Busted

"If the riveting examination of the scandal's cause and effect is this report's strength, its weakness is its sweeping absolution for Martin. Gomery gives too little weight to the then finance minister's presence at the 1996 cabinet meeting that created the program and his annual approval of its $50 million funding at a time budgets were being slashed.

Gomery heard nothing that suggests Martin knew the program was corrupt. But it asks too much of taxpayers and voters to accept that he wasn't aware that federal contracting was both partisan and tawdry.

Those same taxpayers and voters will soon be asked to make an even more difficult choice. They will have to decide if a Liberal party compelled to repay a stolen million, a party that used that money to illegally tilt elections, is fit to govern.

In that context, Gomery's first report is devastating. Despite the current spate of rushed reforms, Liberals in power since 1993 perpetuated a partisan, corrupt contracting system that made friends rich and paid party bills."