If I spoke to every scandal, particularly during the last eight years, we would be here for quite a while. I can't believe, as MP Beech said, that it's been two hours already. Time flies when you're having fun.
The peanut gallery here is saying, for those who can't hear, that at least one of us is having fun.
Now where was I?
Yes, it was Justice Gomery. Let me just reiterate for those watching that on the Gomery inquiry on the sponsorship scandal, it said:
Justice John Gomery concluded that there was direct input by the then minister and his staff, as well as the chief of staff for the prime minister, regarding the selection of particular activities for sponsorship support by the Government of Canada.
I think in fact one Liberal operator went to jail over this.
Justice Gomery determined that this constituted "inappropriate political encroachment into the administrative domain”. Moreover, the deputy minister at the time was not kept informed of interactions between the minister's office and bureaucrats in charge of the program.
Justice Gomery recommended that the government prepare a code of conduct for ministerial staff, which would include provisions that “exempt staff have no authority to give direction to public servants and that Ministers are fully responsible and accountable for the actions of exempt staff. Justice Gomery also recommended that, to help them understand their role, “all exempt staff should be required to attend a training program to learn the most important aspects of public administration.”
In the search for Freeland, I will add on a personal note that it is because of the six degrees of separation rule. It is interesting that this parliamentary report quotes from the Gomery inquiry because the author for the Gomery inquiry, or who helped to write the report, was a fellow named Ian Sadinsky, a good friend of mine, actually, who actually was—and it comes around—Barbara McDougall's speech writer when she was a minister.