A few years ago I had mentioned the word corruption in connection with
deplorable financial activities by some Canadian politicians. Some people
took me to task then for using the word corruption. They said that only
such a finding in a court of law would give one the right to call
questionable monetary practices by government officials corrupted.
I believe that was in connection with the release of the Auditor General's
report that identified a considerable number of financial discrepancies,
about $1 billion in total, in the five percent of financial records that
had been selected at random and examined in detail.
If we assume that a five-percent,
 randomly-selected sample is
representative of all of the records it was taken from, it is reasonable
to assume that in all likelihood the total of misappropriated money would
have been in the order of about $20 billion dollars. None of the Canadian
media ever bothered to make such an extrapolation. I wrote to a few
Canadian conservative journalists about that, but they kept quiet about
the possible and likely total of $20 billion that got lost or handed over
to cronies of the Liberal Party.
In November 2003 Sheila Fraser, Canada's Auditor General, released a new
report, again identifying massive misappropriation of money by government
organizations. This time two extreme left-wing dailies mentioned the word
corruption in connection with the sordid situation.
Will Martin be able to avoid the fallout?
By JOHN IBBITSON
From Wednesday's
Globe and Mail [2004 02 11]
Auditor-General Sheila Fraser only uses the word once, and yet it
permeates her report. That word is fraud.
Between 1997 and 2001, no less than $100-million of taxpayer money
was diverted from government coffers to Quebec advertising agencies with
close ties to the Liberal Party — for no discernible reason.
....You will need to decide how far political corruption
reached into the Jean Chrétien government, and how much responsibility
the current government must bear....
[Full
Story] |
The Toronto Star, more left-leaning than the Globe and Mail, was less
direct in condemning the Liberal pork-barreling.
Toronto Star, Feb. 5, 2004. 01:00 AMStrange times in our capital
JAMES TRAVERS
....Sheila Fraser, the Auditor-General and Ottawa's most
articulate critic, will deliver what is expected to be a
devastating report on corruption just days after the most infamous
landmark in former prime minister Jean Chrétien's hometown, the
Auberge Grand-Mere, was torched by arsonists....
[Full
Story] |
Interestingly, talk radio
and TV in Ontario, in the heartland of Canadian liberalism, was strangely
silent yesterday about the rot.
However, the CBC website quoted an opposition MP this morning:
"This report proves that
this prime minister was the most senior minister in the most corrupt
Canadian government in living memory," said the Conservative party's
Jason Kenney.
Full
Story
The federal government's
sponsorship program that receives so much warranted attention ($250
million misappropriated) right now is only a small part of what Sheila
Fraser identified.
There seems to be no doubt that Jean Chretien is at the heart of the
problem, but let's hope that people don't forget that Paul Martin, our current
prime minister, was Canada's finance minister and the head of some of the
financial committees involved in the scandal. Paul Martin claims that he
did not know what was going on and blames Jean Chretien.
Martin, who spoke
immediately following the report's release, said he took action as soon
as he could.
"We didn't wait a day, we didn't wait five minutes, we acted," said
Martin, who announced an independent public inquiry into the issue.
Full
Story
Whether he knew or not —
keep in mind that Sheila Fraser's report was in the hands of the federal
government since November 2003 — he still carries the responsibility
for what was done under his tenure as finance minister. If he weasels his
way out of this, what will he weasel his way out of during his term as
prime minister?
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is slated to get to the bottom of a
number of the misappropriations. However, the RCMP is hardly in a position
to be impartial in the affair. It labours under a conflict of interest.
Even the RCMP received massive amounts of the money that the politicians
so freely slushed around. Moreover, the chief commissioner of the RCMP
reports directly to the prime minister.
It seems to me that the RCMP is no more likely to find anything wrong than
the Gestapo was to find that Hitler didn't have a clean bill of health.
After all, the RCMP never before found any wrongdoing by any of Canada's
prominent politicians when there was not only smoke but definitely fire.
Paul Martin is the owner of Canada Steamship Lines (a corporation that
Maurice Strong helped the Martin family to acquire). Most of the ships
(largely bulk carriers, many self-unloading) owned by CSL are registered
in the Bahamas. CSL had been involved in a long row of very bitter labour
disputes for mistreating and exploiting its employees. The associated
strikes, litigation and demonstrations had religiously been kept out of
the Canadian media. Some of those strikes took place in Australia. They
made the news there but not in Canada.
When Paul Martin was to become prime minister, the question was raised
whether he would be able to keep himself at arms length from CSL. He
admitted to CSL having received $137,000 from the federal government. It
later emerged that he slightly understated that figure. The total of
federal grants and loans received by CSL during Paul Martin's term as
finance minister runs to $161 million.
