(Hat-tip Norman Spector)
Jim Travers is asking the obvious question, if advertising contracts are like currency to political parties than how likely is it that the corruption is limited to Quebec?
...If paying party workers with taxpayer dollars worked in Quebec, then why not elsewhere? In fact, way back in 2002 The Toronto Star reported that similar tactics were allegedly used coast-to-coast.
In Atlantic Canada, a fantasy federal contract is said to have paid a provincial Liberal campaign organizer. Out West, a prospective candidate's salary was allegedly reimbursed through inflated advertising payments.
Neither case has been tested in court or heard by Gomery, who is narrowly focused on Quebec. And it's also true there is little incentive to break what until now has been a circle of silence protected with all the ferocity of junkyard dogs.
...It may be too late for Martin to become a great Prime Minister. He still has time to be a leader.
Ouch.
Also via Norman Spector comes this column from Greg Weston. Where does the scandal merry-go-round stop?
...Turns out their cafeteria at RCMP headquarters in Montreal is run by Buffet Trio, the family catering company of Joe Morselli.
Morselli is also the former Liberal bagman named in last week's bombshell Adscam allegations that the sponsorship program was rife with kickbacks, bid-rigging and money-laundering.
...Exactly how Morselli's company came to have the catering contract at RCMP headquarters is not entirely clear. A federal Public Works official says that while that department handles the catering contracts in most federal buildings, Morselli's firm was picked by the RCMP division in Montreal -- the same one investigating Adscam.
Morselli's good luck in federal contracting didn't stop with the RCMP kitchen.
Buffet Trio also has the cafeteria contract at the huge federal tax centre in -- wait for it -- Jean Chretien's home town of Shawinigan.
A Public Works official says Buffet Trio first won that contract in a "competitive bid" in 1998, at the height of the sponsorship program.
Update: Andrew Coyne is doing some great digging on his blog here.
...The Conservative strategy is becoming clear. It is to tear down the Chinese wall Martin has erected between his own government and Jean Chretien's -- not by making unverifiable accusations about what Martin knew or didn't know as Finance minister, but by reminding people of what he did or didn't do as Prime Minister.
...Long ago I pointed out that the two accounting firms commissioned to perform the audits, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Delitte & Touche, are also two of the Liberals' largest contributors -- a peculiar choice for a party anxious to redeem its reputation
and here.
...The deputy leader of the Conservative party says the national police force, the people we count on to protect us from the bad guys, can't be trusted; that it's in cahoots with the ruling party; that it may be corrupt itself? And this isn't front page news on every newspaper in the country? What has this country become, when the truly shocking is too obvious to report?
