Angry in the Great White North

Someone was showing an interest in Frank Brazeau:

Frank Brazeau was the bureaucrat at Public Works and Government Services Canada who was suspended, and ultimately fired, by Deputy Minister David Marshall for his role in directing contracts to the firm once owned by his cousin, David Smith. At the time, Smith was the member of parliament for the Quebec riding of Pontiac. David Smith claimed to have knowledge of the contracts that went to his former company, called Abotech, which instead was run by his wife and his two teen children.

Right.

In any case, an audit at PWGSC revealed the monkey business, the contracts with Abotech were canceled, Brazeau and possibly one or two other senior bureaucrats were let go, and David Smith ultimately lost his bid for re-election, coming in third, behind the Conservative candidate Lawrence Cannon, and the BQ candidate. Pontiac is one of the most federalist ridings in Quebec, so for the Liberal candidate to come in third was a major blow for the Liberal Party.

You can read the posts on the Abotech story here.

Now someone from the high-powered legal firm of Heenan Blaikie spent nearly half-an-hour reading my posts on the story. Heenan Blaikie is tight with the Liberal Party:

Heenan Blaikie has within its ranks a number of prominent individuals who have made their mark on the national and international stage, including the Right Honourable Jean Chretien, P.C., Q.C., former Prime Minister of Canada; the Honourable Donald J. Johnston, P.C., Q.C., a co-founder of the firm, who was Secretary-General of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); the Honourable John W. Morden, former Associate Chief Justice of Ontario; Pierre Marc Johnson, FRSC, former Premier of the Province of Quebec and Andre Bureau, O.C., former Chair of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission and current Chair of Astral Media.

Another former Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Pierre Elliott Trudeau, also acted as counsel to the firm for the last sixteen years of his life after retiring from politics.

Donald Johnston was a former president of the Liberal Party:

Returning to practice with Heenan Blaikie is natural for Mr. Johnston since he was a co-founder of our firm in 1973. After several years practicing business law and taxation, he was elected Member of Parliament for Westmount in 1978. As part of the Trudeau government, he was successively President of the Treasury Board, Minister of State for Science and Technology, Minister of State for Economic and Regional Development, and Minister of Justice and Attorney General. He returned to Heenan Blaikie in 1988 before becoming president of the Liberal Party of Canada in 1990. A few years later, encouraged by the Right Honourable Jean Chretien, then Prime Minister, Mr. Johnston submitted his candidacy for the position of Secretary-General of the OECD and was elected.

Just idle interest, or is something brewing on the Abotech front?