He says, she says

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 15, 2011 at 5:12 PM - 111 Comments

When Mr. Harper announced last April that Helena Guergis was the subject of serious allegations, he said that ”pending a resolution, she will sit outside of the Conservative Party caucus.” But though the allegations against Helena Guergus are now confirmed to be those that have already been dismissed, she apparently remains unwelcome.

When asked Friday whether he owed Ms. Guergis an apology – after allegations of drug abuse, wild partying and attempts to secure illegal contracts all proved unfounded – Conservative Leader Stephen Harper was unrepentant. ”There were, as you know well, a range of political problems around this individual,” he told reporters in Thornhill, outside Toronto. “They have been discussed by members of caucus. There is simply no desire to see the return of this individual to caucus…the decision is now in the hands of the riding.”

Ms. Guergis called a news conference today to lay out her version. Continue…

Guergis works the comeback trail

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, April 15, 2011 at 6:10 AM - 76 Comments

Photograph by Colin OConnor

The familiar war colours still grace her signs—white block letters and crimson ribbons, on a background of Tory blue. But the word “Independent” lies spray-stencilled beneath Helena Guergis’s name, while blots of paint covering the Conservative party logo summon to mind a bandage on an open wound. “It’s Conservative against conservative around here,” says Guergis, summing up one of the most bitter constituency battles of the federal election. Not only is she fighting for her political life, says the former junior cabinet minister, she’s doing so against the full might of the Tory electoral machine.

No surprise. Since the uproar surrounding the arrest and lobbying activities of her husband, Rahim Jaffer, Guergis has been one of Stephen Harper’s biggest headaches, demanding that the Prime Minister reveal his reasons for punting her from caucus while insisting she remains a big-C Conservative—in spirit if not on paper. Harper’s office cited unspecified allegations of misconduct on Guergis’s part when it expelled her in April 2010, but a subsequent review by RCMP found no evidence of wrongdoing. Still, the Conservatives refused to re-admit her to the party fold, and last month her old constituency association held a nomination meeting to replace her.

Judging by the campaign muscle they’ve sent the new candidate, a pediatric surgeon named Kellie Leitch, the party brain trust would dearly love to see Guergis gone. At least six Tory heavyweights have swung through the farm country of Simcoe-Grey in recent days, including Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Minister of State for Seniors Julian Fantino. Tory icon Hugh Segal has also dropped by for photo ops. So has Pamela Wallin, the Conservative senator and former broadcaster.

Continue…

Why Laureen Harper might need a professional lobbyist

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 10:29 AM - 3 Comments

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

For the second year, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami presented A Taste of the Arctic, this time in  the Great Hall of the National Gallery of Canada. While there were long lineups for the muskox, halibut and shrimp stations, the one featuring seal meat was less popular. Evan Solomon, host of CBC’s Power & Politics, claimed the seal meat was delicious, if hard to taste because of the heavy sauce. ITK president Mary Simon arrived with her leg in a cast. (Ottawa is plagued with leg injuries: not only is Treasury Board President Stockwell Day in a cast, Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn injured his leg in a snowmobile accident.)

The keynote speaker for Taste of the Arctic was former governor general Michaëlle Jean, now a UNESCO special envoy to Haiti. This was Jean’s first official event since stepping down as GG. Jean, who has bought a house in Ottawa, is happy she was able to stay there for work as it allows her daughter to continue at her school and keep her same friends. Also in attendance was Nick Javor of Tim Hortons, who noted that the company recently opened three kiosks (offering a limited menu) in Nunavut.

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

The entertainment included Inuk singer Elisapie Isaac. During Isaac’s set, which closed the evening, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq starting rocking out on the dance floor and got people moving. Laureen Harper was so impressed with the singer she quipped she was going to “lobby” Heritage Minister James Moore to have Isaac perform for Canada Day on Parliament Hill. Mrs. Harper joked she might have to hire a professional lobbyist because last year she tried to recommend a band she saw in a bar but nothing happened.

