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Earnscliffe got cut of $17M forestry grant

(PoliticsWatch posted March 19, 2004) OTTAWA - Questions are being raised about how the lobbying and communications firm linked to Prime Minister Paul Martin's campaign team received $800,000 of $17 million given to a softwood lumber association in 2002. 

The Forest Products Association revealed this week that Earnscliffe Strategy Group received $800,000 from the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) for "polling, research and advice" after then trade minister Pierre Pettigrew announced $17 million for FPAC to promote Canadian softwood lumber in the United States. 

At the time, Ruth Thorkelson, who is now the prime minister's deputy chief of staff for parliamentary affairs, was FPAC's vice-president of government relations. Previous to that, Thorkelson served as Martin's chief of staff until Oct. 2001. 

But there's more.

Andre Albinati, who was an advisor on Martin's Liberal leadership campaign and also served on his transition team, was working as Pettigrew's aide shortly before the $17 million was announced. Five days before the announcement, Albinati registered as a lobbyist with Earnscliffe's lobbying arm. 

In a December interview with the Ottawa Citizen, Pettigrew's spokesman, Sebastien Thebarge, was asked whether Albinati, who served as a policy advisor on the softwood lumber file, worked on the grant. "He was responsible for softwood lumber in general, yes," Thebarge told the Citizen. 

At the time of his move to Earnscliffe, Ethics Counsellor Howard Wilson had discussions with Albinati and found he would not be in a conflict as long as he did not lobby his former department, Foreign Affairs and International Trade, for a full year. 

When he arrived at Earnscliffe, Albinati joined two other people who worked on Martin's leadership campaign who were already registered to lobby the government on behalf of FPAC, in addition to Thorkelson who was in-house. 

Michael Robinson, who headed Martin's transition team, and Charles Bird, who volunteered on Martin's leadership bid, were both registered to lobby for FPAC. Robinson is still at Earnscliffe, while Bird left last month to become vice-president, government affairs, for Bell Globemedia, the parent company of both the Globe and Mail and CTV.

Even though the announcement was made nearly two years ago, FPAC revealed the deal with Earnscliffe just two days after an inquiry from PoliticsWatch about whether any of the $17 million for the campaign went to ad agencies that were involved in the sponsorship scandal. 

An FPAC spokesman told PoliticsWatch that ad agencies were not used because it was an "advocacy campaign." However, he did not mention the involvement of Earnscliffe. The Earnscliffe link was reported in a brief, three-paragraph story in today's Globe and Mail, which did not note the links with Albinati, even though they were reported in the Ottawa Citizen last year. 

This link to Earnscliffe also comes just days after Prime Minister Paul Martin declared in Quebec City the end of cronyism in Ottawa "come hell or high water."

"No longer will the key to Ottawa be who do you know," the prime minister said. "We are going to condemn to history the practice and the politics of cronyism."

Conservative MP Chuck Strahl said he hasn't seen any evidence that Martin plans to end this type of cronyism. 

"Every time he gets up there and gives this impassioned plea that come hell or high water he's going to clean this up, within a day or two we find out that not only is it not cleaned up, but the people around him are doing the same thing that Jean Chretien's folks did: They're using their access to build an empire or to raise money that no one else can do." 

He said although Martin's speech was a "good, passionate speech," this latest revelation is a dose of reality. 

"It seems to me that if you follow the money, Earnscliffe and the people around there have just a remarkable ability to get an inside track on these jobs," he said. "It's just a real head-shaker. We should all be so lucky to fall into these arrangements where $800,000 falls in your lap." 

He noted that firms are built on smaller contracts than the $800,000 awarded to Earnscliffe. 

"It's a big deal," he said, adding that the Tories are going to raise this in the House next week. 

The Canadian Press recently reported that Earnscliffe received more than $6 million in government contracts since Martin became finance minister in 1993. The $800,000 would not be included in that figure since it came from a private association. 

According to the Foreign Affairs news release from 2002, FPAC received the $17 million for "a softwood industry-led campaign to raise awareness of the negative impact that softwood lumber duties will have in the United States, and to encourage productive negotiations and a resolution of this dispute."

In the news release, Pettigrew stated, "We fully support our industry in its efforts to bring these damaging costs to the attention of Americans. When they realize that these duties favour the few at the expense of many, perhaps Americans will see the need to resolve the dispute in a reasonable way."

Check out these related links:

arrow-trans.gif (111 bytes) PM to restore integrity "come hell or high water"
arrow-trans.gif (111 bytes) 
Address by Prime Minister Paul Martin to the Chamber of Commerce in Quebec City, Quebec
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Martin-linked group received $17-million (Globe and Mail, Mar. 19)

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