Scavengers and Scalawags

Biggest Scavenger of the Moment: Canada’s governor-general Adrienne Clarkson

March 29, 2004

This modern-day Marie Antoinette and Queen’s representative cost Canadians more than $40 million last year--blowing $5.3 on a single junket. The former CBC reporter said she was "circompolaring" when she took the Canadian elite on a northern trip to Finland, Iceland and Russia last fall. "I am above politics" she decreed when asked to explain the decadence of her largesse.

Hillary Rodham Saul is GG’s better half. Snooty Socialist author and circumpolar junket sidekick, he recently deplored the end of globalization and threw temper tantrums when Canadian journalist Ann Rohmer dared to ask him circumpolaring questions. "When’s the last time you’ve (emphasis ours) been to the north," he demanded. "Have you been to 41 Arctic communities?"

Serpent in her own class. This Canadian politician rose to infamy when she spat out: "I hate those American bastards, automatically originating the CanadaFreePress.com "I hate those Liberal bastards" buttons and T-shirt campaign, Parrish, who won, the support of Muslim voters with her anti-American sentiments will soon resurface in news headlines again. In one of the ugliest and most personal battles, she narrowly won 2,165 to 1,925 over archrival Steve Mahoney in the newly-created riding of Mississauga-Erindale and will be back before the voters when Prime Minister Paul Martin drops the federal Election writ.

Scott (Judas) Brison betrayed his Nova Scotia riding of King-Hants for power, trading in his lifelong allegiance to the Progressive Conservative Party for Paul Martin. The Liberals were riding high when Brison defected. Not long after came the multi-million dollar sponsorship scandal, with a Liberal freefall in the polls. When the new Conservative Party of Canada held its recent convention, choosing Stephen Harper as leader, Judas Brison was among the first to begin harping against Harper.

Bye-Bye-Miss-Economic-pie girl. Stronach, who lost out on the Tory leadership to Stephen Harper kept going AWOL during recent leadership debates. But when she did show, she talked constantly about Canada’s "economic pie". The multimillionaire CEO of auto-parts maker Magna International insists she’s not just "Paul Martin in a cocktail dress." We think Belinda’s more red than blue. Frank Stronach’s "daddy’s girl" is not through with the new Conservative Party of Canada. She lost out on the leadership, but she’ll be running for a seat for Newmarket-Aurora riding Member of Parliament in around-the-corner federal elections.

"Gags" Gagliano is straight out of the Sopranos. Journalists dubbed it the "Billion Dollar Boondoggle" when it turned out that over $1 billion in job training funds had somehow vanished when Alfonso Gagliano was Minister of the Human Resources Department. Later in 2001, he came under fire in his position as Minister of Public Works. It was revealed that the department awarded millions in advertising contracts to Groupaction, a Montreal advertising firm that employed Gag’s son. In January 2002, Prime Minister Jean Chretien removed him from Public Works, appointing him as ambassador to Denmark and giving new meaning to the phrase "something’s fishy in Denmark".

Dennis the Huckster, who brought the Rolling Stones to Toronto for a SARS concert last July, has never given the public an accounting of how much money was raked in. This dude has promised to bring a University of Peace to Toronto’s harbourfront. Promising to resign his Parliament Hill seat if a property in his riding wasn’t converted over to the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP) for the homeless, on a self-imposed deadline, he reneged instead of resigning. If Dennis the Huckster has his way, he’ll move the entire United Nations--kit and caboodle--to downtown Toronto, sticking taxpayers with their parking tickets.

"Toady Tabuns" is what newspaper Our Toronto used to call him when Tabuns was a councillor on Toronto City Council. Tabuns cost city taxpayers a mint when he and his executive assistant Holly Penfound banned the circus from coming to town. An Ontario judge overturned the ill-fated motion, saying council had "overstepped its bounds". Years later, Tabuns led a boycott of Harvey’s Hamburgers all because the outlet had contributed to the Conservative Party. When the Harvey’s fire died down, we were not in the least surprised to spot Tabuns carrying his bagged lunch–a Harvey’s Hamburger at the nearby Atrium on Bay. As head honcho of Greenpeace Canada, he locked out his own staff who comprises the smallest union local in existence. The Ontario Federation of Labour later brought staff back. Never far from the side of NDP leader, former Toronto Councillor Jack Layton, Tabuns is running for an east-end seat in upcoming federal elections.

Three years after striking the motherlode by getting then Finance Minister Paul Martin to award a revolving "arm’s length from the government and taxpayer" $250 million endowment to the left-leaning Federation of Canadian Municipalities, climate activist Louise Comeau is for the next few months only a part-time employee for the Federation. According to Elizabeth May, Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada, Comeau is Canada’s most influential activist. "If you ask anyone in government or industry who is behind the pressure on government to deal with climate change, they’d just say Louise–they wouldn’t even use her last name." If you asked if Louise forfeits her six-figure salary to work two days a week, you wouldn’t get answers.

Travels with the likes of Mikhail Gorbachev, his partner in a plan to dump the Ten Commandments for the Earth Charter. A Canadian, and welcome in palaces, castles and corridors of power, this powerbroker has a Rolodex to die for. A special advisor to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and mentor to scandal plagued Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, Uncle Mo created a scandal of his own when, as Chairman of Ontario Hydro, he tried to invest Canadian tax dollars in a Costa Rican rainforest. Among other things, Strong is the shadowy architect of the Kyoto Protocol.