The missile defence decision

It would be sad, if it weren't so silly. We weren't being asked to do anything, the system doesn't depend on us doing anything, and we've already done whatever it was they needed us to do, through NORAD, though that in itself amounted to doing what NORAD does anyway. The only thing achieved by us not participating is to ensure that we aren't consulted in any decision to shoot down an incoming missile over Canadian soil -- the very consultation that Paul Martin once insisted was the reason we should participate. Not that there'd be much time for consultation, always assuming this unlikely event ever occurs, or that the system is ever deployed that can prevent it. But the Prime Minister now insists we must be consulted, even though we're not part of the system and have no way of defending ourselves on our own: our defence strategy in the event of an attack now consists of praying the Americans will protect us, using the system we've just rejected. In which case, we better hope they don't consult us. If it's a choice between saving Toronto and asserting our sovereignty ... It would be silly, if it weren't so sad. All we were asked to do, really, was to say we are doing what in fact we are doing: cooperating in whatever inconsequential way we might, through NORAD and other forums. It was a free throw, a layup, a cost-free gesture of solidarity that might repair some of the damage done by our refusal to participate in Iraq (although in fact we did, we just said we weren't). But there is a rule in Ottawa: you can say you are doing something without doing it, or you can do something without saying it, but under no circumstances is it permissible to say and do the same thing at the same time. So we couldn't even make the gesture, not even at the level of empty symbolism: not because the critics have any serious objection -- it used to be that we shouldn't do missile defence because it would make the Russians mad, which was at least an objection, if not a serious one: but the Russians have not only dropped their objections, they're bidding on parts of the system. And I suppose a few people believe that, although this is a land-base system, it would ultimately lead to the "weaponization of space," which is obviously a Very Bad Thing: lobbing missiles through the stratosphere is one thing, but God forbid they should be shot down from the ionosphere. But no, the only objection most of the critics have is that it involves a) the Americans, and b) military hardware. And because a good number of these people are to be found on the Liberal backbench, the Prime Minister feels obliged to kowtow to them. So we will make critical decisions on foreign and defence policy based on purely internal politics -- internal, not as in Canada, but as in the Liberal Party. It isn't that the Americans will respond in some vastly hurtful way. They'll just shrug and move on. It will simply confirm them in the opinion that we are terminally feckless and utterly unreliable -- just not a serious country, and certainly not one worth taking seriously. So the damage from Iraq will be redoubled, the more so for the hopes that were temporarily invested in Martin. We could have taken our place alongside the United States, Great Britain and Australia, that historical alliance that fought two world wars and to whom literally dozens of countries owe their freedom. Instead, we have chosen to side with our new best friends, the Chinese, the Russians, the Germans and the French, who between them have never liberated a single country, including their own. How very sad. How preposterously silly.

A splurge without precedent

More in my Saturday column.

My Wednesday column

is posted in the column blog, accessible from the sidebar at right. (See: PR: as simple as one person, one vote.) As is sometimes the case, it's based on something I first posted here. Just think of this as a sort of public scratchpad.

Comments 'R' us

I have upgraded to Mike Brock's fantastic TheirSay inline comment service, which should make the experience a lot quicker and easier for readers. Comments left previously under Blogger's system are still posted, but the numbers of comments shown below each post (and in the recent comments index at right) are now those posted since the upgrade. Try it out!

This just in

From the Daily Telegraph:

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein leaders, were publicly named as members of the IRA's Army Council in an unprecedented move by the Irish government yesterday.

