Three, four, 52, who's counting?

Logical possibility 1. Alfonso Gagliano, in addition to having no knowledge of what was going on in his department and no apparent managerial duties of any kind, is also afflicted with severe memory loss, somehow forgetting that he had met with Chuck Guité an average of once a week for several years, rather than the "three or four" times a year he had claimed in testimony to the Commons Public Accounts committee (later amended to "four or five"). Logical possibility 2. Huguette Tremblay, Guite's former deputy as special projects manager of the sponsorship program, is a paranoid schizophrenic, witnessing dozens of meeting between the two men that never occurred. Logical possibility 3. Ms Tremblay, for reasons that are not immediately apparent, is making it up. Logical possibility 4. Gagliano lied through his teeth to the committee. POSTSCRIPT: There appears to have been a lot of traffic through that office:

"We also received requests occasionally from other ministers - and even from the prime minister's office," she said. Ms. Tremblay also mentioned that she had received requests from the former secretary of state for amateur sport, Denis Coderre, who is now President of the Privy Council... [CP] "Tremblay also linked the involvement in the sponsorship program to two prominent members of former prime minister Jean Chretien's office - Jean Pelletier and Jean Carle. [What, him again? - ed.] According to Tremblay, a female from Pelletier's office would often call Guité and Carle would visit the office "on average once every couple of months.... Carle was not the only regular visitor to Guite's office. According to Tremblay, ad executives from Groupaction, Groupe Everest, Gosselin, and Lafleur - all named in Auditor General Sheila Fraser's report - would visit Guite once or twice a month.  And she also fingered the former president of Via Rail, Marc Lefrancois, as being a "frequent caller to Mr. Guite," but could not recollect if any other Crown heads or executives were in regular contact with the office. [PoliticsWatch]

UPDATE: Coderre, according to the Globe and Mail, flatly denied that he had any dealings with Guité. In Parliament, no less.

"There are limits on the lies that can be said," Mr. Coderre said. "I never saw Chuck Guité in my life."

Logical possibility 1... GAGLIANO AD ABSURDUM: The former ambassador to Denmark has resurfaced, but he's not exactly contrite. CP reports his lawyer sent a 10-page letter demanding an apology from committee members for their treatment of him during his testimony.