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Harper appointee under fire from Dion Andrew Mayeda, CanWest News Service Published: Thursday, April 12, 2007 OTTAWA - The Harper government was accused yesterday of launching a political "witch hunt" against the Liberals after naming a former separatist politician to investigate the federal government's past use of public opinion polling. Daniel Paille was a Cabinet minister under the Parti Quebecois government of former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau in the mid-1990s. In his new capacity as "independent advisor," Mr. Paille will probe the federal government's polling practices from 1990 to March 31, 2003. In announcing the appointment, Public Works Minister...

Lafleur to remain behind bars cnews.canoe.ca April 6, 2007 MONTREAL (CP) - Ad man Jean Lafleur will remain incarcerated until at least next Thursday on 35 fraud charges related to the federal sponsorship scandal. Lafleur's bail proceeding was postponed Friday until next Thursday to give his lawyer time to get copies of statements from hundreds of potential witnesses in the case. "We don't have all the information necessary to proceed," his lawyer, Jean-Claude Hebert, told the judge. Jean Lafleur, former owner of Lafleur Communicationand Marketing, prepares to start his last day of testimony at the Gomery commission in Montreal,...

Police probing Liberal 'network of corruption' Daniel LeBlanc Toronto Globe and Mail Wednesday, April 4, 2007 OTTAWA — The police probe into the sponsorship scandal is focusing increasingly on the shadowy world of political organizers who siphoned federal funds from advertising firms on behalf of the Liberal Party of Canada, sources said yesterday. In police parlance, the probes are now looking into the "network of corruption" involving Liberal fundraisers and organizers who were continuously asking advertising firms for kickbacks. A source who has been interviewed by the RCMP said that police are asking more and more questions about Jacques...

The secret caller who exposed Adscam DANIEL LEBLANC reveals how an anonymous tipster helped him break the federal sponsorship scandal Toronto Globe and Mail Saturday, October 21, 2006 DANIEL LEBLANC OTTAWA -- The phone call came on June 1, 2000. The woman had a quiet voice, and she wanted our conversation, and her identity, to remain a secret. She had read my recent story on the sponsorship program in The Globe and Mail, and urged me to dig further. The call couldn't have come at a more opportune time. I had been interested in Ottawa's aggressive advertising campaign in...

Charges laid in DND computer billing case Ex- bureaucrat, two businessmen charged in $100M scam Glen McGregor The Ottawa Citizen Tuesday, January 31, 2006 A former Department of National Defence bureaucrat and two Ottawa area businessmen were charged yesterday after a lengthy investigation into what the RCMP alleges was a complex billing scheme that cost the federal government more than $100 million. Paul Champagne, a former DND contracts manager, was charged with seven counts, including fraud, breach of trust by a public officer and money laundering. The RCMP accuse him of obtaining more than $105 million from the government...

Tory lead firm: poll Harper's party ahead by 12 points, NDP poised to boost seats Norma Greenaway CanWest News Service Saturday, January 21, 2006 OTTAWA - The Conservative party is poised to form a minority government, while the NDP is likely to significantly increase its representation in the House of Commons, according to a new national survey. The Ipsos Reid survey, conducted for the National Post, CanWest News Service and Global National, also says the Liberals and the Bloc Quebecois are in a tight race to become the Official Opposition. Darrell Bricker, president of the polling firm, says the...

Tory support recedes slightly Martin O'Hanlon Global National with files from Canadian Press Tuesday, January 17, 2006 OTTAWA (CP) - The polls they are a-changin' but not enough to make a dispirited Liberal sing. Three new public-opinion surveys suggest the recent Conservative wave of momentum may have crested or even receded a bit just days ahead of Monday's election. A Decima Research poll, conducted Jan. 12-15 for The Canadian Press, put the Conservatives at 37 per cent support compared with 27 per cent for the Liberals. The NDP stood at 18 per cent and the Bloc Quebecois at 11....

Editorial: Three reasons why it's time for a change Toronto Globe and Mail Saturday, January 14, 2006 Canada has been well served by 12-plus years of Liberal rule. Despite what the opposition parties would have us believe, it has not been all scandal and nest-feathering. Ask yourself a simple multiple of Ronald Reagan's famous electoral question: Are you better off today than you were 12 years ago? Unemployment then stood at 11.2 per cent. Today, it is 6.5 per cent. An average mortgage rate was 8.78 per cent. Now it is 5.99 per cent, making home ownership affordable for...

Toronto Sun Fri, January 6, 2006 Canadians want change By PETER WORTHINGTON With 17 days to go before the Jan. 23 election, Stephen Harper's Conservatives have taken a positive lead in the polls over the Liberals. It's a first for the Conservatives in this campaign, and there's a giddy feeling of momentum building -- unless Harper commits a gaffe (always a possibility). While it is as pleasant as it is unusual for Conservatives to be leading in opinion polls, the most significant poll in this campaign may be that 59% of Canadians feel it's time for change, as do 53%...

OTTAWA—The election campaign has taken a dramatic turn, with the opposition Conservatives jumping into their first real lead over the governing Liberals, a new poll shows. The survey, conducted by EKOS Research Associates for the Star and La Presse, found that 36.2 per cent of decided voters say they will support the Conservatives, while 30.4 per cent favoured the Liberals. The NDP is supported by 17.9 per cent of voters, while the Bloc is at 10.4 per cent nationally and the Green party is at 4.7 per cent. If the numbers hold up, it would mean a Tory minority government....

