Happy Temporary Foreign Workers Labour Day!

Bloomberg, Dec 2010 : Europe’s largest oil-field service provider, Saipem, wins $1 Billion onshore contract from Husky for the Sunrise Energy Project in Canada.

Nine months ago, Fort McMurray Today reported that 270 unionized welders and pipefitters contracted to that Husky Sunrise tarsands project were laid off and replaced by cheaper temporary foreign workers from Mexico, Ireland, Portugal and Italy.

A commenter under another FMT article explained:

"We had to conduct a handover to Saipem (a mostly Italian workforce), detailing to them where we had stopped work so that they may continue. In the final week, Saipem foreign workers were actually in the facility working side by side with us; a very uncomfortable situation for those of us about to be laid off."

Yesterday, CBC's Kathy Tomlinson revisited that story : Canadians expose foreign worker 'mess' in oilsands"

"Canadian tradesmen from a huge oilsands construction project are waving a red flag about safety hazards and near misses, which they blame on the use of foreign workers who aren't qualified and can't speak English.

Stand-outs from her report :

• a foreign worker taking a blowtorch to a propane tank to defrost it, 
• Canadians with better qualifications passed over for jobs while foreign workers from Europe continued to show up 
• foreigner workers arrived without Canadian-standard trade certification but "under government rules, they have a year before they must take their test." after which they can take it again later if they fail,  and 
• "Probably 75 per cent of [foreign] ironworkers on site were only at the level of a labourer."
• When refused LMAOs, Saipem used "intra-company transfers" instead [which I wrote about here.] 

But back up a bit. The company that brought in those workers - Italian oil and gas services contractor, Saipem.  Haven't we heard about them before?

Dec. 2012 : Saipem CEO resigns after Algeria corruption probe

July 2013 :Milan court rules Saipem guilty of corruption in Nigeria ... 

July 2013 : Saipem drilling rig sinks off Angola One person missing

"The Italian oilfield services provider said that one of the jack-up rig’s three legs collapsed, causing the rig to suddenly tilt and start taking water. The incident, according to Saipem, occurred during the rig positioning on location between the coasts of Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in approximately 40 meters of water. 6 crew members have sustained minor injuries. At approximately 10:30 am CET, the rig, with no personnel on board, capsized and sank. "

Sept. 2013 : Milan prosecutors investigate Saipem for alleged market manipulation and insider trading

May 2014 : RBC Investor and Treasury Services - SAIPEM  - Class Action Notice 

"As a result of the company's untimely disclosures of relevant information, particularly its involvement in an Algerian corruption scandal from 2007 to 2010, and it is alleged that Saipem paid bribes to win a series of contracts worth around $11 billion which led to significant stock drops in January and June 2013. Various (criminal) investigations against Saipem by the Consob, the Italian market regulator, and Italian prosecutors are ongoing."

July 2014 : Australian unions fury at Coalition`s gas job sell-out

"Saipem's enormous pipelay vessel Castorone will start work soon off the Australia coast.  The Government issued a regulation eliminating the need for any worker on a craft not tethered to the Australian mainland to have a work visa. That would free foreign companies with the contracts to lay pipework and other vital infrastructure on huge projects such as the Browse Basin gas field to hire thousands of foreign workers instead of Australians."

Gosh, just like here.
But no, not any of those stories ... 
Ah I remember - it was Arthur Porter, SNC-Lavalin, and Saipem!

In 2005, Saipem won a contract with SNC-Lavalin for the Horizon oilsands project, owned by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.
In 2006, SNC-Lavalin and Saipem awarded "joint partnership contract" to build LNG Terminal in New Brunswick.

Four years later, SNC-Lavalin had signed a deal to award soon-to-be CSIS watchdog Dr. Arthur Porter of Sierra Leone (currently on the lam from Canadian law in Panama) and his company Sierra Assets Management, 3 payments totaling $10-million for consultancy fees regarding a gas project in Algeria.  The $1.2 billion Rhourde Nouss gas project deal was awarded to SNC-L the same year by Sonatrach, Algeria’s national oil company.