A word from the management

I really am going to get back to some actual blogging, but for now I thought I'd just explain a little about the site in its latest incarnation, version 3.0. After eight months on Movable Type, I've had to go back to Blogger, at least for the time being, owing to some mysterious bug that developed in my MT installation. Regular readers will know what I'm talking about: it took forever for posted items to show up on the site, and even longer for comments. At least, I assume that's what the problem was -- it seems zippy enough with Blogger, so I guess it can't have been the server. Since I've been away, Blogger has gotten a lot more sophisticated -- nicer templates, individual post archives, even a pass at commenting. It's no MT, but then again it works, and doesn't seem (yet) to be clogged with comment spam. I've retained most of the functionality of previous versions, but with a simpler, more elegant design -- and way faster page-loads. I'm guessing I'll break fewer browsers this time, too. (Readers who dare may wish to compare the site in its current form with version 1 and version 2.) Some innovations, this time: I'm going to post my latest National Post columns separately from the main blog (in fact, they're in a blog of their own). The ten most recent columns are listed and linked at right, just under the "Recent Posts" index. Clicking on any of them, besides calling up the text of the column in question, will give you acccess to a fuller listing of this year's columns. Previous years' columns are also archived: see "Back Columns" lower down in the sidebar. (I may gather all of these, recent, near-recent and past, on a separate Columns page.) Links noted in passing, but not worthy of lengthier comment, are posted in the Miniblog, also at right (in rotation with Recent Posts/Recent Columns). As with the main blog and the recent columns blog, readers can post comments to these, if they wish. And to help you keep track of ongoing discussions or pieces from the archives you want to refer back to, every entry on the site -- posts, columns, and miniblog links -- can be "bookmarked" and listed on the main page for ready reference. (Cookies required.) Interestingly, this works even with the Movable Type posts, which you might come across as you search the site. I'm working on a way to integrate these archives with the rest. Some other things on my to-do list, which readers may be able to help me with:

1. Comments remain a problem. Blogger's implementation is cumbersome, and requires jumping to a separate page before posting. I'd far rather the form were integrated with the post pages, as the comments themselves are. I tried a hack from bloggerhacks for this, but it's scarcely an improvement. And while I notice some Canadian bloggers using something called TheirSay, there doesn't seem to be any way to get hold of it. Can anybody steer me straight? I really don't want to go back to using Haloscan.
(UPDATE: Mike Brock to the rescue. Stay tuned.)
2. The template I've adapted from Blogger is a bit unwieldy. I've tried to put the style tags in a separate CSS sheet, like the pros, but for some obscure reason it fails to read the "body" tags when I do. Everything else, it reads: just not "body." Any thoughts?
3. The bookmarking feature, which I've adapted from the MT site, does not work as well as it might. Though it's possible to add a bookmark from any point, they can only be listed or removed on the main page. Any scripting advice would be gratefully received.
4. Finally, I'm looking into Word Press, which I understand has all of the elegance and functionality of Movable Type -- navigational links between posts, integrated comments, categories, plus loads of plugins -- without the sluggishness and complications. On to version 4!

Public interest, private benefit

My Saturday column...

Bob Rae’s proposals for reform of postsecondary education provoked a variety of responses, almost all of them positive. On the one hand, the former premier’s review of how Ontario’s universities are funded was praised by the Globe and Mail as refreshingly “blunt” and full of “smart ideas.” On the other hand, the Toronto Star called it a “sensible blueprint” that makes “a series of meaningful recommendations.” This, for a report whose central recommendation is to deregulate tuition fees: that is, to let universities charge what the market will bear.

Yes, yes, yes, there’s also lots in there about raising operating grants to universities and offering bursaries to low-income students and enshrining in legislation that no qualified student will ever be denied access to university or college because of the cost. And no, deregulation would not kick in until after student aid had been reformed. But still: try to imagine the conservative politician, retired or otherwise, who could get this kind of coverage for this kind of report.

A thoughtful note of discord was sounded by the Globe’s Queen’s Park columnist, Murray Campbell. “It may not be the best time to raise this,” he begins, “but isn’t it about time to abolish tuition fees for postsecondary education?” Mr. Campbell’s piece zeroes in on Mr. Rae’s central argument for making students bear a greater share of the cost of their own education — that the benefits of higher education accrue largely to them, notably in the form of higher lifetime earnings.

