Dave Stonewall (II)

Dave Dingwall's performance -- that is the only word for it -- in front of the Commons Public Accounts committee is simply the most disgraceful thing Canadian politics has seen since, well since Alfonso Gagliano's testimony. Even the wire-story coverage makes mocking reference to his "repeated memory lapses":

He couldn't recall ever meeting Chuck Guité, a former director of the sponsorship program, although prior testimony has suggested he met Dingwall regularly. The former minister later conceded he must have met Guite on occasion but couldn't remember details. Nor could Dingwall explain why his successor, Diane Marleau, would testify that Guite showed up on her first day as minister saying he reported to her office - highly unusual for a mid-level bureaucrat.

But that's just the start. A minister notorious for his enthusiastic turning of departmental budgets to political ends claims to have had no involvement -- none whatever -- in what his bureaucrats were up to, on the single most important file in federal politics, during the gravest crisis in our history. Nor, he suggests, did anyone else in Cabinet. His testimony is contradicted at another point by Allan Cutler, the Public Works whistle-blower who kept detailed notes of what went on at the department in that time. As PoliticsWatch reports,

Cutler testified about a Nov. 17 [1994] meeting between Guite, himself and other members of the contracting group at Public Works.  "At this meeting, Mr. Guite told us that normal rules and regulations should not apply to advertising," said Cutler. "He said he would talk to the minister to have them changed. "A week later, I was informed that myself and two other employees who worked for me would move to Mr. Guite's section and report to him immediately. At this point in time, Mr. Guite's responsibilities were expanded to include not only the selection of advertising agencies, but also the negotiation and award of contracts to selected agencies.

Yet Dingwall claims not only to have no recollection of meeting Guité, except maybe once "10, 11 years ago," but that the first he had heard of any breach of procurement rules in his former department was last Friday, when Guité's two-year-old testimony to the committee was released. Small wonder that the committee chairman characterized his testimony, in unusually blunt terms, as "totally unbelievable." But that's just one opinion. Here's Warren Kinsella's review of his former boss (he was his executive assistant when all this was going on): "David Dingwall was extraordinarily impressive in his presentation to the Standing Committee. His detractors tried, mightily, to bring him down, but they failed."