Ethics Newsline®

Special to Newsline from Canadian correspondent Errol P. Mendes

MONTREAL
A former Quebec advertising company executive, Jean Brault, has testified that he gave kickbacks and other illicit payments to officials and associates of the governing federal Liberal Party and to both the provincial Quebec Liberals and separatist Parti Quebecois in hopes of securing generous advertising contracts worth millions of dollars.

Mr. Brault, the former head of Groupaction Marketing of Montreal, has severely undermined the standing of the federal Liberal Party in Quebec by revelations that he passed funds to the federal Liberal Party headed by former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, placed Liberal Party organizers on his payroll, paid fake invoices, and gave envelopes stuffed with cash to political operatives since 1993.

He has testified that he also gave smaller sums of money to the provincial parties in Quebec, in part to obtain advertising contracts from the Quebec government.

The testimony of Mr. Brault had been under a publication ban imposed by Mr. Justice John Gomery, the judge presiding over the inquiry, in the interests of a fair criminal fraud trial that Mr. Brault and other individuals involved in the growing scandal will be facing in the coming months.

After the contents of the testimony by Mr. Brault had been published on a conservative U.S. weblog and after Justice Gomery ruled that the testimony for the most part would not prejudice the impending criminal trial of Mr. Brault, the explosive testimony has become public.

The furious reaction of opposition parties in the Canadian Parliament has raised the possibility of a no-confidence vote in the minority Liberal government of Prime Minister Paul Martin, possibly leading to an early election in Canada and also increasing the chance of another separatist resurgence in the province of Quebec.