|
|||||||
Spring Cleaning Required To Remove |
|||||||
Edmonton - Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - by: Ron Thornton Marriage, Be It Same Sex, Same Family, Same Harem | |||||||
fetid |
Spring cleaning comes in many forms, but the one that is forever burned in my memory from my youth was having to clean out the barn. Taking out the pitch fork and clawing up the muck of straw and animal-produced fertilizer and hauling the steaming mess outside was never one of my favorite chores. While working for my uncle Bob one summer, one task I was given was to clean out the pig barn. I smelled so bad after that adventure that he sent me home; my newly acquired aroma proving offensive to both man and beast. Then there was the chicken coup. Still, I got off easy compared to the fetid mess that the Canadian government finds itself neck deep in today. | ||||||
|
|||||||
money for |
We hear from Auditor-General Sheila Fraser that, for years, Public Works apparently paid advertising firms for work they did not do, with her report citing missing documents, incomplete or shoddy reports, and inflated contracts. | ||||||
|
|||||||
few |
We heard that this apparently was not a big deal, at least under the previous administration. After all, then Prime Minister Jean Chretien defended the programme by saying | ||||||
"Perhaps there were a few million dollars that might have been stolen in the process, but how many millions of millions of dollars have we saved because we have re-established the stability of Canada by keeping it a united country?" |
|||||||
Rather than seeing if something might have been rotten in Denmark, he instead packaged off the Minister in charge to Copenhagen as our new ambassador when the Vatican said it would not have him. | |||||||
Quebec |
We hear that the "few million dollars" turned out to be about $100-million, representing about 40% of the cash earmarked to make Quebec warm and fuzzy about Confederation. We hear that Via Rail had a hand in this, as did Canada Post. We even hear that RCMP kept some of this sponsorship loot in an illegal bank account, spending some of it to buy new horses. | ||||||
|
|||||||
B.C. |
We hear about Bruce Torrie, a Victoria lawyer and a former legal counsel to the Liberals who has been briefing high mucky mucks in that party about the possible infiltration of the Liberal Party of Canada by organized crime. It would seem someone got nervous and did a professional burglary job of his home. What does Torrie think? | ||||||
"I think organized crime was trying to find out what I know about their activities within the Liberal Party of Canada." |
|||||||
|
|
||||||
loan to |
We are reminded about Shawingate and former Business Development Bank of Canada president François Beaudoin, who recently won his wrongful dismissal suit. He had said that he was forced to resign his position because he dared to question a $615,000 loan to a friend of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. | ||||||
|
|||||||
clever |
We heard that Prime Minister Paul Martin, who served as a Quebec Member of Parliament for the past fifteen years and as Canada's Minister of Finance for eight of them, knew nothing about the advertising scandal. A day later, we heard him claim that 14 people pulled off the caper. If so, it would make the Sopranos appear like a band of pikers in comparison to the stealth-like mastery supposedly attributed to this crew. | ||||||
|
|||||||
government |
There are outfits who skirt the law, who do favours for friends at the expense of the more deserving, who dish out retribution to those who fail to play ball, and who generally do things that most of us were raised to believe were wrong. In some places, such folks have been generically referred to as the Mob. In Canada, it would seem we call it the Government. | ||||||
|
|||||||
|
|||||||
|