OTTAWA — The Liberal party is preparing to return bags of cash purloined from the public purse.

Prime Minister Paul Martin is preparing a late-night huddle with a small circle of advisers on Parliament Hill on Monday.

And his predecessor Jean Chretien is preparing to meet with three of his lawyers the following morning at 10 a.m. ET.

For almost two years, the country's political players awaited Justice John Gomery's report as a potentially ground-shifting moment in Canadian politics.

That moment -- Tuesday morning -- is approaching fast. And they're all preparing for the fallout.

Opposition parties hope for a lurid chronicle of corruption that triggers enough public outrage to sweep the Liberal government from office.

The Bloc Quebecois wants just enough outrage to sweep Quebec out of Canada.

The Liberals hope to survive the wave.

Martin's inner circle gets an early glimpse at Gomery's tome late Monday -- 16 hours before its public release.

That tight group of advisers will spend the ensuing hours discussing how to dismantle a political bomb.

The document is so shrouded in secrecy that those who see it Monday night will be forced to sign a confidentiality agreement.

The few with access will be preparing talking points that will serve the following morning as a line of defence for the prime minister, his cabinet and Liberals across the country.

Liberal party officials say even they don't expect warning of the report's contents -- but they have their main answer prepared.

Within hours or days of its release, the party plans to dip into a $750,000 trust fund it recently set aside to refund taxpayers.

"We know we will have a responsibility to reimburse the government of Canada,'' said the Liberals' national director, Steven MacKinnon.

"Anyone convicted of wrongdoing -- we don't want that money. We don't want any part of it.''

The prime minister will assess the damage and decide how to respond but is expected to make a formal statement, at the very least, in the National Press Theatre near Parliament.

Several blocks away, Jean Chretien will be meeting with his lawyers.

All three of his Gomery commission counsel will pore over the document in a four-hour briefing lockup for media and politicians from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. ET.

They will take the news to their famous client, who plans to issue a public response.

Sources say the potential responses range from a statement of vindication, to a lawsuit aimed at having the report wiped off the government record and discredited.

The political response might undergo some last-minute fine tuning.

But politicians of all stripes have already crafted messages based on the assumptions one might logically draw from the inquiry: the federal sponsorship program enriched the Liberal party, there were corrupt elements in the party, the corruption permeated government, several Chretien confidants had a front-row seat to it, and there was no smoking gun implicating the current or former prime minister.

Let the political spin wars begin.

"The report will confirm what we've been long alleging," Conservative Leader Stephen Harper said in an interview.

"That the money of taxpayers was stolen, and it was stolen in some instances for partisan purposes by the Liberal party.''

The Conservatives have worked frantically in recent weeks to denounce the spending habits and alleged ethical peccadilloes of government members.

The message to Canadians is simple: the culture of corruption is deep-rooted in the Liberal party, and it still exists, so don't let the prime minister off the hook for the sponsorship scandal.

Harper would be infuriated if front-page newspaper headlines on Tuesday morning declared the Liberals exonerated _ even before the report's release.

"We're very concerned that the government will be engaged in leaking this report -- and leaking slanted versions of it,'' he said.

"We'll watch the Tuesday morning papers to see if selected sections have been leaked to Liberal-friendly media.''

The Liberal party will naturally offer a different take on Gomery's findings.

None of the sponsorship testimony ever singled out Chretien personally for wrongdoing. Martin aides will point out nobody ever laid a glove on their man.

In addition to declaring their own exculpation, the Liberals will take credit for having called the Gomery commission in the first place.

"The prime minister asked for this, he wanted this commission, he has this report, he will endorse this report and he will work from (it)," said a senior government official.

That message to Canadians is: You wanted clean government, so we never swept this scandal under the rug and we took a beating for it. Now please re-elect us.

Those competing messages from Liberals and Tories will play a central role leading up to the next election campaign.

The exact timing of the election could depend on the severity of Gomery's report.

If it's scathing, the Tories and Bloc Quebecois could decide to topple the government in their first available opportunity later this month -- although that would mean an election around the Christmas holidays. Those two parties probably have enough MPs to defeat the Liberals but the Tories are reluctant to fight that battle without help from the NDP.

And that leaves Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe -- who stands to gain the most from the sponsorship fury.

He said in a recent interview that even if the report fails to blame Chretien or Martin personally, the cast of characters implicated did include some of the Liberal party's heaviest hitters who also happened to be some of Chretien's closest associates.

The scandal has already transformed Duceppe from a declared dud into a political star, and his Bloc from an endangered species to the most dominant force in Quebec politics.

Support for Quebec independence was lagging around 40 per cent two years ago. More recent polls placed it above 50 per cent.

A federalist government in Quebec had just taken power two years ago. Today Jean Charest's Liberals are halfway through a mandate where their most notable achievement is a spectacular collapse in popularity that has even pollsters shaking their heads in amazement.

The Quebec referendum that led to the sponsorship program was held 10 years ago this weekend.

The Bloc Quebecois marked the bittersweet event with a convention where they discussed plans for what they'd like to gain from the scandal: a country.