Inside Politics

Happy (sort of) anniversary, sponsorship scandal!

by Kady O'Malley Posted: November 2, 2009 10:22 AM Last Updated: November 2, 2009 12:04 PM
Has it really been only four years since Justice Gomery released his first report? It seems like so much longer, possibly because of all those elections we've had in the interim. 

Luckily, however, for the forgetful amongst us, at least one Conservative MP has big plans to mark the occasion; courtesy of Stephen Taylor, here's the full text of a motion that Dean del Mastro intends to put forward at the Ethics committee tomorrow afternoon: 

November 1st 2009 represents the fourth anniversary of the first report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Sponsorship Program and Advertising Activities, presided over by Justice Gomery. Despite the time that has passed, we are no closer to knowing which Federal Liberal riding associations benefited from the stolen taxpayer funds or where the missing $43 million dollars highlighted by Justice Gomery ultimately wound up.

The Standing committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics calls on the Auditor General of Canada to conduct a full audit of the sponsorship program to determine which federal Liberal riding associations received stolen funds and to clarify for Canadians who received the missing $43 million dollars.


Now, I'm sure that some of you are even now prancing around the room chanting, "Adscam! Adscam! Adscam!" like a sugared-up trick-or-treater after a particularly productive Hallowe'en outing. Others, meanwhile, are cocking their heads quizzically at the screen, and wondering just why the Conservatives would want to force the Auditor General back down the rabbit hole so many years after these allegedly stolen funds were doled out -- particularly given the apparent lack of any new evidence or information that would shine a light under the few rocks that weren't up-ended during the course of her previous forensic forays into the sponsorship file, not to mention Justice Gomery's gumshoeing, as well as the various police investigations and civil and criminal court cases, some of which are still working their way through the system. 

As it turns out, there's a very simple answer, and it has virtually nothing to do with Del Mastro's penchant for cold case files, and everything to do with the procedural trench warfare that characterizes the Conservative strategy towards House committees. For the last few weeks, the opposition parties have been making a semi-concerted effort to have the Ethics committee look into those oversized novelty cheques emblazoned with the signatures of certain Conservative MPs, including the prime minister, to determine whether such conduct "meets the ethical standards expected from public office holders." 

When the latest motion came up last Tuesday, however, the Conservatives -- led by the everwily Pierre Poilievre -- brought forward a subamendment to cover both past and present public office holders, not just those who currently sit in the government caucus. Not surprisingly, the lone NDP member turned out to be fine with the idea of extending the proposed investigation to include any past transgressions from the Chretien and Martin, and as a result, the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals were eventually forced to vote against the amended motion, thus sealing its fate.

The del Mastro motion, then, should probably best be regarded as another delaying tactic, albeit one with limited potency, since it doesn't actually call upon the committee to do anything other than convey its wishes to the Auditor General, who will then be obliged to add yet another request to the bottom of her extensive to-do list. Expect her to get around to it sometime in 2012; it's not like her office is short on stuff to do, much of which is related to programs that are just a little more timely, like, for instance, the status of Economic Action! Plan, on which she is scheduled to report this fall.

Of course, what will probably happen is that the Liberals on the committee will proceed to waste hours of committee time trying to prevent the motion from coming to a vote at all, thereby falling straight into the government's trap, but we'll see.


Tags: adventures in passive aggressive subamendments, blackberry jungle, committee games, ethics committee