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Tuesday, March 01, 2005
CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE?
Jim Travers was in Montréal and serves up his take on Gomery. Greg Weston goes after Warren Kinsella and other attack dogs. (The Hill-Times has a long piece this week on my flame-out with Warren.)
Yesterday, Privy Council Clerk Alex Himelfarb testified he did not brief Jean Chrétien on the contents of Sheila Fraser’s draft report, as the routine was to brief only on the final version. Judge Gomery, quite naturally, expressed astonishment.
He’s right to have: This was no routine audit report of a departmental minister--and not just because of the press speculation referred to by Gomery.
Fraser was auditing the PM’s own program, sponsorships, for which Chrétien was accountable, according to Himelfarb's predecessor, Jocelyne Bourgon.
Having served a prime minister and a premier, it seems to me that Himelfarb failed in his duty as a deputy minister; viz., to keep his minister, Jean Chrétien, informed of a matter within his area of responsibility. That is, he broke the "no-surprise" rule by which deputy ministers live and die.
The only question is why. Simple failure? Or a conspiracy of silence?
As usual, The Ottawa Citizen’s Kathryn May best understands the issue:
“The key question was whether Mr. Himelfarb briefed Mr. Chretien on the findings of Ms. Fraser's draft report. As clerk, Mr. Himelfarb is Canada's most senior public servant, secretary to cabinet and acts as deputy minister to the prime minister...."
The National Post’s John Ivison, on the other hand, completely misses the point:
“It would be ungracious to suggest that so eminent a figure as Justice John Gomery would indulge in a small-town cheap tactic like using his commission of inquiry to settle old scores, but that's certainly what it looked like yesterday…."
Posted by Norman Spector on March 1, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
I can't believe the free pass that Kinsella gets in our media - how can any media organization let him speak directly to the public without letting people know his involvement?
I wrote about it today here - http://www.blogscanada.com/egroup/
Other good stuff on the Himelfarb testimony over at Wells' blog.
Posted by: Don | 2005-03-01 10:19:11 AM
Don, excellent post over at blogscanada
Posted by: Norman Spector | 2005-03-01 10:27:08 AM
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