The inquiry commissions such as the now renowned Gommery Commission serve as rehabilitation agents for the state. In the context of capital’s crisis of accumulation, the government needs to refresh its image, because it will soon need to impose on us more suffering in order to once again attempt to get the ruling class out of the always deeper crisis of its mode of production. This means more misery for our class.

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For a good number of months now, on a daily basis, the Canadian population has been enlightened by the increasingly seedy revelations of the now infamous sponsorship scandal. Though originally an initiative of the Chrétien government to “halt the separatist threat in Québec�?, it’s now quite clear that this programme was scarred by at least two major “criminal�? shortcomings. In the first place, we have the deliberate decision, taken at the highest level of the central state, to divert very important amounts of money from the massive federalist publicity programs (already of a dubious legal character) to secretly reinforce the effectiveness and capacity of the Liberal Party apparatus in Québec. Then, of course there is the increasingly obvious fact, that all along the chain of distribution of the diverted money, businessmen, politicians and VIP’s lined their own pockets.

Created to “save Canada�?, the sponsorship programme, the ins and outs of which are now common knowledge, is now the source of one of the greatest political crisis in the country’s history. Far from having “defeated separatism�?, it has contributed to its growth. The Parti Québécois Opposition in Québec City and the Bloc in Ottawa are campaigning on this “Canadian�? faux pas. In the House of Commons, the Opposition is crying bloody murder. Conservatives and New Democrats express their disgust for the Liberals immorality and speak of a crisis of legitimacy. They claim that the Liberals have lost the “moral authority to govern�?. The message behind all this buzz of indignant complaints is that there is on the one hand, a category of greedy and shady politicians, and on the other, a species of honest and upstanding parliamentarians, or if you have any doubt about it, at least a lesser evil. In short, there is quite a lot of noise about all of this in Québec City and Ottawa. Does the Liberal’s corruption represent a new qualitative development justifying such a hue and cry?

Nothing new under the sun

In fact, Canadian history is in its entirety branded by affairs of political corruption. What follows is only a sampling of notable and representative examples chosen from a few generations of “honourable�? parliamentarians. To underline the hypocrisy of the comments about the Liberal’s particular corruption made by the leader of the Conservative Party, Stephen Harper, we have only used examples of when the Conservatives were in power. But we just as well could have referred to as many incidents from the history of Liberal governments or even from the NDP (do you remember the bingo scandal in British Columbia?).

In 1872, at the very beginning of the Confederation, the two “founding fathers�?, John A. Macdonald and George Étienne Cartier were involved in a political storm proportionately even greater than what’s happening today. They had granted the contract to build the new Pacific Railway and the majority of shares to a group of capitalists led by Sir Hugh Allan, in return for which they received about 360 000 dollars (in that time’s value!) in contributions to the Conservative Party coffers. The scandal broke out later, with the publication by the press of the relevant correspondence and telegrams. In one of the letters, our “founder�?, John A. Macdonald was whining to a company lawyer that he absolutely needed “another ten thousand dollars�?. How much money was really raised for the Tory coffers and how much finally ended up in the “honourable�? dignitaries’ pockets remains a mystery. The government was eventually forced to resign in 1873.

Later on, during the First World War, (an imperialist massacre of an unprecedented scale), Sam Hughes, the Minister of the Militia and Defence who had “distinguished�? himself during the Boer War between 1899 and 1902, was also involved in a scandal that would not only mark his epoch, but even more the life and death of the Canadian soldiers under his orders. Thus, Hughes’ “Buy Canadian�? policy, or more exactly his policy of lining his own pockets, led him to make dubious choices that would have critical repercussions on the front lines. His calculated cronyism resulted in the Canadian soldiers having to cope with defective ammunition, rotten rations and appalling equipment. But it was his imposition of the infamous Ross rifle that finally led him to his demise. Heavy, cumbersome and easily jammed, it was loathed by the soldiers in the trenches, as was Hughes by the way. Prime Minister Borden had to get rid of him in 1916.

More recently, Sinclair Stevens, a key minister of the Mulroney government had to resign in 1987 because he had violated the parliamentary “ethics�? code at least 14 times in the pursuit of promoting his personal business agenda. A judge would eventually exonerate Stevens in December 2004, but only on the basis of a legalistic interpretation of what in fact constitutes theft. It is important to note that the seedy dealings of the affair were done with Magna-International, owned and managed by billionaire Frank Stronach whose selfsame daughter Belinda, until recently a simple Conservative Member of Parliament for Newmarket-Aurora, is by “virtue�? of her timely defection now the Liberal minister of Human Resources. Just last week, sitting on the bench of the outraged Opposition, she was still crying “Shame!�? with her other “honourable�? colleagues. The clique of bougeois are not easily embarrassed…

A Federal flaw?