How can I be cool if…

Last week, Liberal MP Massimo Pacetti received his new BlackBerry Torch, the latest handheld device to offer both a keypad and touch-screen option. Pacetti was told by the Commons telecommunications department he was the first MP to get the Torch, which made him feel pretty hip—until he was also told senators had been getting Torches since the end of 2010.

Liberal conspiracy theory

There was much grumbling by Liberals on the Hill when news hit that Rocco Rossi, the former national director of the Liberal party who helped recruit Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff into federal politics, was going to run provincially for Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives in Ontario. At the same time, federal Liberals say quietly that should the Ontario Liberals be defeated before the next federal election it would bode well for them because Ontario would be looking to balance provincial and federal power. Was Rossi’s move all part of some secret plan?

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

In the last election, Liberal MP Justin Trudeau took the riding of Papineau from Bloc MP Vivian Barbot. With election fever in the air, Barbot, who still works on the Hill  for her party, says she plans to go for round two against Trudeau, but only if there’s an election before she turns 70 on July 7.

Harper’s card to Helena

Officials in the PMO say that when they told Stephen Harper that Helena Guergis and Rahim Jaffer had a baby, the PM instructed his staff to send a card, which they did, sometime in December. (A recent item in Capital Diary had Jaffer reporting he did not get any congratulatory message from the PM.) Jaffer explains that when he and Helena collected items, including flowers from Green party Leader Elizabeth May from Guergis’s Hill office on Jan. 18 (the day Capital Diary went to press), there was no card from the PM, but that one arrived a few days later. It was much appreciated, he says. Apparently there are no hard feelings: his wife, he notes, has put out signals she would be willing to come back to the Conservative party if the PM invited her.

Helena Guergis in conversation

By Peter C. Newman - Friday, August 6, 2010 at 8:16 AM - 0 Comments

Photography by John Major

Ottawa remains hypnotized by the blood feud between Stephen Harper and Helena Guergis, who resigned as minister of state for the status of women on April 9 amidst allegations involving her husband, former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer. The Prime Minister then kicked her out of the Conservative caucus. In July, the RCMP cleared Guergis of criminal wrongdoing, but the Prime Minister’s Office continues to exclude her from caucus.

Q: About 50 ministers have resigned or been forced to resign since I started to write about Canadian politics in 1957. But seldom have any of those ministers also been expelled from caucus. So, why this firing squad?
A: I would like to think I haven’t done anything that would warrant being treated worse than convicted criminals. But everybody is just piling on. I’ve always believed it had to do with my husband. In the phone call on April 9 when it all started, I said to the Prime Minister—and I believed he was a friend—that I thought he didn’t care for my husband. I said—and this is something I haven’t disclosed before—that I was going to be taking some time away from my husband, because I needed to figure out what the truth was. At the end of that conversation, the Prime Minister said, “Helena, you shared something with me about your marriage. From one friend to another, you need to know what your husband is doing.” So I firmly believe that he has done this to me because of my husband, and I don’t think that’s right. This is kind of high school, really.

Q: So he wanted you two to be apart?
A: That’s right. I’ll be honest with you, I was really reluctant to do this interview. Just about every single time I have talked to the media, it’s portrayed as though I’m being combative with the Prime Minister, or firing shots at him. I didn’t pick a fight—I simply stood up for myself and answered questions when the pressure was mounting. And I had to. It’s time to put it behind us, for me to be back in caucus and just move on. I really want that, but somehow my request for a meeting with the PM has been turned into me demanding explanations.

Q: Your husband was chief of the Conservative caucus and an MP for a dozen years, going back to Reform days. How did he get along with Mr. Harper?
A: He’s always spoken about the Prime Minister with respect.

Q: How long were you and your husband apart after April 9?
A: I didn’t pull apart from him. I stuck with him—we had a raucous time. I needed to figure out if there was substance to the Toronto Star story [alleging that financier Nazim Gillani boasted that Jaffer “opened the Prime Minister’s Office to us”]. I went up one side of my husband and down the other for weeks, months on end, to make sure that he was not lying to me, that he had told me the truth. I needed to go through that process with him. I’d wanted time away to figure things out, but it was more appropriate for me to stay and to work through it. You don’t just walk away when things get tough.

