Angry in the Great White North

First reported on Captain's Quarters, and in Canada on this site and then on Bourque, the rumour of RCMP interest in what happened in Option Canada has been confirmed, with the Globe and Mail delivering yet more bad news for the Liberal Party:

The RCMP is looking into a controversial $4.8-million grant that was awarded to a pro-Canada group at the time of the 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty, officials have told The Globe and Mail.

The money went out more than 10 years ago in three disbursements to a little-known group called Option Canada, which has since been disbanded.

On Dec. 23, 2005, the RCMP quizzed two officials at the department of Canadian Heritage about the 1995 expenditure. It remains unclear to how the entire grant was used, but a source said that there are questions surrounding the distribution of an amount, believed to be $300,000.

The Mounties aren't confirming and denying that the investigation is happening. However, Canadian Heritage is talking:

However, an official at Canadian Heritage said the department called in the police after hearing that Option Canada was the focus of an upcoming book by Quebec investigative journalist Normand Lester.

“Various information led us to believe that there were possible irregularities in the management of federal funds and it's in that optic that we asked the RCMP to look more closely at the matter,” Heritage spokesman Jean-Guy Beaupre said.

Normand Lester is best known for The Black Book of English Canada:

Normand Lester, a journalist with Radio-Canada (the French-language equivalent of the CBC) stirred up a hornet’s nest when he revealed that the federal government had secretly funded television’s Heritage Minutes which, in his view, provided a sanitized version of our shared history. He was subsequently, controversially, let go. The Black Book of Canada is his impassioned defence of his native province and an implicit repudiation of the anglophone media’s unfair, yet all-too-common attacks on Quebec and Quebecers.

While English Canada may think itself a “just society,” in this highly controversial book – which sold 50,000 copies in French – Normand Lester chronicles English-Canadian intolerance: the expulsion of the Acadians; Lord Durham’s anti-French policies; the hanging of Louis Riel; R. B. Bennett’s funding of anti-Semitic publications; and the internment of Japanese Canadians in the Second World War. Lester argues that the myth of two equal, amicable co-founders of the nation, a myth actively promoted by the federal government over recent decades, ignores the fact that there will always be two incompatible national histories.

His new book, The Secrets of Option Canada, is due to be released next week. I'm willing to bet it will be even more controversial than The Black Book of Canada.

Option Canada was created by the Canadian Unity Council to promote federalism in Quebec just before the October 1995 referendum. The council has charitable status, and so is restricted in engaging in certain political activities. Option Canada was not under those restrictions.

Money to run Option Canada came from the federal government:

Option Canada was created on Sept. 7, 1995, and started receiving federal funds within a few weeks. It obtained a total of $4.8-million in three payments dated Sept. 24, Oct. 2 and Dec. 20.

An internal review at Canadian Heritage criticized the disbursements, saying the process “lacked the rigour and scrutiny one would expect for such large sums of money being given to an unproven client.”

So of the $4.8 million that disappeared in 1995, the Mounties have some reason to believe that they know where $300,000 went, and wherever that is, it is interest to them.

Good that the Mounties know, because the head of Option Canada hasn't got a clue:

Option Canada has been disbanded and its former president, Claude Dauphin, is on holiday and could not be reached for comment.

“He was not involved in the day-to-day management, so he does not know how the funds were distributed and to whom, other than what he read in the media,” said spokesman Jonathan Goldbloom.

Mr. Dauphin is a city councillor in Montreal and a member of the city's executive committee. Before going into municipal politics, Mr. Dauphin worked in the late 1990s as an aide to Prime Minister Paul Martin, who was minister of finance at the time.

Now for the part that will make Liberals blanch. Some of the money went into the Sponsorship Program hole:

In his report into the sponsorship scandal, Mr. Justice John Gomery said that an advertising agency called BCP Group Inc., which worked on the federalist side, received some of the Option Canada funds.

“From September 15 to October 5, 1995, shortly before the referendum, BCP invoiced Option Canada for a total of $2.6-million (including taxes) for media purchases and advertising related services,” Judge Gomery's report said.

Needless to say, the government is nervous, if no other reason that the RCMP investigation is going to bring Adscam back into the limelight in a new way, exactly what the Liberals don't need right now.

Senior government officials have asked for a briefing note from Canadian Heritage in anticipation of the RCMP interest in Option Canada becoming public, a source said.

Well, it's public now.