In 2013,  Algerian police raided SNC offices in Algiers regarding "allegations of bribery and kickbacks involving Sonatrach and public officials and agents hired by SNC-Lavalin to procure a number of large infrastructure projects."

G&M February 2013 : SNC-Lavalin bribery probe widens to Algeria :

The investigation focuses on one of the company’s agents in Algeria, Farid Bedjaoui, a jet-setting money manager hired to help secure at least $1-billion in contracts with the country’s state-run oil company, Sonatrach. Mr. Bedjaoui was educated in Montreal and occasionally resides there

Sources close to the investigations in Europe and Canada believe that SNC and the Italian oil services firm Saipem SpA relied on Mr. Bedjaoui, the nephew of former Algerian foreign affairs minister Mohammed Bedjaoui, to obtain contracts from Sonatrach.

Mr. Bedjaoui is one of several foreign agents hired by SNC who have fallen under suspicion for allegedly paying bribes.

Several Saipem executives are under investigation, including the construction unit’s recently suspended chief operating officer, Pietro Varone, who was so close with Mr. Bedjaoui that the two men launched a wine-making company together outside Naples.

Well, I'm sure when we sign off on those investor-state rights trade deals with Europe, CETA and TTIP, all this will go much more smoothly, right?

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SNC-Lavalinks in a small, small, small Con world.

Gwyn Morgan, chairman of SNC-Lavalin for six years til this past May, portrayed the beleaguered company in his recent July G&M article as "the victim of embezzlement by two trusted, long-time executives."
There are several long-time execs to choose from here so I'm not sure exactly which two he is referring to.  Morgan, you will recall, was Harper's pick to head up his 2006 ethics and accountability commission. 

Helping SNC-L out during this period of victimhood is the Harper Government, who just extended them a defence contract worth $400 million over up to ten years to provide Canadian troops overseas with military logistical support. An SNC-L exec VP said they were proud to support the Canadian Forces.
The World Bank might have banned SNC-L and its affiliates from bidding on their aid projects for 10 years due to allegations of engaging in corrupt or fraudulent practices across four continents - and CIDA has followed suit - but the Public Works Dept. has its own criteria.

Likewise the crown corporation, Canadian Commercial Corporation, best known for its primary job of  selling $1.4-billion of Canadian military technology to the US Department of Defense, will soon decide whether to award SNC-L the contract to build a children's hospital in Trinidad Tobago. SNC-L has already finished designing it as part of a joint Canada/Trinidad Tobago venture and like the SNC-L MUHC hospital deal in Canada, it's a public-private partnership.
People in T&T are understandably concerned about dealing with a company caught up in the largest corporate corruption case in Canadian history, with fraud and bribery charges pending in Libya, Algeria, Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Montreal, but as T&T High Commissioner to Canada and former SNC-L exec Philip Buxo explained : 

 "The T&T Government is not involved in the decision-making process to hire any Canadian company to construct the hospital. The full responsibility for the selection of any company is the exclusive responsibility of the Canadian government’s designated co-ordinator, the CCC.”

It's a small, small, small world ...

In December 2003, Philippe Couillard, then-Quebec Health Minister and now newly-crowned Quebec Lib leader, appointed Brian Mulroney to head up the feasibility study for MUHC superhospitals. A decade earlier Mulroney had appointed David Angus, director of Conservative Fund Canada, to the Senate.

Senator Angus was a director-at-large of the MUHC board that approved the recommendation of the search committee and hired Dr. Arthur Porter as CEO in Jan 2004. Angus became MUHC chair in 2007.

In Sept 2008 Harper appointed both Porter and Couillard to SIRC. 

The MUHC board ratified the choice of SNC-L to build the $1.3 billion mega-hospital in a public-private partnership in April 2010. Three weeks later, SNC-L payments of $22.5-million in consulting fees to Porter's Sierra Asset Management began rolling in, continuing six months after Porter left MUHC. 

Senator Angus continued to stand by Porter publicly, no matter how damning the news about him. In Nov 2011 Arthur Porter stepped down as MUHC director general, followed by Senator Angus' exit as chair of MUHC a month later. 

