by Paul Martin
In addition to the RCMP investigation, Sheila Fraser continued her audit of the sponsorship program. It was pretty clear from the stories now leaking in the media, as well as from the growing scope of the RCMP’s investigation, that there were going to be some serious revelations. Her report was ready for release in November 2003. For Jean Chrétien, it certainly would have been a bitter pill to swallow on the eve of his departure from politics. It would also have been an act of political responsibility and a gift to the future of his party to have accepted the report when it was due. But whether it was out of a preoccupation about his legacy or bitterness toward me — and only he can answer that — he decided to take the steps that would delay its publication until after I had replaced him at 24 Sussex. It is one of the many ironies in this sad affair that Jean Chrétien and those around him were later so critical of my handling of the Auditor General’s report, when he and they had chosen, with great deliberation, to throw the responsibility for dealing with their mess into my lap.
When I came to office in December, in part on Ralph’s advice, I cancelled the sponsorship program as virtually my first act. Ralph became finance minister when the cabinet was sworn in, of course, but because he had been minister of public works, he had been briefed by the Auditor General in the fall. When I finally had the report in my hands, I skimmed it, realized it would be a looming issue for the new government, and handed it over to a cabinet committee led by Anne McLellan that included the new minister of public works, Stephen Owen. I knew we had a big train coming, but I still did not recognize the scale of the political disaster the Auditor General’s report would create. This was due in part to Sheila Fraser’s vivid characterization of the report in the press conference she gave on the day it was released to the public — something no one could have anticipated.
There was an argument for reacting to the Auditor General’s report in an understated way. That approach (for which many of my critics, including Jean Chrétien, have argued) would have simply been to say that the Auditor General had spoken and that the criminal matters arising from what she had found would be investigated in due course by the RCMP. End of story. The problem with that was that this whole affair was more than just a criminal matter, deeply serious though that obviously was. Everyone, including the public, understood that this was a deeply political program as well. It was important that those who had committed criminal offences be held responsible in a court of law. But the public was also right to demand political accountability, and that was something that I was determined to give them. Of course those responsible would feel aggrieved about being held accountable. Why wouldn’t they, and why should that be a consideration?
Both Anne and Stephen felt very strongly about the necessity for an inquiry. I had appointed Stephen as minister of public works in part because of his impeccable credentials as a man of integrity and judgment. He was a former ombudsman in British Columbia and a one-time member of the Law Reform Commission there. I think that he would have seriously contemplated resigning from cabinet had we not initiated a judicial inquiry. In fact, my cabinet was deeply divided on the issue, very much along geographical lines. Few among the Quebec ministers favoured a judicial inquiry. Ministers from the rest of Canada were mostly in favour.
I personally believe that a government whose ethics are doubted — rightly or wrongly — is a government paralyzed. You cannot summon the political will or public support for change unless the people are prepared to give you their trust. That is why I decided to call the judicial inquiry that was led by Mr. Justice John Gomery. I wanted to make it clear that we had nothing to hide and would not sweep anything under the rug. I also announced “whistleblower” legislation to encourage public servants who see something going wrong to speak up. I appointed a special counsel to track down and recover missing funds. And I ordered reviews of government spending and contracting procedures through the Treasury Board.
To those who say the inquiry was a political mistake, I can only reply that the facts do not back them up. The public reaction to the Auditor General’s report was spontaneous, immediate, and dramatic. One poll showed us dropping 17 per cent virtually overnight. Elly Alboim told me that in all his years looking at polls, he had never seen anything like it. In the days that followed, I was very open about my own fury at the Auditor General’s findings in media interviews, including one on the CBC program Cross Country Checkup. As I made my way across the country on a pre-planned swing through eastern Ontario and then on to Quebec City, Winnipeg, and Vancouver, some clever journalist dubbed this my “mad as hell tour.” Some of my critics within the Liberal Party later argued that by so openly expressing my disgust at what the report revealed, I raised the profile of the issue and therefore inadvertently condemned the party to eventual electoral defeat. Let’s be clear: it was the misdeeds revealed by the Auditor General and later by the Gomery inquiry that damaged the party. My condemnation of them was right in principle and also, as it happened, right politically. That catastrophic drop in the polls the day after the Auditor General’s report was released was quickly stemmed and then at least partly reversed as I showed the public that I shared their outrage.
That having been said, we did not win the communications battle over sponsorship in the end. I don’t know whether it was winnable. What I would have liked the public to have absorbed was this: the scandal was the work of a relatively small group within the Liberal Party and the government; neither I nor the cabinet had any knowledge of the depth of what was happening in the sponsorship program, nor did most of those in government; I shared the anger and disgust at what had been uncovered; and I would undertake my responsibility on the public’s behalf to make sure the facts were revealed, the miscreants were punished, and the structures put in place to make sure this could not happen again.
