Kinsella - Spector: Thrilla in Vanilla

Warren K and Norm Spector are back to brawling. Here are some of the previous rounds here and here.

The General comes in with an upper cut right here:

October 17, 2005 - I feel a flame war coming on! Here's hopin'.As anticipated, Big Tobacco Norm couldn't resist my challenge: I wanted to know about one single sponsorship program thingie that took place in 1995. One! Norman, who knows of no better oracle than the one he eyeballs in the bathroom mirror every morning, actually cites himself as a source on his terrific little web site, and then obliquely observes:
...
"The most interesting example of what I have in mind is a concert in Alberta. According to testimony at the Gomery Inquiry, the concert was on the first list of sponsorships approved in 1995. That sponsorship was managed by a BC agency."

I did check out what Norm had to say today, because I didn't think he would let Warren slide:

MONDAY EVENING
--Earlier today, I wrote about a sponsorship which was approved in 1995 and had been managed by a BC agency.

That sponsorship was one of the first in a long line of projects approved before the sponsorship program was established in 2000-01. Here are the details, according to the transcript of the Gomery Inquiry:

The contract number was 771-5-0093.
The contract was dated June 16, 1995.
The contract referred to a sponsorship by the Government of Canada for an event called "Blue Sky," which was held in Alberta in the summer of 1995.

The name of the agency?--Palmer Jarvis.

Norm is usually too sly to just add in something about Palmer Jarvis without a reason: Warren was previously working for Palmer Jarvis DDB from '96. And yes, there were questions raised. See here, here, and here. And he was a lobbyist in '98 for them as well.

Nothing here that's a direct hit on either Warren or Norm. There's more on the battle here.

The real question is why Warren would want to draw attention to himself and Norm at this moment. If memory served, I think both of these men served under Dingwall, and although I don't know Warren's reasons for leaving offhand, Spector left because he was disgusted with the Atlantic slush funds that Dingwall was administering. I think it's just a sleight of hand-A distraction from Dingwall's Wednesday embarrassment, where PWC will say that Dingwall broke none of the rules, because none were found to have existed.

I don't know why Chretienites and Martinites are willing to pay such a heavy price for this guy, but they are all falling on their sword for him left and right.

I wonder what Dingwall knows.

Side issue: If the auditing profession really wanted to boost its image, it would fire the government of Canada as a client as the auditors would have ample reason to be concerned about the "management". And the internal controls are obviously not working.