Canadians turn to US, other blogs for banned news

[RonOnGuitar]

Blogs - as part of the "New Media" - are becoming a major source of breaking and investigative news, but Canadian bloggers are legally constrained by press & speech limitations -



One blog starts out with:



"You may be charged with contempt of court in Canada if you link to 'Captain's Quarters'."



Belmont Club



Another begins with:



"Can Americans take a hint?"



ColbyCosh.com



And this blog is receiving the majority of it's hits from news-hungry Canadians:



Small Dead Animals

[bitwhys]

If those bloggers actually cared about justice they would have respected the publication ban instead of playing along with the leak and making guilty parties that much more difficult to convict.



Very unprofessional.

[bitwhys]

but now that the cat's out of the bag I have to laugh...



PQ got kickbacks, too

Quote:

---

A Montreal advertising firm that received more than $40 million in AdScam sponsorship contracts paid huge kickbacks to both the federal Liberal party and the Quebec separatists, senior executives of the company have told Sun Media. "I remember seeing the cheques," one former Groupaction executive said of payments to the federal Liberal party in Quebec.



The man spoke on condition that he not be identified until he testifies at the Gomery inquiry sometime over the coming weeks.



The exec said the president of Groupaction, Jean Brault, made no secret around the company about where the kickback cash was going and for what.



"He spoke to me about it ... having to pay money back to the Liberal Party" in return for contracts.



ANTI-SEPARATISM CASH



The $250 million in sponsorships that the previous Liberal government pumped into Quebec was supposed to help fight the separatists after the near-miss referendum in 1995.



But another former Groupaction executive, Alain Renaud, said that while the firm was getting millions of dollars in federal sponsorship money, it was secretly cutting cheques to the separatist Parti Quebecois.



Renaud said that in one transaction, a total of about $90,000 was given to the PQ as part of Groupaction's getting a $4.5-million advertising contract for the Quebec liquor board, called the SAQ.



Groupaction apparently won the contract in a competition when a bagman for the Parti Quebecois had a meeting with the firm's top executives.



One of those executives told Sun Media: "The bagman came by and said: 'Well, you won the bid, and all that's needed now is a signature, and the documents are on the minister's desk to be signed, and it's going to cost you fifty grand.' "



Renaud recalled about $45,000 a year in donations were to be paid to the PQ for two years.



The money was funnelled through individual Groupaction employees to circumvent Quebec law, which prohibits corporate political contributions.



Renaud said Groupaction president Brault was personally involved in the tollgating deal. "I was there when he (Brault) was negotiating with the people of the PQ," he said.



Brault's testimony at the Gomery inquiry over the past week is under a publication ban and cannot be reported.

---

but you gotta know the players and what they've been screaming about in Parliament to know how intensely funny this is.

[RonOnGuitar]

I follow the players a bit, bitwhys. (Hmmm..that sentence was almost a pun!)



I think the telling point is which group is terrified of elections being called - and in this case, it's the Grits. It's not who broke which law (politicians look after one another) that matters as much as who will suffer the people's wrath and be tossed outta office.



This from today's (Sat 9 April) Toronto Sun:



Ex-PM's staff named

GOMERY IS TOLD CHRETIEN AIDES TOOK CASH FOR 1993 ELECTION



By STEPHANIE RUBEC, SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER

"STAFFERS OF former PM Jean Chretien received secret payments to fund his victorious 1993 Shawinigan election campaign from a Montreal ad firm lobbying for federal contracts, the Gomery inquiry heard yesterday. Former Groupaction Marketing employee Alain Renaud said two years after the election, Chretien's brother Gabriel personally set up meetings for him with a senior PMO staffer and top Liberal officials in a bid to open the floodgates of federal contracts.



Renaud, who was hired by Groupaction founder Jean Brault in 1994 to bring in federal contracts, added to his former boss's explosive testimony about secret donations to key Liberals.



"(Brault) mentioned to me that he had invested a lot in the last Liberal election campaign and that there would surely be contracts ... from the federal government," Renaud said.



Renaud said Brault showed him a $30,000 cheque payable to Chretien's then chief of staff, Michel Fournier, during the 1993 federal election campaign.



"Were these cheques for the campaign of the Liberal Party or Mr. Chretien's campaign?" commission lawyer Bernard Roy asked.