As we have shown earlier, the Parti Québécois also want to gain from this crisis and put forward the perspectives of Québécois nationalism against the present form of Canadian federalism. The degree of bourgeois hypocrisy of this political formation is just as astounding as that of its federal rivals. Indeed, two important witnesses of the Gommery Commission, Alain Renaud and Jean Brault have already confessed to having paid very important amounts of money to the PQ to obtain a lucrative publicity contract for the SAQ, while the PQ was still in power. In all, it’s estimated that about 150 000 dollars were deviously conveyed at the expressed request of Ginette Boivin, the party’s fulltime financial officer with the direct approval of Michel Hébert, another PQ administrator.

But there is more. Does the PQ really think we have forgotten the Oxygène 9 affair; what the newspapers referred to as the “Lobbyist Scandal�? during its last mandate? That scandal brought on the resignation of PQ leader Bernard Landry’s most influential minister. Gilles Baril, who many used to call “Québec City’s Gagliano�?, had to quit as did the PQ’s main organizer, Raymond Bréard. The ineffable Sylvain Simard, already a minister at the time, almost had to walk the plank himself.

Finally, we cannot believe that the PQ’s many financial debacles, such as the famous unfinished Gaspésia building site, the ruinous investments of the Caisse de dépôt et de placement (notably the colossal sums spent on the building of its luxurious head office) and the Laval Métro (where access tunnels had failed to be planned for!), were only caused by a lack of judgement. And what about the 35 million dollar gift to Tembec? Clearly, some people pocketed a lot of money in these affairs!

Capitalism itself is corrupt

All the fuss raised by the Conservative profiteers, the Bloc nationalistic demagogues and the NDP bureaucrats aims to make us believe that the sponsorship scandal and the Liberal’s moral turpitude constitute a hijacking of parliamentarianism, a debasement of bourgeois democracy. However, as we have seen, not only has corruption been an important factor through the whole history of Québec and Canadian governments, but our analysis is that our country is no exception. It would be too easy here to list a multitude of examples of corruption in the countries of the periphery of capitalism. It would be also quite easy to bring up all kinds of cases from China or Russia. But we think it is more useful to remind our readers how governmental corruption reigns within the historical heart of capitalism itself, inside the great centres of capital.

We are reminded here of the ELF slush fund scandal that broke out in Europe in the year 2000, the mechanisms of which resembled the Canadian sponsorship scam in many ways. It is this affair that threw light on the extent of the obscure and uncontrolled operations of the Kohl government in Germany and the Mitterand gang in France. There is also the infamous affair of the sale of French patrol boats to Taiwan or again the Lockheed scandal. Let’s not forget the open bias of Italian Prime Minister Sylvio Berlusconi for his own businesses. And then, what about US Vice-President Dick Cheney’s well known connivance, in helping his beloved Halliburton obtain lucrative contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq? In closing, need we go into detail about the Bush clan’s legendary greed?

Our message is clear. It is capitalism itself, as a mode of production and with the tools it has at its disposal and by which it ensures its domination that is corrupt. Bourgeois governments, just as much as capitalist cartels are veritable dens of thieves. We should not be surprised by the misappropriation of funds in this scandal. We must rather question what the reasons are behind the hue and cry of the present turmoil.

The importance of this crisis and what it’s all about

This new scandal and the political crisis it has created is the product of many factors. It feeds on the general disgust of a huge part of the population and the working class in particular, for political practices that appear more-and-more unacceptable in an economic context where the state increasingly uses arguments of austerity and rigor against us. It also feeds on the constitutional crisis that divides the majority of the Québec bourgeoisie from the majority of the Canadian ruling class, over the issue of a new division of responsibilities between the different levels of government. It is for this reason but under other pretexts (nation, language and distinct society) that they will soon have us marching again, either under the folds of the blue and white of the fleurdelisé or the red and white of the maple leaf. As long as we stand divided, the reign of exploitation, corruption and oppression shall remain secure. One must also not forget the role played by the important fracture existing inside the Liberal Party itself, the main historical party of capital’s domination in Canada.

As in all these type of affairs and particularly in times of crisis, inquiry commissions such as the now renowned Gommery Commission serve as rehabilitation agents for the state. In the context of capital’s crisis of accumulation, the government needs to refresh its image, because it will soon need to impose on us more suffering in order to once again attempt to get the ruling class out of the always deeper crisis of its mode of production. This means more misery for our class. In this sense, the corruption of the bourgeoisie and its political apparatus are but expressions of the decadence of the capitalist mode of production. The essence of decadence lies in the crisis of the profit system itself. In its struggle, the working class must not forget this, so as to keep the fight on its own terrain: its autonomous, antiparliamentary, internationalist and totally anti-capitalist action.

The Internationalist Workers Group, Canadian section of the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party

Email: canada@ibrp.org