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! 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.

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

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. 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).

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. 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).

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

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 http://www.pnc.com.au/~lfell/visit.html

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 http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20001122/378868.html

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 http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20001017/431568.html

5. Fifth RCMP probe of grants in PM's riding, Andrew McIntosh, with files from Robert Fife, November 11, 2000, National Post http://www.nationalpost.com/search/story.html?f=/stories/20001111/366798.html

6. Job grants in PM's riding generate more charges, CBC Canada, WebPosted Thu Dec 7 09:15:44 2000 http://cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2000/12/07/grant_charges001207