AdScam ban may be lifted (publication ban) -- Fraud Trial Delayed until June

Sun Media ^ | Stephanie Rubec

[Clive]

Justice John Gomery will rule this morning on whether to lift a publication ban shrouding explosive testimony by ad exec Jean Brault. The decision will come only 24 hours after a Quebec Superior Court judge agreed to delay Brault's fraud trial until June. Brault, Groupaction's founder, was set to be tried early next month along with former sponsorship program head Chuck Guite for allegedly defrauding taxpayers of almost $2 million.

Justice Lise Cote ruled yesterday against granting the duo's request for the trial to be put off until the fall, opting instead to give his lawyers an extra month to prepare their case.

The proximity of the trial date was the backbone of Gomery's argument in favour of slapping a publication ban upon Brault's testimony.

Media lawyer Mark Bantey said he'll argue for a complete removal of the ban today.

"I am optimistic that a large portion of the testimony will be made public," he said.

Brault wrapped up his testimony before the AdScam inquiry yesterday after six days of grilling at the hands of commission co-counsel Bernard Roy and a handful of lawyers.

U.S. and Canadian bloggers have thumbed their nose at the judge's ban on his testimony and published some of Brault's allegations on the web.

Gomery will hear today from Alain Renaud, a consultant who was paid $1.1 million to lobby for federal contracts. He said it's thanks to his contacts with key Liberals that sponsorship floodgates opened after 1996.

"I began from zero and took (Brault) to the highest summits," Renaud said in a phone interview yesterday.

Renaud said that had he only lobbied public servants in charge of handing out advertising and sponsorship contracts at public works, "I'm not sure that we would have reached those summits."

Renaud said he took advice from Chuck Guite to get close to key Liberals to heart: "So the mix of both politics and public servants worked."

Renaud said he was let go when Brault handed Guite a consultant contract in the fall of 2000. "I introduced all those people to Brault and I was pushed aside," Renaud said.

[Clive]

There is a conflict of rights here. The right of the public to be informed, particularly to be informed about misconduct in government against the right of the accused to have a fair trial.

Both Canada and the US regularly come up against this conflict of rights and judges have ordered publication bans in both nations and judges have refused it in both nations.

The US public policy tends to lean toward the right to be informed whereas the Canadian public policy tends to lean the opposite direction, but in neither nation is it an absolute.

[Snowyman]

OTTAWA (CP) - The House of Commons erupted in an uproar minutes after Justice John Gomery lifted a ban on publication of testimony at the sponsorship inquiry he's hearing in Montreal.



Conservative Deputy Leader Peter MacKay said the evidence, under a publication ban since last week, shows the Liberals are involved in a "criminal conspiracy," the likes of which Canada has never seen.

Justice John Gomery decided Thursday at 2 p.m. ET to partially lift a ban on the release of advertising executive Jean Brault's testimony at the federal inquiry.

Minute later during question period in the House, MacKay said the testimony shows Paul Martin's office, when Martin was finance minister, was directly involved in the sponsorship program.

But Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan called the allegations against Martin, "absolutely untrue."