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Monday, April 12, 2004
Reggie has some 'splainin' to do
Reg Alcock, Liberal apologist, is working hard to downplay the sponsorship scandal. On CTV’s Question Period yesterday, he said the accounting firm Ernst and Young had only found $13 million missing in this sordid affair, not the $100 million flagged by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser. (Can we assume a whole lotta paperwork has miraculously surfaced?) But how did Mr. Alcock know this? He seems to know an awful lot about what Ernst and Young is finding, more than the Public Accounts committee does. From the Globe and Mail story:
Conservative MP Vic Toews, who sits on the parliamentary committee investigating the matter, wanted to know how Mr. Alcock has received information from Ernst and Young that he has not. He said the committee hired the firm to help in its investigation.Is the accounting firm leaking to the Liberals? If so, what does that say about the impartiality of their work? How to account for Alcock's jumping the gun and blabbing the findings of, as far as anyone else knows, an incomplete audit?
Cover-ups are always problematic because it's difficult to coordinate a re-arrangement of the past while still stumbling and fumbling with the present. You run to plug one hole only to discover your footfalls have created several more. So Alcock rushes to the media with this convenient new finding--which may or may not be conclusive--only to undercut the credibility of the information by his haste.
I guess we'll have to wait for Alcock to answer how he, a partisan Liberal manipulator not on the Public Accounts Committee, knew the result of Ernst and Young's audit before the Public Accounts Committee did. And Ernst and Young can explain why they are giving information to him before they give it to the committee.
I suppose Reggie felt forced to get the lower figure into the media spin cycle as quickly as possible because this part of the Liberal campaign strategy--minimize all the scandals (and the list is long)--has to flower prior to the election growing season. So they are out to shoot the messenger, the Auditor-General, for doing her duty and they have to shoot fast because that season appears to rapidly arriving (like my mix 'n match metaphors?...it's early). The second part of the strategy--demonize the opposition--requires that they avoid talking about their own record over the last 11 painful, "ethically challenged" years. Put simply, they cannot run a campaign on their record, and they know it.
Posted by Kevin Steel on April 12, 2004 | Permalink
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» "Seulement 13 millions"...? from Le blog de Polyscopique
Reg Alcock, president of the Treasury Board under the Martin government, claimed he obtained from Ernst & Young, the accounting firm hired by the Commons Public Accounts Committee to do an audit of the books in the sponsorship scandal, informations... [Read More]
Tracked on 2004-04-12 5:28:36 PM
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