Why did an ad agency donate $10,000 to Warren Kinsella's 1997 election campaign?

DECEMBER 14 UPDATE: Please see my important update to this post, here.

If Warren Kinsella disagrees with the legal findings of fact made against him by Justice John Gomery in his Judicial Inquiry into Adscam, why didn’t Kinsella file an appeal?

Other Liberals who felt wronged by Justice Gomery appealed. But not Kinsella. Justice Gomery said Kinsella’s conduct was “highly inappropriate”. Kinsella grumbled about it, but he didn’t take any steps to overturn it.

It’s funny; Kinsella has made a cottage industry of denouncing Justice Gomery. On his website alone, Kinsella calls Justice Gomery a “joke and a circus”; “grossly biased”, someone running a “despicable political inquisition”, someone who deals in “smears" and shredding reputations, and on and on. A quick Google search finds hundreds more insults. In one op-ed, he comes out and states the obvious: he holds Gomery’s Commission “in contempt”.

So, it’s typical Kinsella – a cascade of insults. But Kinsella never uses one particular insult: he never says Justice Gomery’s findings were legally incorrect.

That’s a pretty glaring omission, don’t you think?

In fact, I can’t find a single instance of Kinsella even acknowledging that he was found to be “highly inappropriate”, let alone disputing it. In dozens of media interviews Kinsella had done about Justice Gomery, he never once discloses that critical fact.

If I were found by a judge to have engaged in “highly inappropriate” conduct – trying to funnel government contracts to a criminal – and I thought that the judge was “grossly biased”, “a joke”, etc., I’d attest my innocence, and file an appeal.

That’s the one thing Kinsella didn’t do.

Oh, he vomited insults on Justice Gomery – that’s Kinsella’s specialty. But he didn’t try to overturn Justice Gomery’s findings.

Sort of says it all.

Oh, by the way, Norman Spector points out an interesting detail that I haven’t seen elsewhere (scroll to the bottom). Kinsella wrote his “highly inappropriate” memo about advertising contracts on November 23, 1995. (You can see it here, on pages 159 and 160.) Then, a year and a half later, Kinsella ran for Parliament in North Vancouver (he lost, of course). But look at Kinsella’s Elections Canada filings, here. Look at the tenth donation. Look who gave Kinsella a cool $10,000 towards his campaign: Palmer Jarvis Communications.

That’s a large advertising agency.

With plenty of government business.

The same sort of government business that would have been covered by Kinsella’s “highly inappropriate” memo.

Why did they give so much money to him? Was it just their civic duty -- $10,000 worth of democratic spirit?

I’ll have to ask Kinsella. I’m curious – aren’t you?

If I were Michael Ignatieff, I’d probably want to know Kinsella’s answer to that question, too -- before the entire country hears it at trial.