Auditor General s Report on Sponsorship Misspending: Purgatory for Gagliano and Chretien; Serious Concern about Paul Martin

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1 Auditor General s Report on Sponsorship Misspending: Purgatory for Gagliano and Chretien; Serious Concern about Paul Martin BDO Dunwoody/Chamber Weekly CEO/Business Leader Poll by COMPAS in the Financial Post for Publication February 16, 2004 COMPAS Inc. Public Opinion and Customer Research

2 1.0. Introduction The business leader panel holds Jean Chretien and Alfonso Gagliano unambiguously responsible for the sponsorship program imbroglio 91% hold the former Public Works Minister very responsible, 80% the former Prime Minister. Prime Minister Paul Martin is held far less responsible but he is certainly not off the hook. Only 12% of respondents feel that he has no responsibility at all while 38% hold him very responsible with most of the remainder holding him at least somewhat responsible. Compared to the general public, interviewed in a National Post/COMPAS poll Friday February 13 th for Saturday publication, the business panel appears tougher on Chretien and Gagliano and gentler on Martin. The business panel was interviewed Tuesday through Thursday, mainly before the revelation in the National Post that Martin had been warned about the misspending by a senior Liberal party official in Almost Unanimous Blame for Gagliano and Chrétien--Substantial Blame for Martin Too Business leaders see Alfonso Gagliano and Jean Chrétien as the most responsible for mismanagement of federal funds in the sponsorship scandal. The evidence for this can be seen in the high mean and top box scores for both Gagliano and Chrétien, as shown in table 1. Former Finance Minister Paul Martin receives less harsh criticism from business leaders with a mean score of 3.9 on the 7 point scale assessing his responsibility for the misspending. This compares with means of 6.3 and 5.7 for Gagliano and Chretien. Meanwhile 38% score Martin 5-7 on the 7 point scale, thereby signifying that 38% hold him very responsible. This compares with 91% and 80%, respectively, for Gagliano and Chretien. Only 1-2% hold Chretien and Gagliano not at all responsible, scoring 1 on the 7 point scale. By comparison, 12% score Martin a 1 on the same scale. 1

3 Table 1: Q1. As you may know there has been talk in the media about the recent Auditor-General s report on government spending. Using a 7-point scale where 7 means entirely responsible and 1, the opposite, to what extent are each of the following responsible for the misuse of funds in the sponsorship program and advertising grants? [RANDOMIZE] Former Public Works Minister Alfonso Gagliano Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien Former Finance Minister Paul Martin MEA N DNK The sponsorship program itself receives mixed opinions from Canada s business leaders. About half the panel (45%) feels that the program funnelled money to friends of the then Prime Minister and did little to help the country while almost no respondents (5%) feel that it was an important factor in federalist success in the referendum. Most of the remainder (39%) feel that the program was a mix of fraud and federalist service. Table 2: Q2. As you may know, the sponsorship program was created to increase Federal presence and visibility in Quebec. Over $250 million was spent to sponsor events with $100 million given to communications agencies as production fees and commissions. Which of the following opinions is closest to your own? [ROTATE FIRST TWO] % The sponsorship program was designed to funnel money to friends of Jean Chrétien and did little to help the country 45 Both 39 The sponsorship program, while favouring Quebec companies, was an important factor in Federalist success in the last referendum 5 DNK 11 2

4 3.0. Paul Martin Retains Some Residual Goodwill Though the business leader panel holds Martin at least somewhat and in many cases seriously responsible for the fraud, the former Finance Minister benefits from residual goodwill. The overwhelming majority believes that he will outperform Chretien at exposing and eliminating misspending while most do not believe that he will accept responsibility for the sponsorship program mess itself, as shown in table 3. Table 3: Q3. There s been some talk about how the Martin government will react to the Auditor-General s report. Using a 7-point scale where 7 means completely agree, and 1 the opposite, please score the following opinions. [ROTATE] Martin will do a better job than his predecessor in exposing and eliminating government misspending Martin will not accept responsibility for the government s spending actions while he was Finance Minister MEA N DNK The panel s far greater confidence in Martin than in Chretien stems from a widespread feeling of frustration with, if not, contempt for Martin s predecessor. As shown in table 4, the panel is not enormously confident that the Martin government will actually award contracts fairly or be accountable to taxpayers. When this lukewarm finding is set alongside the widespread confidence that Martin will outperform Chretien, as shown in table 3, a fair conclusion is that more of the panel s goodwill towards Martin comes from its frustration with Chretien than its unambiguous confidence in the latter s successor. 3

5 Table 4: Q4. Please score each of these on a 100-point scale where 100 is the best trustworthiness score and zero, the worst score [ROTATE] MEAN SCORE D NK The Martin Government s commitment to awarding contacts fairly 63 1 The Martin Government s accountability to taxpayers Methodology The National Post/COMPAS web-survey of CEOs and leaders of small, medium, and large corporations and among executives of the local and national Chambers of Commerce was conducted February 10-12, Respondents constitute an essentially hand-picked panel. Because medium and small companies are more numerous in the economy and hence among Chamber membership, the actual respondents in this consultative panel are drawn more from these strata than from the stratum of the largest companies. Because of the small population of CEOs and business leaders from which the sample was drawn, the study can be considered more accurate than comparably sized general public studies. In studies of the general public, surveys of 184 are deemed accurate to within approximately 7.2 percentage points 19 times out of 20. The principal and coinvestigator on this study are Conrad Winn, Ph.D and Tamara Gottlieb. 4