Alfonso Gagliano, the former public works minister at the centre of the federal sponsorship scandal, said Friday that his life has been ruined by the controversy over the issue.
Speaking with reporters after testifying before the inquiry investigating allegations of misspending and fraud in the program, Mr. Gagliano told reporters in Ottawa on Friday that he has been unable to find work because his name has been muddied by the scandal.
The inquiry, under Mr. Justice John Gomery, is looking into how millions of dollars of sponsorship money was funnelled to Liberal-friendly ad firms
"It affected my family; it affected my career," he told reporters. "It's a year I'm back from Denmark, I couldn't find a job."
Mr. Gagliano said he blames negative media attention in part for making him unemployable.
He was stripped of his post as public works minister by former prime minister Jean Chrétien and made ambassador to Denmark. He was fired from that role early last year by the current Liberal government when it was revealed that he was named in the Auditor-General's scathing report on the sponsorship program. That report led to the current inquiry.
In his testimony before Judge Gomery this week, despite allegations of patronage, Mr. Gagliano placed the responsibility for the decision-making process in the sponsorship program solely on the civil service.
He said final decisions were made by bureaucrats, not him, on which programs were to get funding, contradicting former officials at Public Works who have said that he sometimes decided on the distribution of sponsorship funds.
He has insisted that he provided suggestions only to ensure that the program reached its policy objective. Overall, he said, the program was effective in increasing the visibility of federalist symbols in postreferendum Quebec - its goal during its existence between 1996 and 2003.
He insisted to reporters on Friday that he did not unduly influence decisions in the sponsorship program.
He said while he gave his blessing to decisions, a blessing and political interference are not the same thing.
"We're playing with the words, but … I said this is a political program - not political in the sense partisan - but political in the sense of being federalism against separatism. And so I was giving political input. I've been saying that all along and I'll continue to say it."
He said the minister gives "input" but does not sign contracts or give contracts.
"The minister gives political direction and that's what I was doing."
In testimony on Friday, Mr. Gagliano tried to quell a controversy over his dealings with Jacques Corriveau, a former vice-president of the federal Liberal party.
Mr. Corriveau, through a printing company he owns, provided campaign signs for Liberal candidates in Quebec in the 1993, 1997 and 2000 elections.
Bernard Roy, chief counsel for the Gomery inquiry, noted this week that Corriveau's firm, Pluri Design, also got subcontracts - channelled through yet another private company Groupe Polygone - for work on sponsorship projects.
Opposition MPs were quick to pounce, contending Mr. Corriveau had, in effect, been paid back for his partisan Liberal work with public funds.
Mr. Gagliano acknowledged that he met Mr. Corriveau and Jean Pelletier, then chief of staff to Mr. Chrétien, in late 1997 to discuss outstanding bills that the Liberals had yet to pay Mr. Corriveau for his campaign work on the election held six months earlier.
The meeting had nothing, however, to do with sponsorships, Mr. Gagliano said, adding that no government money ever went to pay the party's debt.
"Everybody who worked for the Liberal party, whether on an election campaign or outside an election campaign, was paid by the Liberal party."
Mr. Gagliano doubled at the time as public works minister and chief party organizer for Quebec.
But he said he did not even know, until Mr. Roy raised the issue, that Mr. Corriveau's firm had received money under the sponsorship program.
The inquiry is looking into $250-million in sponsorship spending that was ostensibly aimed at promoting national unity and fighting separatism.
An estimated $100-million went to Liberal-friendly ad agencies, public relations firms and other middlemen who often failed to deliver quality work.