Alfonso Gagliano ended his day by telling reporters not only is he innocent, he's not going to point fingers at who might be responsible for the abuses of the $100-million federal sponsorship scandal.

"I'm not blaming anybody yet," said the former public works minister in Ottawa Thursday, following a day of testimony at the House public accounts committee.

"I believe in due process. I've been blamed wrongly without due process ... if I want due process for me I think we have to give due process to the others."

There were still a lot of facts to come out, he added.

Gagliano was in charge of the department when it funneled millions of dollars to Quebec advertising agencies for little or no work.

As minister, Gagliano said he did everything in his power to fulfill his cabinet obligations. Management was not his responsibility, though. As such, holding him accountable for every department employee is unfair.

"I never had the control or power over my department that would have given me the ability to answer for all that went open with them.

"That was most certainly the case with the sponsorship program."

But a subcommittee heard Wednesday that Gagliano communicated directly with Chuck Guite, the program's executive director. That's highly unusual as cabinet ministers usually make deputy ministers their contact point.

Ran Quail, a now-retired deputy minister of public works, has told the committee he was frozen out of the sponsorship file.

Gagliano acknowledged he met with Guite three or four times per year and had signed off on some seven-figure spending increases without reviewing any documentation.

"I assumed all the paperwork ... was in the file," he said. "I didn't see it, I didn't ask for it."

Problems emerged in 2000

Gagliano claims he didn't know how Guite ran the Communication Co-ordination Services Branch, and that he didn't hear about problems until after Guite retired in 2000 (he was replaced with former Gagliano aide Pierre Tremblay). He said he took the proper action, starting with an internal audit that year.

Prime Minister Paul Martin also said Thursday that he first heard of administrative problems with the program in 2000.

"The deputy minister himself ... said the problems were administrative and there was a 37-step plan to solve this problem," Martin told reporters. "So it's quite different from the problems that appeared later on."

Despite Gagliano's resolute defence of his own actions, few committee members appeared to be buying it.

In his questions for the former minister, Conservative Party MP Peter MacKay communicated his disbelief.

"You're telling us today that you were just essentially a finger puppet of your own department, that you had no control over the sponsorship program?" he asked.

Gagliano responded that not only did he object to be called a "puppet," but also that he is now a private citizen appearing of his own volition.

"I would remind everybody that I'm no longer in politics," Gagliano said, failing to temper the tense exchange.

"I'm here voluntarily and I'm ready to answer the questions but I'm not here to be insulted... by you or anybody else."

MPs from all parties were similarly skeptical in their questions.

Despite the rough going, Gagliano tried to offer some suggestions for preventing such a situation in the future:

• making ministers responsible for everything that transpires in their department;
• giving ministers the power to hire and fire high-level executives as well as mid-level bureaucrats;
• devising a way to co-ordinate department activities without the minister's presence at every committee meeting.

"You can't have the cake and eat it too," he said. "You cannot... deprive him of the tools that other any responsible person would insist upon having."

Gagliano was terminated as ambassador to Denmark on Feb. 10, the day Auditor General Sheila Fraser's report came out on the sponsorship scandal.

She mentioned him 23 times by name.

Gagliano said he is having his lawyer review his firing to see whether legal action is warranted.

The committee will hear further testimony from Gagliano on Friday.

With a judicial inquiry also coming, Gagliano will likely be telling this story again in the near future.