All three opposition
parties fired a barrage of questions about $161 million in government
contracts won by Canada Steamship Lines Ltd. over the last decade. The
company's decision to base its international affiliate in Barbados for
tax reasons also found its way into opposition crosshairs.
Full
Story
Amongst other things, Paul
Martin's CSL supplies virtually all of the road ballast used in the
eastern USA — good old Canadian bedrock, far more solid than the Canadian
Liberal Party's politician's reputation.
At any rate, the next federal elections are expected to take place in
about two months. The criminal investigation by the RCMP will be a long
way from being finished by then. What's a little bit of patronage and
corruption amongst friends. It will roll off the Liberals like water off a
duck's back, and the Liberal Party is expected to win again in a landslide
victory.
INDEPTH:
Highlights of the auditor general's report
The CBC is government-funded
and depends for its existence on the Liberal government's largesse. The
Conservatives would love few things better than to dismantle the CBC.
Anyway, cut through all of the political hype, propaganda and distortion
and go to
the Auditor General's report.
(If you arrived here by following a link from
another page, you may wish to read this page from the beginning, so that
the following is put into context.) Many of the problems that befall Canadian
families and leads to their break-up are the consequence of deliberate
government policies that evolved and are being actively pursued, ever
since the 1960s. Those
 policies aim at
the systematic, planned destruction of the traditional nuclear family.
Will the sign shown to the right work
for the Liberals in the upcoming 2004 federal elections?
The Lawn signs are ready, but will it do any good to downplay the
name of the party (see lower left-hand corner of sign) and to emphasize
the face and name of the man that signed the cheques during his term as
finance minister? Will it help to erase the memory of the Liberal's
or the finance minister's involvement in so much financial chaos,
mismanagement and corruption?
Do the Liberal's truly think that Canadians are that gullible?
The colour for the signs is a good choice. It brings to mind
another party in another country that had set itself
the goal of eradicating the traditional
nuclear family, so that a better socialist country could be built from
the remaining rubble and ruins of society.
That party's colour was red, too, and it brought corruption,
financial ruin and social chaos to the country it ostensibly ruled with an
iron fist, the USSR.
Do we want to go down that road? If you can't make up your
mind yet, have a look at
what Lorne Gunter
thinks of the Liberals' Martin-centred ad campaign.
_______________________
See also:
- Ted Byfield's commentary
on Canadian Taxes in the May 11, 1998 issue of the Alberta Report:
Canada is now the world's top nation — when it comes to paying taxes,
that is
- Maurice Strong & Paul
Martin, Part 2
Champagne socialist
full of bubbles: Maurice Strong profits from pushing leftist ideas
Edmonton Journal, Friday 18 July 2003, p. A18
By Lorne Gunter
Levant claims Strong has
"never stopped pressing for a world where the UN's resolutions would
be enforced as the law in every corner of the Earth." And Strong has
made it clear he sees no harm in carbon taxes, air travel taxes and
financial transaction taxes that raise billions or even trillions
annually to fund a super world bureaucracy where he and others can
influence world affairs without every grubbying themselves by seeking
approval from -- ugh -- voters.
This is the man Paul
Martin wants to make a senior economic and environmental adviser in
his PMO. But that's no surprise, either. Levant details how Strong
hired Martin to be his personal assistant at Montreal's Power
Corporation, even before Martin had left university, and later helped
Martin get his stake in Canada Steamship Lines, the company that is
the source of Martin's personal wealth, not to mention his pride and
joy. Martin's enthusiasm for Strong's counsel goes way, way back.
On CSL's use of "flags of convenience":
For example, the CSL “Innovator” had a
labour agreement, a Bahamanian flag and an Indian crew. But when CSL
pooled some of its ships with a German company, it sold them the
Innovator as part of the deal.
The Germans gave it a new name, a Liberian flag, and a Filipino crew.
CSL then leased the ship right back – and its labour agreement no
longer applied.
...
"It’s no different than dealing with sweatshops, he uses sweatships –
same thing. He applies the same kind of rules – he may not apply them
but he knows what they are – that is why he goes offshore with his
vessels."
In an interview with the new prime minister on December 19th
[2003], Mary-Lou Findlay, host of As it Happens, asked Mr. Martin
about his image problem with Canada Steamship Lines - specifically CSL’s foreign flagged ships. Called flag-of-convenience ships (FOCs)
they allowed Mr Martin (and now allow his sons) to pay a quarter of
the Canadian wage rate, avoid paying taxes altogether, and to ignore
Canadian labour standards, health and safety laws and environmental
regulations. Experts in the field estimate that each ocean-going ship
saves on average $700,000 a year from this unethical practice....
Like it or not, we are all Paul Martin watchers now. We should all
keep an eye on the length of his nose.
Pinocchios – Courtesy Tim Rotheisler & The REPORT
(Paul Martin on left — keep
an eye on the length of his nose.)
 The White Rose
Thoughts are Free |
