By arthur Weinreb
Friday, February 11, 2005
The media is strangely quiet when it comes to any criticism of Justice John Gomery, the commissioner who is conducting the inquiry into the adscam scandal. The whole purpose of the commission, supposedly, is to investigate if and how much taxpayer money was stolen and siphoned off or kicked back to Liberal Party friendly Quebec advertising agencies under the guise of keeping this poor fragile country united.
Gomery received virtually no bad press for holding media interviews during the course of the inquiry. During those media scrums, Gomery described Chuck Guité, a bureaucrat at the heart of the sponsorship scandal, as a "charming scamp". Justice Gomery also described former PM Jean Chrétien as being "small town cheap" for ordering golf balls with his name on them to be given away.
When Chrétien’s lawyers moved before the commission to have Gomery step down on the grounds that there was a reasonable apprehension of bias, the media lined up behind commissioner, whining about how much replacing Gomery would cost and quoting experts on the difference between a trial and an inquiry. Never was the Quebec justice criticized for setting in motion the events that led to calls for his removal.
Nearing the end of his testimony before the Gomery Commission and taking his cue from his counsel, Chrétien reached into his briefcase and pulled out golf balls that were emblazoned with names, amongst others, of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
The following day, Greg Weston’s column in the Toronto Sun was typical of the reaction of the media. Weston blamed Chrétien for "bamboozling the media"; for making golf balls the key issue and not the millions of dollars in payoffs to friends of the Liberal Party in Quebec. But Chrétien didn’t pull out those golf balls in a vacuum; they became relevant when John Gomery, who never met a camera he didn’t like, didn’t have the discipline to stop himself from making a silly crack about the former prime minister, a man who may have played a central role in any wrongdoing that took place.
While it is difficult for any semi-rational person to agree with anything that Chrétien loyalist and Liberal Party hack Warren Kinsella says, his constant references to the learned Quebec justice as "Gomery Pyle" isn’t far off the mark. Yet the media consistently try and make Chrétien the bad guy for Gomery’s actions that led to the focus of the commission being diverted.
The media doesn’t seem interested in how Gomery’s actions and statements are taking away from the real purpose of the costly inquiry. Gomery’s weak attempts at stand up comedy may result in the commission not getting to the bottom of what actually happened to all that sponsorship money. and that would probably suit Paul Martin just fine.