The PM and Liberals were hit last Thursday with the news about a new RCMP probe -- just a week after the Mounties announced that they had launched a criminal investigation into a possible leak on the government's November announcement of a tax change favourable for income trusts. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) was asked last week to look into about 4.8 million Canadian dollars (about 4.1 million U.S. dollars) in grants the Option Canada, a federalist lobby group, received before the Quebec referendum in 1995, and how that money was spent. The federalist side used a low-profile organization to pay millions of dollars in undeclared campaign expenses during the 1995 referendum, the authors of a new book claim.The authors of a new book allege that the lobby group bypassed Quebec's spending laws for the referendum. authors Robin Philpot and Quebec investigative journalist Normand Lester book Les secrets d'Option Canada, hit the bookshelves Wednesday. While the book, Les secrets d'Option Canada, reviews decade-old events, it names people who are still active in the Liberal Party of Canada, creating a new headache for Paul Martin's struggling election campaign. The book provides alleged accounts of what happened to a portion of federal funds that went to Option Canada -- a pro-federalist group during the Quebec referendum. The money went to people or agencies with ties to the Liberals, he said. "It was a Liberal trough," Mr. Lester said. "The whole apparatus was essentially the Liberal Party."According to the authors, Option Canada received $5 million from the federal government -- and $3.5 million of that sum was illegally spent by the referendum campaign's "No" side by bypassing Quebec's spending laws for the referendum. The authors claim that some of the amount was used to pay Grit volunteers who worked on the "No" campaign, including an organizer who was recently banned from the Liberal Party over involvement in the sponsorship scandal. Sovereigntists have long accused Ottawa of using the group to skirt rules on referendum funding. Spending limits for both the Yes and No committees were set at $5 million each. Lester said a source recently pointed him to documents from Option Canada in a cardboard box behind a suburban Montreal shopping centre. Philpot told CTV Newsnet in an interview that the documents revealed "a will on the part of the ... conceivers of Option Canada and the federal government to break Quebec's referendum laws and to secretly inject money into a democratic political campaign..." Philpot claimed he and Lester have uncovered a "very, very serious case of the government injecting secret money illegally to deny a legitimate political debate ... from taking place." Included in their book are details about a $12,000 grant that allegedly went to one of Liberal Leader Paul Martin's current cabinet ministers to promote national unity before the referendum. Option Canada paid $300,000 to 50 referendum organizers on the federalist side who were supposed to be volunteers. One of those who allegedly benefited, to the tune of $10,500, was Tony Mignacca, a Liberal who Mr. Martin banished from the party after his name came up in Mr. Justice John Gomery's report into the sponsorship scandal. Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew, who was then a private consultant, received $12,000 to promote federalism. The book says it was to write five essays for the daily La Presse in September, 1995. Option Canada also paid $10,000 to the communications firm of André Morrow, the spouse of Heritage Minister Liza Frulla. At the time, Ms. Frulla was vice-president of the No committee. Option Canada spent $102,000 for celebrations for the No campaign workers the night of the referendum. The authors found invoices that detail $2.2-million that Option Canada paid the ad agency BCP Group Inc. In a statement, BCP said that the money was spent before the referendum campaign officially started Internal auditors found in 1997 that the money was issued to Option Canada without proper scrutiny. Two Canadian Heritage officials were interviewed just before Christmas about the 1995 expenditures. But despite a series of internal audits, it was never determined exactly how Option Canada spent its $4.8-million grant. The original grant was made when Michel Dupuy was the minister of the Department of Canadian Heritage. But former deputy prime minister Sheila Copps took over the department by the time it came under scrutiny. Copps said in an interview on Sunday that she personally asked for an accounting of the cash, and that she called on the auditor general to examine the books of Claude Dauphin -- the man who ran Option Canada at the time. But the authors argue that the heritage department never took the matter to the RCMP, and that the government waited until learning about the new book to contact authorities. "... What we have here is not simply what Stephen Harper has called corruption in Quebec," Philphot told reporters Monday at a Montreal press conference. "It is a case of the government of Canada injecting money, secretly and illegally into a legitimate democratic debate in an aim to violate the democratic process and to defeat legitimate democratic position," he alleged. Dauphin, who also happens to be one of Martin's closest advisers from Quebec...
and the ends do not justify the means, not any for all the undeniable Liberal cheating, lying , stealing, breaking of the laws by the Liberals especially. and it is not just the Immoral acts of a few persons, many Liberals were invloved in it still too even once again..
On top of that I am too quickly reminded as well that the Liberal PM Paul Martin now himself he clearly now really cannot be trusted, he had promised a clean campaign, but him now in desperation actively , fully bashing the others is not a clean campaign... thus he already broke his election campaign promise.. so what he really cannot win if he plays honest, fair and clean? obviously not... so who needs more dishonest and untrustworthy Liberals back in power certainly not me.. and I live in his riding too.