The National Assembly on Thursday unanimously asked the Chief Electoral Officer to make public all the documents and testimonies heard behind closed doors in the investigation into the financing of the No camp during the 1995 referendum.
In 2006, the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec, Marcel Blanchet, appointed retired judge Bernard Grenier to investigate the illegalities committed by the No camp and revealed in The secrets of Option Canada that Robin Philpot and I had published. Robin had just written The stolen referendum.
We had obtained all the accounting documents from the federalist propaganda office. The Auditor General of Canada believed they were destroyed shortly after the referendum.
A fishtail ending
Justice Grenier held 52 hearing days from September 2006 to April 2007. He heard 90 witnesses, including Daniel Johnson, Jean Charest, Liza Frulla and Lucienne Robillard. Some 4,500 documents were filed as evidence, including a forensic accountant’s report and appendices of nearly 2,000 pages. Some of their findings were severed: they were beyond the commission’s constitutional jurisdiction.
The investigating commissioner nevertheless concluded that the federal heritage department of Sheila Copps had illegally spent some $539,000 during the month of the 1995 referendum period in Quebec.
This is only the tip of the “iceberg of illegalities” committed by the federal government and its accomplices to steal the referendum. The publication of the documents will undoubtedly allow us to open up avenues for even bigger scandals, in particular on the involvement of business circles linked to the Liberal Party in the operation.
Indeed, Judge Grenier could not investigate everything he discovered. Counsel for the witnesses and for the Government of Canada have raised constitutional law questions about his mandate. Judge Grenier was forced to limit his investigations to the activities of Option Canada and the Council for Canadian Unity, provided that they appeared in public documents. This implies that there were therefore other “illegal activities” that he could not investigate.
Among the leaders of the operation, the commissioner-investigator Grenier identifies René Lemaire, general manager of Option Canada who, according to him, made several regulated expenses without obtaining authorization from the No camp. He also writes that Jocelyn Beaudoin, director general of the Council for Canadian Unity (CUC), participated in decisions by Option Canada that resulted in unauthorized expenditures.
And the PLQ in all this?
As for the role played by leaders of the Liberal Party of Quebec, Judge Grenier limits himself to saying that persons in authority have “lack of vigilance” in relation to the illegal activities of Option Canada and the CUC. Why this honeyed euphemism? He adds that the evidence presented before him was insufficient for him to draw an unfavorable conclusion against them. We will be able to judge by reading the secret documents.
In any case, the investigating commissioner takes good care of the Liberals. He explains that he asked for an extension of his mandate because “it seemed difficult to him to question witnesses directly or indirectly involved in the electoral campaign”.
Anyway, this band of political thieves knew they were protected by the system. The law prevented the DGE from taking criminal proceedings against offenders because the facts dated back more than five years and there was a prescription.
What to do?
I take from all this that we will no doubt find disturbing things in the documents and testimonies that will be made public. But they will also open up new avenues to follow to get to the bottom of things. A commission of the National Assembly should devote itself to it.