Megapundit: James Moore, son of Trudeau?

By selley - Friday, June 27, 2008 at 1:48 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Don Martin on Gomery’s comeuppance; Susan Riley on the cabinet shuffle; Richard Gwyn on the Green Shift.

Stuck in the past
Some of us, apparently, haven’t quite gotten past David Emerson’s floor-crossing and the fact that Michael Fortier isn’t an MP.

If Fortier and Emerson awoke today with a burning sensation all over their bodies—less painful than white phosphorous, say, but not by much—it may have something to do with Susan Riley‘s piece in the Ottawa Citizen. She portrays Fortier as an idly rich, over-entitled, unelectable layabout who exacerbates Stephen Harper’s contempt for the democratic process in appointing him with his unconvincing promises to run in an election if and when a riding with a “winning profile” is located. Emerson’s personality fares slightly better, but his CV doesn’t: he stands accused of “negotiat[ing] a flimsy truce on softwood lumber” and, in his previous Liberal life, “putting the brakes on Stéphane Dion’s environmental ambitions” (Aha! So he’s why it’s so difficult to make priorities!) This is all several feet over the top, particularly Riley’s bizarre talk of “class loyalty” affecting the appointments, but we sure loved reading it!

Continue…

Inkless Wells takes a trip down Gomerian memory lane …

By kadyomalley - Friday, June 27, 2008 at 11:28 AM - 0 Comments

Or perhaps a tour of the Gomerytham sewer system in a glass-bottomed boat. Let’s just hope he leaves a trail of breadcrumbs so he can find his way back to the present day:

I’ve been working on the railroad: memories of Gomery (I)
Mr. Martin’s gentle ride: Memories of Gomery (II)
Not a hostile witness, but maybe a skeptic: Memories of Gomery (III)
A nasty business: Memories of Gomery (IV)

Also, check out what we’re billing as “the toughest Canada Day quiz ever” here. I’ll confess that I barely got above a passing grade — but am confident that our readers are far smarter than me, and will sail through it with no difficulty whatsoever. (Feel free to brag/bitterly question the legitimacy of the questions in the comments below.)

A nasty business: Memories of Gomery (IV)

By Paul Wells - Friday, June 27, 2008 at 10:40 AM - 0 Comments

I spent several weeks in Montreal covering the Gomery commission hearings in 2005. Despite my earlier posts today, which detail shoddy work by the Gomery crew, it is true that anyone who sat through those hearings could only shake his head at how sleazy the sponsorship scandal was. Here are three of my pieces from that period.

The question is not whether the sponsorship program was a nasty business. It had already been exhaustively demonstrated, long before Sheila Fraser’s final audit, that it was. The question is not whether there was criminal wrongdoing. The courts have established that there was. The question is whether John Gomery’s commission of inquiry substantially added to the sum of human knowledge or the balance of universal justice during a year and a half of expensive, media-saturated work.

As Judge Gomery’s own contrite expression yesterday demonstrated, the answer to that one is not nearly as clear.

Mr. Martin's gentle ride: Memories of Gomery (II)

By Paul Wells - Friday, June 27, 2008 at 9:39 AM - 0 Comments

Feb. 10, 2005. Commission counsel Neil Finkelstein is careful not to rattle the ice cubes in Paul Martin’s glass as he delivers the gentlest interrogation in the history of ever. Ooh. Ooh, Mr. Martin, could you maybe grace this court with rousing tales of your victory over the deficit? You bet he can: Continue…

I've been working on the railroad: memories of Gomery (I)

By Paul Wells - Friday, June 27, 2008 at 9:29 AM - 0 Comments

Return with us now to the thrilling days of Feb. 8, 2005, when Jean Chrétien testified at the Gomery Commission on Ratifying Paul Martin’s Preferred Campaign Narrative. (All transcripts are available here.) Jacques Bernard Roy is commission lead counsel. (Not “council.” Thanks to Mark Bourrie for spelling assistance. Sigh.) His witness, Jean Chrétien, has been exhaustively pre-interviewed, his lawyers briefed on all areas of potential questioning. Or so he thought. But what’s this? Continue…

Gloating via proxy: Liveblogging Jean Chrétien's "spokespersons and lawyers" on the Gomery decision

By kadyomalley - Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 1:26 PM - 0 Comments

12:49:13 PM
Well, that’ll teach a girl to plan a leisurely afternoon of running background checks on the beneficiaries of the recent flurry of federal appointments. Sorry, Google, I’ll have to take a raincheck. When the Gomery signal flashes in the sky, we have to follow.

Slowly but surely, the room is filling up. The gallery was given very short notice of the press conference, so the turnout is surprisingly robust, considering. It’s not like there’s much else happening, other than that aforementioned flurry of appointments, but still. When it comes to Gomery—in fact, the whole sponsorship scandal—I know I’m speaking for at least a few of us reporters when I say that the very name sends me into a state of twitchy catatonia, which has nothing to do with any sympathy for the former Liberal government or any of those Quebec ad firms, and everything to do with the fact that this was the story that devoured Canadian politics for nearly four years. So many thousands and thousands of words, and yet it’s apparently still not over.

12:58:48 PM
Just got a copy of the decision – I’m not even going to pretend to be able to read it in the thirty seconds before the presser is scheduled to start, but the key word is “bias”—and the reasonable apprehension of thus. That’s what the court has concluded, insofar as Gomery’s treatment of the former PM, and that is what his spokespersons and lawyers—but not, sadly, the man himself—will be talking about in just under a minute.

Continue…

Death of a dog and pony show

By Paul Wells - Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 12:58 PM - 0 Comments

I am very sorry, though unsurprised, that the massive online archive of testimony from John Gomery’s now utterly discredited vanity parade has now been removed from the innertubes, because I would have liked to point to specific incidents of towering boneheadedness on the part of Judge Gomery and his cast of twits for posterity’s sake. Continue…

BTC: The gloat

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 26, 2008 at 12:30 PM - 0 Comments

Mr. Chretien’s lawyers are due to be in the National Press Theatre at 1pm. The gloating should be palpable.