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| Martin trying to duck issues - Saturday, January 31, 2004 at 21:01 |
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PUBLICATION: The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It would seem that in running a shipping company for a couple of decades Prime Minister Paul Martin has learned a thing or two about the importance of clearing the decks before sailing into stormy seas. That much is evident from the strategy Martin and the Liberals have adopted in handling politically damaging revelations that Parliament had been misled utterly about the extent of the business dealings that CSL Group Inc. and other companies Martin owned until last year have had with the federal government over the past decade. On Wednesday, government House Leader Jacques Saada posted on his website a revised response to a question raised in late 2002 by Alliance MP James Rajotte about CSL contracts with Ottawa. It showed that instead of the $137,000 Parliament was told in February 2003 was the extent of federal contracts with CSL between 1993 and 2002, the total was a whopping $161 million, including $46 million while Martin was finance minister. For a Liberal government that is responsible for the gun registry fiasco a little matter of being out on price estimates by a factor of 1,000 might not be a big deal, but to the rest of Canada it is. Martin, who was forced out of cabinet in June 2002, says he had nothing to do with the initial response but knew as soon as he saw the numbers that they were too low. But nearly a year has elapsed before Canadians learned of the "administrative errors" Martin says he was "appalled" to discover. Even though Martin insists there's no attempt to cover up his family shipping empire's extensive business dealings with Ottawa, the government's attempts this week to bury news damaging to the prime minister in a flurry of more positive announcements smacks of the kind of politicking that fosters public cynicism. Saada's $161-million answer raises troubling issues of ethics and conflicts of interest, in particular about a $4.9-million federal "repayable contribution" to a shipbuilding company partly owned by CSL. Concerns from an Industry Canada bureaucrat about the subsidy went nowhere as former Industry minister Allan Rock handled the file while Martin was in cabinet. Even if, as Saada's figures indicate, CSL fared better with contracts under the Mulroney administration in 1993 and after Martin left cabinet in 2002 than during his nine-year tenure as finance minister, Martin needs to come clean with Canadians on his corporate financial dealings with the government instead of trying to bury the details in an avalanche of other news. The extraordinary "supervisory" blind trust approved by cabinet's ethics lapdog, Howard Wilson, to govern Martin's CSL operations while he served in Finance allowed Martin to get regular updates about the company's financial situation and CSL officials to consult him on major corporate decisions. Martin's explanations about the blind trust preventing him from learning the true extent of CSL's dealings with Ottawa ring hollow, especially when he is seen going to great lengths to bury news of these dealings by acting quickly on other fronts to divert public attention. Despite insisting a week ago that he would allow two internal probes to decide if CSIS and RCMP officials had a hand in Canadian citizen Maher Arar's expulsion to a year-long tortured stay in a Syrian prison, Martin ordered a public inquiry as Arar and several groups had been demanding. Suddenly, National Security Minister Anne McLellan, who was telling Canadians last week that they should be more concerned about a security breach within the RCMP than with police-state tactics that impinged on constitutional guarantees of a free press, is all for a public airing of the Arar affair. She's also promised to review the draconian Security Information Act that allowed police to raid the home of a journalist who wrote stories based on leaked police documents, and to establish a Commons committee to oversee national security operations. And, if opposition leaders agree to take a privy council oath, McLellan will share with them secret cabinet documents and all confidential public inquiry findings pertaining to the Arar case. Ottawa also is expanding its reference to the Supreme Court on same-sex unions, seeking its opinion on the current opposite-sex restriction on marriage. This even though Martin says federal lawyers will argue strongly in support of same- sex marriage instead of a compromise solution such as civil unions for gay couples. What both moves do, of course -- in addition to diverting public attention from Martin's more immediate troubles over the CSL revelations -- is to clear the deck for a relatively smooth parliamentary session and spring election campaign. Any questions about these troublesome issues can be deflected by saying they are before legal tribunals and cannot be commented upon. It's a masterful bit of clearing the decks from a leader and party that continue to pick up plenty of experience in navigating rough political waters. --- Steven Gibb, Gerry Klein, Les MacPherson, Sarath Peiris and Lawrence Thoner collaborate in writing SP editorials --- "Democracy cannot be maintained without its foundation: free public opinion and free discussion throughout the nation of all matters affecting the state within the limits set by the criminal code and the common law." -The Supreme Court of Canada, 1938 |
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