Gomery Commission - Proceedings and Testimonies

Proceedings and Testimonies

The Commission began in Ottawa, meeting in the Old City Hall. The hearing opened in September 2004. The first to testify was Auditor General Sheila Fraser who reported the findings of her earlier investigations. The first part of its investigation was of the political direction of the project. Most of the top officials involved were called to testify.

In an unprecedented event, the inquiry saw the testimony of two Prime Ministers in February 2005: Paul Martin and Jean Chrétien. The testimony of Chrétien was much anticipated. In December 2004, Chrétien's lawyers had moved to expel Justice Gomery due to comments he had made to a National Post reporter that the lawyers argued showed that Gomery was biased against Chrétien. These included Gomery commenting that golf balls marked with Chrétien's name, which had been paid for by the sponsorship program, were "small town cheap." Gomery rejected the calls to recuse himself setting up a confrontation between him and Chrétien. At the end of his day of testimony Chrétien closed his statement by pulling out a series of golf balls bearing the name of American presidents and asking whether each of them was "small town cheap". The stunt was the focus of all the media reports.

After the prime ministers testified, the hearings moved to Montreal to investigate where the money had gone. The hearings in Ottawa had uncovered little more than what was in the Auditor General's report. The AG did not have the authority to investigate outside of the government, and the look into the advertising companies in Montreal uncovered a great deal of new and explosive allegations. The most important of these were by Groupaction executive Jean Brault who recounted a series of crimes committed to direct government money to Liberal party supporters. These caused a sharp fall in the support for the governing Liberals, and put their government in jeopardy.