According to Sun Media columnist Greg Weston is was common knowledge at GroupAction that kickbacks were being paid to the federal Liberal Party.
...A Montreal advertising firm that received more than $40 million in AdScam sponsorship contracts paid huge kickbacks to the federal Liberal party and the Quebec separatists, senior executives of the company have told Sun Media. "I remember seeing the cheques," one former Groupaction exec said of payments to the federal Liberal party in Quebec.
The man spoke on condition that he not be identified until he testifies at the Gomery inquiry sometime over the coming weeks.
The exec said the president of Groupaction, Jean Brault, made no secret around the company about where the kickback cash was going and for what.
"He spoke to me about it ... having to pay money back to the Liberal party" in return for contracts.
Not only that, but some of the Sponsorship money found its way into the Parti Quebecois. Some much for former-PM Chretien definition of federalist and separatist ad firms.
...But another former Groupaction executive, Alain Renaud, said that while the firm was receiving million of dollars in federal sponsorship money, it was secretly cutting cheques to the separatist Parti Quebecois.
Renaud said that in one transaction, a total of about $90,000 was given to the PQ as part of Groupaction's getting a $4.5-million advertising contract for the Quebec liquor board, called the SAQ.
Groupaction apparently won the contract in a competition when a bagman for the Parti Quebecois had a meeting with the firm's top executives.
One of those executives told Sun Media: "The bagman came by and said: 'Well, you won the bid, and all that's needed now is a signature, and the documents are on the minister's desk to be signed, and it's going to cost you fifty grand.'"
Renaud recalled about $45,000 a year in donations were to be paid to the PQ for two years.
And how exactly does this help National Unity?
The Globe and Mail's Daniel Leblanc has also interviewed a Gomery Inquiry witness before they testify (not clear if it is the same person). Seems like the media has designed their own way to get around publication bans.
...A salesman who got $1-million to open doors in Ottawa for Groupaction Marketing Inc. said the advertising firm donated to the Liberal Party in a multitude of ways as part of its lobbying efforts to help win lucrative sponsorship contracts.
Long-time Liberal supporter Alain Renaud spoke to The Globe and Mail in advance of his testimony at the Gomery inquiry, which is scheduled for tomorrow.
...Mr. Renaud said he was never directly employed by Groupaction, but the firm paid him $1-million from 1994 to 2000 in consulting fees and expenses for his role as a "door opener" with Liberal officials such as Jean Carle and Alfonso Gagliano. Groupaction won millions of dollars worth of contracts from the federal government's sponsorship program over the years.
...Mr. Renaud's comments paint a picture of how the relationship between Groupaction and the Liberal Party worked over the years.
He said companies in many sectors have long helped governing parties, either in raising funds or during elections. Groupaction also made donations to the Parti Québécois when the firm worked for provincial agencies, he said.
"When a party in is power, you have to be known. If you're not known, you won't get contracts," Mr. Renaud said.
"Friends work with friends, and that is not about to change . . . . You won't work for a party if it is not in power. It doesn't do any good. I don't know too many people who work in politics for nothing, whether they're engineers or architects or anything else," he said.
If it is not the same witness, he is singing the same tune.
And in the Calgary Herald we have news that the lifting of the publication ban may be closer than you think.
...A ruling today on whether to postpone the criminal trial of former advertising executive Jean Brault could lead to the lifting of the publication ban on his testimony at the sponsorship scandal inquiry.
"If they lift the publication ban, then and only then will we be able to assess how the public reacts to it," deputy Conservative leader Peter MacKay told The Canadian Press on Tuesday. "but the direction it's going right now, it's extremely serious."
On the other hand it has been announced that the criminal trials of Jean Brault and Chuck Guite will only be postponed until June. In which case Justice Gomery may keep the publication ban until then. More on this at CTV.
Here is Chantal Hebert's take on all of this.
...If the Conservatives in particular pick up a strong beat of indignation against the government, Paul Martin's minority regime could lose the confidence of Parliament before this year's batch of tulips blooms in the nation's capital.
Quebec will not factor into the equation. It is already lost to the Liberals.
The latest set of sponsorship revelations will only confirm the obvious.
It will take at least another election cycle before francophone Quebecers reconsider their judgment of the federal Liberal party and/or look beyond the Bloc Québécois to another government alternative.
Thus, only if further revelations of Liberal wrongdoing give the sponsorship scandal new traction outside Quebec will Conservative leader Stephen Harper have a real incentive to go for the jugular of the minority government.
...Commission insiders insist that, as lethal as the Brault testimony might be to the Liberal party, there is yet more and worse to come.
If they are right, a federal election this spring would unfold against the backdrop of a daily stream of damaging testimony to the Liberals.
Whether that stands to be more corrosive than the entire pool of the final Gomery report later this year is ultimately going to be Harper's call
to make.
