The big news in Canada today was the release of the much anticipated Gomery report, which was supposed to finally explain the sponsorship scandal and lay blame against those responsible. Unfortunately, I fear that $32 million of taxpayers money (which is 1/8 of the total scandal amount) has been wasted as the Gomery report was revealed to be nothing but a joke.
How on earth could the Finance Minister have no idea what was going on? If it has to do with money, should he not be aware of it? I like Paul Martin (maybe more a year ago than I do now) but even I am not so daft as to think he had no idea. Not even an inkling, Mr. Gomery? I mean get real! Same goes for Mr. Chrétien, who I think was a great Prime Minister despite the scandal. No evidence to suggest that Chrétien knew what was going on? Again, get real!
“Since Mr. Chrétien chose to run the program from his own office, and to have his own exempt staff take charge of its direction, he is accountable for the defective manner in which the sponsorship program and initiatives were implemented,” Gomery said.
Chrétien said Gomery falsely determined that the office of the prime minister administered the sponsorship program.
“There is no evidence before him to support that allegation,” Chrétien said.
Perhaps the biggest joke of all? No one is going to read it, and most Canadians simply don’t care. I happened to watch Global National tonight, and despite the government charging $49 for a copy of the report, the TV show couldn’t give a copy away (some guy finally took it, no doubt to burn with glee). Canada’s free daily Dose even hired actors to read the report aloud, though passersby didn’t seem to notice.
Now we wait for a February/March election and the second report from Mr. Gomery, unless the NDP decide to join the other opposition parties and press for an election before Christmas. I think we should move to a US-style election. Under that system, the petty fighting between parties would be sidelined as one party is in charge for four years regardless. And when that term is up, you’ve got a real chance to keep them or dump them. The current “call an election when it best suits us” system is stupid.
Read: CBC News
MasterMaq's Blog 
I have to disagree about the importance of whether Paul Martin knew about it or not. It’s not his responsibility to make sure individual departments are spending their money correctly. I worked for a few months in Finance at the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and got a good sense of how finances in individual departments work. Individual departments have many safeguards that do their best to stop this from happening, and if they don’t find the problem, the Treasury Board is there to make sure they get it right. The Department of Finance has absolutely no responsibility or right to tell departments how to spend their money. So, even if Paul Martin knew of what was going on, he has no capacity to stop what is going on other than telling the Treasury Board or Public Works’ finance department. Arguments about what he did or didn’t know are moot.
I think that’s a very weak argument. I think it’s pretty clear that he knew what was going on, and even if he has no legal power to do something, he still could have brought the issue to light. That would have been the responsible thing to do. From Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_of_Finance_%28Canada%29L:
"It is the responsibility of the Finance Minister to manage and each year present the federal government’s budget. The Minister of Finance must deal with all the other departments and plays an important role in deciding which will receive more funding."
So actually, he does have indirect say into how departments can spend their money, because he decides how much they get. And because he’s got to deal with all the departments, he should have known!
If he knew, and didn’t say anything, doesn’t that make him just as guilty as the rest of them?
Who’s to say he didn’t do anything? I don’t think doing something publicly would be the right thing to do, since it would undermine the government. However, there’s many things he could do privately, such as notifying the Treasury Board. I believe him and the report when he says he didn’t have anything to do with this, since I think it’s quite plausible that Jean Chretien thought it was in his best interest to isolate the biggest threat to his leadership from as much of the rest of the government as possible. True, Chretien did pick a hell of a place to isolate him in the Department of Finance, but I think this qualifies as keeping your enemies closer. And I don’t think he had any more say than any other cabinet ministers as to the internal workings of another department. He probably had less, in fact, because of the well documented animosity between both parties.