Months ago Canadian bloggers began digging through the Elections Canada database and discovered that a numbered company was the largest contributor to the party. Jay Currie asked; “Who is 55555 Inc.? Why did it/they give the Liberal Party $2,974,341.20? What did they get in return.?”

Mike Brock produced a chart.

MK Braaten;

Previously, Chuck Guite testified that he recalled that he had a telephone conversation with Terrie O’Leary who told him that “Paul would prefer (Earnscliffe)” for advertising contracts. Earnscliffe is an advertising/consulting firm which has very close ties with Paul Martin and was a large supporter in his leadership bid. In return, Earnscliffe’s owners David Herle and John Webster, who are also the national Liberal Co-chairs, donated nearly 3 million dollars to the Liberal party through a container company #55555 Inc. In total, Earnscliffe has earned over $6 Million dollars in government contracts under Martin’s watch. The question remains is whether Martin deliberately diverted contracts toward Earnscliffe, which is operated by Liberal party members, who then diverted money through #55555 Inc and back to the Liberal party. A phantom company with no previous history turned out to be the largest contributor towards the Liberal party in 2003; this definitely seems odd. Why else would a container company, whose financial statements are not public, donate millions of dollars to the Liberals? Similarly, Groupaction was given millions of dollars in contracts and was used as a container company. Government contract money would be ‘washed’ through Groupaction before it was illegally returned to the Liberal party disguised as donations. When Martin was running for leadership, Shelia Copps dared Martin to reveal who donated to his leadership campaign. Mr. Martin responded that the money was in a ‘blind trust’ and he did not know who contributed. Why the secrecy?

Discussion of this numbered company has arisen previously – without doing a lot of surfing around, it seems to me that the explanation given was that it represented the surplus from Paul Martin’s leadership campaign.
Now, here’s a question I can’t answer – perhaps readers can. What are the reporting procedures on donations to party leadership campaigns? Someone have Sheila Copps’ phone number?

Monte Solbert says Scott Brison is showing off his Paul Martin cufflinks.
He should have asked to see his Jean Chretien bracelets.

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.

A good day to pick up the phone and call your MP, I’d say.
You can find their numbers here.
Saskatchewan residents might funnel their calls to our lone Liberal MP, and finance minister “Honest Ralph” Goodale who, as of yesterday, still hadn’t responded to local media requests for an interview. Perhaps he’s taking his cue from “Scurring Through The Corridors” Chretien and “Fleeing In Dark Windowed Cars” Martin.
Ralph’s phone number: (613) 996-4743 fax : (613) 996-9790
Don’t bother with email. The words “sponsorship” and “you stinking band of crooks” won’t make it through the spam filters.
Neale News is on top of the items now flooding out of the mainstream press. (The London Fog blog scored a write-up in the local press).
In the National Post, Don Martin is picking up the “Canada’s Watergate” meme.

The Liberal spin of this as a scandal confined to a small band of unsupervised rascals who auctioned off contracts to the highest bidder and used the proceeds to line their own pockets is a tough sell. How, then, to explain the rogue party official who was able, after receiving a $50,000 cash bribe, to muscle the justice ministry into killing a planned advertising tender for the much maligned firearms registry, leaving the business in Brault’s hands? That’s deep penetration stuff, not just the small circle running the sponsorship program.

Some of our lefty blogger friends are pooh-poohing the comparison[1] to the Nixon scandal – as though the systemized theft of millions from the federal treasury by top government officials is just so much small potatoes when stacked againt the cover-up of a hotel room break-in.
Though, in a sense they’re right. Had this taken place in the US, the Prime MInister would already be gone. There would have been no “Gomery Inquiry”. The original Public Accounts Committee hearings would have resulted in Jean Chretien and Paul Martin both making their exit on a Sea King from the lawn of Parliament Hill.
Footnote:
[1] It’s also possible that the writer was just trying to stir the pot as a way of boosting readership.

Greg Staples has mugshots a photo gallery of the “Parallel Liberal Group” featured in this SDA post from yesterday. It so nice to put faces to the names… go check it out.
In other late breaking developments – John Welsh has stepped down as chief of staff to Heritage Minister Liza Frulla. His Sponsorship claim to fame;

Liberal organizer, John Welch, now the chief of staff of Heritage Minister Liza Frulla.
Mr. Welch got paid $8,000 a month. For a year, he kept a small office at Groupaction, where “he was very active on the phone and I understood he was doing work of some type for the party,” Mr. Brault said.”

The Canadian contingent has arrived in Rome for the funeral of Pope John II. The BBC reports;

Vatican dignitaries who were on hand to meet the Canadian Prime Minister and his entourage were at first shocked when he kneeled on the ground immediately after disembarking.
Concerned that Mr. Martin might be attempting to emulate the late Pope in kissing the ground, their fears that an embarrasing protocol breach was about to occur were allayed when it was realized that he was merely attempting to claw a hole in the earth into which to crawl.

Via Stephen Taylor, the Brault testimony transcripts. (PDF)
March 30, 2005
April 1, 2005
April 4, 2005
April 5, 2005
April 6, 2005
(additional note: Testimony is in French )

The Globe and Mail is out of the box with the Brault testimony.
There is almost too much to absorb in one or two readings. For all that we have heard about the depth and routine nature of the criminality, it is worse than I thought. This part jumped out at me;

In September, 2001, Mr. Brault needed something from Mr. Morselli.
“You’re asking a lot of me. I do what I can. You said `If I can help, I’ll do it’,” he said he reminded Mr. Morselli. “I challenged him.”
He told Mr. Morselli he needed to delay the bidding for a contract with the Justice Department.
He said Mr. Morselli called a few days later and asked him to his office, in an east-end industrial park. As he went in, he saw Mr. Mignacca leaving.
He said Mr. Morselli asked for $100,000 in cash. “It’s $100,000 and your problem is solved,” Mr. Brault said he was told

The scandal broke before the payments were complete.
If true, it means that Minister of Justice and Attorney General Irwin Cotler’s office has been compromised by the very people it is supposed to be investigating. It does not matter to what extent or in what manner. What we do know is that none of his officials or department employees have been charged or publicly implicated – so it is not unreasonable to suspect that there are individuals there who are still playing for the other team.
In this light, every move by the Justice Department in prosecuting (or not prosecuting) individuals involved in the corruption must be highly scrutinized for any whiff of conflict of interest or the setting up of tactical legal roadblocks, unless and until the Minister addresses the accusation and demonstrates that his officials have been thoroughly investigated for any role in the affair.