Fun fact : When SNC-L decided to conduct an internal audit into all this in 2012, it hired Senator Angus' law firm Stikeman Elliott LLP, from which he retired in 2009 as a senior partner after four and a half decades.
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Update : Excellent piece on the SNC-L/T&T deal from economists Patricia Adams and Brady Yauch :

"The injudicious decision by one Canadian federal government agency to arrange an untendered, closed-door deal for SNC-Lavalin while another, the federal police force, investigates the company for wrongdoing seems lost on government officials. Canadian taxpayers would be right to charge, as are Trinidadian and Tobagonians in their own country, that our government is failing to maintain proper standards in the handling of public projects. 

More fundamentally, untendered, closed-door deals arranged by the Canadian government for any company can’t help but create the very environment in which bribery, corruption, and conspiracy to defraud taxpayers and ratepayers thrives.

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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks #6

Bunch up everyone to make room for Steve's latest Perp with Perks, Saulie Zajdel.

Arrested today and facing five counts of corruption, breach of trust, and fraud from 2006 to 2011 in the anti-corruption sweep that also bagged the mayor of Montreal, Zajdel is better known to us as the guy who was put on the public payroll as a "cultural liaison" by Heritage Min James Moore for an alleged $60G's to act as the Cons' shadow pretend MP in Irving Cotler's riding after he lost to him in the 2011 election.  

Here's Steve campaigning for Zajdel three days before Election Day.

Here's Nick Kouvalis from Campaign Research defending their        "reprehensible" calls made into the riding on Steve and Zajdel's behalf implying Cotler would not run.

After his election loss to Cotler, Zajdel gave speeches in the Mount Royal riding, such as one advertised as : “How the Federal Government Relates to Israel.” 

A 2011 election campaign vid uploaded by Zajdel, along with the tagline :

"Let us thank our prime minister Stephen Harper for how he supports the land of Israel, he is its strongest advocate of any leader in the world."

Steve and Saulie in happier times in a photo op featuring brown paper bags - a prop usually avoided by the Cons after Brian Mulroney.
Mulroney spoke at a $600-a-plate fundraiser for Dean Del Mastro, another Perp with Perks, this past May. [h/t Toe at Bread 'n Roses]

Brown bag photo h/t : Robert Jensen2 via Holly Stick in comments.
And to Canadian Cynic for the nudge.

Previous Perps editions with bios.
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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks - Part 5

Updated : h/t Canadian Cynic

Welcome Con MPs Devinder Shory, James Bezan, Shelly Glover, and update! House Speaker Andrew Scheer to the growing family scandal of Steve's Parade of Perps with Perks.  

Devinder Shory, Calgary Northeast, accused of providing legal work that supported allegedly fraudulent mortgages - in his case at least five straw-buyer cases of more than $3.7 million:

Promised a payment of up to $8,000, hundreds of straw buyers, mostly new immigrants, allowed their names to be used to obtain falsely inflated mortgages on over 200 properties. When the straw buyers could not pay up, the bank would foreclose and the "masterminds" would walk away, wiring proceeds from the alleged fraud to Lebanon, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. 

[T]he Alberta Lawyers Insurance Association (ALIA) has agreed to pay $9.2 million to BMO to settle the case on behalf of all 17 lawyers named in the suit."

April 28 2014 Update : Two Con candidates hoping to challenge Devinder Shory appear to have had their nomination papers quashed by Dimitri Soudas to protect Shory.

Two years after the election, Elections Canada is still waiting for campaign expenses compliance from Manitoba Con MPs James Bezan and law 'n order gal Shelly Glover regarding documents that put them over the top of their allowed amounts ... just like Perp with Perks veteran Peter Penashue in Labrador. Both Glover and Bezan have filed court applications to prevent their being barred from the House by EC's Marc Mayrand while Con Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton wrangles their cases.

ETA : Dear Mr. Hamilton : Clawing back campaign staffers' pay a year later in order to get Glover under the spending limit wire in what you refer to as "an honest mistake of fact" seems a bit mean. I also fail to see how having election campaign signs up in places where the traffic is poor disqualifies their existence as, you know, election campaign signs.

