(The following article by Graham Fraser and Susan Delacourt was posted on the Toronto Star website on March 14.)
OTTAWA — Jean Pelletier says he is ready to testify any time on his activities as ex-prime minister Jean Chrétien’s chief of staff.
“I’ve offered to testify for two years,” he told the Star yesterday. “I don’t know why I’ve not been contacted.”
The former chair of VIA Rail is one of three crown corporation executives fired in Prime Minister Paul Martin’s sweeping-up operation in the wake of the federal sponsorship scandal, which has seen some of Chrétien’s closest allies lose their jobs.
Today, Martin’s government intends to start rolling out its plan to take politics out of appointments to crown corporations and the Immigration and Refugee Board. Changes are also due to be announced in the government’s advertising programs, PMO sources said.
On Wednesday, Martin is due to make a major speech in Quebec city that is expected to lay out the details of the government cleanup under way. A chief aim, Martin aides say, is to persuade Canadians that the old brand of Liberal politics, of friends and favours, of patronage and perks, is now extinct.
“It’s important we show that there isn’t simply a peppering of new cronies replacing old cronies,” a senior PMO adviser said.
On Saturday, the Star reported one former employee at the federal sponsorship program, who chose to remain anonymous, was willing to testify Pelletier made regular calls to the head of the program through the late 1990s, when abuse of government money was well under way.
It was the first time the Prime Minister’s Office has been directly linked to the sponsorship scandal, which is already rife with tales of Liberal politics bleeding into a public service that is supposed to operate well away from partisanship.
Controversy erupted a month ago when Auditor-General Sheila Fraser reported on inappropriate handling of government funds — money funnelled through crown corporations to advertising firms, double billing, faulty records, little indication of work done, and favoured advertising firms who received a percentage of contracts even when they did not work on them — in the $250-million sponsorship program.
There is now an inquiry into the affair under way by the public accounts committee of the House of Commons, and a public inquiry being prepared by Quebec Superior Court Justice John Gomery.
“I reiterated that (offer to testify) on Feb. 17, and I didn’t hear anything about it,” Pelletier said yesterday in a telephone interview from his home in Quebec city. “I am ready to testify under oath on what I did at any time.”
Pelletier did not say to whom he made his offer to testify two years ago, but it’s assumed he and his old boss, Chrétien, will eventually be called to one or both of the inquiries.
Chrétien loyalists have accused Prime Minister Paul Martin of `payback’
Chrétien has so far said nothing about the scandal. Later this week, all eyes will be on former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano, who is testifying before the Commons committee, where he’ll be pressed for answers on how much the Prime Minister’s Office was a part of his department’s handling of the sponsorship program.
The other fired crown corporation chiefs are VIA Rail president Marc LeFrançois, fired March 5, and Business Development Bank of Canada chairman Michel Vennat, who was terminated from his position last Friday.
Only LeFrançois was fired directly as a result of Fraser’s findings. The other two were terminated because of actions or words that put them at odds with the new culture that Martin says he is trying to instill in government.
Pelletier sealed his fate with an insulting remark about former Olympic champion Myriam Bédard after she complained about VIA’s dealings with the advertising firm Groupaction.
Pelletier told La Presse that Bédard was “a poor girl who deserves pity” because she was a single mother without a partner.
Pelletier, 69, was Chrétien’s chief of staff from 1991 until 1993 when he was leader of the Opposition and, after Chrétien became prime minister, from 1993 until 2001, when Chrétien named Pelletier chair of VIA Rail.
A friend of Chrétien since they were at classical college in Trois-Rivières, Pelletier, a former mayor of Quebec city, combined the discretion of a diplomat, the courtliness of an aristocrat, a quiet authority and an understated sense of menace.
After a storm of criticism over his remarks about Bédard, he apologized, but was still fired, with Martin arguing that to do anything else would send the wrong signal to future whistle-blowers. Chrétien’s old allies and loyalists have been alleging Martin is engaged in “payback” and in keeping the old leadership rivalry alive so he can pitch himself as a new Liberal government.
Senior officials who had worked with Pelletier said privately they found his remarks about Bédard out of character.
However, the strong public reaction included comments from Quebec city residents who remembered his telling a neighbourhood group lobbying for funding for a child-care centre that the only women who would use it were divorcées and single mothers, since ordinary women, like his wife, stayed home to raise children.
Vennat was fired Friday as a result of a harshly worded Quebec court decision last month that found the Business Development Bank had engaged in a vendetta against a former executive who got on the wrong side of Chrétien and his inner circle.
Martin’s Quebec lieutenant said yesterday the government cleanup operation would almost certainly push the federal election past early spring.
“I mean will you believe that Paul Martin would, at this time, when people are still mad, we are in the process of cleaning up this, would call an election right away just to make sure we get defeated?” Jean Lapierre said on CTV’s Question Period. “I mean we’re not out of our minds.”
Lapierre, a former Bloc MP and radio host, acknowledged approval ratings had plunged for the Liberals in his province since the scandal. But he said he is convinced once Quebecers recognize Martin’s seriousness about cleaning up government, Liberal fortunes will rebound.