“Mr. Rae falls into the trap of refusing to consider higher education as part of the continuum that begins in Grade 1,” he goes on. Elementary and secondary education is free and universal. Why shouldn’t universities be as well? When “up to 70 per cent of new jobs in Ontario require postsecondary educations,” isn’t it time we “abandon the distinction between the private and public benefits of more education?” In other words, higher education is, increasingly, no longer the preserve of the elite, an option for those so inclined, but a necessity — like health care. “Why is the public benefit that flows from universal health care,” he asks, “different from the benefits of universally available education?”

There are a few answers that spring to mind. One, elementary schooling is mandatory, whereas a university degree, while perhaps desirable, is not as yet legally required. Two, parents and students have lots of time to save for higher education, whereas the kids are barely out of diapers by the time they’re eligible for kindergarten. That goes double for health care. “We should not confuse insurance against illness,” Mr. Rae writes, “with a planned decision to enrol in higher education.”

But back to Mr. Campbell. He’s right to point out that more and more employers demand some form of post-secondary education — but to say they demand it is another way of saying they are willing to pay for it. This is perhaps obvious, but it bears stating. There is another crude but popular argument against tuition fees, to the effect that the public benefits from having a lot of highly trained university graduates around, so why shouldn’t the public pay for it? To which the answer is: the public is paying for it. Who do you think pays the salaries of these graduates? The public interest in the skills they acquired in college is fully reflected in the compensation they receive. To insist the public should also pay for their tuition is to say they should pay twice.

I don’t think Mr. Campbell is making that argument. But if it’s accessibility he’s worried about, there are better ways than suppressing tuition fees. The impact of higher fees, on their own, is always exaggerated: the past week produced yet another study, this one from Statistics Canada, showing the stiff increases in fees of recent years have had no effect on participation rates. Of course, part of the reason for that is that students tend to be drawn disproportionately from the ranks of the well to do. But that was always true, even when fees were a fraction of what they are now: a phenomenon of sociology, not economics.

To lay off the cost of higher education on the broader public, then, is to suggest the average taxpayer should pay so his boss’s kids can go to university. Does that mean society has no interest in ensuring equality of access? Of course not, but accessibility is defined at a particular moment in time: the point in a student’s life when he wishes to enrol in higher education. Though it pays substantial dividends later on, at the moment he is obliged to pay his earning power is typically low. Moreover, the resulting payoff may be fluctating or uncertain, to which traditional student loan schemes are frequently insensitive.

It’s a cash-flow question, more than anything. To say that students should ultimately bear the cost of their education is not to say they must do so now. What’s needed is a system of student aid that recognizes it for what it is: an investment in human capital — an investment of a particularly risky kind, to be sure, but that’s the difference between debt and equity. If students were required to repay society’s upfront investment, not on a fixed schedule of interest, but as a percentage of their future incomes — a suggestion Mr. Rae leaves for the longer term — then public and private interests would be equally served.