Belated addition of House Speaker Andrew Scheer, MP, for sitting on Mayrand's formal letter of May 24 advising him Bezan and Glover were in violation of election law and therefore ineligible to sit in the House. Scheer did not advise the House and the next day Glover filed a court challenge, followed by Bezan. 
We the public of course would not have known about any of this if the media had not dug into it - hats off to Kady and McMaher.

Very good post from Dr.Dawg on whether rule of law still exists if a sitting government can flout it without repercussion. Whether the court finds any mitigating factors in Bezan and Glover's applications or not and regardless of Scheer's eventual ruling, the Cons will claim it a victory and continue on as they like. 

Running out of perp parade room here and the month is yet young ... I'm going to have to start setting out benches at the back for the next batch to stand on.

Previous editions/perps' bios
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Steve and the multinational man of mystery

I do hope someone is securing the rights to make a Made In Canada thriller about Stephen Harper's spy watchdog and his various business associates.

I'm referring of course to the Honorable Dr. Arthur Porter, "His Excellency, Ambassador Plenipotentiary, Republic of Sierra Leone" and also "Member, Queen’s Privy Council for Canada” for life.

Really, this cast of characters has everything -  spies, dictators, terrorists, Russians, drug cartels, arms dealers, diamond mines, bribery, money laundering.  

Here's a storyboard to get you started ...

2008 : Dr. Arthur Porter is appointed to five-member CSIS watchdog committee, SIRC, on recommendation of PMO. 

June 2009  SIRC committee member Arthur Porter appointed to lead investigation into complaint CSIS 'was complicit in the detention' of Abdelrazik" six years previously.
Investigation goes nowhere.

June 2010  Porter promoted to Chair of SIRC by Harper

Also in June 2010, Porter wired $200,000 in personal funds to former Israeli agent and international lobbyist/arms dealer Ari Ben-Menashe to secure a $120-million grant from Russia to build Russian port facilities in Porter's native Sierra Leone where his family have diamond mining interests. The offshore payment was made via one of Porter's private companies, the Africa Infrastructure Group, but the deal fell through. 
Mr. Ben-Menashe was charged in the US in 1989 with illegally attempting to sell three military transport airplanes to Iran but acquitted on the grounds he was acting on official Government of Israel business. 

Ben-Menashe testified he had personally witnessed George H. W. Bush attend a meeting with members of the Iranian government in Paris in October 1980, as part of a covert Republican Party operation — the so-called October Surprise — to have the 52 U.S hostages then held in Iran remain there until President Jimmy Carter, who was negotiating their release, had lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan.

His house in Montreal was fire-bombed this past December.

During Porter's 2004 -2011 tenure as CEO at McGill University Health Centre, two former top executives at SNC-Lavalin allegedly authorized $22.5 million in payments related to getting the contract for a $1.3-billion superhospital expansion to Porter who was head of the selection committee. Payments were made to Sierra Asset Management Inc in the Bahamas at a bank run by a business associate of Porter's.

Nov 2011 Porter resigned from SIRC following the NaPo story on his dealings with Ben-Menashe and a month later from his position as CEO of McGill University Health Centre, where he left behind $300,000 in personal debts and a hospital with a $115-million deficit .
According to the McGill Daily, Porter sold the condo McGill fronted him half a million bucks to buy without paying back the $800,000 loan on the place.

Feb 2013 Arrest warrants issued for Porter for defrauding the government, accepting bribes, and money laundering in connection with alleged SNC Lavalin $22-million kickback to Porter via Sierra Assets Management to secure the hospital contract.  Also on the arrest warrant :

• Former MUHC director Yanai Elbaz.
• Former CEO of SNC-Lavalin Pierre Duhaime
• Former SNC-Lavalin VP Riadh Ben Aissa, in jail in Switzerland for the past year on suspicion of making bribes in return for contracts in Libya
• Jeremy Morris, Sierra Asset Management, Bahamas, 

SNC-Lavalin signed a deal to award Sierra Assets Management, formed in November 2009, 3 payments totaling $10-million for consultancy fees regarding a gas project in Algeria. The $1.2 billion Rhourde Nouss gas project deal was awarded to SNC  the same year by Sonatrach, Algeria’s national oil company.
Last Monday Algerian police raided SNC offices in Algiers regarding "allegations of bribery and kickbacks involving Sonatrach and public officials and agents hired by SNC-Lavalin to procure a number of large infrastructure projects."
FINTRAC, the Canadian federal agency that monitors money laundering, is investigating a trail of SNC payments to Porter and later Sierra Asset Management from 2007 to June 2012, six months after Porter left MUHC.


