[QUOTE BY= MadeInCanada]He's like the crook who you know is guilty but can't prove it. [/QUOTE]<br /> Or rather the Mulroney who can sue the very country he governed.<br /> <br /> Gomery blaming everyone but Martin, the finance Minister no less, will have a far worse negative impact than partial blame would have. But that's just Liberal all-or-nothing attitude rearing its ugly head again, is anyone surprised?

   

I think they could have gotten to Chrétien if they had been able to prove that he gag ordered CBC/SRC Rabinovitch to keep his investigative reporters away from the main Addscam. <br /> <br /> Gomery should have asked Rabinovitch if he had been pressured to gag order Lester from Chrétien or from Heritage Canada. Lester was afterall first to uncover the sponsorship anomalies. This went all the way to the ombudsman, the CBC/SRC chief and to the house of commons. They simply cannot deny they did not know about these first sponsorship anomalies. What did they do to ensure that they would not reoccur other than putting the SRC under a gag order???<br /> _________<br /> <br /> see http://www.premierechaine.ca/radio/mais ... 3380.shtml<br /> <br /> Monsieur Maisonneuve, <br /> <br /> Ce qui est révoltant dans ça, c'est de voir que Normand Lester a payé de sa job parce qu'il avait enquêté sur les activités de Monsieur Scully en 2000. On doit comprendre que Lester avait mis le doigt sur le bobo voilà presque 5 ans. <br /> <br /> Il faut croire qu'il y avait à l'époque des personnes qui ne voulaient pas que cette information sorte. Cela en dit long sur le magouillage qu'il avait à l'époque entre le monde politique et Radio-Canada. <br /> <br /> Comment peut-on croire à la neutralité de certains organes de presse quand on baillonne les journlalistes qui font un excellent travail? <br /> <br /> C'est Normand Lester qui doit rire dans sa barbe présentement.<br /> Pierre Martin<br /> Shawinigan-Sud<br /> <br /> _________<br /> <br /> The icing on the cake for me is that they did not even bother during these round-tables to bring in some real media workbench strength for the recommendations section of the report. I remember seeing on their web press release section a clear reference to "media" experts and they ACTUALLY removed it; I even blogged over the media reference they once had. I would love to question the commission on whose direction was this reference removed. <br /> <br /> And to add to this, someone from la SRC during that dark period was promoted to GG! Was she not part of the conspiracy of silence during both the Lester episode and the Addscam??? I am absolutely amazed that nobody is irritated over this. <br /> <br /> The inquiry has clearly refused to recognize our national public broadcaster with a watchdog role of public interest. If that is the case, perhaps they should just fold the CBC/SRC IMHO and leave the NGO media sector breathing space to do exactly that job. Maybe that is what some people want; they are sure acting like it.<br /> <br /> And then they are making these claims about improving transparency and accountability. 1984 again right on our state radio, with no mainstream media (or even other political parties) reactions and we are too apathetic to react!!! <br /> <br /> ***Late addition:***<br /> And then I check the RSS feed on CBC news and see<br /> <a href="http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/10/21/accountability051021.html?ref=rss">"Liberals unveil new accountability system"</a><br /> <br /> Once again no watchdog role on our national public broadcaster. More bureaucracy. More bogus transparency.<br /> Will the Gomery report be bogus in this area too since they did not bring in any media workbench strength during these roundtables??? They did not come even close to acknowledging that our public broadcaster investigative reporters failed us (or were under gag order). <br /> <br /> One of the mandate of the commission was to make recommendations to improve transparency and accountability. Is the commission really transparent and accountable itself? How can it make recommendations if it is not? Finally how much money did this commission cost again???

   

Well, apparently I've heard no leaks were actually given. That this reporter found no real proof of what the Gomery report entails.<br /> Let's not get bent over speculations. I'm just going to wait for the Report itself.

