Sponsorship Scandal - Involved Parties

Involved Parties

• Jean Chrétien — Prime Minister of Canada at the time the Sponsorship Program was established and operated. The Gomery Commission, First Phase Report which assigned blame for the Sponsorship scandal cast most of the indemnity for misspent public funds, fraud on Chrétien and his Prime Minister's Office staff, though it cleared Chrétien himself of direct wrongdoing.
• Jean Pelletier — Prime Minister's chief of staff and later chairman of Via Rail. Via Rail was accused of mishandling sponsorship deals, though mostly not under Pelletier's tenure.
• Alfonso Gagliano — Minister of Public Works, and thus in charge of the program. Also the political minister for Quebec.
• André Ouellet — member of Prime Minister Chrétien's Cabinet, longtime Liberal politician and later head of Canada Post, who was also accused of violating sponsorship rules.
• Chuck Guité — bureaucrat in charge of the sponsorship program. Arrested for fraud by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) - convicted on five counts on June 6, 2006.
• Jean Brault — head of Groupaction Marketing, one of the companies to which deals were directed. Arrested for fraud by the RCMP, he pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud and on May 5, 2006, was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
• Jacques Corriveau — Liberal organizer and head of Pluridesign to which millions in sponsorship dollars were directed.
• Paul Martin — former Prime Minister of Canada. He was Minister of Finance, and Senior Minister from Quebec during most of the years the program occurred. When he became Prime Minister in December 2003, he claimed that he put a halt to it. He also set up the Gomery Commission which later cleared him of formal responsibility by Justice Gomery in his November 2005 'First Phase Report' of the Gomery Commission. The Gomery findings found that Martin, as finance minister, established a 'fiscal framework' but he did not have oversight as to the dispersal of the funds once they were apportioned to Chrétien's Prime Minister's Office. A report on the issue by the Auditor General's Office of Sheila Fraser came to the same conclusion. Nonetheless, Martin was inappropriately accused of tying Gomery's hands and using the sponsorship scandal as an excuse to purge the Liberals of members who supported Chrétien. The scandal played a factor in the federal election of 2006 and the fall of the Liberal Government. Shortly thereafter, Martin resigned from the liberal party leadership.
• Joe Morselli — Liberal Party fundraiser. Jean Brault testified that the money exchanges were with Morselli.
• Jean Lafleur — former CEO of Lafleur Communication Marketing Inc. One of the advertising executives that accepted money from the federal government. Pleaded guilty to 28 counts of fraud.
• Allan Cutler — former civil servant and whistleblower who reported anomalies in a Canadian sponsorship program, triggering the Scandal.