Q: How long have you been married?
A: In October, two years. So it’s still new, but I didn’t leave. There was a lot of yelling and screaming going on, a lot of questions, but we made it through that process. I wasn’t feeling the greatest because I was pregnant, and I needed his support. There were a lot of people who were telling me I should get rid of him. They kept saying, you know, “If you want to save your career . . . ” Some were even suggesting I should stage it. That’s not happening. I’m not playing those games.

Q: What are your political options now?
A: I will continue to ask for a meeting with the PM—not demand, just ask—you know, as one member of Parliament to another, as former colleagues . . . as colleagues, sorry. We still are colleagues in the House. I just think it would be the right thing to do to sit down, to talk, and put this all behind us. I want to be able to go forward with my pregnancy without the stress, I want to continue to work as an MP because I enjoy my job and I work really hard. My community deserves some closure and some answers. Maybe it’s time to change some of the election laws because right now it’s like the Prime Minister is the ultimate, supreme ruler. When you look at Canada as a flourishing democracy, it shouldn’t come down to one person who can just decide that the rest of my life I’m going to be marked. Even the stuff that’s coming out of the Prime Minister’s Office now suggests that I don’t meet the standards [of the caucus]. What’s that about? They don’t have a right to treat anybody that way. It’s against the basic human rights in this country. I don’t know what they expect me to do. Am I going to live on fresh air and sunshine?

Q: On one occasion, Mr. Harper came over to you in the Commons and sounded encouraging. Can you remember his exact words?
A: I said, “If you sit here I don’t know if I’m strong enough to not start crying,” and he just sat quietly for a minute. Then he said there had been a lot of bad stories written about him in the past and that I should just keep my head up high and I’d get through this sort of thing. He was trying to reach out to me, at least that was what I thought.

Q: One of the theories floating around is that you didn’t get along with Guy Giorno, the PM’s chief of staff.
A: My former chief of staff had tried to meet with Mr. Giorno on several occasions [before April 9] and I still have the email exchanges between them. She was very frustrated that he would not meet with her. She was the only chief who had not met with Mr. Giorno since he joined the PMO [in July 2008]. It seems that he doesn’t care for me very much.

Q: When you were removed from caucus, the Prime Minister specifically stated you should “sit outside caucus pending a resolution.” Why, since the RCMP charged neither you nor your husband with any wrongdoing, are we spending more time on this charade?
A: I was so relieved when I thought all this was behind me, but I do think I have a right to know why I was investigated, and have my name truly cleared.

Q: The only error in judgment that’s been proven is that your husband borrowed your BlackBerry. Is that a capital offence?
A: I’d love to answer that one. Lots of caucus members have given their BlackBerries to their spouses. That’s a fact. When he was caucus chair, Rahim received a number of emails from spouses that clearly identified they were using a parliamentary account. He still has all those emails.

Q: What about this office we’re in? The accusation was that your husband was holding meetings and working here.
A: Did you go through security downstairs? Yeah? Well, anyone who comes here has to go through. They have a log; it shows there was no business here at all. This is nonsense. Somehow I’ve become an enemy of the state, for some reason. I don’t understand at all.

Q: One story going around is that your money is running out because your legal costs have been so high. Is that true?
A: Oh yeah, I have spent a significant amount trying to figure out what I’ve done wrong. When the Prime Minister calls in the federal police force, you have to take it seriously, you have to get a criminal lawyer.

Q: Another accusation was that your husband was using your emails for his business.
A: I saw three emails on the CBC website which showed the documents. One was between him and Brian Jean [parliamentary secretary to John Barrett] where it’s actually kind of comedic, though there was a section in the middle that did deal with his business. I said to him, “Rahim, why did you do that?” And he says, “I was in the middle of a conversation with him on something else and so I just asked him and wasn’t paying attention.” Another one had to do with a constituent who doesn’t want her name in lights but is happy to tell the Prime Minister’s Office that she didn’t do business with Rahim, he did it on behalf of a constituent for me—he’s helped a lot of constituents, because spouses do that. Spouses attend luncheons, they do a lot of things for us as MPs, that’s the way it is. In the third email, he actually directed the political staff person to his business account, so he did take the initiative to say, “Don’t do this.”

