When Premier Gary Doer returned from Washington DC last Thursday he had to immediately try to do damage control duties over a Cabinet briefing note from November 2000, which was leaked to the Liberal caucus.
Doer tried to convince the media that the Cabinet memo which hit the press while he was away, had nothing new and it was already covered by the Singleton audit, and claimed it didn't in any way show his government had acted specifically to cover up for the Fund operating in contravantion to the perspectus. Problem was, even if some in MSM took the bait, a lot of things were being looked at by the public in a new light -- and found wanting.
That didn't matter to the Free Press, who devoted an entire front page of the Saturday paper to pointing readers to an "analysis" provided by "an unnamed Grit source" that tried to downplay the collapse and losses of 34,000 shareholders.
The Great Canadian Talk Show dedicated a special week to getting into the contents of the briefing memo and what it really meant, and to hear from some of the players in the unfolding political and legal mess.
Each day we conducted an in-depth interview about Crocus, along with our usual features and notes.
In order, we spoke with Bernie Bellan, secretary of the Crocus Shareholders group; Paul Sveinson, the data analyst who is crunching the figures and helped unravel the connections between the Fund and who got money from it; Progressive Conservative leader Hugh McFadyen; on Thursday we previewed the Public Accounts Committee hearing and finally on Friday we got the report about the hearing from Liberal MLA Kevin Lameroux.
Here is a summary of what we discussed and the major issues being missed by news reporters.
Bernie Bellan explained the briefing note got him upset because he had rolled his shares over when the three year cooling-off period had been revoked. Bellan was told he was investing in Manitoba businesses, but the Cabinet memo proves that back in 2000, the government knew that new investors money like his was actually going to be used to pay out those investors who in essence, bailed.
Bellan rejected the Free Press feature as slanted by the paper's relationship with the current employer of former Crocus honcho Sherman Kreiner, University of Winnipeg president - and former Grit godfather of Manitoba - Lloyd Axworthy.
With the U of W embarking on major capital projects with Kreiner helming the campaigns, damage control came from the Kreiner defender that Sherm's plan to save Crocus was thwarted by bureaucrats in Industry and Mines who "hated Crocus" and who fought against changes to the law. Bellan pointed out the changes actually were made by the NDP, just not as fast as Kreiner wanted, changes which in then end, served to fund a Ponzi scheme while questionable investments and exhorbitant expenses were being rung up.
And then there was the illegal loan from the Solidarity Fond in Quebec, which was described as an "investment" and then used to cook the Crocus books and give it the illusion of stability and liquidity.
Bellan didn't believe that the government, whether by the reports of the Crocus board rep appointed by the govenment or by the research memos of the bureaucrats, didn't know the Fond loan was fishy. And as for the government's insistance Singleton had seen the note and included some references to it even if it wasn't in the timeline chart he prepared of the collapse -- Bellan wasn't buying it.
Paul Sveinson elaborated on problems with the way Crocus made investments that were social engineering and/or social climbing in nature, and not in the pursuit of a fair return for shareholders.
He especially focused on the sports industries, such as buying up a piece of the Manitoba Moose, putting up money for the construction of the MTS Centre, funding the ballpark and loaning money to the Winnipeg Goldeyes ball club, and the oddball decisions to pour endless sums into entertainment industry failures like Westsun ($21 million) all the way down to Blye Brothers ($1 million, zero films produced).
We had called the RCMP and asked about whether the shocking implications of the leaked Cabinet memo had been examined as part of their criminal investigation, given their access to the Singleton audit review. We reported exclusively -- No one at the RCMP could tell TGCTS they had seen a copy of the note signed by Finance Minister Greg Selinger (which was supposedly available to Singleton when he wrote his report although he said he never saw it). All they would say is "the investigation is ongoing."