Wednesday's column

Everyone thinks he can improve on equality. Everybody’s got a better idea. Locke and Hume and Mill might have been all right in their day, but that doesn’t mean we can’t help them out a little, with our finer appreciation of the complexities of modern life. Naive, undomesticated types who cling to the ideal of equality in its original sense, as equal treatment, are sent away with an indulgent smile and that quote about the law forbidding princes and paupers alike from sleeping under bridges. Well, we certainly can’t be accused of that, can we? Not in this country, where every case is special and every circumstance is unique -- unique, not in the way that other circumstances are unique, but in a uniquely unique way that makes it an exception to all the other exceptions. Consider, for example, our constitution. Whereas Section 15 of the Charter proclaims that every citizen has equal rights and is entitled to equal benefit of the law, by the next line we’ve already begun to think better of it: under Sect. 15.2, governments may continue to treat their citizens unequally, as long as their motives are good. Or even if they aren’t: the notwithstanding clause allows governments to override the most basic human rights, including the right to equality, for any reason whatever. Or rather, some people’s rights. The override does not apply to language rights, or to aboriginal rights, or to “Canada’s multicultural heritage.” Nor does it apply to women’s rights: after a prolonged squawk, a clause was added to the Charter stipulating that, although sexual equality is already guaranteed under Sect. 15, it should be guaranteed a second time, notwithstanding notwithstanding. And so it continued: After the Bourassa government’s initial proposal to add the “distinct society” clause to the preamble of the Constitution, the Parti Quebecois objected that this would give it less interpretive weight than the aboriginal and multicultural exceptions, which are in the body of the Constitution. So it was moved, with predictable results: every other identity group scrambled to ensure that the rights of the distinct society did not trump its own. At the height of the insanity, during the Charlottetown debacle, Kim Campbell was explaining that the virtue of the accord was that it reflected everyone’s vision of the country -- simultaneously -- including yet a third declaration of the equality of women and men. Lately we have begun to apply much the same approach to federal-provincial relations. At last fall’s “health care summit,” Ottawa agreed not to hold Quebec to the same conditions as the other provinces, justifying this in the name of “asymmetric federalism.” The significance of this may be debated, since a) the conditions the other provinces agreed to are meaningless and unenforceable, and b) Quebec actually agreed to much the same conditions, just not on the same piece of paper. Nevertheless, an important principle was established, and the principle is: There are no principles. In case there were any doubts, we were hastily assured that the same offer was available to all the other provinces. Symmetrical asymmetry, if you follow. The same, er, principle was at work at the subsequent equalization conference, at which it was agreed that equalization would no longer be about equalization: rather than allow these transfers to dwindle as provincial revenue bases grew more equal, a floor would be placed under them, together with an escalator clause. The agreement with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia that suddenly has everybody up in arms should be seen as more a refinement of this concept than a departure. When it has already been established that the “have” provinces must continue to redistribute funds to the “have-nots” regardless of whether there are any have-nots to redistribute to, it is only a short hop to the idea that they should do so even when the have-nots have more than the haves. But now that it is apparent that equalization is governed by no principle whatever, any position can be made to seem reasonable. Saskatchewan, which thanks to the recent surge in oil prices is already a “have” province (keep up), is demanding the same deal as Newfoundland. As is New Brunswick. Also British Columbia. And Quebec? They’re protesting at the singling out of one province for special treatment: a “sweet deal,” Gilles Duceppe calls it. Does that mean that Ontario, which pays for much of the equalization program, is calling on Ottawa to tighten the taps a little? Not on your life: the province’s premier now says its grief can be assuaged with, oh, let’s say $5-billion. But since this money, too, comes disproportionately from its own citizens, this amounts to a demand that Ottawa should transfer money from the province’s right pocket to its left -- minus shipping and handling. To which the Prime Minister replies: We already are. Look at the money we pour into the auto industry. Not only that, but the money Ontario pays the other provinces “enables the great manufacturing heartland of the country … to benefit from a very large domestic market for its products.” Of course! Pay people to buy what you’re selling them! Why didn’t I think of that? This is the bold new future the Prime Minister promised us? It is traditional for every province to believes it is paying more into Confederation than it is taking out. Under Mr. Martin, it will be the reverse: henceforth, every province will take out more than it is paying in. Income will be redistributed from every province to every province. Those provinces who have difficulty paying will be eligible for a special tax abatement, to be funded by a levy on all the others, who will in turn be reimbursed out of a one-time relief fund, to be financed out of a tax on.… This being the 40th anniversary of the current Canadian flag, it is perhaps worth recalling in this context the late Sen. Eugene Forsey’s proposed design: ten jackasses stripping the leaves off a single maple tree.

Unusual lengths: An exchange

My Saturday column (see below) elicited the following response from a Mr. Warren Kinsella. I had thought the matter was just between us, but as Mr. Kinsella has also seen fit to make his complaints public, he will perhaps forgive me for following suit.

