In a report released by the Fraser Institute this month, it was revealed the Adscam was much larger than Sheila Fraser realized.
Relationships were grown between the Liberal Party of Canada and various advertising agencies in Quebec and Ontario ($7.4 million of legal business between the Liberal party and the agencies, for exchange of $3.9 million in donations). These transactions are completely legal as these exchanges are between private organisations. However, these relationships created favouritism when the Government of Canada had to contract advertising services as $1.2 billion of contracts were paid by the government to these companies with cozy Liberal relations. To emphasize this cozy relationship, the companies involved with Adscam gave 98% of their political donations to the Liberals and only 2% to other parties. Clearly, these advertising companies knew that the Liberals were their best bet for future corrupt deals.
There were other new revelations uncovered by the Fraser Institute report published this month.
Particularly striking were donations made to the Liberal Party of Canada by the RCMP and by the Privy Council Office.
For the “privilege” of protecting the Prime Minister and other members of his campaign team during the 2000 campaign, the RCMP paid the Liberal Party $112,000 for seats accompanying the PM.
The Fraser Institute reports:
“It is an apparent conflict of interest for government agencies, especially those engaged in law enforcement, to pay a governing political party for services rendered during an election. This financial entanglement can impair perceptions of independence and due process that are essential to the proper functioning of those agencies.” — Fraser Institute report, July 2005
One would expect that the taxpayer would pay for the services of the RCMP to protect the Prime Minister. However, it is counter-intuitive that the RCMP (ie. the taxpayer) would pay a private organization (ie. the Liberal party) for work done by the federal law enforcement agency.
The Privy Council Office paid $44,000 to the Liberal Party for similar “services”.