Ouellet is Done like dinner:

Ouellet involved in abuses, audits find

By CAMPBELL CLARK

Ottawa — Suspended Canada Post president André Ouellet pushed marketing and other contracts toward firms friendly to the Liberal government, skirted hiring practices to get jobs for favourites and ran up expenses that averaged $250,000 a year, two audits released yesterday found.

The reports thrust the sponsorship scandal back into the lap of the Liberal government only a month after it nearly cost the Grits the federal election, and raised larger questions about abuses at a Crown corporation run by a man who has been a giant of the Liberal Party since the 1970s.

Mr. Ouellet, suspended with pay since February, has a week to respond to the findings — the same process that preceded the firing last winter of two other heads of Crown corporations that were named in a critical auditor-general's report.

Mr. Ouellet, who sat in the Commons from 1967 to 1995, was a powerful Liberal cabinet minister over three decades. He was Jean Chrétien's foreign affairs minister and Quebec lieutenant until he left government. He was appointed chairman of Canada Post when he left government and became president in 1999.

Thank God this did not surface during the campaign, eh? Hey, wait a second....I guess we don't have to guess who ordered the audits and when they were ordered, right?

Verrry interrrresting...veerrrrryy interesting.