John Galt

Canaduh is a fascist, high-tax police-state. Freedom-loving Canadians
(all five of them) should start doing the Iraqi resistance
thing.....oh, yeah, the sheep turned in their guns, so forget it.

Who polices the police?
Greg Weston, Special to the Free Press 2004-02-11 03:29:01


OTTAWA -- One way to understand the advertising and sponsorship
scandal exposed in yesterday's scathing report by Auditor General
Sheila Fraser is to follow the money straight to the horse's mouth --
in this case, the Horsemen's horse. For more than a year, the RCMP
have been conducting a supposedly intense investigation into the
federal sponsorship scam which, as Fraser reported yesterday, fleeced
Canadian taxpayers of more than $250 million from 1997 to

Oops. Turns out the federal police force was itself up to its red
tunics in the sponsorship fiasco it is supposed to be investigating,
taking taxpayers for a $3-million musical ride of financial
squandering, disappearing documents and even a secret bank account in
Quebec.

This truly bizarre tale begins in 1997, when the Public Works
Department agreed to contribute just over $3 million in sponsorship
funds toward the Mounties' 125th anniversary celebrations.

As we now know, the sponsorship program was essentially a $250-million
slush fund the Liberal government used to throw money at various
cultural and sporting events in Quebec.

In return, the federal government's Canada logo was to be displayed at
these events, supposedly to convince Quebecers the rest of the country
really cares.

Exactly how an anniversary of the federal cops would inspire Quebecers
to embrace Confederation is something maybe an RCMP horse would
understand.

Certainly not the auditor general, who said of the entire sponsorship
program: "There is little evidence of value received for the money
spent."

But it isn't just the waste of money that makes the sponsorship fiasco
one of the worst scandals in decades. It's how millions of dollars
were wasted, or simply disappeared.

Liberal-friendly

In the case of the RCMP, Public Works funnelled $1.7 million in
sponsorship funding through three "Liberal-friendly" ad agencies in
Quebec.

Now follow this manoeuvre carefully: The companies were handed the
money by Public Works, extracted a total of $244,000 in fees, and gave
the balance to the RCMP.

Make no mistake: No advertising or meaningful work was done here.

Money was simply passed from a federal department (Public Works) to a
federal agency (the RCMP) via three Quebec ad agencies, for a small
fee of only a quarter-million bucks.

Fraser found the same game -- a kind of legalized money-laundering --
was played repeatedly at other federal agencies, including Via Rail,
Canada Post, the Business Development Bank, and the crown corporation
that runs the Old Port of Montreal.

"This wasn't just a matter of missing documents or bending the rules,"
Fraser reported. "These methods were apparently designed to pay
commissions to communications agencies while hiding the source of the
funds."

In total -- hold your breath for this one -- Fraser found the lucky
few Quebec ad agencies involved in the sponsorship mess pocketed a
staggering $100 million in fees in just four years. But the fiscal
equivalent of witness protection was just the beginning of the fun
times at RCMP headquarters.

The auditor general reports one of the ad agencies involved in the
RCMP debacle, Lafleur Communications, subcontracted almost $200,000 of
work to a related firm.

In some cases, Lafleur was charging 15 per cent subcontracting fees
for subcontracting to its own subsidiary.

Separate account

The auditor general also found $65,000 of the Public Works money
originally funnelled by Lafleur (for a fee) to the RCMP was then paid
back to Lafleur for services which, as it happened, were passed along
to the Lafleur subsidiary for another subcontracting fee.

In the entire $3-million RCMP deal, the auditor general found only one
written contract, for $800,000.

In return for that huge pot of money, Fraser noted, the RCMP's
125th-anniversary celebrations were required to display the Canada
logo, which, as it happens, the Mounties are required by regulation to
display anyway.

Fortunately for taxpayers, not all the sponsorship money disappeared.
The Mounties spent $106,000 of it buying six horses and two new
trailers.

Vive le Quebec!

Finally, the auditor general made this interesting notation in her
report -- remember, this is the federal police: "A separate
non-government bank account was used for all deposits and payments to
the RCMP's Quebec division (in) contravention of the Financial
Administration Act.

"In addition, all transactions for Quebec Division were recorded in a
manual accounting system rather than the RCMP's corporate accounting
system.

"We were unable to verify the transactions from the Quebec bank
account because some of the documents had been destroyed."

Quick, call in the Mounties.





Copyright © The London Free Press 2001,2002,2003

Neil

Canadian politicians are corrupt, I don't think there is anyone in this
country that has not realized that a long time ago. However since thre
is no real, intelligent threat to the liberal party, we are stuck with
them. The NDP, and the pathetic Christian Hertiage party (oops,
reform...ooops, allaince, and now the fake conservatives) are no answer.
Heck they can't even keep their name for more then a couple of years...

The world would be a better place without politicians at all, but till
we have a viable option to replace the liberals...we gotta take some
lumps with our asprin.

iaink

Plenty of guns in canada, we just dont use them on each other.

This has nothing to do with immigration though, so take it elsewhere.

While you are there maybe you should find a chip to balance the other shoulder.

Iain

s1lv3rsh4dow

[QUOTE]Originally posted by John Galt
Canaduh is a fascist, high-tax police-state. Freedom-loving Canadians
(all five of them) should start doing the Iraqi resistance
thing.....oh, yeah, the sheep turned in their guns, so forget it.


No offence to you, but if you are not from here, am sure you had a choice in the first place, not to come here, i mean there are about another 192 countries that you could have emigrated too.

If you are from here, don't let anything stop you from going the other way. You might want to try Hong kong and Austria, if you think you are paying high taxes already.

Police state....How about moving to Zimbabwe? Its such a lovely liberal country.

Captain!

"John Galt" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > Canaduh is a fascist, high-tax police-state. Freedom-loving Canadians
    > (all five of them) should start doing the Iraqi resistance
    > thing.....oh, yeah, the sheep turned in their guns, so forget it.
why are you so stupid?

Peter Phelps

Left-wing anarcho-marxist ideology has bankrupt canada of money, influence
and integrity.


John Galt <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > Canaduh is a fascist, high-tax police-state. Freedom-loving Canadians
    > (all five of them) should start doing the Iraqi resistance
    > thing.....oh, yeah, the sheep turned in their guns, so forget it.

iaink

And I am guessing you are posting from the US

Iain

Dave B.

John Galt wrote:

    > Canaduh is a fascist, high-tax police-state. Freedom-loving Canadians
    > (all five of them) should start doing the Iraqi resistance
    > thing.....oh, yeah, the sheep turned in their guns, so forget it.
    >
Not all of us did..

<snipped to end>

Dave B.

Peter Phelps wrote:

    > Left-wing anarcho-marxist ideology has bankrupt canada of money, influence
    > and integrity.
    >
You got that right!!