On Feb 12, 2005, at 11:55 AM, Warren Kinsella wrote: No evidence, anywhere, has been tendered to demonstrate that I or David Dingwall “went to unusual lengths” to place Guite in charge of sponsorship. In fact, the program did not exist until more than a year after Dingwall and I were out of Public Works. The program commenced in mid-1997, as your newspaper has reported many times; Dingwall was shuffled out of PWGSC in January 1996. I went with him, then left government entirely in February 1996. Guite was placed in charge of sponsorship, as I understand, by Ran Quail and Diane Marleau, around the time that I was living in Vancouver. If you had bothered to pick up the phone to speak to me, or done the barest amount of research, you would have known that. Instead, your partisan rage about golf balls, I suspect, persuaded you to publish a lie. That was a big mistake. I am demanding that you correct the record in your next column, in the clearest possible terms. I'm not screwing around, either, Andrew. Norman Spector is not someone you should be treating as a source, as he and his libel counsel are about to shortly discover. I look forward to hearing from you. I've copied Jon Kay on this, in the event that he needs to get involved, which I suspect he will. Warren

Dear Warren:

I did not say that you had "placed" Mr. Guité "in charge of sponsorship." The "program" I was referring to, as is evident from the context, is federal advertising. And it was a program: As the Gomery inquiry has heard, following Mr. Dingwall's suggestion, federal advertising and communications were consolidated across all departments into one centrally administered, um, program. If you can think of a better word, please advise.

But let's pass on. Did you and Mr. Dingwall, as I state, go to "unusual lengths" to ensure that Mr. Guité was put in charge of this program? Let me quote from this story in The Ottawa Citizen, Sept. 16, 2004:

The bureaucrat at the centre of the sponsorship scandal was hand-picked by the Chretien government to revamp federal communication strategy, according to documents submitted yesterday to the Gomery commission. A 1995 memo from then-public works minister David Dingwall's chief of staff to the department's top bureaucrat urged that Chuck Guite be appointed to head a review that would centralize the buying and co-ordination of all advertising, polling and communications across government.... During questioning, commission counsel Neil Finkelstein asked Treasury Board Secretary Jim Judd whether political staff [that would be you, Warren] normally direct a deputy minister -- in this case Ran Quail -- on whom to appoint in bureaucratic jobs. Mr. Quail was responsible for the department's management, including who is hired and fired, to ensure the bureaucracy remains non-partisan and free from political influence. "How unusual is it for political staff of a minister to be directing assignments in the public service? That's a difficulty for the deputy minister, isn't it?" asked Mr. Finkelstein. "It's not a usual experience, I would suggest," replied Mr. Judd. "It is a difficulty for a deputy minister, isn't it?" Mr. Finkelstein repeated. "Yes," said Mr. Judd... Mr. Judd testified it is highly unusual for the minister's office to bypass the deputy minister and co-ordinate relations with PCO. He said Mr. Quail should have been talking directly to PCO, not Mr. Kinsella.

And then there's this, from the Toronto Star of the same day:

[I]n the wake of the sovereignty battle, Guite was singled out by onetime public works minister David Dingwall as the best person available to spearhead the development of a new, co-ordinated strategy to deliver federal advertising and promotional services. Guite, who then ran the government advertising branch that evolved into the sponsorship program, is "clearly best suited" to handle this project, Warren Kinsella, an aide to Dingwall, wrote in a letter to the deputy minister of public works in November, 1995. Kinsella wrote that the policy review, which was a priority of then-prime minister Jean Chretien, should investigate all advertising and "potential sponsorship initiatives that are available to effectively promote government programs," according to a memo tabled at the inquiry. The review led to the creation of one federal agency within public works - headed by Guite - which handled advertising, polling and the sponsorship program that produced the biggest scandal of the Chretien years.

