Prime Minister Paul Martin denied yesterday that he has reopened a civil war inside the governing Liberal Party, but bitter blasts are being exchanged between the two camps.
Two days after Paul Martin staffers blamed Jean Chrétien's camp for the sponsorship scandal, Mr. Chrétien's insiders took the same tack, accusing Mr. Martin of launching a smear campaign that will hobble the party before an election.
Several Chrétien insiders also questioned Mr. Martin's move to call a judicial inquiry, suggesting it increased the impact of the scandal. They asserted that the new Prime Minister should have followed his predecessor's practice of asserting that the police will find anyone who committed a crime, and to do no more.
"You take six weeks of heat, and then you move on," one said.
On Thursday, Mr. Martin insisted he knew nothing about the sponsorship scandal because Mr. Chrétien's team kept him out of the loop on Quebec political matters.
A day earlier, Martin insiders had anonymously told numerous reporters that Mr. Chrétien was responsible for creating the culture that allowed the scandal to happen, that there were "two tribes in Quebec" and Mr. Martin's people were on the outside, and that Mr. Chrétien's people would in the end be found responsible for the scandal.
Yesterday, Mr. Martin said once again that Mr. Chrétien is a man of "unquestioned integrity." And he insisted that Liberals weren't headed into a period of severe infighting. Instead, he said, party members have the same desire to get to the bottom of the sponsorship scandal as the general public.
"I believe that just as Canadians are outraged by this, Liberals are outraged by this," he said at a press conference in Brockville after he met with local business leaders. "Every Liberal across the country wants to know what happened."
The leadership race is over, Mr. Martin said, shrugging off suggestions that some may now be out to smear him. In any case, he added, he will not be diverted from having all the facts about the sponsorship program brought to light.
"I am mad that there are some people who clearly perverted what should have been a government program that should have done a lot of good."
Mr. Martin said he decided to hold his press conference on Thursday because he was upset by the "cavalier attitude" displayed by Crown corporations — some of which are led by Chrétien loyalists — that were fingered in the Auditor-General's report. "I was really very, very upset."
But, as Mr. Martin was speaking publicly yesterday, Chrétien insiders launched an attack on the Martin camp under cover of anonymity, speaking to The Globe and other news organizations.
A former senior Chrétien official, speaking on condition he not be named, charged that Mr. Martin's camp smeared Mr. Chrétien, and said he must fire the aides who made anonymous attacks on Mr. Chrétien. Mr. Martin has said he does not support the anonymous attacks., with which Mr. Martin said he disagreed.
"What is Martin going to do about it? What leadership is he going to show?
"Liberals are joking that he's a temporary prime minister, and that what we have here is leadership that waffles, because every day it's a different story and somebody else is being blamed for it. And there's great nervousness in the party that the election's going to be a major problem with this type of leadership — or lack thereof."
He said that scandals did not stick with Mr. Chrétien because he defended people, and did not hang Liberals out to dry. Instead, the current Prime Minister's Office changes its story every day.
"This war that his officials have started is now going to leave the Liberal Party a shell of itself. There's no opposition, but there's the old saying that governments defeat themselves."
The leak of a letter written to Mr. Martin by the Liberal Party's former national policy chair, Akaash Maharaj, was viewed yesterday as a volley in that war by many in the party, including Mr. Maharaj.
In the letter, written in February, 2002, Mr. Maharaj asked Mr. Martin to check out "rumours" about the sponsorship scandal so that Liberals could prove them false.
Mr. Maharaj, who lost last November's race for the Liberal Party presidency to a candidate backed by the Martin machine, said dozens of people had the letter, and that he did not leak it.
He backed Mr. Martin in an interview yesterday, and said it is not surprising that Mr. Martin would not have solved all the problems before news stories provoked the government to call in Auditor-General Sheila Fraser.
He said that he only raised concerns about widely circulated rumours and public media reports. The Globe and Mail had already published more than a dozen stories on the sponsorship scandal before that time.
One month after the letter, in March, 2002, The Globe's story about a $550,000 report commissioned from Montreal's GroupAction Marketing led the government to ask Ms. Fraser to investigate the contract. That probe led to the broader study she released Tuesday.