Q: If the PMO won’t talk to you, what will you do?
A: I will run as an Independent, Conservative Independent. My name will be on the ballot. It’s hard because the Elections Canada Act doesn’t allow Independents to collect money except during the campaign.

Q: Do you still believe in the Conservative party?
A: I don’t believe in some of the people in the Conservative party. I believe that the Prime Minister has been given some really, really bad advice. I don’t know who or why—clearly Mr. Giorno is a part of that. I think there are a few people who need to be removed from the situation and the Prime Minister needs to have a sit-down, heart-to-heart, one-on-one with me. I think that would be very good, not only for both of us but for the party. I have written to him and asked him personally [for a meeting], and he had agreed to sit down and talk to me. Then I sent a message that I’m not prepared to talk about my husband. I’m fair game—anything you want to ask—but I’m not going to discuss my husband’s case or any details. He cancelled the meeting.

Q: Where will it all end?
A: I really hope I’m not pushed further away from the caucus, or from the Prime Minister. I know that I’m not being 100 per cent complimentary, but I think you know I could say a heck of a lot more. If I were inclined to be that kind of person, I could be on the attack, I really could.

A fitting end

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 3:52 PM - 17 Comments

The last day of committee hearings into the dealings of Rahim Jaffer ends in bafflement, contradiction and scorn.

“We stood for democracy. We stood for freedom,” he told a Commons committee this morning, referring to the party he first joined and was elected to as an MP to Parliament in 1997. He was defeated in 2008. “The way my wife has been treated by your party and your government doesn’t represent anything that I have ever … worked for during the time I was an MP.”

Mr. Jaffer, clearly agitated, said that his wife, Helena Guergis, isn’t even allowed to run as a Conservative for the nomination in her Simcoe-Grey riding. “You want to talk about disappointment. That’s disappointment.”

Viva Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 8:30 AM - 15 Comments

So, apparently, it was also Rahim Jaffer, in Cuba, with the special passport and the Castro administration. And maybe even that isn’t the entirety of it.

Sources close to the controversy say Harper was told Jaffer used the passport on a trip to Cuba promoting green technology to the Castro regime. That raised immediate fears that Cuban officials could have been misled that Jaffer carried Canada’s seal of approval…

It’s not clear when the Prime Minister first learned about the passport issue or if it is part of unspecified information still being withheld about the case. More certain is that Harper was justifiably riled by the combination of the visit to a country loaded with Canada-U.S. diplomatic sensitivities, as well as the abuse of privilege. Even so, both the warnings and the Prime Minister’s reaction are being kept under unusually tight wraps. That suggests there’s more to an incident that on the surface seems little more serious than a breach of protocol.

What else could there possibly be?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 17, 2010 at 2:34 PM - 28 Comments

Shelly Glover teases the possibility of still more exciting developments to come in the story of Helena Guergis.

“I can assure you that there is far more to come out,” Shelly Glover, parliamentary secretary for official languages told CTV’s Question Period Sunday. “This isn’t finished.”

So far we’ve got allegations of cocaine, prostitutes, compromising photos, improper lobbying and use of a government Blackberry, not to mention an alleged con man, a dog photographer, a former member of the Toronto Argonauts, Robert De Niro’s son and a private investigator. Place your bets on what’s next.

Tonight in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 10:04 PM - 37 Comments

The member for Simcoe-Grey writes an open letter. The last paragraph might be the most interesting part.

I do look forward to the RCMP’s quick resolution of this matter and trust that their objectivity will finally put to rest the very unfair and unspecified cloud of rumour that has interfered with the very important work I am proud to have done and which I intend to keep doing; representing the people of Simcoe-Grey.

