Corruption tops the agenda of Canada's 2006 federal election, reports Robert Farnan Canadians go to the polls to elect a new government on Monday 23 January. Some 19 months ago Prime Minister Paul Martin's liberal government shook off a sponsorship scandal, inherited from the previous Chretien administration, to claim a fourth successive term and a minority government. With the same corruption issue still lingering at the forefront of the first winter campaign in 26 years, the patience of Canadians reckoning with salient election issues will be tested again. The main issues facing Canadians this time around, as with the June 2004 election, seem nearly identical. Like the last election, current campaign agendas circulate around the topics of: governmental accountability, the economy and health care -- while, being Canada, never straying too far from events in Quebec. In opinion polls during this election Canadians have placed health care above all other issues. Traditionally, health care is a bastion of Canadian electoral politics. A recent Environics Research poll, undertaken for the CBC, ranked health care as the number one priority for 30 per cent of those surveyed. In comparison, corruption scandals and ethics garnered only 14 per cent. Despite this, the three main opposition leaders have focused their campaigns on themes of governmental accountability and ethics. Right-wing Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, left-wing New Democrat (NDP) leader, Jack Layton, and separatist Bloc Quebecois leader, Gilles Duceppe, have been protesting against Martin's minority liberal government for sometime. With only days remaining until Monday's vote, polls are suggesting that the difference between the Liberals and Conservatives is too close to call. The Liberals, who had survived a no- confidence vote last May by the slimmest of margins, 153-152, were not so lucky on the 28th of November, as parliament voted, 171- 133, to bring down the government. Having lost NDP support due to an earlier row over health care, Martin's Liberals no longer had the oppositional support needed to survive confidence votes. After the no-confidence vote, opposition Conservative leader Stephen Harper set his campaign in motion by declaring the vote, "historic," and saying that it signalled, "the end of a tired directionless scandal-plagued government." He continued, "It's the start of a bright new future for this great country." Martin, in contrast to Harper, did not allude to the corruption scandal, but instead emphasised his record. Instead of placing emphasis on governmental accountability, the Liberals have made the economy the prime subject of their campaign. Following the vote Martin defended his government, saying Canada had paid off $60 billion of its debt, and that its unemployment rate is now at a 30 year low. Martin said, "we have delivered eight straight budget surpluses helping to keep the economy strong for Canadians. And there is no other G7 country that can say that." Still, despite Martin's fiscal declarations, the corruption scandal remains an engrained topic alluded to by each of the opposition leaders. It is an ethical focus for opposition party campaigning. A fulcrum to revolve around and an issue whose very circumstance has ignited and kept alive a central campaign theme: governmental accountability. The issue of ethics and accountability emerged on the backs of the Liberal Party's involvement in a late 1990s corruption scandal in the primarily French-speaking province of Quebec. The scandal is known in Canada as the sponsorship scandal. Although Martin has been cleared of all involvement in the scandal, he has borne the brunt of opposition criticism. Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe was forthcoming in his views at the 16 December English-language debate, saying, "because of the Liberal sponsorship scandal, Paul Martin's government has lost the moral authority to govern." This sentiment is shared by the other parties. In February 2004 a report released by Canada's auditor-general, Sheila Fraser, said that the liberal government, during the late 1990s, had diverted a "shocking" CDN$100 million from a CDN$250 million government programme to advertising and communication agencies connected to the Liberal Party, with little money or work accounted for. An initial inquiry into the scandal, issued by Justice John Gomery, determined that the money, which had originally been designated for advertising firms in Quebec to fund cultural programmes promoting Canadian unity, had in fact been wasted on agencies with links to the ruling Liberals. The Gomery Report, as it is known, revealed that some Liberal Party officials had asked for and been given political donations from companies who, at the time, had been under federal government contract. These lucrative deals allowed some officials, cabinet ministers and staff to influence and determine who would receive contracts -- the allegations on the opposition side being that Liberal Party members, invariably, asked for "kickbacks" from those they had awarded contracts to -- and in so doing, were no longer ethically fit to govern. The initial findings of the Gomery Report has given opposition parties backing in their appeals of a moral high-ground during this election, as well as kindling for their earlier claims that the sponsorship scandal, and its instances of Liberal mismanagement, are indicative of a Liberal Party which they assert is "corrupt beyond redemption". As Federal Party leaders buckle down in the final stretches before voting day, the traditional concern of Canadians has come to the forefront. Health care, which in many ways has been overshadowed by talks of Gomery and G8, is entering more prominently into the debate as we approach 23 January. However, mind-numbingly for Canadians, scandal and corruption continue to loiter at the forefront of campaign discourse.
