Tip Of The Iceberg

A reader passed on these figures for The Canadian Firearms Registry ad contracts in the comments, pulled from Lufa.ca website. Lufa is a little gaudy in its layout, but it’s a good place to refresh one’s memory as to how much taxpayer money has gone down the drain in corruption and incompetence over the years.
GroupAction is Jean Brault’s outfit. MediaVision is part of GroupEverest – the firm associated with Paul Martin and his team. Testimony about GroupEverest’s involvement in Sponsorship contracts is still to come.

BIG CFC ADVERTISING CONTRACTS 1995/96 – 2001/ 02
SOURCE: Justice Department
Year ……. GroupAction ………. MediaVision
1997-98…$ 345,219.53
1998-99…$ 783,799.42 …….. 1,528,471.55
1999-00…$ 740,048.28 …….. 1,264,645.64
2000-01…$1,658,194.48 …. $14,892,511.62
2001-02…$1,006,999.00 …… $5,116,520.89
TOTAL … $4,534,260.71 ….. $22,802,149.70
Groupaction had to pony up $100,000 for their share of the action, can you IMAGINE what Mediavision had to pay for 5x the work?

Good question.
While we’re busy refreshing our memories, this lengthy post from last year at Rightpoint is a must read. It covers the testimony of Allan Cutler before the Public Accounts Committee, and suggest that the kickback scheme existed well before the Sponsorship program was hatched.

A CTV news report says that since word of the sponsorship scandal was made public, the Liberals have insisted the troubled program was launched to boost Canada’s image in the wake of a near-loss in the sovereignty referendum.
But Allan Cutler, a former federal bureaucrat, who was the original whistleblower at Public Works, told the Public Accounts Committee that he saw shady dealings in the department in 1994 — the year before the plebiscite.
That was when Cutler said departmental checks and balances on contract procedures were effectively erased by a senior Public Works official allegedly working with ministerial backing — Chuck Guite.
Cutler said he first raised his concerns with Guite shortly after his duties were changed in 1994, a move that upset his boss.
Allan Cutler “It quickly became apparent to me that my employment was in jeopardy,” he told the committee probing the findings of Auditor General Sheila Fraser, whose report uncovered $100 million in sponsorship money that was misspent or mishandled between 1997 and 2003.
At that point, Cutler said, he began keeping a diary of events, and putting aside copies of contracts and correspondence — all of which he submitted to the committee on Thursday.
“I have had to unlearn 20 years of good contracting,” he said in one entry to his diary from December 1995. “Falsification of information, payments to firms to conceal improper contracting . . . it never ends”

None of this should surprise any thinking person – organized theft on this scale does not spring fully-formed from nowhere. It starts small and grows with experience, confidence and success. The number of individuals implicated in the scandal indicates this was no isolated scheme, but “business as usual”.
This is a government that has placed billions of tax dollars in the hands of foundations that are headed by Liberal patronage appointees, and who are outside the reach of the Auditor General. There they remain, despite her suggestions that their books be open. Billions.