Emphasis added. Your enthusiastic recommendation of Mr. Guité is all the more unusual in light of the following exchange, reported in the Toronto Star on Sept. 24:

The high-level political backing enjoyed by Chuck Guite, a former public servant at the centre of the sponsorship scandal, should have set off alarm bells among senior government officials back in the early 1990s, the Gomery inquiry was told yesterday. David Marshall, the current deputy minister of public works, was being cross-examined at the sponsorship hearings about how Guite was promoted regularly until he became an executive director in charge of Ottawa's multi-million-dollar communications budget. Richard Auger, representing Guite at the inquiry, asked Marshall about a letter in the mid-1990s from the office of then-public works minister David Dingwall to his deputy minister suggesting Guite should be promoted and put in charge of reorganizing all the government's advertising and public relations efforts. Noting that Guite's file was full of excellent performance reports, there would have been no reason to object to the promotion, Auger suggested to Marshall. But Marshall said it wasn't that simple. "When you get a minister's office directing you to appoint somebody, there's more than just competency for the job that you would think about," the current public works deputy minister said. Marshall said senior officials should have wondered if Guite was too close to his political masters for a mid-level public servant and too prone to cut corners to satisfy political aims. "I'm suggesting that a flag would have been raised, but that's just my own opinion." Marshall added that an audit of public works advertising activities under Guite in 1996 had raised questions about lack of compliance with government contracting regulations. "There was evidence on file that Mr. Guite was capable of breaking the rules," the deputy minister said.

Your emphasis on the sponsorship program not having begun until mid-1997, by which time you were out of government, seems to me misplaced, in two respects. One, so far as we define "sponsorship program" in terms of sponsorships, the federal government began sponsoring events in Quebec and elsewhere long before that date. (See, for example, The Ottawa Citizen, Sept. 28, 2004: "Mr. Himelfarb admitted that many of the events surrounding the sponsorship program were "unusual," including Mr. Chretien's signature authorizing the funds. Mr. Chretien signed three Treasury Board submissions to use the unity fund for sponsorships after 1996 and signed three others for similar events before 1996.") And two, so far as we define "sponsorship program" as a program, ie a continuing operation with established rules, practices and procedures, there was no such program, at least until 2000. In support, let me quote the following exchange, between Judge Gomery, with whom I believe you are familiar, and Paul Martin, the current Prime Minister of Canada:

THE RT. HON. PAUL MARTIN: Well, I don’t think that – I think that program is too strong a word, to be aware of a program, Commissioner. I think that there was a desire on the part of the government to increase its visibility in a multitude of ways. I think we all understood that that had become a factor, that there a program in the words – the definition of program that I would use, I don’t think I was aware of that in any event. THE COMMISSIONER: Well, we know now, with the benefit of what we have learned here, that there was no program. THE RT. HON. PAUL MARTIN: There was no program. THE COMMISSIONER: It has been called the Sponsorship Program, but until the year 2000, there was, in fact, no program in the sense of a --- THE RT. HON. PAUL MARTIN: Yes. THE COMMISSIONER: --- government program with rules and criteria and some form of organisation.

Perhaps you would like to take up your disagreement with these two gentlemen. So the notion that there is some bright line to be drawn between 1997 and previous years seems, if you will permit me, specious. In any case, if the whole controversy over sponsorships is as overblown as I gather you take it to be, if indeed you share the former Prime Minister's view that it was a well-intended and thoroughly non-partisan endeavour, I am at a loss to understand why you are so concerned to distance yourself from it. I fear you are responding in too much haste. The inquiry is still in its early stages. It has drawn no conclusions, nor have I: the column in question makes no accusations, but merely summarizes evidence heard under oath in a public inquiry (what we are "asked to believe."). In advance of the inquiry's report, I have no reason to hold you in anything but the highest personal regard. You, on the other hand, have recklessly and without evidence charged me with publishing a lie, ie a deliberate falsehood, an accusation which you can now see is untrue and I'm sure will want to retract. Very best wishes, Andrew Coyne