   

Well Mr. Geddon, I was right and Gomery even went so far as to "exonerate" Paul Martin.<br /> <br /> A lot of people don't understand the role of the Department of Finance. Finance is not the guardian of the cash in Ottawa. It takes the government's available cash and allocates it among programs and departments based on indications from the Prime Minister. It can not be the custodian of cash because this would entail a conflict of interest. Once the money is allocated by Finance, it is released by the Treasury. The treasury board and finance are kept distinct to preserve segregation of duties.<br /> <br /> Anyway, I'm not surprised at the outcome. It's really not rocket science that Chretien and his boys were named. If you have significant collusion at higher levels of the government, i.e., the PMO, they can effectively pull the wool over Finance and the Treasury since neither knows enough about anything to easily identify fraud.<br /> <br /> To me it seems that is exactly what happened, whether the CPC and the Bloc want to accept it or not (and they won't because politics are a dirty game). Trying to tie it to Paul Martin is pretty retarded at this point, and is just more examples of the CPC and the Bloc pandering to the unsophisticated average voter. I'm not a diehard Liberal, at least not a Martinite, that's for sure, but their behavior following the report has pretty much solidified my vote for the PLC in the next election.<br />

   

I'm still fuzzy on the details of all this. The meat of it is that a huge bureaucracy was created for a 'program', just like the gun registry. Tons of cash was then put into the program, just like the gun registry. Then private companies were given the cash to do the work, just like the gun registry. In this case it was private advertising companies, many which did no work. In the gun registry's case it was Ross Perot's computer compute which got billions which not only did no work, it LEASED it's equipment and a ten year old out of date software package. The initial work was then cancelled, and the company was given another contract to do the whole thing over again.<br /> <br /> The only question that comes to my mind is whether people actually believe that Ross Perot's various companies, which were rewarded for incompetence with even more work, didn't in fact employee TONS of people who did little or nothing, and didn't use some of their recent largesse to donate to the liberal party, which gave them the contract in the first place and millions of dollars. <br /> <br /> In other words, how is this different from regular politics? Give a company a contract, the company is VERY happy, so donates to the party that gave it to them. The only difference here seems to be that some bureaucrats forgot to dot the i's and cross the t's.

   

[QUOTE BY= MadeInCanada] Well Mr. Geddon, I was right and Gomery even went so far as to "exonerate" Paul Martin.<br /> <br /> A lot of people don't understand the role of the Department of Finance. Finance is not the guardian of the cash in Ottawa. It takes the government's available cash and allocates it among programs and departments based on indications from the Prime Minister. It can not be the custodian of cash because this would entail a conflict of interest. Once the money is allocated by Finance, it is released by the Treasury. The treasury board and finance are kept distinct to preserve segregation of duties.<br /> <br /> Anyway, I'm not surprised at the outcome. It's really not rocket science that Chretien and his boys were named. If you have significant collusion at higher levels of the government, i.e., the PMO, they can effectively pull the wool over Finance and the Treasury since neither knows enough about anything to easily identify fraud.<br /> <br /> To me it seems that is exactly what happened, whether the CPC and the Bloc want to accept it or not (and they won't because politics are a dirty game). Trying to tie it to Paul Martin is pretty retarded at this point, and is just more examples of the CPC and the Bloc pandering to the unsophisticated average voter. I'm not a diehard Liberal, at least not a Martinite, that's for sure, but their behavior following the report has pretty much solidified my vote for the PLC in the next election.[/QUOTE]<br /> Ahh but you're glossing over an important fact from Gomery's report in your dire need to prop up Mr. Martin as something he is not and convince yourself to vote corruption again.<br /> <br /> Gomery cites a "culture of entitlement" deep rooted in the Liberal Party of Canada. Paul Martin has been an integral part of this culture for many years and to quote him, "he grew up in it". He, you and the PMO's attempt to pull the wool over the shark infested tank is wearing thin.<br /> <br /> In a recent development, the BLOC is demanding to know the names of the candidates who received the cash stuffed envelops of stolen taxpayer money. Answers are not forthcoming. Who is Paul Martin trying to protect? Was Paul Martin one of the candidates?

   

Handpick a committee, give them a narrow focus, exclude most departments, pick a couple of scapegoats, blame your predecessor who you forced into retirement. Yeah, that would 'solidify' my respect of Martin too. Politics IS a dirty game, so it makes sense to support the slimiest.