Angry in the Great White North

From the Globe and Mail:

Industry Canada has frozen federal financing for research projects by an Ontario biotechnology firm pending the outcome of an investigation into the company's agreement to pay $350,000 in lobbying fees to former Liberal cabinet minister David Dingwall, government sources say.

The move is part of a much broader probe of about 22 high-tech companies that may have hired unregistered lobbyists, or allegedly paid improper contingency fees to lobbyists to help secure federal financing under Ottawa's controversial Technology Partnerships Canada program.

Bioniche, based in Belleville, Ont., recently admitted to Industry Canada that it agreed in May of 2000 to pay Mr. Dingwall a “success fee” of $350,000, the government sources said.

Dingwall is denying everything, while being unavailable because he is traveling.

Please, no jokes about how far you can travel on $350,000.

Now in the lobbyist registration database, Dingwall's work for Bioniche is clearly identified as not including contingency fees.

Yet the company says it paid him $350,000.

One wonders if the same goes for Theratechnologies. It is another biotech firm that also hired David Dingwall for a similar period of time, that also tapped into the Technology Partnerships Canada fund with Dingwall's help, and that stated it would not be paying a contingency fee.

One wonders if the same goes for TM Bioscience. It is another biotech firm that also hired David Dingwall for a similar period of time, that also tapped into the Technology Partnerships Canada fund with Dingwall's help, and that stated it would not be paying a contingency fee.

One wonders if the same rules applied to Marc Lalonde. Marc Lalonde, of Stikeman Elliott LLP, and former cabinet minister from the Trudeau years (and named in 2005 by Paul Martin to be co-president of the Liberal Party's electoral campaign in Quebec), is a current lobbyist for TM Bioscience, having started about 8 months after David Dingwall stopped working as a lobbyist for this firm. Under Lalonde's entry, the firm is listed as having tapped into TPC, now with Lalonde's help, and stated that it would not be paying a contingency fee.

But back to Dingwall. You need to understand that his bios usually read like this: "After his public sector tenure, Mr. Dingwall became the President of Wallding International Inc."

Well, he was also the only employee of Wallding International Inc. Well, he had an executive assistant, Gloria McArter, and a researcher/associate, Nancy Bleses. These people are listed in the archived version of the website for Wallding International. But that's it. The official email contact for the company was his own personal email for the company (dingwall@wallding.com).

So when it comes to any funny business at TPC that he was involved in, Dingwall is going to have to explain it all on his own -- there are no other people, no junior lobbyists, no rogue operatives, to deflect the questions towards. It might help to track down McArter and Bleses, and ask them what they recall of the deals with Bioniche, Theratechnologies, and TM Bioscience.

Actually, that turns out to be pretty easy. When Dingwall was appointed president of the Mint in March of 2003, based entirely on merit of course, he brought McArter and Bleses with him, since clearly they merited jobs at the Mint as well. McArter remained Dingwalls executive assistant. Bleses got promoted to Director of Research. I wonder if the Mint ever had a Director of Research before Bleses came on board.

What we can be sure of is that there are important people who want this TPC thing to go away.