Before or After, Don Cordonnola?

Alfonso Gagliano, the disgraced former Liberal Minister of Public Works, claims that the Quebec separatists were conducting much worse business than his own government’s unethical and illegal plan to subsidise his party’s finances. Gagliano has gone as far as to suggest that “Quebec’s then-separatist provincial government spent five times more” than the Liberals did. It is not clear what he means by spend, but he seems to be saying that the Parti Quebecois defrauded tax payers by amounts five times greater than the Liberals did?

We’re showing to Quebeckers the bad things that happened during this sponsorship program… but there’s no inquiry in the other side.

Right now, we’re just looking on one side and that is helping the separatist movement to gain momentum

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

This statement begs the Watergate questions, what does he know and when did he know it?

By the sounds of it, Gagliano seems to be saying that the Chretien Liberal government set up its scamming programme to counter the separatist one. That would mean that as a Minister of the Crown, he and his boss had knowledge that crimes were being committed by the PQ and failed to report them. That is an abandonment of responsibility as officers of the Crown, and an abdication of their fiduciary duty. Instead, they chose to engage in similar unethical and illegal activity. That makes them silent accomplices. It also begs the question about what Paul Martin knew.

If, on the other hand, the allegations of separatist wrong-doing began after Adscam was up and running, then Chretien, Gagliano, Martin and the rest of the Liberal cabinet could hardly point fingers at the separatists –maybe the most likely scenario. And then we would have to conclude that the Chretien government established the template for the separatists to follow.

In short, if the separatist are reaping a political boost from the sponsorship racket, his party bears the blame on two counts: showing them how to use and improve the federal scheme to defraud tax payers, and for abdicating their duty to prosecute the wrong doing.

Either way, the Liberal government surrendered its responsibility to fight for this country –in that is in fact what they were doing– while remaining within the bounds of the rule of law and in dutiful performance of its responsibility. The RCMP shroud be taking notes.

Lastly, Gagliano’s account is very similar to his boss’, Jean Chretien. There is no contrition or admission or wrong doing. He has in fact said that there was nothing wrong with the defrauding programme. Instead, he is trying to shift the blame on to the Gomery Commission. IT will be responsible for the destruction of the country that Gagliano has forseen. My four year old boy is more responsible than that.

Cross posted from Civitatensis