Martin says no sponsorship answers coming soon
Canadian Press
June 7, 2004 5:29 PM ET
OTTAWA — Prime Minister Paul Martin conceded Monday that Canadians will be selecting a new government while still in the dark about the federal sponsorship scandal.
Nor can they expect enlightenment any time soon.
The remarkable admissions helped frame a day in which the question of trust took centre stage in the federal election campaign, with competing party leaders claiming Canadian voters have no faith in the other guys.
"I don't think we got, obviously we didn't get the answers that anybody would want," Martin said in a television interview with CPAC when asked about the progress of investigations into the troubled $250-million federal ad program.
"But it's going to take a long time. It may well take longer than we would have in terms of this mandate."
An aide later explained that Martin was referring to the current mandate's full duration, which could have run until November 2005 had the prime minister not chosen to go to the polls this month.
Martin staked much of his political capital this spring on getting to the bottom of the scandal "come hell or high water."
He promised that, before an election, Canadians would have a clear sense of what went wrong in the shadowy, multi-year program in which government-friendly ad firms charged about $100 million in fees and commissions for work the auditor general said was of little or no value.
But a Commons committee looking into the issue stalled in partisan bickering, while a judicial inquiry headed by Justice John Gomery won't start hearing witnesses until September.
On Monday, the inquiry released a list of people who are seeking standing at the hearings.
Former prime minister Jean Chretien tops the list. Also seeking standing are discredited former cabinet minister Alfonso Gagliano and former Chretien chief of staff Jean Pelletier.
Public hearings in Ottawa on June 21 to 23 _ less than a week before the June 28 federal vote _ will provide further details of why the intervenors are seeking standing.
Any resuscitation of the sponsorship corpse would appear to be bad news for the governing Liberals as the election battle increasingly focuses on issues of trustworthiness, integrity and hidden agendas.
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper adjusted his campaign schedule Monday to address a weekend barrage in Quebec, only to face a fresh round of attacks on his party's conservative social values.
Harper's apparent willingness to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on the same-sex marriage issue marks a "radical departure from Canadian tradition," Justice Minister Irwin Cotler said Monday in Ottawa.
"It means that every one of the fundamental rights in the Charter can be arbitrarily expunged by Stephen Harper and his Conservative government, through the wielding of the notwithstanding clause."
The same issue of trust was on the mind of NDP Leader Jack Layton, who told a partisan crowd at a day-care centre in Vancouver that Harper's Tories harbour a hidden social agenda.
"The Conservatives actually want to turn back the clock," Layton charged.
"They have intolerant, extreme views on things like abortion, on the right of lesbians and gay men to marry; we'd be in the war in Iraq right now with Conservatives."
Layton reminded B.C. voters that they've already seen the impact on social programs of a provincial government -- the Liberals of Gordon Campbell -- which sharply cut taxes.
"No thanks," said Layton. "One reckless tax-cutter is enough."
Harper, speaking in Quebec City rather than the planned B.C. swing, confronted the allegations head on.
"Every time the Liberals attack us anywhere it's an opportunity for people to get to know us better. The better they get to know us, the more votes we get," Harper said.
"The problem with Liberal attacks -- what the Liberal party hasn't clued into in this election -- is that nobody believes anything they say."
Recent opinion polls suggest Conservative fortunes are rising as the Liberals plummet, with the two parties now locked in a dead heat.
In Quebec, Conservative polling numbers remain low, with the Bloc Quebecois appearing on track to win as many as 60 of the province's 75 seats and the Liberals taking the rest.
Martin, in a series of TV interviews from Ottawa before heading to a G-8 meeting in Atlanta, acknowledged Monday that voters are cynical about politics.
"I didn't come into this because I want to be prime minister," he told one Thunder Bay, Ont., affiliate.
"I came into this because I believe certain things very, very strongly and I am going to carry them through."