My Saturday column

Here is what we are asked to believe. We are asked to believe that Jean Chretien, having created the sponsorship program, having personally secured funding for the program out of the so-called “unity reserve,” having personal authority over every request for funds from that allocation and having been warned in writing by the Clerk of the Privy Council that he would thus be personally responsible for every grant made out of those funds, should accept no personal blame for anything that went wrong under the program. We are asked to believe that, although the program was critical to achieving “the unity of Canada … my number one priority,” he had no knowledge of and indeed took no interest in the way the program was run because “I’m not a micro-manager”; that, in particular, he had no knowledge that a company controlled by Jacques Corriveau, a close friend and former vice-president of the Liberal Party, had received millions of dollars in sub-contracts under the program, nor that, prior to receiving these commissions, he had complained to Mr. Chretien’s closest political advisers that he had not been paid for work carried out in the 1997 election campaign, nor even that he had contributed thousands of dollars to Mr. Chretien’s personal election campaign. We are asked to believe this, notwithstanding Mr. Chretien’s demonstrated penchant for “micro-managing” on behalf of friends in search of federal funds. It was, after all, in those same post-referendum years when the sponsorship program was in its heyday that Mr. Chretien somehow found the time to make repeated phone calls to the president of the Business Development Bank of Canada on behalf of the proprietor of the Grand-Mère Inn, the serial fire-victim Yvon Duhaime, who was mysteriously granted a loan for which he was ineligible. And Mr. Duhaime was hardly the only friend of Mr. Chretien’s to benefit from federal largesse. For example. there was Claude Gauthier, a long time friend and political contributor who was awarded a $6-million CIDA grant on which he was ineligible to bid, and who was later given a $1.2-million “job creation” grant for a company in bankruptcy proceedings, after Mr. Chretien’s officials intervened. We are asked to believe that Mr. Chretien was so insistent, when it came to federal advertising and sponsorships, that “all the rules, regulations and guidelines had to be followed,” that he appointed Jean Carle, then his director of operations, to police it. That would be the Jean Carle who has admitted to having later participated, as vice-president of the Business Development Bank, in a scheme to launder $125,000 in sponsorship funding to a Montreal film producer through the Bank. But perhaps that was his only lapse. We are asked to believe, likewise, that Mr. Chretien was so concerned to remove any partisan taint from federal advertising practices that he assigned the task to David Dingwall, his first Public Works minister; and that Mr. Dingwall and his executive assistant, Warren Kinsella, were so seized with non-partisan zeal that they went to unusual lengths to ensure Chuck Guité was put in charge of the program. Mr. Guité has testified that Mr. Dingwall explained his decision to keep him on, notwithstanding similar activities on behalf of the previous Conservative government, with the words: “You won’t rat on them, you won’t rat on us.” We are asked to believe that neither Jean Pelletier, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, nor Alfonso Gagliano, Mr. Guité’s superior as minister of Public Works, though they met regularly with Mr. Guité, and though they admit to having offered “suggestions” as to which projects should receive funding, and though several witnesses and dozens of documents attest to their having closely directed the program in every respect, took no part in deciding how the funds should be allocated, ie through which advertising agencies. We are asked to believe that the politicians responsible for a program that was conceived in secret, that appeared in no budget document, that was never divulged to Parliament and of which even cabinet ministers were unaware, should have been surprised to learn that bureaucrats answering to them were allocating millions of dollars in secret, without invoices or receipts. We are asked to believe, last, that Paul Martin did not know about the existence of the unity reserve until 1996, three years after he had been named Finance Minister; that he did not know what it was used for, ie sponsorships, until some years after that; and that he did not know about the abuses that went on under the program until some years after that. And yet, ignorant as he was as to either the purpose or results of the program, he immediately signed off on the Prime Minister’s request for funds, without question. We are asked to believe that Messrs. Chretien, Pelletier, Gagliano, Carle, Dingwall, and Kinsella acted at all times throughout this affair out of an impartial devotion to the public good; or that if they did not, Mr. Martin had no clue that anything untoward was going on, and no reason to suspect it. That is what we are asked to believe. Do you?