Angry in the Great White North

Stephen Harper promised to check into Earnscliffe:

Clean up government polling and advertising

The Liberal government commissions some $25 million per year in polling and public opinion research. Much of this polling is conducted by Liberal-connected polling firms. The Auditor General revealed that Paul Martin’s Finance department commissioned polling for which there were “only verbal reports” – nothing was written down so there was no paper trail. Yet the Martin government prevented the Gomery Commission from investigating this part of the Auditor General’s report.

And while the Liberal-friendly ad firms involved in the sponsorship program are under investigation, tens of millions of dollars have been awarded to Liberal-connected advertising firms in other contracts not related to sponsorship. Earnscliffe, the lobbying and polling company closely connected to Paul Martin, has received over $10 million from the federal government since 1993.

Government advertising and contracting must be cleaned up – not used for partisan purposes by government, or for the private benefit of contract recipients.

The plan

Stephen Harper will:

• Ensure that all government public opinion research is automatically published within six months of the completion of the project, and prohibit verbal-only reports.
• Ensure that an independent review is conducted of government public opinion research practices discussed in Chapter 5 of the Auditor General’s November, 2003 report to determine whether further action, such as an extension of the Gomery inquiry, is required.
• Open up the bidding process for government advertising and public opinion contracts to prevent insider firms from monopolizing government business.

Now we're seeing some action on that promise:

The Conservative government will launch an investigation today into alleged Liberal-era irregularities in taxpayer-funded opinion polling.

Public Works Minister Michael Fortier will launch the probe at a Parliament Hill news conference this morning, casting it as the fulfilment of another election campaign commitment from 2006, according to government sources.

But the announcement appears designed to place Stephane Dion's Liberal party under a cloud of suspicion, on what could be the eve of a federal election campaign.

If you recall, when Paul Martin set up the Gomery Inquiry to look into the Auditor General's report, he deliberately omitted Chapter 5 of the report from Judge Gomery's mandate. That chapter raised questions into the money spent on polling firms in general, and with Earnscliffe in particular. Why did he do that? Since Paul Martin was not involved in the Sponsorship Program, he knew what would be discovered would tarnish the reputation of his predecessor, Jean Chretien. But he did not want the Earnscliffe contracts investigated. Now we'll find out why.

Can this investigation wreck a Liberal election campaign for Stephane Dion, the way the Sponsorship Scandal was a millstone around Paul Martin's campaign neck? Of course it can.

The timing is suspicious if you believe that a campaign is around the corner. Or it's just the fulfillment of a promise totally unrelated to any election. It's really up to Stephane Dion to help the government survive and hold off any election. Heh.

But it's the potential interplay between the advertising agencies that could be most interesting:

The public works department and major polling firms have been negotiating the terms of the investigation for months.

But rather than a wide-ranging look into the relationship between the federal government and polling companies, sources suggest it will have a narrow focus on the relationship between the Liberals and Earnscliffe Strategy Group, an Ottawa-based government relations and communications firm that had close links to former prime minister Paul Martin when he was finance minister.

David Herle, a former senior Earnscliffe partner, was among Martin's top political advisers and ran the Liberal party's election campaigns.

In April 2005, Herle told the House of Commons public accounts committee that the verbal reports amounted to three projects over about eight years.

Did the Tories strike some sort of deal with some of the firms in order for them to open up with what they know about Earnscliffe? This is just pure speculation, but it is a classic investigative technique to get smaller players with only little involvement in the situation to "turn" on the real target.

This works especially well when there is bad blood between the advertising agencies:

There was an apology issued on the campaign trail Friday, but it came from Martin''s chief campaign strategist and pollster, who apologized to Jean Chretien''s former pollster for accusing him of trying to "sabotage" the election campaign and questioning his polling capabilities.

David Herle called POLLARA chairman Michael Marzolini after the comments he made to CanWest News Service were published Friday. He suggested he was taken out of context and said how sorry he was, said Marzolini, the former Liberal party pollster who served under Chretien for 11 years.

Herle subsequently followed up his conversation with a letter, which will be posted on POLLARA''s Web site for the next few days, said Marzolini.

Herle's harshly critical comments, all of which were taped by CanWest News Service, lashed out at Marzolini for orchestrating "internal sabotage" within the Liberal party.

Marzolini said he accepts Herle''s apology, although he conceded legal action was being contemplated.

Reaping what you sow and all that.