Gomery mulled misconduct against Chretien

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Gomery mulled misconduct letter against Chretien, transcripts show
Jack AubryCanWest News Service; Ottawa Citizen
Monday, July 09, 2007

OTTAWA -- Justice John Gomery's letter of warning to Jean Chretien in May, 2005 said an allegation of misconduct against the former prime minister was being considered in Gomery's final report which would tie Chretien to untendered 1995 pre-referendum contracts including one with Lafleur Communications for an outdoor advertising campaign in Quebec, a transcript of a private meeting reveals.

The transcript shows Chretien's lawyer arguing vehemently during a June 1, 2005, closed-door meeting in Montreal with Gomery that the letter did not contain enough details to allow them to prepare their final submission to Gomery later that month.

The request for further details was rejected by Gomery. But not before the judge became testy at the end of the meeting when Chretien's lawyer, Peter Doody, and suggested that the judge was meeting in private with the commission's counsel.

The verbatim record of the 90-minute meeting has been obtained by CanWest News after it was recently filed as part of Chretien's on-going court action to have Gomery's report quashed by the Federal Court of Canada because the commissioner had been biased throughout the hearings against him.

Doody told Gomery at the meeting that the warning letter's five allegations weighing against Chretien were short on details and a written request to Bernard Roy, the commission's lead lawyer, for more information had already been rejected.

Gomery was required to issue warning letters, according to the federal Inquiries Act, as soon as he felt he might make a negative finding against someone to allow that person time to prepare a proper defence.

In the end, Gomery's report of findings did not allege misconduct on Chretien's part even though it did lay much of the blame for the mismanagement of the sponsorship program on Chretien and his former chief of staff, Jean Pelletier.

Guy Pratte, Pelletier's lawyer, had a similarly fruitless meeting with Gomery after Pelletier had received a warning letter from the commissioner.

Gomery's report said Pelletier, as the official who effectively oversaw the sponsorship program, failed to exercise caution about how the money was being spent and although he had testified that he only offered advice, "suggestions by a person in the position of Mr. Pelletier were the equivalent of an order."

Pelletier is also before the federal court with Chretien, and former public works minister Alfonso Gagliano, trying to clear his name by having the findings invalidated.

According to the transcript, Doody told the judge that the letter of warning alleged that Chretien had "authorized the financing, selection and management of sponsorship and/or advertising activities in breach of the Financial Administration Act, Treasury Board policies and the guidelines on communication services, public opinion polls and advertising contracts in the context of a process lacking in transparency and failing to optimize resources."

He was also tied in a similar way in the warning letter to two, $50,000 untendered contracts to two ad agencies; untendered contracts to Lafleur Communications for a pre-referendum outdoors ad campaign in 1995 and a $250,000 sponsorship for the Molson Indy Race in Vancouver in September, 1995; the failure to implement management mechanisms in respect to sponsorship and ad programs selected by the prime minister's office; and improper interventions "directly or indirectly" in sponsorship and ad activities of the federal government.

Disgraced ad executive Jean Lafleur, the president of Lafleur Communications, was sentenced recently to 42 months in jail and ordered to pay back $1.6 million in the stiffest penalty yet because of his key role in the scandal. He had pleaded guilty to 28 counts of fraud.

Doody told Gomery that the page-and-a-half notice letter did not inform Chretien how he was alleged to have authorized any of the mentioned activities since no evidence had been heard at the hearings which backed up these allegations.

Citing Supreme Court of Canada Justice Peter Cory's decision on a related matter for the Krever Commission, Doody said Gomery had failed in his letter of notice to give "adequate detail" to Chretien.

Roy argued during the meeting that Cory's decision also said that the notice was not required to give the same level of detail as would be the case in a civil, criminal or disciplinary proceeding.
"So we're not before a Court of Law where the duty to be fair and the rules of procedural fairness are more stringent and applied, in my opinion, much more strictly as they should, if I may add," said Roy.
In one interesting exchange, Gomery did tell the lawyers that there is no suggestion that Chretien had told "untruths to the public" and even if he had, it would not qualify as misconduct in the final report. "You know, I don't have to - there is no law that says a politician has to always be truthful," he commented.

Towards the end of the meeting, Gomery took great exception to a suggestion from Doody that he was privately consulting commission lawyers for the writing of his report. Doody had complained that not only was Gomery's notice letter "very vaguely and generally worded", but the commission's lawyers were making representations in private to Gomery which Chretien's lawyers were not being allowed to hear.

Gomery cut the lawyer off, saying he was making "a very grave accusation" and told Doody it was "presumptuous for you to assume that I would be part of such an impropriety."

The meeting ended with Gomery and the lawyers agreeing to argue over the matter in a scheduled public hearing later in the day.

Ottawa Citizen

© CanWest News Service 2007

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