Conservative's Man Chuck Guite?

[THELIBERAL]

I guess when the Liberals won the election back in 1993 they didn't clean house just quite good enough. Some Conservative trash left behind has come to haunt them today!!!!

Seems Chuck Guite is a carry over from the Mulroney years!

Well who knew?

http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/v39/v39_3lh.htm

Finally, the Gomery Commission seemed to operate in a vacuum, missing the political context it needed to be understood. The reprehensible Chuck Guite, who has now been charged with fraud in the sponsorship scandal, has been portrayed as a friend of the Liberal Party. In fact, he rose to prominence under """Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives."""

Journalist Stevie Cameron documented Guite’s venal activities eleven years ago in her explosive, bestselling book, On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years. In a chapter called “It Pays to Advertise,” she described the ludicrous abuses that occurred under the umbrella of Canada’s 125th-anniversary celebrations in 1992, along with cushy jobs and fat contracts in the millions for ill-defined work done (or not done) by scores of Conservative pals. It should be noted that nobody attempted to sue Cameron when On theTake was published.

Given the media histrionics around the admitted abuses of the federal sponsorship program, it’s interesting to remember how Mulroney was treated when it was discovered that, just after leaving his post as prime minister, he had accepted $300,000 in cash in a hotel room from German profiteer Karlheinz Schreiber. The payment was made in 1993; National Post reporter Phil Mathias uncovered that story and wrote it in 2001; his editor at the Post, Ken Whyte (now at the helm of Maclean’s magazine) refused to print it, and none of this information surfaced publicly until 2003. To make matters worse, Mulroney had lied under oath about his “innocent” relationship with Schreiber.

When the story was finally told in the pages of the Globe & Mail, Mr. Mulroney’s $300,000 was barely mentioned. Instead, the Globe made its former columnist, Stevie Cameron, the story, suggesting she was a police informer, with the inevitable connotation that she had personally victimized Mulroney in her reporting, especially in the misbegotten Airbus investigation.

[THELIBERAL]

RE::The reprehensible Chuck Guite, who has now been charged with fraud in the sponsorship scandal, has been portrayed as a friend of the Liberal Party. In fact, he rose to prominence under """Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives."""

Gee seems the Conservative types on here don't want to talk about this.

[takeanumber]

The Conservatives don't like to admit it because it has an important implication.

The implication is that it's no so much that entire political parties are bad, but rather, there are elements in all political parties that attract the likes of Guite and all those who exploit the public purse for their own gain.

Such an element existed under Mulroney, and it was tolerated.

Such an element existed under Chretien, and it was tolerated.

What the Cons really don't want to talk about are the actions taken by Paul Martin. I believe that Martin's fate hinges on actually making fundamental changes to governance in this country.

What is the Conservative plan?

Well, the Cons plan is nothing. They argue that corruption is a 'character' issue. Reading the Conservative line is a lot like reading Chinese policy documents during the 1950's when ultraleftists argued that socialization should take place before economic development.

The Conservative plan: trust us because we're good people, is ultraleftist in this context, because it aims to change the culture of government.

We've seen in the past that such socialization drives don't work.

That's because the problem is systsemic. One only has to look at the graft and corruption of Alberta's Conservatives to see that so-called 'good people' are still capable of intense corruption.

Since the problem is systemic, the system...not the culture, needs to be adjusted. As such, the action taken by Chretien (financing reform) and Martin (whistle blowing, contracts, ethics reform) has addressed many of these systemic problems. Any additional suggestions by Gomery should also be implemented as well as furthur efforts to turn parties into public utilities.

Incidentally, the Conservatives are not even compliant with the new financing laws, and the hammer just might come down this time. It has to do with the nature of the Con apparatus...local control versus national control. Yeah, the party has big problems when it comes to the issuance of receipts.

In effect, the Cons won't even respect recent attempts, and have made no attempts in Alberta to make any sort of systemic corruption reform. (Want to find out who's donating to the con party of Alberta? It's not online...government won't do it. You gotta go down to a office in Calgary or Edmonton and ask to see the book. Why isn't it online? Well, because then we could actually see who's contributing, of course!)

I'm giving the liberals a chance here to make real systemic reform.

You won't get any sort of transparency with the Cons.

[BHS]

RE::The reprehensible Chuck Guite, who has now been charged with fraud in the sponsorship scandal, has been portrayed as a friend of the Liberal Party. In fact, he rose to prominence under """Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives."""

Gee seems the Conservative types on here don't want to talk about this.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So, now you're replying to your own posts? Okay, I'm game. I'll keep your little party going, if only briefly.

So, Chuck Guite was a Quebec scumbag who came to prominence under Brian Mulroney. And the Liberals, apparently short of Quebec scumbags (who knew?), looked at him and said to themselves, "He's our kind of man!" and kept him on the payroll.

My question is, why are you trumpeting this to the rest of the forum? You'd think this would be the kind of thing a red-blooded Liberal would try to keep under wraps.

[BHS]

Whoops. takeanumber slipped in before I had a chance to hit the post button.

So, you're giving the Liberals another chance to reform themselves, huh? Because the "Cons" can't be trusted, eh? Well, why not. Blind faith is as good as any other excuse I've read for why people support the Liberals.

[takeanumber]

The Liberals have already made systemic changes.

The Cons have never made any systemic changes, and in fact have not changed their party's finance mechanism. If anything, the Cons are regressive with respect to systemic change.

Moreover, if you want a good example of the Conservative method of keeping politics clean, check out Alberta's record.

[Canuck E Stan]

The Liberals have already made systemic changes.

Except the big one. Mr. Dithers.But hey, that's going to happen pretty soon,right?

[BHS]

The Liberals have already made systemic changes.

The Cons have never made any systemic changes, and in fact have not changed their party's finance mechanism.  If anything, the Cons are regressive with respect to systemic change.

Moreover, if you want a good example of the Conservative method of keeping politics clean, check out Alberta's record.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The Reform Party becomes the Alliance, and merges with the Progressive Conservatives to become the Conservative Party, all since the last time a nominally conservative party has held power. Those are a lot of changes, some of which are undoubtedly "systematic".

Which leads me to my next question: just what does "systematic changes" mean, in your lexicon?

Second question: what are these "systematic changes" that the Liberals have supposedly made?