Meanwhile, in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 at 11:46 PM - 65 Comments

The private investigator says the Prime Minister’s Office did not accurately report to the ethics commissioner the information he passed on to them. He says he has no evidence as to the conduct of Ms. Guergis in his “possession or knowledge.” The concern, he says, was “optics.” He says Mr. Jaffer was the “back door” to federal funding and Liberal party president Alf Apps was Nazim Gillani’s “getaway driver.” Mr. Gillani responds. Mr. Apps’ law firm says Mr. Apps was briefly on retainer to Mr. Gillani, but the law firm declined to do work with Mr. Gillani and the retainer was returned. And CBC reports that the private investigator arrived in Ottawa driving a nice car.

Civil war

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 12:10 PM - 1 Comment

The government side returns fire.

Helena Guergis lied in her interview with CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge when she told him she did not know the allegations that led to her abrupt departure from cabinet and removal from caucus, according to a series of Conservative talking points circulated to a select group of supporters and MPs…

“Ms. Guergis wasn’t telling the truth about not knowing the allegations,” their memo says. “She was told the specific allegations by the party lawyer. Remember, she issued a statement after being dumped from cabinet saying she denied ‘all of the allegations.’ How could she deny allegations she knew nothing about?”

Five and a Half Things about the Guergis interview

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 7:18 AM - 20 Comments

1. It probably doesn’t help Helena Guergis’s case that whenever I hear her voice I think of the little Poltergeist lady. Now clear your minds. It knows what scares you. IT HAS FROM THE VERY BEGINNING!!

(This isn’t a joke. I am deeply unnerved by her Soft Voice. At points during last night’s interview, it was as though she was trying to tuck Peter Mansbridge into bed. “I guess I could be naïve, Peter. Yeah. <softer> Yeah. <softer> And then the baby unicorn and the fairy princess were bestest friends for all time. The end.”)

1.5 When Guergis made reference to watching her career implode on “the news hour at 11 o’clock,” I admired Peter Mansbridge’s restraint in not tearing off his microphone and hollering, “Why don’t you go cry to your best friend Lloyd Robertson then?”

2. Allowing Mansbridge to view the videotape of her alleged meltdown at the Charlottetown airport was smart – no boot throwing? WHAAA?? –because it allowed her to begin the interview with a demonstration of credibility. Two obvious questions: Why didn’t she do this sooner? And more important, can we all go Continue…

‘I’m hurt by the Prime Minister’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 10, 2010 at 10:17 PM - 3 Comments

As Peter Mansbridge as our witness, there are apparently no “diva-like moments” to be seen on the videotape of Helena Guergis passing through security at the Charlottetown airport. Ms. Guergis admits she had a less-than-pleasant conversation with the ticket agent and that she uttered the phrases “happy f—ing birthday” and “hellhole,” but insists the latter was reference only to the airport she found herself in—she’s apparently not too keen on airports—and not reference to the city of Charlottetown or the province of Prince Edward Island.

This was merely the beginning of the CBC’s exclusive time with Ms. Guergis, as aired on The National just now (starting at the 14:15 mark of that link). After Mr. Mansbridge and Ms. Guergis had visited the offices of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority to view the tape, they sat down in a dimly lit room to chat.

Wearing braces—I don’t recall those being there when last we saw her—and speaking in her small voice, she managed then to raise approximately as many questions as she answered. Continue…

The latest in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, May 5, 2010 at 1:39 PM - 27 Comments

Conservatives in Simcoe-Grey are concerned the party is attempting to bigfoot them. One potential replacement candidate says she’s not a candidate. Meanwhile, two cabinet ministers are politely refusing to appear before the government operations committee to discuss their knowledge of Mr. Jaffer’s behaviour.

The Commons: ‘Whoops!’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 3, 2010 at 6:09 PM - 28 Comments

The Scene. Dominic LeBlanc stood and did as so many great rhetoricians have done before him. In this moment, he stood and sought solace in a complicated law that governs the professional behaviour of elected officials.

“Mr. Speaker, the Conflict of Interest Act specifically states that a public office holder is in a conflict of interest when he or she exercises an official power, duty or function that provides an opportunity to further the private interests of their friends,” Mr. LeBlanc stated.

And so the echoes were sufficiently stirred.

