Justice Minister Dave Chomiak faced renewed questions in the Manitoba Legislature today about his knowledge of the taxpayer-fleecing accounting switch pulled off by the NDP in 1999, when he was campaign chairman for the Doer victory.
After earlier jousts between Conservative leader Hugh McFadyen and an increasingly frazzled premier Gary Doer about the timeline of who knew what-and-when about the scam, Liberal leader Jon Gerrard followed up, zoning in on Doer's admission last week that he had known since 2001 that alterations to the election returns of 13 candidates had been done without the knowledge of the official agents.
Dr. Gerrard accused Doer of playing "hide and seek" with the public and asked whether he will call a public inquiry.
Doer repeated from the diversionary themes handbook - that the refund of the disallowed expenses was published in 2004 and tabled in the Legislature without a whimper from the opposition at the time, which goes hand in hand with "the government had banned corporate and union donations so this can never, ever happen again."
Gerrard then directly asked if the Premier had been apprised of this scam by the Justice Minister himself, who had been campaign chairman? After another non-answer by Doer, Chomiak finally rose to respond to the question of Liberal Kevin Lamoureux, asking him directly if he knew about the fraudulent change-up when it happened.
Chomiak went on to refer to the changes to donations laws, refered to the Monnin inquiry comment about "liars", and said "Every party has repaid and refiled (returns). It's in a report that's 5 years old. It's not very secret."
But what is a secret, and one Chomiak did not want to tell, is what he knew, and when he knew it, about the trick played on well-trained NDP official agents.
Someone altered the placement of union workers salaries on declaration forms, so that the party could get half the money deposited back as a subsidy into party coffers.
Whereas the government continues to spin this as a "disagreement" with Elections Manitoba, the public is seeing a now serious breach in the NDP cabinet along the lines of ethics and optics.
Finance Minister Greg Selinger will not rise on any questions about his refiled return, or about his demand for a letter of exoneration. Nor will he explain if he took his concerns about the possible (past) election deception that cost taxpayers to senior department officials.
In a scrum last week, Selinger confirmed the account of whistleblower Jim Treller, that agents and candidates had no idea they had been put on the hook for falsified expense claims until a meeting in April 2003.
Justice Minister Chomiak portrays an equivalency between the other parties past refilings and what the NDP did in 1999- taking donations from unions to pay for campaign workers, then tried to get another 50% of the wages refunded on top of it. The opposition parties never pulled that one.
And although the bare-bones numbers were published in a report 5 years ago, it is the circumstances of that refiling - that the party jeopardized the legal position of 26 innocent loyalists via trickery, in an attempt to scam taxpayers - that was a secret.
Given the legal costs for the Conservative candidates nailed for election finance misdeeds in 99 ran up to $15,000, that was a hell of a chance someone at NDP HQ took with other peoples private lives. It was so serious, Selinger insisted he be kept off the hook (not caring what happened in the other 12 ridings).
Chomiak will not answer questions about when he learned about the scam, which took place under his watch over the rise to power of Gary Doer in 1999.
Doer will only say he learned of it in 2001, sees no ethical problem, and thinks we should move along. He refuses to answer who told him about the scam being red-flagged by the auditor David Asselstine.
Selinger admitted to what he knew, and clearly he saw a problem if he demanded a letter from party HQ attesting to his non-role in the scam.
By Premier Doer not answering the question of who told him, alongside Chomiak totally avoiding the issue of when he himself found out about the scam, the public is being led to the obvious conclusion.
And given the optics of the non-answers of Doer and Chomiak when compared to Selinger's belated epiphany, voters are waiting for the next NDP whistleblower to come forward. Who knows when Dave Chomiak knew about Refundgate?