Tory leader Hugh McFadyen came on the air and reviewed the reasons why this memo proved that an independent public inquiry was necessary to sort out the responsibility of the NDP for Crocus investors losing millions. He said he accepted the claim by current Provincial auditor Carol Bellringer about the briefing note having been in the audit file, but said he would stick to his guns and force another review beyond Singleton's, even if the spring budget had to be held up. He dismissed the anonymous-sourced Free Press story that had tried to spin the affair away from the need for a public inquiry - an inquiry frequently called for by the editorial department.
When challenged about how he has handled the Crocus file thus far in the Legislature, McFadyen was firm that his move to stop the bell-ringing last year was the right call because the opposition didn't have this kind of 'smoking gun' evidence about the NDP's repeated denials in Question Period of having known before 2002 of the Fund's precarious position were in fact loaded with weasel words and terminology. He said he would do it again (stop the bells) under the same circumstances.
We set out a series of questions that the Opposition could pursue before the Public Accounts Committee met on Thursday. As well, columnist Frances Russell had hopped onto the deflect the blame bandwagon the paper started on the weekend.
In a piece designed to have it both ways, "Govermnment cannot evade blame in Crocus affair", Russell used two more unnamed "sources" and Free Press favorite pundit Prof. Paul Thomas, to again twist what went wrong, now forwarding the claim Crocus may not have been violating its prospectus despite the Auditor's conclusion, and if only the NDP had allowed Crocus all the legislative changes it had asked, it would have had a fair shot against all the other labour funds. And then there was this apologia for Premier Doer:
" " ...we're using third parties outside government to deliver programs but we haven't invented sound accountability mechanisms for them " (said Thomas) ... leaving the public interest - and the taxpayers dollars - in the hands of boards of directors, frequently "enlightened amateurs" at best..."
Many of the appointees being criticized happen to have been NDP appointees for whom the government is responsible but Russell ignores that critical fact.
We also noted that the Freep had ignored the news Bellringer had decided on Tuesday, to conduct an audit into the Spirited Energy branding campaign, which meant the Free Press business relationship with the campaign was also under the microscope.
On Friday Inkster MLA Kevin Lamoreaux told our audience that he had no doubt the NDP was hiding even more information, and that Selinger had lied to the House when confronted with questions about Crocus in the past. However we pointed out that a CJOB reporter had told us that the meeting was taken up by motions and debates for an hour and 45 minutes, leaving only an hour and 15 for questions.
While admitting that perhaps the public was not happy that so much time was wasted, he explained that two of the motions were meant to get answers as sworn testimony and to limit responses to 4 minutes. Those seemed reasonable enough and he was shocked the NDP outvoted the motion for the evidence to be sworn. But then the NDP moved for the opposition leaders to apologize to the Finance Minister, a move clearly designed to waste time arguing with the opposition and stall out the time limit.
Lamoreaux said it was gratifying that the Liberals had gotten the leak last week and that he would continue to do his best to represent shareholders and taxpayers concerns in the House, as the Singleton report obviously didn't cover what the Finance Minister knew about the Fund in 2000.
In addition to our Crocus Cabinet cover-up review, we also:
Interviewed former WWE developmental talent Kenny Omega about his tag title match at the PCW event at the Lid, on a show headlined by Spike-TV star Samoa Joe. Omega had some interesting insights into the style of training for WWE and how it is not truly reflective of the styles popular around the indy circuits, and on learning the complex art of story-telling in the modern age in the ring;
Frank the Italian Barber railed about the possibility NHLPA exec Ted Saskin reading players emails, and about Ryan Smyth's agent provoking the trade from the Oilers over a difference of about $200,000 in a contract dispute;
Kelly Dehn of CTV went over the crime scene and car theft statistics, a scene which by Friday was dominated by an incident where a stolen car was used to mow down a male jogger on ritzy Wellington Crescent, an act so shocking even the remaining complacent elements within the media woke up to the danger being posed by youth criminals and gangbangers to the public;
And inaugural reports were aired from Shannah-Lee on the Human Race Machine on display at Red River College, which creates images of a face in other races; and from Cody who provided a preview of what to do around town on the weekend.
