..that causes their ministers to do weird stuff with money

The cabinet minister who has mounted the vigorous defence of the Liberal government over Adscam is himself snared in a nasty money dispute with his old Conservative riding association that prompted a complaint to the RCMP, Sun Media has learned. For more than a year, Public Works Minister Scott Brison has been asked to provide receipts or invoices to the King-Hants Conservative riding association to account for a $4,400 cheque given to him in 2003, while he was a Tory MP.
“It’s still not properly accounted for,” said Debbie Janzen, who sat on the board of Brison’s old Progressive Conservative Party riding association.
The cheque, which Brison assistant Dale Palmeter says was used to help pay down debts from his failed bid for the PC leadership in 2003, was made out to Brison on July 31 that year.
But it wasn’t cashed until Dec. 11 – the day after he defected to Paul Martin’s Liberals.
The money was deposited into Brison’s personal bank account in Wolfville, N.S., and the contribution does not show up on the list of contributors to his campaign.

I just happen to have a copy of that check. (click on it to enlarge)


People send me such cool stuff.

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This is one great idea:

Because we all know how much the Liberal party likes envelopes stuffed with money, so we might as well help them out and all send one. But don’t forget to put a note in the envelope too, because you have to request something from them in return for your envelope stuffed with cash. From what we have been hearing, that’s how things work inside of the Liberal machine.

Help spread the word!
update: sorry! link fixed

“I have never had a lunch with Claude Boulay or anybody else to discuss the direction of contracts, directing contracts, intervening in contracts, that’s just simply not my style of politics,” he said, referring to the Montreal ad executive.
Asked if he had lunch with Boulay to discuss something else, Martin told reporters Thursday: “I can’t recall having had lunch with him since we formed the government.”

A long time was spent on crafting this answer…. and it shows.
Too many qualifiers. The safety valve: “recall”. “since”.
Paul Martin has just broadcast that there are skeletons in his closet.
This was not a man who had a question thrown to him from the blue. The details and personalities involved in this scandal have been on the public record for many months.
Paul Martin works closely with a team (teams?) of advisors. His people will have scoured every agenda book, every office record, every telephone log, to ensure that they are aware of any and every figure that Martin may have had contact with who is implicated.
When the question about Paul Martin’s lunch with Claude Bouley were asked in the House, he would have known instantly if there was truth in the accusation. A man who was completely out of the loop, who had no knowledge, would have known that his team had confirmed that. And he would have been able to state as much, without qualifiers.
He waited three days to answer, and then parsed his words extremely carefully. He waited because he couldn’t be sure if they had missed something. He stalled for a reason – they were checking their records.
He’s lying. He knew.

The Black Rod has been collecting federal sponsorship trivia – in Manitoba.

Canada’s National Ukrainian Festival was given $30,000 in 2001. However an access-to-information request showed that the festival had actually been awarded $34,500 by Public Works Canada.
Festival organizers were told that the other $4,500 was a commission to Compass Communications in Halifax. They were told to send a bill to Compass, but to make the bill out to Media/IDA in Montreal. The letter to the Ukrainian Festival was written by Pierre Tremblay, a very familiar name in the Adscam investigation.
Conservative MP Bill Casey asked the obvious question in the House of Commons:
“Does the minister have any idea at all why Public Works would tell a Manitoba organization to send this bill through one Liberal advertising agency in Nova Scotia and have it funnelled through another one in Montreal for an event in Manitoba to be paid for by Ottawa?
Did the government pay commissions to Media/IDA Vision in Montreal or did it pay commissions to Compass Communications in Halifax, or did it pay commissions to both of these Liberal advertising firms?”
He never got a straight answer. Nor has anyone.
Compass is owned by Tony Blom, a Liberal strategist who is also related to former Nova Scotia Liberal party president Gerald Blom.
Government records show it received $463,365 in commissions and more than $4.6 million for production costs related to events between 1998 and 2001.
The names Compass and Tremblay showed up again in documents surrounding sponsorship of the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg in 1999. Compass Communications billed $1.6 million in fees and commissions.
Objections were raised as to whether the sponsorship project met the government’s own rules. “Pay it,” said Tremblay, who overruled the naysayers.
NDP MP Pat Martin has invoices showing the Pan Am Games Society received $634,000. A letter dated May 1, 1999, from Games president Don MacKenzie to Blom indicates the group was expecting another $300,000 from Compass. He’s still wondering where that money went.
“I believe this sponsorship program blew way out of control,” said Pat Martin. “It appears to have turned into a cash cow. The abuse began immediately and the abuse extended it seems beyond Quebec’s borders at least to Halifax and now to Winnipeg.”

You can obtain a full copy of the article by email: Black Rod.