Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's involvement with the BDC's $615,000 loan:
Part 2: Thinking Recursively is a Creative Process

Nipawin - December 9, 2000 - by: Mario deSantis
   

loyal
friends

The truth is a never ending process, it is the process of life as scientist Humberto Maturana(1)
would say. And as we have been mentioning all the times, recursively and never getting tired
of it, we find our truth in our patterns of behaviour and relationships. We want to find a truth
about Jean Chrétien's wheeling dealing with the Grand Mere's affair. And, as we search for this
truth and list the events characterizing Jean Chrétien's behaviour, so we must recursively ask
and answers these questions: Was Chrétien interested in the welfare of his loyal friends? Or
maybe he was interested in the greener amenities of his golf course? Or maybe he was
interested in creating jobs for his electoral riding?(2)

 

 

knowledge
is a fixed
entity

Thinking recursively is what we understand to be critical thinking or deep thinking, and you
know what our demented academicians tell us? They tell us that knowledge is a fixed entity,
and that learning is the activity to know such entity, and therefore learning becomes more of
a memorization process rather than a creative process. And what is funny, is that these same
kind of academicians tell us what the definition of creative learning is, and guess what? We
are being told to memorize it!

 

 

need more written
rules

And so Jean Chrétien wants us to know the truth, the only truth, the absolute truth about his
involvement with the Grand Mere's affair, and he has his personal Ethics Counsellor, Howard
Wilson, coming out in his defense. Our deep thinking Mr. Wilson conducts a 24 hour review
on Chrétien's involvement in the Grand Mere's affair and provides his final judgment that
Chrétien has not violated any ethical written rule, however he has stated that we need more
written rules to guide our parliamentarians(3). Is this an implied understanding that Chrétien
violated unwritten rules of ethics? Again, you, readers, are going to make your own opinions,
just put yourself in behaving as Mr. Chrétien did in the Grand Mere's affair, in your own
community, and then rationalize how your community members and police force would think
and behave about you and your behaviour.

 

 

motivations

Let us now turn our attention to the following sequel of events as we proceed in trying to
understand Jean Chrétien's motivations in his involvement with the Grand-Mere's affair.

 

 

 

The Grand-Mère Inn's tainted affair

hotel in Shawinigan

Just before the federal election in April, 1997, Mr. Chrétien announced a $600,000 grant to
the Auberge des Gouverneurs hotel in Shawinigan, even though a business plan had yet to
be filed with HRDC officials. Who approved the grant? The Prime Minister himself, officials
said. As it turned out, the majority shareholder of the Auberge, Pierre Thibault, had moved to
the area from Belgium, where he was under criminal investigation after admitting in writing
that he had misappropriated close to $1-million from his former partners in a fireplace
company.

 

 

René
Fugère

A second hotelier, Yvon Duhaime, received $1-million in HRDC grants to expand
the Grand-Mère Inn he bought from Mr. Chrétien, even though his business was near
bankruptcy and he had convictions for assault, death threats and repeat drunk driving, as well
as past hotel troubles(4). As Mr. Duhaime received part of his job creation grant, he paid
$11,500 to René Fugère, an unpaid aide and Liberal supporter for Mr. Chrétien's riding of
St-Maurice, for consulting services. René Fugère had been helping companies to get
governmental grants in exchange for a fee of 5% to 10% of the value of the grants(5).

 

 

documents

In November 2000, the National Post obtained documents confirming that Jean Chrétien
called the head of the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) repeatedly in 1996 and
1997 to urge him to grant a big mortgage loan to the near-bankrupt Grand-Mère Inn in his
St. Maurice riding.

 

 

HRDC

As we have seen in this series of articles, Mr. Chrétien has played a very relevant role in
making sure that his friend Yvon Duhaime didn't go bankrupt; in fact, Mr. Duhaime not only
got the $650,000 loan from the BDC bank, but he got additional financing from other federal
agencies. In addition, in 1997 he received $1-million from Human Resources Development
Canada (HRDC)

 

 

RCMP's
charges

In the next related articles we continue to cover the web of relationships connected with the
Grand-Mère's business and political environment as more RCMP's charges(6) are being laid
against Chrétien's friends.
   
------------References/endnotes:
   
  List of relevant political and economics articles http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign
   
  The author can provide specific references of the cited events in the Grand-Mère affair. He also acknowledges the following news organizations: National Post, Canadian Internet Network, The Ottawa Citizen, The Globe and Mail, Canadian Press. The author read articles written by Robert Fife, Andrew McIntosh, Joël-Denis Bellavance, Peter Shawn Taylor, Andrew Coyne, Gordon Gibson, and Diane Francis of the National Post; Paul Adams and Daniel LeBlanc of The Globe and Mail; Lawrence Martin and Kate Jaimet of The Ottawa Citizen.
   

1.

An 'Interview' with Dr Humberto Maturana

 

 

2.
-
-

Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's involvement with the BDC's $615,000 loan. Part 1: Chrétien's interest for his friends? For his golf course? For creating jobs? By Mario deSantis, December 6, 2000

 

 

3.
-

Ethics boss: no rules, no foul, Robert Fife, Andrew McIntosh and Joël-Denis Bellavance, November 22, 2000

 

 

4.
-

The anatomy of the Liberals' HRDC scandal: Auditor-General to table report on $1B jobs fund fiasco, Andrew McIntosh, October 17, 2000, National Post

 

 

5.
-

Fifth RCMP probe of grants in PM's riding, Andrew McIntosh, with files from Robert Fife, November 11, 2000, National Post

 

 

6.
-

Job grants in PM's riding generate more charges, CBC Canada, WebPosted Thu Dec 7 09:15:44 2000