Chretien holds us all in contempt
Jean Chretien's cheap trick
Andrew Coyne
National Post
February 10, 2005
Maybe you and I were watching different shows. If you were one of my media colleagues, you saw a bravura performance by an old pro still in top form. On the CBC, a misty-eyed Don Newman reported that Jean Chretien had hit "a home run." Elsewhere it was described as "a touchdown," a "slam dunk," and inevitably, "a hole in one." You get the point: It was all a game, with the press gallery in its preferred role as scorekeeper.
If you were like me, however, and I suspect a good part of the public are, you saw the former prime minister of Canada engaged in what in another context would be called contempt of the proceedings. After hours of questioning by the Gomery commission as to what he knew of the errant sponsorship program, questions to which he offered, by turns, sneers, evasions, and professions of his own, as the Post's John Ivison put it, "encyclopedic ignorance," Mr. Chretien spent his last few minutes on the stand in a stagey, prop-filled attempt to humiliate the judge before whom he sat.
I repeat: This is the former prime minister of Canada we are talking about -- not some juvenile delinquent in youth court. Even Bill Clinton did not go that far. Cornered, under oath, he at least had the decency to lie: the tribute that vice pays to getting caught. Whereas Mr. Chretien, whose responsibilities as prime minister included upholding the law and protecting the taxpayers' interest, chose this moment to advertise his contempt for both. Which is more or less what the inquiry was called to investigate, isn't it?
Not to many in the media.
You may think an over-long vaudeville routine to the effect that other politicians besides Mr. Chretien hand out souvenir golf balls proves exactly nothing of any relevance. The issue before the inquiry, after all, is whether public money was systematically diverted into the pockets of friends of the Liberal party, and possibly those of the party itself, not whether Mr. Chretien has good taste.
But to the punditocracy, what mattered was that Mr. Chretien had scored a point on Judge Gomery. Today many will do the same thing, comparing Paul Martin's "performance" to Mr. Chretien's and finding it wanting: not for any economies he might take with the truth, but for his clumsiness in the attempt.
We have got to, please pardon the expression, keep our eye on the ball. The Gomery inquiry is our last chance to get at the moral rot that has taken hold of Ottawa over the past three decades.
Indeed, as the inquiry wears on, that is more and more becoming the issue: not so much the misappropriation of public funds, as serious as it was, but the apparent inability of our system of government to hold anyone to account.
Virtually every line of defence has proved inadequate. The Commons has been the usual model of futility: Questions about the scandal are answered with remarks about gay marriage. The Public Accounts committee tried, but was worn down by government barracking, before being shut down by an early election call. Let us not even talk about the Senate.
Within the government, it was much the same. The ethics counsellor was, needless to say, nowhere to be found. Internal audits that flagged the misspending early on were suppressed. Indeed, had it not been for the Auditor-General -- and a couple of enterprising reporters -- we might never have found out about the whole mess at all. Certainly the RCMP was unlikely to have pursued it with much vigor, having itself served as a conduit for tainted funds.
And if the Chretien regime was less than forthcoming about what it was up to, the Martinites have been scarcely better. The lawyer who was supposed to recover the missing millions has given up, not a penny wiser. Having assigned two of its largest contributors to audit its contributions, the party then reneged on its promise to release their findings before the election, as indeed it reneged on the promise not to call the election before all the facts were known.
So the Gomery inquiry is all we've got.
Do you see what the stakes are? You can see why Mr. Chretien and his henchmen are so desperate to discredit the commission: not just their legacies, but their futures are potentially at risk if the inquiry is permitted to follow the money trail to its inevitable terminus.
But for the public, the stakes are even higher. Indeed, how this matter is resolved will test whether we can reasonably be called a democracy.
Can a regime accused of corruption endlessly suppress evidence of its misdeeds; can it muzzle or intimidate those few institutions it does not already control; can it muddle through election after election after election without ever being held to account: that is what is at issue here.
We can't afford to let this opportunity go by.
