More from CBC, which strangely fails to mention the Martin "smoking gun":

Guité also said the rules were loosely defined to give flexibility to ministers to pick the firms they wanted to hire. Gagliano and Jean Pelletier, Chrétien's chief of staff, made extensive use of those flexible rules, he said. The system "was 150 per cent politically driven," Guité told the inquiry.

Under the so-called "10 per cent rule," the minister could pick a firm that came in second on contract bid as long as it came within 10 per cent of the winning bid. Bids were judged on a complicated set of criteria that didn't necessarily include how much the company would bill the government. Bids on sponsorship and advertising were also limited to firms that were 100 per cent Canadian-owned, a strategy designed to benefit Liberal firms, Guité said. BCP Guité said Jean Pelletier intervened in 1994 to give millions to BCP, a big Montreal firm which held the bulk of the advertising contracts for federal Liberal campaigns in Quebec. In one case, BCP fell short in its bid for a $60 million Tourism Canada contract. The contract went to another ad firm, Vickers and Benson. But Guité said the decision was quickly overturned after the Prime Minister's Office got a call from Yves Gougoux, the head of BCP. "Yves Gougoux from BCP went ballistic and phoned the PMO and they changed it. Is that political influence?" asked Fournier. "I think so," Guité answered.