RCMP proving to be Martin's undeclared but powerful campaign rival (Canada)

RCMP proving to be Martin's undeclared but powerful campaign rival

MICHELLE MACAFEE
Fri Jan 6, 6:27 PM ET

OTTAWA (CP) - Paul Martin could be forgiven for feeling these days as though he's running against an undeclared but powerful rival: the RCMP.

The Liberal leader's campaign promise of a $500-million package to help the elderly, the disabled and family caregivers was obscured Friday by word police were looking into more allegations of mismanaged tax dollars in Quebec.

While Conservative rival Stephen Harper was detailing plans for child care and Jack Layton described the NDP version of a gun-crime crackdown, Martin found himself confronted with the latest whiff of scandal to plague his flagging campaign.

Martin's daily news conference was dominated by questions about a published report that the RCMP is looking into a controversial grant.

Last month, police interviewed two officials at the Department of Canadian Heritage about the expenditure, which went out to a little-known group called Option Canada, which has since disbanded.

The questions were focused on the distribution of about $300,000 of the total grant.

Martin, who was finance minister at the time, said he believed the accounting was done properly as he defended the Liberal commitment to national unity during a tense, high-stakes period in Canadian history.

"Absolutely I'll insist that the rules be followed, but nobody will stop me from defending the unity of my country," Martin said.

"I fought for it 10 years ago and I will fight for it today."

Martin stressed that as prime minister, he moved quickly to bring in more financial controllers, increase their mandate and training and create a new position of general controller under the federal Treasury Board.

"We've made a fundamental shift which demonstrates the way I think controls should be done," he said.

Both Layton and Harper welcomed the chance to hammer home the message that Martin's struggling Liberals are synonymous with scandal.

"If the Liberals are re-elected, this is what Canadians can look forward to, a government pre-occupied with ongoing scandals, corruption and police investigations," Harper said in Bolton, just northeast of Toronto.

"They have to be dragged kicking and screaming and protesting into accepting that anything wrong could possibly have been done," said Layton.

The Liberal war room dismissed the allegations contained in the published report as "not new or particularly relevant." Indeed, sovereigntists have accused the government of using Option Canada to bypass the Quebec government's referendum funding rules.

Harper began his campaign day in Bolton, Ont., offering more details about his plan to create 125,000 more child care spaces, while Layton promised mandatory sentences for gun crimes and to try youths aged 16 or older who are charged with such offences as adults.

In Surrey, B.C., Layton ventured into unfamiliar law-order territory with a package of gun-control proposals designed to help put the NDP on the radar of voters galvanized by the Boxing Day shooting death of a 15-year-old Toronto teen.

In addition to promising millions for victims of violence and at-risk youth, Layton called for a four-year minimum sentence for anyone convicted of possessing an illegal gun and better witnesses protection programs to help police in their investigations.

The Option Canada report comes about two weeks after the Mounties launched a criminal investigation into whether leaks tipped Bay Street investors to the November announcement of a tax change favourable for income trusts.

The investigation has helped shift the focus of the crucial second half of the campaign away from the Liberal platform, forcing Martin to defend the Liberal record - something he'll doubtless be doing during the second set of leaders' debates, which start Monday.

Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said Martin should welcome a full investigation into the Option Canada grant if he has nothing to hide.

"He must know where the money went," Duceppe told a news conference in Gatineau, Que., suggesting that it might have helped to pay for the pivotal 1995 federalist rally in the days before the referendum.

"Was the love-in paid for by Option Canada?" he asked.

Justice John Gomery's first report into the sponsorship scandal is also in the hands of the RCMP, but it was Martin who forwarded it to them immediately after its release last November.

The report, which examined how millions of taxpayer dollars were mishandled or funnelled to Liberal friends in a program that was supposed to promote national unity, exonerated Martin of wrongdoing.

Has Tony Martin Lost the Catholic Vote?

Sault Ste. Marie's Catholics, by far the largest local faith group claiming 46 percent of the population, are being heavily lobbied behind the scenes to support pro-family, pro-life candidates in the January 23 federal election.

"It is our responsibility to demand that the next government develop policies to support married couples who are ensuring the survival of society by giving birth to new citizens and raising them in the most stable environment," says an open letter issued this week by the Catholic Organization for Life and Family, an autonomous non-profit corporation co-sponsored by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus.

A similar letter has reportedly been mailed by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men's fraternal benefit society, to its 239,000 Canadian members.

"These basic questions about life and marriage are central to the current issues," says the Knights of Columbus letter, signed by Jean Migneault, international deputy supreme knight and Dennis Savoie, president of the Canadian Association of Knights of Columbus.

"Political leaders, using all their personal convictions must truly serve the common good by crafting legislation respecting freedom of religion and conscience," the letter states.

What the bishop said

As SooToday.com reported yesterday, Bishop Jean-Louis Plouffe of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie is also distributing an election-related pastoral letter to area parishes this coming weekend.

"Choose the ones that are most likely to support our values and convictions, to sustain the social life to which we aspire, to respect the life and dignity of persons, to defend the poor, the marginalized, the excluded, to promote family, the environment, universal health care and justice," the bishop urged.

While ostensibly non-partisan, the bishop's carefully worded letter was interpreted by some SooToday.com readers as being squarely aimed at Sault MP Tony Martin's decision last year to defy his Church's leadership and vote in favour of the Liberals' same-sex marriage bill that redefined marriage to include lesbian and gay couples.

What Tony said

"I respect my church," Martin, a former Catholic school trustee once employed by the Church as a pastoral and youth worker, said in a March 24 speech to the House of Commons. "I respect it and love it enough to be able to tell its leaders when I think they are wrong. I know there are other good and faithful Catholics who think the same."

"I believe same-sex marriage for civil society is a justice issue but I wanted it clarified that I believe this is so because of my own personal Roman Catholic convictions, not in spite of them," Martin said.

"I have not disassociated myself from the church .... It was the spirit of Vatican Two that challenged me to inform my conscience and that informed conscience says we must reach out to Bill and Scott and Libby and Real and all members of the gay and lesbian community to say you are as whole and wholesome as all humanity."

Targeted in homily in his own church

In an interview earlier this year with the Hill Times newspaper, Martin said that his own priest has made his disapproval of his position on same-sex marriages clear in a homily delivered during a Sunday service.

"I felt that [the homily] was certainly being targeted at me as the MP for Sault Ste Marie," Martin told the newspaper. "But above and beyond that [the priest] also shared with the community that this is where Tony comes on Sunday for some spiritual respite and nourishment and it should not be a place where he is to be harassed or attacked over this. And it hasn't happened."

Any loss of Catholic votes could be a serious problem for Martin, who's facing a strong local Liberal candidate, a vigorous national showing by the Conservative Party, and a Green Party opponent with demonstrated potential to siphon off as many as 2,250 votes.

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