(This column was published in the North Shore News on Mar. 17, 2004)
Lost taxpayers' millions need accounting for
By Leo Knight
THE subject of a revolution last week touched a nerve across the political divide it appears.
E-mails were flying from all manner of angry Canadians despite the attempts by the PMO and certain members of the eastern media to convince us things are all fine once again. Unfortunately for the PM's mandarins and spinners, they took yet another hit as the week drew to a close, the apparent disappearance of $160 million, ostensibly paid out to subcontractors working on IT issues in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for work evidently not actually performed. That is $160 million. Gone, poof, just like that.
The bureaucrat responsible for the contracts, Paul Champagne, was interviewed by the media on the weekend at his mansion in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. No, really, he has a gated mansion there. He said he made his pile in the stock market and really never needed to be working as a $50K a year contract administrator over at the MoD. The other bureaucrat who managed to let $250 million of yours and my dollars slip through his fingers is also retired. He used to live year round at his splendid home in the Gatineau, on the Quebec side, while he was working his fingers to the bone shovelling our tax money at those Liberal pals who ran a few ad agencies in Montreal.
Now the members of Her Majesty's Opposition are clamouring for Chuck Guite to come to answer their questions in the public accounts committee looking into the Adscam mess. Oddly enough, he's busy wintering in the valley of the sun at an Arizona ranch. Neither the opposition nor the media have yet been able to get Guite to come and play. The CBC gave it the old college try and were told to get lost. The CBC got that on tape, but as far as answers to questions concerning the missing millions, alas, there were none. Now Guite is no stranger to questions of propriety related to how he handled our money. Consider this, taken directly from Hansard:
"(MP) Caroline St-Hilaire Longueuil, BQ: 'Mr. Speaker, in November 1996, external auditors concluded that Chuck Guite and his group had broken all the rules for awarding advertising agency contracts and that, consequently, they should be discharged from their duties.
The government knew this in 1996. Can it give any reason - other than a desire to maintain the existing system - why Chuck Guite and his team, instead of being punished, were rewarded with responsibility for the sponsorship program, which was also so beneficial to friends of the government and of the Liberal Party of Canada?' "
I'd show you the response from the president of the Treasury Board Reg Alcock, but alas, question period is aptly named, for the members of the government don't actually provide answers for the questions asked. Responses are political bafflegab. Guite also featured prominently in the 2002 auditor general's report which led ultimately to the sudden departure of Alfonso Gagliano as minister responsible for the mess to become our ambassador to Denmark, where conveniently, he has since been fired by the current prime minister, who is still in denial that he could have possibly known about anything because he and the former PM couldn't play nice in the sandbox. In that report, Sheila Fraser looked at only three of the advertising contracts administered by Guite. She said that Guite broke "just about every rule in the book" as a manager of public funds.
But the real revelations came last week to the public accounts committee from the original whistle-blower Allan Cutler who triggered the 1996 audit referred to above in the quote from Hansard.
Cutler used to work for Guite and is the quintessential bureaucrat. For years he worked in the office that administered the contracts. In November 1994 it all changed. J. Charles (Chuck) Guite was suddenly put in charge and he let it be known that he reported directly to the minister. Cutler, in true bureaucrat cover-your-ass style, kept a diary. He entered that into evidence before the committee last week and it is dynamite. It lays waste to everything that is being spun out in defence of the government. Firstly, it shows how the scam was set in motion a full year before the squeaker referendum victory that Jean Chretien claims was the genesis for the program. And it illustrates how the rules were being deliberately broken. The rules that were in place, I might add, to protect taxpayer money and prevent fraud, theft and embezzlement.
Secondly, this was only a year after Chretien took government and with Paul Martin as the finance minister in his fledgling government it seems impossible, especially with the times of fiscal restraint as they were then, for Martin to still claim he did not know what was going on. But finally, and perhaps most importantly, it shows the corruption that permeates throughout our system. We need more than parliamentary reform in this country. We are desperately in need of democratic reform of the sweeping variety.
We need to get control of our country back.
As for the ex-patriot bureaucrats sunning themselves during the cold of a Canadian winter, perhaps it's time a couple of Revenue Canada investigators had themselves a thorough look at assets and how they were acquired. They may wish to offer a ride to someone from the Mounties' integrated proceeds of crime section too.
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