I don’t think I handled the issue particularly well in public. As a politician, I had no problem talking about difficult things. I had made the spending cuts when I needed to, for example, and convinced the public that they were necessary. But I had trouble with an ethical issue like this one, in part because I was so bothered by it. It fed into an easy and cynical caricature of politicians as being devious or corrupt. I was mad about it. I was mad that people I knew had been involved. I was mad at Jean Chrétien for having left me this time bomb. It drove me crazy that I had to deal with this leftover mess when there were so many more important issues I had come into government to confront. In hindsight, it is clear that as a government that had been in power for a decade, we were not going to get the benefit of the doubt. When I stood up in the House and said that I knew nothing about what had happened, it did not occur to me that some would construe it as a claim that I had never heard of the sponsorship program; of course I had. I was saying that I knew nothing of the misdeeds.
The public had a right to be skeptical, of course. The Opposition had a legitimate opportunity to strike. But many commentators failed the elementary test of fairness by repeating the absurd insinuation that as finance minister I must have known. Did anyone really think that people like David Dodge and Don Drummond at Finance were in the know? It was absurd! And if the Department of Finance did not know, how did they think I would be apprised of the sorry facts?
I mentioned this later to a reporter who had been covering politics at the time. “Why didn’t you just say that?” she asked. I replied that I must have said it a hundred times.
I simply could not believe, emotionally and intellectually, that anyone thought I had anything to do with this mess. Why would I have jeopardized my reputation for this? And why on earth would anyone have told me about it? My organization in Quebec was barely tolerated by the party there. The Little Sisters of the Poor would have known about the scheme before I did. Those who were involved were my political foes. As the Opposition assaulted me in waves, trying to link me personally to the scandal, I kept thinking someone would stand up and say, “Hey, wait a minute; he’s the last person who would have known.” But it never happ
ened.
Even at the moment when the Auditor General’s report was released, and I called the inquiry, I still had no idea how bad the sponsorship mess would turn out to be. I thought Mr. Justice Gomery would discover that the sponsorship program was handled very poorly by the government and that some money found its way into the wrong hands. I did not expect the level of criminality that was uncovered, nor the links back to the Liberal Party. I could not have imagined the B-movie scenarios of envelopes of cash being wordlessly pushed across tables in dimly lit restaurants. I had no conception that Radio-Canada’s news network, RDI, would run the hearings live and that they would turn into a popular daily soap opera in Quebec. Perhaps I should have; but I did not.
The question then becomes: if I had known all that, would I have called the inquiry? The answer is yes.
In this same period, shortly after taking office, I also confronted a series of problems involving people who had been appointed by the previous government. Only one of them was linked to the sponsorship scandal, though all of them raised questions of accountability to a greater or lesser degree. There was a mistaken belief among many people, especially in the media, that I had adopted a general policy of “sweeping clean” the government of people closely associated with my predecessor. From my perspective, each of these cases confronting us was a discrete problem, though of course I tried to apply consistent principles when they arose.
The first was Alfonso Gagliano, who had been public works minister during the launch of the sponsorship program. When the issue heated up in Parliament, Jean Chrétien had appointed him as ambassador to Denmark. I was told privately that the Danes were complaining, and said publicly that he was no longer serving Canadian interests in the post. In the circumstances, I agreed with Bill Graham, that as minister of foreign affairs, he should recall him as ambassador. Anyone who says that he was our best possible representative in that post at that time is being disingenuous.
The other cases did not relate to the sponsorship scandal. For instance, I had no intention of removing Jean Pelletier, who had been Jean Chrétien’s chief of staff, as head of Via Rail. However, when the former Olympic athlete Myriam Bédard raised allegations of impropriety at the corporation prior to Pelletier’s tenure, he was quoted in the media as saying: “I don’t want to be mean, but this is a poor girl who deserves pity, who doesn’t have a spouse, as far as I know.” He should not have commented on the personal life of an employee. Furthermore, I had made it plain that no pressure was to be put on whistleblowers by their superiors. It was entirely inappropriate and a direct challenge to my whistleblower policy. To leave Pelletier in place in the circumstances would have undermined our commitment to public servants that they could come forward without fear if they had allegations or concerns.
At my very first meeting as prime minister with Jacques Chirac a few weeks later, the French president told me he was a friend of Pelletier and that he didn’t much like the way I had treated him. Chirac had been mayor of Paris when Pelletier was mayor of Quebec City and they had become friends back then. I told Chirac that I appreciated their relationship but that I was prime minister of Canada and would make my own decisions.
A few days before Jean Chrétien’s testimony, I appeared before the Gomery inquiry myself, in more matter-of-fact testimony. Preparing was not difficult. I had nothing to hide, and having my say over the course of many hours might even force the media to grapple with the facts in a way they had been amazingly reluctant to do so far. On the other hand, no one testifying under oath at a televised proceeding is in any doubt about the potential of lawyers to make you look bad. I was the first prime minister ever to run such a gauntlet, and I wanted to make sure that I did not do the truth a disservice. I hired two outstanding counsel, Andrew Davis and Leonard Shore. Two members of my staff, Katherine Levitt and Véronique de Passillé, also helped tremendously with my preparation. They walked me through the kinds of questions I might expect. As was the standard practice, I also met prior to my testimony with one of the commission’s lawyers so that they would be prepared for what they were going to hear. In the end, it went exactly as I would have liked it to. For one day, at least, the media had to convey the story that I had tried in vain for so long to communicate in the House of Commons.
