Alfonso Gagliano said he's been unfairly singled out for blame in the sponsorship program, and believes the prime minister is a hypocrite for judging him so swiftly.

The former public works minister also said Prime Minister Paul Martin is leading Canada and the Liberals down the road to ruin.

"He's going to destroy the party and break up the country," Gagliano said during an interview with French-language network Radio-Canada.

In response, Martin told reporters Tuesday in Windsor: "Mr. Gagliano . . . said yesterday that he is not a Paul Martin Liberal. And he's right." He then repeated the statement in French.

When he spoke to the nation in a rare televised speech last Thursday night, Martin made special mention of the former public works minister.

"I fired Alfonso Gagliano, the minister responsible for the sponsorship program, from his appointment as ambassador to Denmark," Martin said as he recounted a list of his responses to the scandal.

As the prime minister has often repeated, he commissioned veteran Quebec Justice John Gomery to head an inquiry into program as soon as he took office.

But Gagliano says Martin's plea that Canadians wait until Gomery reports before passing judgment on his party or government smack of hypocrisy.

"If he asks Canadians to wait ... before they can pass judgment on him and his government, why didn't he wait for the Gomery report before he fired me (in February, 2004)?"

Pointing to current senior cabinet ministers Pierre Pettigrew and Anne McLellan, both of whom were in charge of once scandal-plagued departments, Gagliano said there was no precedent for his being singled out on this file.

Denying any direct links to allegations of wrongdoing in the sponsorship program, Gagliano said, "I did everything I could when I was aware, I acted."

"I learned the same time you learned that these things took place ... there is no direct link with me," he added. "So why didn't the prime minister wait for the report and what Gomery will say before he judges me."

In a separate interview with CTV reporter Rosemary Thompson, Gagliano went one step further.

"Paul Martin ruined my life, for his political gains," he said.

Leading nation to separation

In his speech last Thursday night, Martin promised Canadians he would call an election 30 days after Gomery releases his inquiry report.

According to Gagliano, the direction Martin is taking could lead the nation to ruin long before then.

By calling the sponsorship inquiry, with its daily detailing of the millions spent by the federal government in the wake of the 1995 sovereignty referendum, Gagliano says Martin has seeded a separatist resurgence.

"We're showing to Quebecers the bad things that happened during this sponsorship program... but there's no inquiry in the other side," he said, suggesting Quebec's then-separatist provincial government spent five times more.

"Right now, we're just looking on one side and that is helping the separatist movement to gain momentum," Gagliano added.

"If Quebecers would know what the separatist government in Quebec did in those same years, on the same files, they would be more outrageous."

The inquiry was ordered last year, after a report by federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser found irregularities in the now-defunct sponsorship program.

Established by former prime minister Jean Chretien to promote national unity, the program wound up paying Liberal-friendly ad firms for little or now work.

Closely following the daily dramatics at the inquiry, audiences in Quebec have been transfixed by testimony describing the exchange of sponsorship funds for contributions to the bankrupt Quebec wing of the Liberal party.

During the inquiry's Ottawa phase, Gagliano testified he knew of no wrongdoing, and did not control where the money went.