"Highly inappropriate" Adscam figure joins Michael Ignatieff's campaign

For all of his flaws, the selection of Stephane Dion as leader of the Liberal Party represented a step away from the corruption that was rife in Jean Chretien's government. Dion had other unfortunate Liberal traits -- elitism, arrogance, socialism in his veins -- but he was not a thief like so many others who inhabited the Liberal Party in Quebec, several of whom have since been sentenced to jail terms for their roles in Adscam, the scandal that saw $250 million in public money siphoned off by Liberal-connected crooks.

Which is why it's so surprising to learn that Michael Ignatieff, the leading contender to succeed Dion, has allowed Warren Kinsella to join his campaign team.

Kinsella was a key embarrassing figure in Adscam. The judicial inquiry into the matter, in a chapter titled "Who is responsible?" mentioned Kinsella by name over and over again, calling his conduct "highly inappropriate". In short, Kinsella was a political staffer at the time, and he wrote to a senior member of the public service demanding that government advertising and polling contracts be steered through Chuck Guite. Guite was later convicted on five counts of fraud, as the central figure in the scam.

Kinsella had tried to get even more public money steered through Guite; fortunately, the brave public servant who was on the receiving ends of Kinsella's demands didn't give into the bullying.

I'm stunned that Ignatieff would allow himself to be seen in public with such a figure as Kinsella.

But perhaps Ignatieff and Kinsella have more in common than it first appears.

Ignatieff famously denounced Israel as a "war criminal" for its response to the 2006 Hezbollah terrorist attacks on its civilians.

That fits in rather nicely with Kinsella's decision to give advice and help to the Canadian Islamic Congress -- whose president-for-life, Mohamed Elmasry, has publicly declared that every adult Jew in Israel is a legitimate target for a terrorist attack.

With Kinsella securely on board, can it be much longer before Ignatieff taps Jean Lafleur as his Quebec lieutenant, and Elmasry himself as a candidate?

Nov. 18 update: Today Kinsella told my friend Mike Brock that he didn't agree with my characterization that he was a "key" figure in Adscam. He was more of an Adscam B-team, definitely not in the big leagues like Guite or Lafleur. I think that's a matter of opinion and interpretation. There were two sides to Adscam: those shovelling the money out of the government, and those receiving the money -- though, of course, much of the money was cycled back to the Liberal Party in Quebec.

Kinsella was the chief of staff to the Public Works Minister, and he ordered a civil servant to do some shovelling out. Sounds like a pretty big fish to me, trying a pretty brazen scam -- though, thankfully, the civil servant refused. I have no doubt there were people more senior than Kinsella on the inside, too -- but none of them were stupid enough to put their corrupt instructions in a written memo, like Kinsella did.

That said, I'm open to a debate on the question: how big of an Adscam player was Kinsella? Big? Really big? Medium sized? I originally used the word "key" above, but I've edited it out, replacing it with embarrassing. Because, really: anyone mentioned a dozen times in the judicial inquiry, anyone caught red-handed trying to funnel government money to a criminal, anyone dumb enough to put it in a memo, and anyone legally found to be "highly inappropriate" is an embarrassment whether he was "key" or -- as he claims now, in the first recorded instance of Kinsella trying to take less credit for something -- a bit player in the corruption scandal of the decade. I'm really quite surprised Ignatieff would let such an unethical person on his team.