Tories take the lead: poll Harper ahead even in vote-rich Ontario Eric Beauchesne CanWest News Service Monday, January 02, 2006 OTTAWA -- The Conservatives have edged ahead of the Liberals in support, according to poll results released today that also put Stephen Harper's party in the lead in the crucial Ontario region. If an election were held today, 33% of voters would cast their ballots for the Conservatives, up a percentage point from a week ago, while 32% would vote Liberal, down a point, according to the poll by Ipsos Reid for the National Post, CanWest News Service and...

Calgary Sun Sun, December 4, 2005 Harper's cut wounds Grits Goods and Services axe means Red Book promise will have Tory-book ending By Licia Corbella At long last, the Liberal Party's broken election promise to scrap the GST is gouging and stumping them. Almost six years ago to the day, Paul Martin -- then an opposition MP and Liberal Party leadership hopeful, dissed the GST. "The GST is a stupid, inept and incompetent tax," said Martin, as recorded in Hansard on Nov. 28, 1989. That quote was dredged up by the Conservative Party and sent out in one of about...

TORONTO SUN Sat, December 3, 2005 Liberals put party before the people Ignatieff nomination demonstates Grit flaws By PETER WORTHINGTON You wanna know what's wrong with Canadian democracy, the way it's practiced by the federal Liberal party? Look no further than Michael Ignatieff and his nomination as the Liberal candidate for Etobicoke-Lakeshore. Here's a guy who was born in Toronto but who has mostly lived and worked in other countries. He teaches at Harvard, but returns to U of T in January as a "visiting professor," for heaven's sake. Ignatieff writes critically acclaimed books that only the elite read, and...

Winnipeg Sun Thursday, December 1, 2005 Not often we get a second chance By JOHN GLEESON The Mulroney Conservatives went down in flames because they failed the country. In the early '90s, Canada's economy was in a bitter recession and all Brian Mulroney could do was try to win a constitutional pact to "get Quebec into Canada" -- and, not incidentally, to get Mulroney into the history books as the prime minister who made it happen. The pragmatic virtues of free trade can be disputed but there was no mistaking Brian's failed obsession with Quebec or his legacy to every...

Kilgour will add his boot Ex-Liberal Independent MP will help vote Grits out on Monday By DOUG BEAZLEY, EDMONTON SUN November 25, 2005 It'll be the last act of David Kilgour's long and rocky life in Canadian politics: voting with the Opposition to kick his former Liberal colleagues out of office. "This government has behaved atrociously for the last several months. It really had forfeited all right to the confidence of the Canadian people," the Mill Woods-Beaumont independent MP and 26-year veteran of federal politics told the Sun yesterday. "After all is said and done, it's up to the...

OTTAWA (CP) - Tories stood defiantly by their allegation linking the Liberals to organized crime and dared their opponents Friday to make the accusation a campaign issue. They flatly rejected Liberal calls to apologize. Prime Minister Paul Martin demanded a retraction and his office threatened to sue over the comments by Stephen Harper, who told the Commons on Thursday that the sponsorship program was "a front for massive kickbacks involving organized crime, used by the Liberal party to fill its own election coffers.". But the Conservative leader said he has nothing to apologize for. One of his top lieutenants dared...

OTTAWA, Nov 13 (Reuters) - The leaders of Canada's three opposition parties met on Sunday to decide how and when to try to bring down the 16-month-old minority Liberal government and force an election, possibly as soon as next month. Following a change in heart by the New Democratic Party, which said on Monday that it would no longer be able to support the Liberals, the heads of the three parties met in Conservative leader Stephen Harper's office in Parliament. They kept reporters away from the meeting, but were understood to be discussing whether to bring the government down before...

I wrote last week that it would take Canada's Liberal Party about two months to live down the disclosure by the Gomery inquiry that its Montreal members had siphoned many millions of dollars in government money into the party's coffers and into their own pockets. I was wrong. It took less than a week. Three days after the Gomery Report documented the party's lavish looting of the funds in the government's "sponsorship program," a poll showed that the party's national support had slipped from 38 percent to 31 percent, only a single percentage point over the Conservatives, who had risen...

The Canadian government has put nearly $9 billion into "foundations" that are beyond the reach of the auditor general. Given the corruption that exists in other government programs that ARE in sight of the auditor general we must recognize the likelihood that these funds may be subject to government misuse too. Please sign this petition urging Paul Martin to open these foundations to the auditor general... http://www.petitiononline.com/cdsmith/petition.html

A federal judge proclaimed last week that in the final years of Canada's Chretien government, untold millions of dollars were channeled from the treasury into the bank accounts of the federal Liberal Party, several Liberal-friendly advertising agencies and a few senior party backroom gentry in Montreal. His report was viewed with alarm by the media, the politicians and the pundits – by everybody, it seemed, except the Canadian people. They knew that already. They had gathered it conclusively from a report of the auditor-general three years ago, and reaffirmed it in the testimony of the sordid parade of Liberal insiders...