Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin said on Monday he would resign if an official probe into a government financial scandal showed he had been aware of what was going on.
Martin insists he did not know that government officials had taken C$100 million (US$76 million) from a sponsorship fund designed to promote national unity in French-speaking Quebec and given it instead to advertising firms closely tied to the ruling Liberals.
Asked by reporters in Quebec City whether he would resign if the probe showed he had known about the scandal, he replied: "Absolutely."
The Liberal government has been in turmoil since a report last week revealed the extent of the scandal, which took place from 1997 to 2001 -- a time when Martin was finance minister.
Martin, who took over as prime minister from Jean Chretien in December, has ordered a public inquiry into what happened and says those guilty of wrongdoing will be brought to justice.
"I don't know where the money went and in order to find out where it went we have to put no limits of the ability of the [inquiry] to look," he said.
Martin said he wants the inquiry to start quickly. Similar investigations in the past have lasted up to 18 months.
"I have said that I am quite prepared to testify in front of the inquiry. In fact, I would be very anxious to do so," Martin later told reporters in Montreal.
He praised Chretien as "a man of integrity" but Liberal insiders fear the probe could exacerbate tensions between supporters of the two men and undermine the party as it plans for an early federal election.
Martin was grilled for two hours by listeners to a nationwide phone-in show on CBC radio and television on Sunday and accepted partial responsibility for the scandal, which he admitted had become "a very large problem" for the Liberals.
Until recently, Martin aides had said he planned to call an election for May 10 to take advantage of the party's popularity. But polls now show the Liberals slumping in the polls -- though still in first place -- and many callers on Sunday told Martin they did not want an election until the inquiry had finished its work.
"On the one hand I think people certainly have the right to know how all that [the inquiry] turns out. On the other hand they have the right to say that a new prime minister and a new government ... should seek a mandate," said Martin, declining to say whether the scandal would affect the election's timing.
Martin -- who said he is "mad as hell" about what happened -- has appeared before the media every day since the release of the report and will travel across Canada this week to stress his determination to clear up the scandal.
"I imagine that everyone is furious and disgusted but what's important now us that we're cleaning things up ... and we're discovering the truth," he said.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of
RSS