Democracy itself was at stake. If the opposition continued to air these charges of government ministers abusing their offices, it would bring the whole of the government into disrepute. And then, well, history tells us what happens next. After all, this was exactly how Hitler started. Well, Le Pen anyway.

So it was that the excessive rhetoric scandal -- or, as it was inevitably dubbed, Rhetoricgate -- was finally rooted out. The Prime Minister rose in the House and unveiled a "bold eight-point action plan," as he was modest enough to describe it, precisely crafted to stop the opposition from accusing ministers of abusing their offices. If it contained nothing to stop ministers from actually abusing their offices, that was only because no such abuse had taken place: certainly not at the hands of this minister. At worst -- at worst -- "mistakes were made." That is to say, mistakes were made by bureaucrats.

Well of course mistakes were made. As the Prime Minister said, "in an organization as large as the Government of Canada, mistakes are made every day." Not that that should be taken as an argument that, if the government were a little less large, fewer mistakes would be made. Indeed, the whole emphasis on government mistakes was misplaced.

"Governments," he said, eschewing the particular in favour of the universal, "should be judged not on whether mistakes are made" -- doesn't matter how many, or how large -- "but on how problems and mistakes are identified and how they are corrected." If it took an Access to Information request, four months of Opposition questions and the odd lawsuit to get the government to "identify," let alone "correct" a mistake, well, that was part of the majesty of democracy.

What was far worse was all this "excessive rhetoric" in response. That was what had brought him to participate in this debate, unaccustomed as he was to public speaking: "because of the need to tone down the rhetoric." After all, "integrity and public trust are the foundation of democratic government." Once these are called into question, the whole edifice crumbles. To accuse his government of corruption was irresponsible. No, it was worse than irresponsible. It was the "destruction of democracy." "I've been travelling in Europe," he reminded the House, "and it's because of the irresponsibility that you have the type of Le Pen that move into the vacuum." The problem, he implied, wasn't that governments in Europe were corrupt: it was that they had been accused of being so. The parallels were as ominous as they were inescapable: If this keeps up, the government of Canada will be so weakened as to expose it to a fascist takeover -- possibly led by the bigots, racists and Holocaust deniers on the other side.

That was why he was so anxious to "tone down the rhetoric." Members of Parliament were all honest people. How did he know? Well, none of them had been arrested. "There is not one Member of Parliament in the last nine years who has been charged with anything." So the eight points in his action plan -- to "make public" this and "clarify" that, together with a Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament, perhaps modelled on the one for Cabinet ministers that had proved so effective in his own case -- should not be taken as an admission that anyone had done anything wrong. The message was not: There's a problem, and I'm doing as little as I can about it. The message was: The problem is the opposition.

Here he was, trying to save the country, and the opposition was busy pointing fingers. He recalled the hoo-ha over that little business in Human Resources Development. Sure, a couple of billion dollars had been shovelled out the door with no questions asked, much of it to Liberal ridings, friends and business partners -- what the Prime Minister summarized as "some bad record-keeping and poor administration" -- but that was only in the cause of "promoting literacy, helping the disadvantaged and people with disabilities." And not only them, but "the poor and the weak," against whom the opposition had apparently taken up arms.

And now this matter of the sponsorship program in Quebec, and the accumulating evidence that advertising companies that gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Liberal party had received millions of dollars in government contracts. Well, yes. But their motives were good. The sponsorships were a vital part of the government's agenda to promote national unity, in the wake of the "close call" in the referendum of 1995.

"It was an urgent situation. We acted with a sense of urgency. And with urgent action mistakes can happen." It was urgent to spend as much money as possible, as fast as possible, on as many Liberal firms as possible. And it worked! He had saved us from the separatists, as he would save us from Le Pen.

But now he was drawing to a close. He quoted Churchill, to the effect that democracy was the worst form of government, except for all the others. The point was left hanging: Perhaps the same was true of his government. But he sensed he had left something unsaid. Perhaps it was necessary to acknowledge, not just the responsibility of members of Parliament, or his government, but his own personal responsibility. He was the Prime Minister, after all.

"I am humble enough to admit" -- his audience tensed for what was to come: that I failed you? that I used your money to help my sleazy friends? that the government's ethical problems begin (though they certainly do not end) with me? -- "that mistakes have been made." I'm humble enough to admit that other people screwed up. Theya culpa.