One ruling Mr. Justice Gomery made during the inquiry that had huge political implications for us was the initial publication ban on Jean Brault’s testimony at the beginning of April 2005. I do not fault Gomery for it; he was doing his job. Brault was also facing criminal charges and was concerned about contamination of his trial by publication of his inquiry testimony. However, the fact that it was legally under wraps magnified public expectations about his admittedly sensational testimony. Within a few hours of his appearance, Brault’s claim that large sums of sponsorship money had been funnelled back to the Liberal Party was posted on American websites. It was a big story, available to journalists, political staffers, and news junkies. But the publication ban kept it from most Canadians, who still get their news from televisions, newspapers, radio, and Canadian websites — all of which were prohibited from disseminating a word. By the time the news ban was lifted a few days later, the media had whipped up a frenzy of public expectations and unloaded several days of testimony in a single multi-megaton bombshell. The story broke during my trip to Rome for the funeral of Pope John Paul II, and naturally the travelling media clamoured for my comments right there in the precincts of the Vatican. But for all their ardour to hear from me, my call for the RCMP to investigate could hardly be heard in the din back home.
Before the Brault testimony, the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois were already hungry for an election. The testimony, and its impact on the polls, had them salivating for one, despite the fact that the polls all indicated that Canadians were not interested in having an election just one year after the last one, on the sponsorship issue or anything else. It was in that context that Ken Dryden suggested I give a televised address to Canadians with a very specific pledge. I thought it was a good idea. In the speech, which ran just more than six minutes, I laid out as clearly as I could, as completely removed from the media filter as was within my power, all that the government had done, including shutting down the sponsorship program, calling the Gomery inquiry, suing the malefactors who had taken government money, and ordering a forensic audit of the Liberal Party’s books so that any ill-gotten funds could be returned to the government of Canada. I talked about having established an independent ethics commissioner and a comptroller to oversee government spending. Finally, I pledged that I would call an election within thirty days of Mr. Justice Gomery’s final report.
Of course I did not imagine that my address or the election pledge it contained would staunch the Tory and Bloc enthusiasm for an early election. I did hope, however, that it would clarify the issue for the public, telling voters they would have their say once all the facts were known, and that it was the Tories and the Bloc who were set on forcing an election on sponsorship before the facts were known. In the end, we survived a non-confidence motion and avoided an election that spring not because of my pledge but because of a complicated sequence of political events, most of them having nothing to do with the inquiry — a rarity in this Parliament. But that’s another story, one that I will defer to a later chapter.
When Mr. Justice Gomery released his preliminary report at the beginning of November 2005, it was a huge media event. Although I had committed to calling an election after the final report, due in just a few more months, the release of the preliminary report triggered another round of partisan manoeuvring for an election, this time successfully. There were no stunning revelations in the Gomery report; those had already come out, day after day in the testimony before the inquiry over the previous year. There were, however, some interesting findings. Forgive me for quoting verbatim:
The Minister of Finance establishes the fiscal framework within which overall government spending takes place. Once that framework is set, department
s are responsible for the management of the expenditures allocated to them, with general oversight by Treasury Board. The Department of Finance and its Minister have no oversight role for other departments’ expenditures, other than setting the financial context via the fiscal framework.
And later:
Mr. Martin, whose role as Finance Minister did not involve him in the supervision of spending by the PMO or PWGSC [Public Works and Government Services Canada], is entitled, like other Ministers in the Quebec caucus, to be exonerated from any blame for carelessness or misconduct.
Exactly.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Taking the Lead
The same November weekend I was elected leader in 2003, the Grey Cup was played in Regina. The cleanup in the convention hall in Toronto had barely begun when I got on a plane and headed West for the game in which my hometown Montreal Alouettes would play the Edmonton Eskimos. There was a rumour that I might be asked to make a ceremonial kickoff, which nearly gave David Herle a heart attack. I could fall flat on my backside anywhere, except in his home town. As it was, I was invited to toss the coin, which even he accepted I could probably manage without embarrassment.
A few weeks earlier, knowing that I was certain to become leader and eventually prime minister, I sent out an invitation for all the premiers to meet with me in a room below Taylor Field Stadium before the game for a get-to-know-you session. I’m afraid that our meeting came as a bit of a surprise to the prime minister and, from what I hear, was not received in very good humour. But it was very important to me that I kick off my leadership (sorry about that!) with a signal that I wanted to work closely with the premiers. Many of the issues that were most important to me — those of Aboriginal Canadians, health care, child care, and cities — would not be solved unless we were able to work together. Of course, this was a casual meeting. I was not yet prime minister, and it was not the time yet for making any decisions; but it did set a tone. I committed to holding annual first ministers conferences — something the premiers had been requesting — with the first to be devoted to health care. Afterwards, we all shivered in the stands through a pretty good game. Montreal was up at the half, but it was all Eskimos after that. It wasn’t the result I wanted on the field, and I lost twenty bucks to Doug Richardson, a good friend from Saskatoon, but our meeting that day did contribute to a series of successes over the next two years.