Funny thing about this Gaffer Affair, the longer it remains with us, the more substantive it becomes. What once was a simple tale of well-endowed prostitutes and illicit narcotics is now something to do with the Conflict of Interest Act, a 13-page code of conduct that is understood by perhaps one person in the capital. This is progress. Continue…

The Commons: Let he who is without shame

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 6:10 PM - 82 Comments

The Scene. Liberal Dominic LeBlanc rose to report on the latest stash of documents to be released in regards to the Gaffer Affair and to wonder aloud, with seven departments now said to have been contacted by Rahim Jaffer, how many more ministers and parliamentary secretaries were still to disclose their communications with the husband of the deposed Helena Guergis.

And so John Baird stood to pronounce on the heroism of his government. ”Mr. Speaker, let me very clear,” Mr. Baird clarified, “we would not be having this debate about documents if it were not for the government which made all these documents public.”

Alas, the Liberals did not congratulate the minister so much as laugh derisively.

Mr. LeBlanc stood again and took direct aim at Mr. Baird with the allegation that the Transport Minister had put his parliamentary secretary between he and Mr. Jaffer and that such a move might constitute some violation of the vaunted Accountability Act. And here Mr. Baird did what he had the day before—he invoked the ghosts of Liberal scandals past. Continue…

Tonight in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 11:02 PM - 6 Comments

Mr. Gillani appears before the government operations committee and, while denying the involvement of hookers and cocaine in all of this, produces a document that seems to indicate he and Mr. Jaffer had entered into some kind of a contract. Meanwhile, the Canadian Press, Canwest, Star, CTV and CBC review e-mails Mr. Jaffer sent to individuals in various government departments—e-mails that came from Ms. Guergis’ parliamentary accounts, appear to contradict some of Mr. Jaffer’s testimony and detail how Mr. Jaffer’s entreaties were received. CBC has posted the whole raft of documents online.

The last 36 hours or so in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 12:23 PM - 9 Comments

Mr Jaffer once emailed Tony Clement’s office, bringing to four the number of cabinet ministers who’ve had to acknowledge contact. The Globe reports more details of what Mr. Jaffer was or was not promoting. The Liberals ask John Baird to turn over some documents they say he hasn’t as yet. The owner of Sassafraz comments on the relative celebrity of Mr. Jaffer and Ms. Guergis. And something something Robert DeNiro’s son.

Nazim Gillani is due to appear before the government operations committee at 3:30pm this afternoon. The proceedings can be streamed via the link here.

Monday in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 12:16 AM - 7 Comments

Canadian Press tells the tale of the BioDryer. Liberal MP Judy Sgro empathizes with Ms. Guergis. The Hill Times explores the complicated world of lobbying. Lobbyists are unimpressed with Mr. Jaffer. The Prime Minister’s Office has asked that all Conservative MPs come forward about any interactions with Mr. Jaffer. The Environment Minister reveals that the meeting between a member of his staff and Mr. Jaffer took place in Ms. Guergis’ Parliament Hill office. The Chronicle-Herald delves into Ms. Guergis and Mr. Jaffer’s trip to Belize, including insight into how Ms. Guergis’ skin was handling the sun. And sportswriters are now officially employing Mr. Jaffer’s name as a witty pop-cuture reference.

This weekend in Guergis (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 11:40 PM - 11 Comments

However much Ms. Guergis wants to come back and however much her riding association wants her there, an unnamed Conservative tells CTV that the party is looking for a new candidate in Simcoe-Grey.

This weekend in Guergis

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, April 24, 2010 at 4:58 PM - 10 Comments

The Star and Globe explain how Mr. Jaffer met Mr. Gillani. The Citizen looks into Mr. Gillani’s business career. Environment Minister Jim Prentice rose in the House yesterday afternoon and revealed that a member of his staff met with Mr. Jaffer. Meanwhile, the Enterprise-Bulletin, Canadian Press, and Canwest stake out the riding association meeting in Ms. Guergis’ riding and find support for the currently party-less MP.

