Apr. 6, 2005. 09:02 AM

Scandal's acid eats into Liberal prospects


CHANTAL HÉBERT
Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government may be one Ontario tantrum away from becoming history.

When the testimony heard over the past week at the Gomery commission is finally published — possibly as early as today — all party strategists will have their fingers on the pulse of public opinion in Ontario, the Liberal party's heartland.

If the Conservatives in particular pick up a strong beat of indignation against the government, Paul Martin's minority regime could lose the confidence of Parliament before this year's batch of tulips blooms in the nation's capital.

Quebec will not factor into the equation. It is already lost to the Liberals.

The latest set of sponsorship revelations will only confirm the obvious.

It will take at least another election cycle before francophone Quebecers reconsider their judgment of the federal Liberal party and/or look beyond the Bloc Québécois to another government alternative.

Thus, only if further revelations of Liberal wrongdoing give the sponsorship scandal new traction outside Quebec will Conservative leader Stephen Harper have a real incentive to go for the jugular of the minority government.

Despite the ban on the publication of the testimony of Groupaction's Jean Brault, much is already known about the import of what he has alleged to date.

Over the past few weeks, his testimony has forced Martin to change tack both at the commission and in the Commons.

On his instructions, Liberal lawyers are challenging Brault's testimony in front of Mr. Justice John Gomery; the party also has asked the RCMP to investigate how its Quebec branch operated over the course of the Chrétien era.

After months of trying to shut down queries in the Commons by telling the opposition to hold off until the inquiry's report, it is Martin who is no longer content to wait to defend his party.

The Prime Minister has to know that if his first line of defence does not hold with the public, his government might crumble under opposition pressures.

It could be that the gist of the Brault testimony, if and when it becomes public knowledge, will come across as anti-climatic.

A public jaded by a string of government mismanagement stories may be inclined to shrug it off.

Over the past decade, Canadians have shown themselves to be a forgiving lot when it comes to the Liberal government, giving it a pass on a referendum near-miss, the gun registry debacle, the human resources grants boondoggle and, just last year, the sponsorship scandal.

Many may find the government's rationale, that the alleged sins at hand are those of another regime forced out to pasture by the very Prime Minister who is now at the helm, compelling enough.

If that is the case, then it will be business as usual for Parliament this spring and the minority government will lurch along to the next crisis, probably when Gomery issues his fact-finding reports next fall.

But if it is not, Canada is in for a bruising federal campaign.

Commission insiders insist that, as lethal as the Brault testimony might be to the Liberal party, there is yet more and worse to come.

If they are right, a federal election this spring would unfold against the backdrop of a daily stream of damaging testimony to the Liberals.

Whether that stands to be more corrosive than the entire pool of the final Gomery report later this year is ultimately going to be Harper's call to make.

One way or another, the optics on the Martin government's electoral prospects have undergone a tectonic shift over the past few weeks.

Only a month ago, speculation revolved around how the Liberal government would go about securing a majority.

Now, it is about whether Martin could even salvage a minority in an election held between now and the end of the year.