10/1. The Sponsorship Scandal
It's difficult to know just whether to put this at the top or bottom of the list so it's going to go at either end. That's right - it's arguably the single most significant issue in the federal government that has already, for the most part, fallen out of the media's viewfinder and its importance warrants double entry on the 2004 list.
2004 marked the first full year of Canada being governed by the man who would be king - or at least had been planning his ascension to 24 Sussex since at least 1993. Ten years in the making, one would expect great things to come from the new regime.
What a let down.
An old rhetorical joke asks: "What is Martinizing and why does it take one hour?" The political parallel could ask the same question, only replacing one hour with one year. To carry the lame metaphor to its obvious conclusion, one of the key promises the new Prime Minister made was along the lines of 'cleaning up Ottawa.' In other words, a 2004 resolution would have involved making sure that dollars were spent where they ought to be spent instead of being frittered away on the latest government whim of the day.
Like most resolutions, this one made it about as far as February, when Auditor General Sheila Fraser unleashed her scathing report on the state of government finances, particularly the truckloads of unaccounted-for money unloaded through the federal government's sponsorship program [http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/cana... ] . The report, among other things, highlighted not only that vast quantities of tax dollars were being spent to promote Canadian federalism to Quebec nationalists, but also that very few controls were in place to ensure that value for dollar was achieved or even that dollars went where they were supposed to go.
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