been stopped.
"What a waste of a career," Cutler said.
The early warning Cutler sounded was ignored, and the sponsorship program ground on unabated. For several years, the money and the good times flowed. Until the auditor general's scathing report in 2002 and her now-famous judgment. The inquiry has heard tale after tale of outrageous and outlandish misspending of public funds. Over 10 years, just over $300 million was spent on the sponsorship program. Here are a few examples.
There was the flag purchase. "They were actually for Sheila Copps to send out to everybody in the country," Cutler said.
The flags could have, probably should have, been purchased directly, but the contract was given to an advertising agency that charged a large commission simply for buying the flags and handing them over.
"It was a three-day contract for three-plus million dollars where they got a 200- or $300,000 commission for buying flags. Now, if I could work for three days and get two- or $300,000 worth of work, I would think it's a very good deal," Cutler said.
Another sponsorship: "the China Series." The China Series featured a Canadian whose stage name is Dashan. In the series, he visits various sites in Canada. The shows were aired only in China but paid for out of the sponsorship fund, which was supposed to promote Canadian unity. The producer of the China Series, John Hayter of the advertising firm Vickers & Benson, failed to explain how a series not seen in Canada could promote Canadian unity.
 John Hayter
"I have to tell you, I have a hard time understanding the use of these funds that were apparently to be dedicated to the promotion of Canadian unity to sponsor the creation of a television program or programs for broadcast in China. I'm not saying your series wasn't a series or whatever," Justice John Gomery commented.
"Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt. I agree with you. I just, I said, do you want me to try something on? Didn't work," Hayter responded.
"Well, OK. You're an advertising man, Mr. Hayter. It's a very good example of your talent," Gomery said.
 Alfonso Gagliano
Did the pressure have had anything to do with the fact that Vickers & Benson was a contributor to the Liberal party?
"No, no, no, and I don't know and I still don't know who Vickers & Benson was," Gagliano said. "I knew the name of the agency, but I didn't know who they were."
If it can be said there are victims in the sponsorship program other than taxpayers, one of them might be Mark Roswell, a huge celebrity in China known as Dashan. The Chinese media accused him of absconding with sponsorship money.
 Mark Roswell
There's a much less expensive sponsorship called Canada Place. It was an event in Italy. The minister of public works laid a plaque in a small town.
At the Gomery inquiry, bureaucrat Chuck Guité said the minister, Alfonso Gagliano, asked him to find the money for the project. Gagliano disagrees with Guité's description of the project.
 Chuck Guité
That's part of the first half of the story. Sponsorship money intended to promote unity that did anything but. The second half is the money trail. How much of it went back to the Liberal party to help elect Liberals in Quebec?
On this subject, a lot of the testimony is either unprovable or extremely contradictory.
 Joe Morselli
A few other Liberals have accused them of being, to put it bluntly, on the take. Their names first surfaced at the Gomery inquiry when advertising executive Jean Brault of Groupaction told an astonishing tale about an incident at Frank's restaurant in Montreal's Little Italy, where Brault provided an envelope of cash for Wajsman.
Wajsman, who now runs a social action institute in Montreal, said this is completely untrue.
 Beryl Wajsman
Joe Morselli doesn't like the way he's been portrayed in the media as a mob godfather, and perhaps because of that, he often presents an image of eccentric charm.
But at the Gomery inquiry, there was testimony that Morselli had asked an advertising executive for a hundred thousand dollars and in return, Morselli would arrange to have a competition for a federal contract delayed.
"I never got money," Morselli said. "That's a false perception. I didn't raise money. We sold tickets. We sold tickets. The company or individual were making a cheque. They were not making a cheque to me or making a cheque to the Liberal party."
It was at the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada where Morselli and Wajsman were ticket selling, usually $500 tickets for Liberal cocktail parties, and it's here where they clashed with some of the staff and the executive of the Liberal party.
 Daniel Dezainde
"Even if I say that, what's wrong with that? Is there something wrong to say to someone, I declare war on you? I don't like you, I declare war on you. So don't talk to me no more. Leave me alone. In that sense, possible. And actually, I didn't want to talk to him. I didn't want to see him, even," Morselli said.
Dezainde testified he suspected Morselli was running a parallel fundraising operation outside the Liberal party. Dezainde said he fired Wajsman for holding fundraising events the Liberal party apparently didn't know about. As well, Wajsman was handing out what he called guides to potential corporate donors to the party. Wajsman claims he and Morselli were trying to open up the party to ethnic and social action groups.
"They want to know what the hell does the government do for us? All we're getting is bad news. That's why this guide was produced. And all it was, we compiled websites of government ministries that related to this is what Dezainde objected to. Why? Because he didn't want the party open," Wajsman said.
But this is what Justice Gomery had to say about Beryl Wajsman's guide for donors...
"And if the person who was soliciting the contribution said that he has influence or he has contacts or he can furnish people with information which will assist them in getting favours from the government or getting grants from the government, it seems to me that you may have crossed the line into peddling influence," Gomery said.
It's ultimately up to Gomery to sort out the truth in this internal Liberal party turf war. He's a bit of a folk hero now in Montreal, recognized sometimes on the street. His mandate is to determine the facts, follow the money, and make recommendations. But no one yet has taken responsibility for the overall debacle the sponsorship program became.
 Chuck Guité
"There is no way under this roof that Chuck Guité personally himself only, would run that program without any input, without any influence, without any direction from either the minister's office, the Prime Minister's Office, Privy Council..." Guité said.
Gagliano, on the other hand, said: "Do I regret that, do I have a regret in all this? Oh, I have a few. I have, I regret having trusted the bureaucrats. Maybe I shouldn't have trusted them."
Does Gagliano have any sense that he should take ministerial responsibility for what happened because it happened on his watch?
"I believe that I had an obligation to apologize if I did anything wrong. I believe that I did everything that I had to do knowing what I knew then," Gagliano said. "Well, criminally, civilly, or even personally, I didn't do anything wrong. So far, nobody has proved that I do anything, that I did anything wrong."
 Andrew Stark
"Chrétien has said if people committed crimes, they should pay," Stark said. "They're responsible and they're guilty. But otherwise, he seems to think there's no other kind of responsibility that one can have short of criminal."
What of Prime Minister Paul Martin who has, at last, apologized?
"I was the minister of finance. Knowing what I've learned this past year, I am sorry that we weren't more vigilant, that I wasn't more vigilant," Martin told a television audience.
Andrew Stark said he should have addressed what he knew back then.
"What he might have said would be something like this: 'At the time, I was a senior minister from Quebec. I had a network on the ground. I should have been more activated by the rumours that that network was getting.' Certainly I think it would restore some measure of public trust, but it might even be politically advantageous," Stark said.
 Alfonso Gagliano
"I'm considered a bum. I mean, I'm considered a criminal when I walk on the street," he said. "What we did here, we shoot ourself ... in the foot. And now the only party – since the last two months, the inquiry turn into the Liberal Party of Canada. It's not even the sponsorship anymore. It's the Liberal Party of Canada, and definitely we'll take at least another 10 years before the Liberal Party of Canada will be able to win some seats in Quebec."
Allan Cutler, the stickler for the rules, feels he was forced into early retirement just because he spoke up, and no one in government has ever thanked him for what he did.
 Allan Cutler
Like many Canadians, like all the politicians whose fate hangs on the outcome, he'll be watching, for his own reasons, the final act when Justice Gomery reports next fall.
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Gilles Duceppe's response (RealVideo runs 5:59)
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