Now that you've got the Led Zeppelin tune in your head (think of the ending) it is on to Day 3.
First in my email was a Google alert linking to the Ottawa Sun.
...Opposition parties believe Justice John Gomery will lift his publication ban at the Adscam inquiry, allowing them to hammer the Liberals on last week's potentially damaging testimony. Rumours swirled in Ottawa yesterday about which political party would jump the gun and risk thumbing its nose at Gomery. Officials from both the Conservatives and NDP agreed the Bloc Quebecois would have the most to gain by raising allegations expected to further tarnish the Liberal minority government.
But Bloc spokesman Frederic Lepage denied his party is considering breaching the ban, insisting MPs don't want to do anything to jeopardize their standing at the inquiry, which allows them to listen to the secret testimony and access documents.
NDP spokesman Jamie Heath said his party hasn't ruled out raising the testimony shrouded by the ban, but is preoccupied with fighting for the separation of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from an omnibus budget bill set for a Commons vote.
...Conservative spokesman Geoff Norquay said his party will not consider discussing Brault's testimony or raising it in the Commons until Gomery lifts the ban.
"It's Justice Gomery's call," Norquay said. "You can't use parliamentary privilege to break a publication ban."
More information at the Shotgun group blog.
Brock on the Attack has some interesting thoughts on Publication Bans on the Internet Age.
Norman Spector has a couple more stories on this (once this ban is lift his site will be priceless)
...The Gazette’s HUBERT BAUCH reports on Friday’s hearings:
“Embattled former advertising executive Jean Brault continued testifying before the Gomery commission without incident yesterday.
The day before, he broke down in tears at one point under close questioning from commission counsel Bernard Roy, but yesterday he was calm, easily forthcoming and even jovial at times.”
He also links to this.
Pointe-Sud’s Maurice Giroux reports on Jean Chrétien’s brother
Update: Norman Spector has some more stuff up.
...Aside from the poop on the explosive testimony, readers of this review, in their emails, are intensely interested in the political impact of the explosive information. Since the BQ has been raring to go to the polls for some time, Stephen Harper holds the whip hand in the Commons.
If he is wise, he’ll give Gomery more time to expose more of the muck. There's a lot more damaging testimony to come—from Brault’s testimony, it’s clear that the entire Liberal machine in Québec is implicated.
And links to a couple of his older articles which posed some interesting questions, here
...I'd also like to know why sponsorship spending did not tail off as Quebec premier Lucien Bouchard's attention turned from sovereignty to the deficit — with a consequent drop in popularity. Surely, at some point it must have been obvious that there would not be another referendum.
As well, I'd like to know why Mr. Chrétien did not involve the Conservatives and the NDP in a common front of federalist forces — as was the case in 1980 and 1995.
And I'd like to know whether Mr. Chrétien's objectives included enticing Quebec Conservatives to cross the floor and defeating Bloc Québécois MPs in the 1997 and 2000 elections — even though the former were federalists and the latter had no power to call a referendum.
Finally, I'd like to hear Mr. Chrétien's reaction to pollster Alan Gregg's explanation of the sponsorship scandal (in a CBC broadcast):
“At the root you have a situation how political parties run their election advertising as they pull together a consortium of essential volunteers. They're either unpaid or if they're paid,
they're paid significantly below market value. And at the end of a winning campaign . . . there's kind of a nudge, nudge, wink, wink, you know, we owe you one.”
and here
...Spending on sponsorships continued long after the threat of another referendum had waned. Stéphane Dion, the architect of that victory, knew nothing about the program; when he looked into it, he concluded it was useless.Mr. Chrétien's protégé was into sponsorship approvals; later, Jean Carle manufactured a fictitious invoice at the Business Development Bank and attempted to “ruin the career” of the bank president, who had displeased Mr. Chrétien. Mr. Chrétien's chief political adviser and his Quebec political minister would have had to be angels not to use the slush fund to increase Liberal representation from Quebec in the elections of 1997 and 2000.
Update: I think Meatriarchy needs to cut the Canadian bloggers some slack. There is this little thing of breaking the law constraining things a bit.
Update II: Here is the latest from MP Monte Solberg.
...But just as bad are all those people who knew something dirty was going down and simply turned a blind eye. We now know that scores of people with big time Liberal connections were involved in Sponsorship, but no one from inside the Liberal Party blew the whistle. Doesn't that strike you as strange?
...Paul's problem is that he's spent too much time sitting in the same stew as Chretien, Gagliano and other lesser lights of sponsorship fame and his government now has the same decadent flavour, and gives off the same malodor.How can this not sound self serving, but I'm not just arguing for the defeat of a Paul Martin government in the next election. I'm arguing that the Liberals should be swept away for their own good, and for the good of the country.Only then could new, clean leadership re-build them, at least in theory, on principled grounds.
Update III: CTV has posted the following story including a video with MP Peter MacKay and MP Jack Layton from their Question Period program.
...Conservative Deputy House Leader Peter MacKay, speaking on CTV's Question Period on Sunday, said he doesn't think that the testimony will spark a non-confidence motion. But that doesn't mean the Liberals will be let off the hook.
"Will there be further negotiations around the budget that could potentially lead to the election? That still exists," he said.
Spending items, such as the budget, are considered confidence motions, and could trigger a snap election.
NDP Leader Jack Layton, who also appeared on Question Period, pointed out that in a minority government, the two independent seats in parliament and his party come into play.
"It's time for Mr. Martin to start talking with the opposition parties. We'd like to suggest he talk with us about the budget issue," Layton said.
Oh yeah...still nothing at the CBC. No mention of the Canadian Press story, no mention of anything! Pathetic.
Update IV: The award for the most cryptic "devasting evidence" post goes to Paul Wells.
Gomery election Brault testimony
Ha! Suckers.
I guess the suckers are the people who used these words in Google and stumbled onto Mr. Wells' site. Or people like me who have him on our RSS feeds and clicked the title expecting him to weigh in. All in good time I guess.
Update V: Bound by Gravity is all over this. He has tonnes of links to the reaction in the blogosphere.
Update VI: And the big fish are starting to pay attention to the little fish (or I am sure some would prefer, bottom feeders). Check out Stephen Taylor's blog.
