OTTAWA (CP) - One of Jean Chretien's top lieutenants has stoked the smouldering embers of the Liberals' last leadership war with a new book that depicts Paul Martin as a "boil" who should have been lanced before he could wreak havoc on the once-mighty party and the country.
The book by Eddie Goldenberg hits store shelves in the midst of Liberal efforts to choose a new leader - an exercise many Grits had hoped would put an end to the debilitating Martin-Chretien civil war.
Goldenberg is supporting longtime friend Bob Rae in the current leadership contest, although he also has praise in his book for another contender, Stephane Dion, Chretien's onetime unity minister.
Entitled "The Way It Works: Inside Ottawa," Goldenberg's tome offers an inside look at the tensions between former prime minister Chretien and Martin, his finance minister and eventual successor.
It paints an unflattering picture of Martin as an ambitious, conniving and inept politician whose "colossal over-reaction" to the sponsorship scandal - at least in Goldenberg's view - destroyed the Liberal brand name and reignited separatist forces in Quebec.
Goldenberg, who counselled Chretien for more than 30 years, 10 of them as senior policy adviser in the Prime Minister's Office, also delves into Chretien's rocky relationship with U.S. President George W. Bush.
But it's his assessment of Martin that is likely to create the most waves.
The book reveals that Chretien wanted to shuffle Martin out of the finance portfolio after an attempted leadership coup in early 2000. Goldenberg says he and Jean Pelletier, then Chretien's chief of staff, advised against a shuffle, fearing that Martin would quit cabinet altogether, splitting the party and hurting the government's credibility with financial markets.
"Over the course of the next two years, it became clear that Pelletier and I were wrong and that Chretien's political instinct to lance the boil immediately was the right one," Goldenberg writes.
Martin eventually left cabinet anyway in 2002, and a subsequent revolt by his caucus supporters forced Chretien to announce his retirement about a year ahead of schedule.
Goldenberg writes that Chretien never trusted Martin's instincts on Quebec and never forgave him for the nasty tone of their rivalry over the Meech Lake constitutional accord during the 1990 leadership contest. During one all-candidates debate in Montreal, Martin's supporters called Chretien a sell-out and traitor for opposing the accord.
Those words were "particularly destructive and short-sighted and could only give a boost to the separatist cause should Chretien win the leadership," Goldenberg says.
He also maintains that Martin himself was personally opposed to Meech, although he claimed to be a staunch supporter.
At a policy conference in 1989, Goldenberg says Martin told him "in no uncertain terms that . . . he too was against the accord."
However, Martin was convinced the deal would never obtain the requisite provincial consent, and so "he could publicly support Meech Lake - knowing it would fail - because, in his view, it was good politics in Quebec for federal Liberals to be seen to support it."
Worse, in Goldenberg's view, was Martin's handling of the sponsorship scandal.
Goldenberg says Martin should simply have handed the file over the RCMP and allowed the Mounties to prosecute wrongdoers after Auditor General Sheila Fraser revealed that the sponsorship program, aimed at bolstering the federal presence in Quebec after the 1995 independence referendum, was riddled with corruption.
Instead, once he was installed as prime minister, Martin decided "it would be in his political interests to separate himself from his predecessor by highlighting what in fact was an isolated case of unacceptable greed, abuse and wrongdoing" by a handful of bureaucrats, advertising executives and Liberal organizers in Quebec.
Martin created the Gomery inquiry to investigate the affair, notes Goldenberg, and the ensuing "sensationalism" of the inquiry's report helped to damage "public respect for the institution of government itself and the cause of federalism in Quebec."
At other points in his book, published by McClelland and Stewart Ltd., Goldenberg writes that:
-U.S. President Bush, during a private meeting shortly after he was elected, told Chretien he'd heard that Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez was "a pain in the ass." Chavez last week excoriated Bush during a speech to the United Nations, comparing him to the devil.
-Shortly after the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush told Chretien: "I have to manage the bloodlust of the American people."
-Bush once jokingly told Chretien he hated officials who leaked information to the media. "If I catch anyone who leaks in my government, I would like to string them up by the thumbs. . . The same way we do with prisoners in Guantanamo."
-Relations between Chretien and Bush remained amicable, at first, after Chretien's refusal to join the Iraq war. But Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, was furious when an expansive Chretien, on the brink of retirement, reminisced with reporters about his "friend" Bill Clinton, who was closer to Chretien on many social and economic issues. An angry Rice called Chretien's foreign policy adviser and bluntly told him the relationship between Bush and Chretien was "irreparably broken."
http://start.shaw.ca/start/enCA/News/NationalNewsArticle.htm?src=n092443A.xml
Now I think this guy should be investigated for corruption.
