Hence in place of substantive measures -- I am announcing that I will announce something on Monday that we have already announced -- we were treated to a lot of vintage Martin bluster ("make no mistake... let me tell you ... let's be frank... let's be clear...") and vague promises of a change in the "culture" of Ottawa, all relying heavily on his own personal credibility and not much more. "I am personally and profoundly committed to rapid and permanent changes in the way things are done in Ottawa.... One thing I can promise you is that I'm going to change the way citizens feel about their government... I give you my word, I'm going to make that happen.... "

But in fact it seems he already has made it happen. After the Auditor General's report, he says, he made a choice. Rather than try to "sweep it under a rug," he decided to "take the bull by the horns," to "pull out all the stops" (note to Martin speechwriters: switch the Cliché-Check to "on"), in short, to "get to the bottom of the matter, and then put in place the means to make sure it never happens again." And, "we have done that." To be sure, "we will go on doing it." But the sense conveyed was of carrying on with what had already been achieved, rather than attempting anything more radical.

So: Trust me. We've changed.

All right. Let's look at that. Viewed from one end of the telescope, what Martin has done or at least promised in the few weeks since he took power is undeniably impressive: an independent ethics commissioner; some relaxation of party discipline in the Commons; parliamentary review of appointments to the Supreme Court, Crown corporations and other major agencies, and an end to patronage on the Immigrant and Refugee Boards. Responding to the advertising scandals, in particular, he has cancelled the sponsorship program, fired some of the worst offenders, frozen government advertising, and launched three separate inquiries: a parliamentary committee, a judicial inquiry, and an external audit (two, actually) of Liberal Party contributions.

But that, as I say, is from one end of the telescope: measured against what was done before. Which is hardly an exacting standard. And in any case, the public has moved on: What might have been radical and far-sighted a year ago no longer seems so now. Measured against what needs to be done, or even against what can be done, the Martin record looks less impressive.

Take those "three separate inquiries." The Liberal members of the Commons Public Accounts committee, it is fair to say, have not been noted as hound-dogs for the truth in the past, and they show no sign of changing. Their fiercest scrutiny to date has been reserved for the Auditor General, whom they accused of fomenting the "big lie" that $100 million of public money had gone missing. (Quite right. It's not missing: it went straight into the pockets of a half-dozen Liberal-friendly advertising firms in Quebec.) After an initial coaching session with the Prime Minister's deputy chief of staff, Ruth Thorkelson, the MPs have been publicly chafing to wind down the hearings almost from the day they began. Barely a week in, Liberal Marlene Jennings volunteered the opinion that the committee had heard all it needed to hear, and could report back by the end of the month. Her colleague, Shawn Murphy, had concluded, after scarcely more testimony, that "the real culprit in this whole mess is Guité." Sentence first, verdict afterwards, evidence last. Just so nothing interferes with the election.

The judicial inquiry, meanwhile, has yet to get under way, but already has run into heavy weather. I don't think Norman Spector was right to cast aspersions on the independence of those involved, simply because the judge was a Liberal appointee to the Copyright Board, while his two co-counsel were, respectively, an oldtime political chum of Marc LeFrancois, recently fired as Via Rail chief, and a former constitutional adviser to Jean Chretien. But he is right to say that public perceptions of the inquiry's independence would have been greatly enhanced had it been constructed more at arm's length, rather than in the back rooms of the Prime Minister's Office.

And as for those independent external audits, isn't it extraordinary that out of the hundreds of reputable accounting firms in the country, the Liberals selected for the task two of their largest contributors, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte & Touche? Again, there's no suggestion of anything untoward. But as a matter of perception, it shows remarkable self-confidence, not to say gall.

But never mind. We are invited to trust the Prime Minister. How I wish that I could. But for every one of his praiseworthy reforms, there is a troubling question. He speaks of giving more power to MPs, yet anyone not considered a loyalist in the party mysteriously disappears. He denounces cronyism, yet the stories of Earnscliffe Strategy Group's "special relationship" with the Finance department multiply by the day. He promises an independent ethics commissioner, yet his own lapses -- on the Irving flights, on federal grants to Canada Steamship Lines, on the famous "Venetian blind trust" -- call into question his memory, if nothing else. The CSL file on its own is a conflict-of-interest mushroom patch.

And hanging over everything, for all Mr. Martin's appealing persona and inspiring rhetoric, are two positions he has taken that are hard to reconcile with his image as a reformer: his increasingly dubious claim to have known nothing of any misdeeds in the government of which he was a senior minister, and his ambitions for a quickie election in the spring.