The Liberal Party of Canada could be targeted in a taxpayer-funded lawsuit to recover millions of dollars that went missing in the federal sponsorship program, a newspaper report says.
INDEPTH: The Gomery report
In its Thursday edition, La Presse quotes a source who says the Harper government has told its lawyers to prepare to sue the Liberals for "all the dirty money," an amount it estimates is between $1 million and $40 million.
In addition to recovering funds, the move could have political benefits for the minority Conservatives, keeping the sponsorship scandal in the minds of voters until the next federal election.
FROM MAY 5, 2006: Sponsorship player Brault sentenced to 30 months
The Liberals repaid $1.14 million after the Gomery public inquiry found that some money paid to outside companies under the federal sponsorship program found its way back into the coffers of the party's Quebec wing.
The inquiry also heard that some ad firms in Quebec agreed to keep Liberal organizers on the payroll in return for lucrative sponsorship contracts.
Total benefit to Liberal party still unclear
Former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien's government quietly created the program to raise the profile of the federal government in Quebec after the 1995 sovereignty referendum. It was intended to convince Quebeckers that their province would benefit from remaining within Canada.
Nearly 10 years later, the auditor general said the program's managers "broke just about every rule in the book," awarding large contracts without tender to Liberal-friendly ad firms – in many cases, in return for little or no work.
The exact amount of money that made its way to the Liberal party has never been pinned down.
One audit said the companies that received sponsorship contracts passed on $800,000 in legal, registered donations to the Liberal party. However, marketing executive Jean Brault testified at the Gomery commission that he made secret donations of about $1.7 million.
Brault was recently sentenced to 30 months behind bars for fraud connected to the sponsorship program.