Now, I didn't like Martin as a PM or Finance minister, however, he was right to hold the Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship scandal and cost him the job that he had wanted all his life. I bet this windbag is corrupt, the RCMP should look into him.
The book by Eddie Goldenberg hits store shelves in the midst of Liberal efforts to choose a new leader - an exercise many Grits had hoped would put an end to the debilitating Martin-Chretien civil war.
Goldenberg is supporting longtime friend Bob Rae in the current leadership contest, although he also has praise in his book for another contender, Stephane Dion, Chretien's onetime unity minister.
Entitled "The Way It Works: Inside Ottawa," Goldenberg's tome offers an inside look at the tensions between former prime minister Chretien and Martin, his finance minister and eventual successor.
It paints an unflattering picture of Martin as an ambitious, conniving and inept politician whose "colossal over-reaction" to the sponsorship scandal - at least in Goldenberg's view - destroyed the Liberal brand name and reignited separatist forces in Quebec.
Goldenberg, who counselled Chretien for more than 30 years, 10 of them as senior policy adviser in the Prime Minister's Office, also delves into Chretien's rocky relationship with U.S. President George W. Bush.
But it's his assessment of Martin that is likely to create the most waves.
The book reveals that Chretien wanted to shuffle Martin out of the finance portfolio after an attempted leadership coup in early 2000. Goldenberg says he and Jean Pelletier, then Chretien's chief of staff, advised against a shuffle, fearing that Martin would quit cabinet altogether, splitting the party and hurting the government's credibility with financial markets.
"Over the course of the next two years, it became clear that Pelletier and I were wrong and that Chretien's political instinct to lance the boil immediately was the right one," Goldenberg writes.
Martin eventually left cabinet anyway in 2002, and a subsequent revolt by his caucus supporters forced Chretien to announce his retirement about a year ahead of schedule.
Goldenberg writes that Chretien never trusted Martin's instincts on Quebec and never forgave him for the nasty tone of their rivalry over the Meech Lake constitutional accord during the 1990 leadership contest. During one all-candidates debate in Montreal, Martin's supporters called Chretien a sell-out and traitor for opposing the accord.
Those words were "particularly destructive and short-sighted and could only give a boost to the separatist cause should Chretien win the leadership," Goldenberg says.
He also maintains that Martin himself was personally opposed to Meech, although he claimed to be a staunch supporter.
At a policy conference in 1989, Goldenberg says Martin told him "in no uncertain terms that . . . he too was against the accord."
However, Martin was convinced the deal would never obtain the requisite provincial consent, and so "he could publicly support Meech Lake - knowing it would fail - because, in his view, it was good politics in Quebec for federal Liberals to be seen to support it."
Worse, in Goldenberg's view, was Martin's handling of the sponsorship scandal.
Goldenberg says Martin should simply have handed the file over the RCMP and allowed the Mounties to prosecute wrongdoers after Auditor General Sheila Fraser revealed that the sponsorship program, aimed at bolstering the federal presence in Quebec after the 1995 independence referendum, was riddled with corruption.
Instead, once he was installed as prime minister, Martin decided "it would be in his political interests to separate himself from his predecessor by highlighting what in fact was an isolated case of unacceptable greed, abuse and wrongdoing" by a handful of bureaucrats, advertising executives and Liberal organizers in Quebec.
Martin created the Gomery inquiry to investigate the affair, notes Goldenberg, and the ensuing "sensationalism" of the inquiry's report helped to damage "public respect for the institution of government itself and the cause of federalism in Quebec."
At other points in his book, published by McClelland and Stewart Ltd., Goldenberg writes that:
-U.S. President Bush, during a private meeting shortly after he was elected, told Chretien he'd heard that Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez was "a pain in the ass." Chavez last week excoriated Bush during a speech to the United Nations, comparing him to the devil.
-Shortly after the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, Bush told Chretien: "I have to manage the bloodlust of the American people."
-Bush once jokingly told Chretien he hated officials who leaked information to the media. "If I catch anyone who leaks in my government, I would like to string them up by the thumbs. . . The same way we do with prisoners in Guantanamo."
-Relations between Chretien and Bush remained amicable, at first, after Chretien's refusal to join the Iraq war. But Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, was furious when an expansive Chretien, on the brink of retirement, reminisced with reporters about his "friend" Bill Clinton, who was closer to Chretien on many social and economic issues. An angry Rice called Chretien's foreign policy adviser and bluntly told him the relationship between Bush and Chretien was "irreparably broken."
http://start.shaw.ca/start/enCA/News/NationalNewsArticle.htm?src=n092443A.xml
Now I think this guy should be investigated for corruption.
Now, I didn't like Martin as a PM or Finance minister, however, he was right to hold the Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship scandal and cost him the job that he had wanted all his life. I bet this windbag is corrupt, the RCMP should look into him.