Why Warren Kinsella's Adscam involvement matters

My favourite subject to blog about is freedom of speech and the abusive censorship powers of Canada's human rights commissions. But I occasionally blog about other subjects, including partisan politics.

It's important that I blog about Warren Kinsella and his involvement in Adscam -- the sponsorship scandal that discredited the Liberal Party and broke their hammerlock on political power.

I can think of three reasons to keep writing about this.

1. Kinsella has threatened to sue me if I talk about it (he already has one lawsuit pending against me). That in itself is a reason to keep writing about it -- because we should never give in to threats.

2. Adscam is a very important public issue. The money involved was important, but far more important was the culture of corruption that pervaded the government. We've got to learn our lessons from that -- every party must. We can't be scared away from writing about Adscam. Kinsella is a bully, who uses lawsuits -- or the threat of lawsuits -- abusively. Besides threatening me with a lawsuit, he has also threatened various bloggers, as well as senior mainstream media journalists from Andrew Coyne to Norman Spector -- all for discussing his role in Adscam. Sorry, we don't abide political censorship in Canada, especially not about issues that are in the public interest like this. If anything, our culture (and our law) permit and encourage scrutiny and criticism of our political class. It's built in to our Canadian system -- even our "loyal opposition" is designed to be a permanent critic of the government.

3. Kinsella says he's part of Michael Ignatieff's campaign. That is newsworthy for several reasons. First, it goes to Ignatieff's own judgment. Kinsella said he "supported" Stephane Dion for leader in 2006, but Dion made the decision to keep his distance from Kinsella, essentially exiling him from the party. Now Ignatieff has welcomed Kinsella back -- but without any statement of contrition from Kinsella about his Adscam conduct. That goes to Ignatieff's judgment, especially about the core issue of public corruption.

And it raises another, troubling question too: if Ignatieff ever does become prime minister, what will Kinsella's role be? Will he be permitted to do the things he did when Jean Chretien was in office? Will Ignatieff let him send memos to non-partisan civil servants, ordering them to divert public monies, like Kinsella did? What privileges, perks and power will Kinsella get from an Ignatieff government? That is an important question to answer.

For these three reasons, I'm going to keep writing about Kinsella and Adscam. Of course, I'll keep writing about other things, too!