On May 27 Porter and his wife were arrested in Panama and are fighting extradition to Canada. Porter has stated he is too ill to leave his home in the Bahamas to fly all the way to Montreal to face charges, however he was seemingly well enough to embark on a business trip 1½ times that distance from Bahamas to Antigua, but was unfortunately nabbed en route in Panama.

Porter's Panamanian lawyer, Ricardo Bilonick Paredes, a former ambassador of Panama, testified at Manuel Noriega's 1991 trial that he :

"acted as a middleman between Manuel Noriega and Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s ... passing millions of dollars in bribes to Noriega, in exchange for the ability to fly planes packed with tons of cocaine from Panama to the United States."

Dr. Karol Sikora, Porter’s business partner at his medical cancer clinic in the Bahamas, was hired by the son of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2009 to give a medical opinion on the condition of the Lockerbie bomber, Abdel Baset al-Megrah - in prison for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.  Sikora secured al-Megrah's release from prison on compassionate grounds, testifying that he only had 3 months to live. Al-Megrahi lived another three years .

Currently Sikora is arguing Porter's self-diagnosed stage four lung cancer means he will not live long enough to stand trial.

Some have questioned how Steve could have displayed the poor judgement to appoint Dr. Arthur Porter, multinational man of mystery, to head up a sensitive position at SIRC giving him access to both Canadian and American intelligence.

You're kidding me, right?

May22 2014 update : National Post :
Arthur Porter and associate split $22.5M payout in ‘biggest corruption fraud in the history of Canada,’ Quebec inquiry hears

SNC-Lavalin made threats against Spanish bid rival

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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks - Part 4

Please welcome Senators David Tkachuk, Marjory LeBreton and Carolyn Stewart Olsen to the growing family scandal of Steve's Parade of Perps with Perks.  Click to enjoy.

While Steve is still going with the lone topgun chief of staff on the Duffy knoll with the chequebook story from his temporary hideout in South America, his perps at home are busy fucking that up for him. 

We were most relieved to hear from Senator Tkachuk that even though he was soliciting advice from the Prime Minister's Office on how to do his audit of Duffy, and Nigel Wright was calling him up wanting to know "When is this thing over with?", Senator Tkachuk assures us that "no one came to my room and told me what to do."

Well that's good to know but with Steve's former-press-secretary-now-Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen spearheading the Duffy audit whitewash/rewrite in the steering committee for you, your own room was pretty well always safe, wasn't it? 

That whitewashed audit is now winging its way back to the same perps for further review and Steve's buddy, government leader in the senate Marjory LeBreton, has refused to open the hearings, complaining she lives in a town "populated by Liberal elitists and their lickspittle media” and is not getting enough credit for opening up the senate to Steve's scandal.

Excellent piece on this from Mound of Sound

Updated Perps with Perks and their bios.
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Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks - Part 3

Please welcome Nigel Wright, Steve's chief of staff on loan from Onex Corp and the latest member of Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks, for secretly cutting Mike Duffy a $90,000 personal cheque to paper over the senate investigation and Deloitte audit into Mike Duffy's creative housing expense claims and reports he billed the Senate for travel while campaigning for the Cons .

Duffy isn't co-operating with the investigations now he has the cash but that didn't stop House leader Peter Van Loan from praising him for his "leadership" in returning money that didn't belong to him. 
Duffy : 

"It's become a major distraction so my wife and I discussed it and we decided that in order to turn the page and put all this behind us, we are going to voluntarily pay back the living expenses related to the house we have in Ottawa"

Ah yes the Royal Bank loan and the PMO instruction to keep his little head down.
Unfortunately Duffy then blabbed around town about his secret cheque from Wright.

So which is it then? A bank loan or a personal cheque from Steve's chief of staff? 
Both? Given he purportedly has secured the bank loan to cover the senate repayment, what's the cash bonanza from Nigel Wright for exactly?