Rahim & Patrick's Don't Pay a Cent Event

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 10:57 AM - 79 Comments

Let’s assume everyone’s telling the truth. Rahim Jaffer and his partner, Patrick Glémaud, never got paid for their activities. They were simply making inquiries about the terms and conditions on which certain types of government grants might be available to certain companies. The companies in question never hired them to act as lobbyists. And nobody got a dime of government money. How do we make sense of this?

Why would Jaffer and Glémaud work for free? Were they actively lobbying, or just researching? Did they break any laws? Or is this all just a misunderstanding?

Let me try one theory out. It’s just a theory, I stress. But it might explain what was going on here. Suppose what Jaffer and Glemaud were working was a kind of disguised contingency fee scheme. To wit: You charge no fees in the initial, exploratory, “pre-lobbying” phase, when you’re probing to see whether there’s any takers on the government side. You don’t register as a lobbyist, because you don’t have to: so long as no money changes hands, under the law there’s no requirement to register — one of the loopholes Democracy Watch’s Duff Conacher complains of. Then, once you’ve got some prospect of success, you register, start the meter, and collect your fees.

As Glémaud explained to the committee:

“If there was an interest then there would be a request to submit a detailed business plan with all the details of the project. And that would be viewed as the actual grant or contribution agreement application, and that’s when lobbying would start. We didn’t get to that stage.”

“Our understanding is if we were in a position to be at that stage, then I would have to decide for myself to register as a lobbyist.”

There’s no explicit contingency arrangement, you understand. But the clients are taking far less risk than if they were paying you to make cold calls. The fees don’t start until you’ve got at least a nibble.

The beauty of it is that if it all blows up, everyone can deny everything, truthfully. We weren’t charging any fees, says Rahim. We weren’t paying any, says his supposed client and fellow lobbyist, Joe Jordan. We were just making inquiries, says Glémaud. We never even hired them to do that, says Jordan.

I wonder how common this is. Contingency fees are illegal, as is unregistered (paid) lobbying. But this wasn’t a contingency fee agreement, and they didn’t have to register: whether or not it was lobbying, they weren’t getting paid. It’s possible, in other words, that everything that went on here was within the law. Which may be an argument for changing the law.

Hey look: What this week was all about, maybe

By Paul Wells - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 8:26 AM - 22 Comments

From the print edition, my new column, at double-ish the regular length, shakes the Guergis-Jaffer spectacle until some different perspectives pop out.

Tonight in all that and still more

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, April 23, 2010 at 12:35 AM - 25 Comments

Ms. Guergis seems interested in being the Conservative candidate for Simcoe-Grey whenever the next election occurs. The director of a solar power company, and a former Liberal MP, says he was “shocked” to learn his company was the subject of a proposal submitted to the government by Mr. Jaffer’s company. The private investigator tells the Canadian Press that the RCMP told him that it has commenced an investigation. The RCMP won’t say if it has actually done so. An observer wonders if there might be some holes in the Lobbying Act that need tending to. The ethics commissioner says she can’t investigate unless she has “some information that goes to whatever the hell the problem was.” And Mr. Jaffer’s business partner produces the documentation that was requested and, in the process, suggests that perhaps racism had something to do with the reception he and Mr. Jaffer received at the government operations committee the other day. Or at least that some people who watched the committee proceedings told him that perhaps racism had something to do with it.

The Commons: Shakespeare’s worst play

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 6:23 PM - 56 Comments

The Scene. Bob Rae stood and commenced to separate the knowns from the unknowns.

“We now know that there were several meetings between Mr. Jaffer and his partner with the parliamentary secretary. We know that Mr. Jaffer had dinner with the minister. We know there were proposals made worth at least $800 million that were not only discussed, but were considered directly by the department and that there were answers from the department for the proposals,” he said.

He held his hands in front of him and brought them close together, as if to put this all in a metaphorical box for presentation to the Prime Minister.

“I have a very simple question for the Prime Minister,” he said. “If all of this does not amount to lobbying and does not amount to special access for those who are friends of and close to the Conservative Party, what exactly would the Prime Minister—”

Alas, he had spent so much time reviewing just one-tenth of this story that his time had run out.

No matter, the Prime Minister was in no mood for gifts anyway. He wanted only to be clear. Absolutely clear. Continue…