"Mr. Chretien's campaign," Renaud replied.



Fournier resigned as Chretien's chief of staff shortly before the 1993 election to work as the Liberals' chief organizer in Quebec.



Renaud said his boss also showed him five to seven cheques addressed to former Liberal Party spokesman Daniel-Yves Durand during the 1993 campaign.



Brault testified he gave Fournier about $6,000 over three months during the election campaign to pay for Durand's work. But Renaud said Brault's secret donations added up to about $50,000.



Renaud said Brault also set up a breakfast meeting for him with Chretien's older brother, Gabriel, who introduced him to senior Quebec Liberals and got him a meeting with the PM's then-chief of operations Jean Carle.



Renaud told the inquiry lobbying Chretien confidant Jacques Corriveau and former sponsorship program head Chuck Guite paid off with sponsorship contracts.



Renaud said he would complain to Michel Beliveau, the Liberal Party's former Quebec president, if the flow of contracts stopped. He said Beliveau would call Chretien's then chief of staff Jean Pelletier about the complaint."

===============================



But I think what's more interesting here is the bigger view (from the US) of the draconian control on press and speech just to our north. News bans, thoguht crimes, speech limitations - the whole works. We're used to having our internal mudfights in the open and the "dirty laundry" being hung out for all to see. A cross border trip would make for a "culture shock" to those who aren't hip to these differences.

[bitwhys]

nah



they lifted the ban. the judge explained the testimony he's giving now is not really related to



no one is questioning the law itself, just the application. the spirit of the law is to protect witnesses who are doing the public a service when their doing so puts them at risk.



the names of rape victims is an example, tho I don't think that's always protected. Its hardly an issue. really. no one's running around complaining about it based on some idealistic rhetoric. this time it was just stupid since the internets makes the whole idea rather silly. there IS talk about updating it to make it more applicable to the times we live in, but the impression I get is most folks are willing to mind their own business.



afa the testimony goes, well we'll just have to see. we're talking about the testimony of a guy who facing charges for corruption. its just a hearing. how much of what he's saying is actually true is tough to say at this point. there's no cross examination. right now its just a process to assemble the facts and determine plans of action from there.



for all we know the guys a psychopath who THINKS he's been playing cloak and dagger at every turn.



odd thing is, most folks just shrug their shoulders right now, except Quebec, they're mad as hell, but that's Quebec. they're always on the Anglo's case about something. not that the Liberals are going to get off the hook but most of us assume they're all a bunch of crooks anyway



the testimony just proves there were some people in the Liberal party stupid enough to get caught. the testimony is a whopper, but there's no meat on the bones right now.



Harper says he's going to watch the polls and decide from there. He better watch out. He's going to leave Kyoto, same-sex marriage and a particular concern of mine, the Kazime case dangling. It could very easily come back to haunt him as the facts roll out later, or even regardless of the facts when the public sees government disabled at a critical time.



the military in particular would be pissed big time if the budget was voted down.



anyways. no one's too pissed about the law as it stands. in this case it was just silly trying to use it since the case is too big to keep under a collective hat.

[RonOnGuitar]

I remember watching the Oui/Non seperatist vote on cableTV - probably about 1996(?) , interesting stuff.



At first I thought it was a France-based channel since it wasn't part of the normal channel line-up. Then I heard references like "le hotdog" and "le weekend". France works hard at wiping out such Anglo, or even worse, Anglo-American terms, lol. So I figured it was a Quebec channel.



The furthest away TV signal we ever got just using an antenna TV was a TV station in Calgary. Lasted for a few hours, was pretty cool. Great fun going up&down the dial catching far-away signals of AM radio and TV (due to "skip" - atmospherics) stations.

[bitwhys]

"le hotdog"!



LOL!



my brother lived in Quebec for quite a while. he also lived in Belgium. he thought "le hotdog" was hilarious.



god bless 'em, but they're a pain in the @#%$ sometimes. they don't really hate Anglos but they really do hate watching their culture slip away. can't blame them. I've been there. Its a beautiful thing.



i wish them all the luck in the fricken world when they separate and try keep their language rules without us to back them up. not to be nasty. (but they know that - most of us in the West let 'em get away with it because they're the only ones big enough to go toe-to-toe with Toronto! Alberta keeps trying but everyone knows they'd be Big Oil's bitch if they ever tried anything).