“The PM was not aware of the specifics,” Andrew MacDougall, Mr. Harper’s director of communications, has said of this transaction when asked.

I think that's called implausible deniability.

Nigel Wright, a founding director of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, has resigned.
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Updated Perps with perks and their bios.

Arrgh update. Typo correction : That should have been "a founding director"; without that "a", it made him sound like the only one.  Apologies.
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Cons : "Well you didn't ask us."

In response to NDP questions on Monday regarding the missing $3.1 billion in public security and anti-terrorism spending and why even the words "public security and anti-terrorism" hadn't shown up in nine years of public accounts, Tony Gazebo of the Treasury Board blamed the opposition for not guessing the right question :

“If NDP caucus members from the years from 2001 to 2009 did not ask the right questions then that is their problem, not the problem on this side of the House.”

In February, Public SafetyMin Vic Toews used the same tactic. When questioned as to how the Cons managed to appoint Dr Arthur Porter - subject of an arrest warrant for fraud, money laundering and bribes/kickbacks in connection with SNC Lavelin - to head up the CSIS watchdog agency SIRC in 2010 without doing a sufficiently diligent security clearance on him first, Toews blamed the opposition parties for not stopping them from appointing a crook by not asking the right question :

"If there were any concerns that he had, he could have brought it to the attention of the appropriate authorities and simply asked the question. He failed in his responsibilities."

So from now on, all the opposition has to do is to try to guess which right questions are cleverly hidden under the Con security blanket.

Noon update : And even when reporters ask Tony Gazebo the right questions about government outsourcing ...

Star investigation: Millions in taxpayer-funded consulting work kept secret

A Star investigation has found 90 per cent of the $2.4 billion paid out in the past decade comes with no description of the work done — and more than a dozen departments refuse to provide details when pressed.

Harper's Parade of Perps with Perks

Time to update Harper's Parade of Perps again, says Canadian Cynic.
Ok then ... let's add three more to make it an even ten Parade of Perps with Perks.

New entrant below the still unidentified Mr RoboCon is Saskatchewan Senator Pamela Wallin, seen here in 2000 advertizing her stint as host of  Who Wants to Buy a Millionaire? in New York where she owns an apartment. Senator Wallin is not currently being investigated for clocking $321,027 in "other" senate travel expenses because she does visit her Saskatchewan residence even she holds an Ontario residency health card just like PEI Senator Mike Duffy. However the former investigative journalist does not want to discuss it, explaining it's a "point of privacy". 

Between Duffy and Bruce Carson stands Labrador MP and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Peter Penashue, who resigned from both yesterday following reports of illegal overspending and accepting corporate contributions disguised as individual donations in his 79-vote win over the Liberal incumbent in the last election. The Conservative Party transferred $44,350 to his campaign last November and this month to cover his overspending repayment debts.
Penashue explained that "mistakes were made by an inexperienced volunteer" - Reg Bowers, the campaign's official agent - who was subsequently appointed by Resources Minister Joe Oliver to the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board. The CNLOPB bio describes Bowers as "having extensive business involvement" and "a Bachelor of Commerce" as well as "post secondary work with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants." Still, you know ... math.
Penashue intends to have a do-over election, presumably before Elections Canada gets around to finishing an investigation which could bar him from running for election again.
Yesterday a Conservative Party spokesman explained : Nice riding you got there, Labrador, be a shame if something happened to it :

He will be the Conservative Party candidate in the by-election and if Newfoundland and Labrador want to continue to have a strong voice within government they need to re-elect him as the Member of Parliament for Labrador.

Under Steve is Dean Del Mastro, Steve's parliamentary secretary and pointman on the robocall election scandal, being investigated over his $21,000 personal cheque to Frank Hall at Holinshed Research Group for voter ID/GOTV services. Ah, I see the Frank Hall vid I reposted a month ago is "no longer available" at Youtube. So how's the rest of the RCMP/Elections Canada investigation into Del Mastro's scandal-ridden 2008 election campaign going, huh?
Fun fact : Del Mastro has now missed 26 consecutive Ethics committee meetings.

Well that's all for now, folks. Stay tuned though - it's only March.

Update : Collect the whole set!
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