Well, there’s no real need for me to risk prosecution under Canadian law, so I’m not going to post what I’ve heard about the testimony under publication ban from the Gomery Commission, but some other places, being under no similar threat, has proven more than able in this regard.

What does all of this mean? Has the hour come around at last, for the deliverance of God’s faithful subjects in the Northern land? Is the hour now upon us?

Let’s talk in generalities.

1) Can the Martin Liberals wriggle out from under this information (whatever it is) on the grounds that “it was that other lot that did all of that”?

This, I think, simply doesn’t fly up to a point. If the Sponsorship Scandal involved, as we were led to believe, corruption simply for the sake of helping a few friends of the government in ad agencies, with the total being diverted back into the hands of the party being counted in the thousands, it was remotely plausible that all of it could have gone on without the notice of the Finance Minister/Top Quebec Lieutenant of the Liberal Party. It wasn’t likely, but it remained within the realm of possibility.

But let us speculate, hypothetically, that this information confirms what many of us have suspected for a long time: that the involvement of the Liberal Party itself was far deeper than originally revealed.

For example: it might be possible that someone like Martin could ignore or be kept ignorant of a small-scale scam. But it doesn’t strike me as at all possible that even Paul Martin could remain unaware of corruption on a much-larger scale. It’s one thing to remain blissfully unaware of where a petty amount of money like $250 million is going when it’s going out from the taxpayers: it’s another thing altogether to be a senior Quebec Liberal politician and not be aware of what was apparently happening to that money thereafter.

2) Is this bad enough to get people to vote for the Tories or the Bloc instead of the Liberals?

Yes, I think. But, then again, I thought that the original revelations were bad enough to get people to vote for the Tories or the Bloc over the Liberals. It may well be that, in the last election, the Liberals did about as badly as they can do in the hands of an electorate which, by all appearances, is made up of a gang of Stepford Liberals.

But, do think this is bad enough to hurt the Liberals more. In a fair world, this would be enough to earn them a 1993 PC-level destruction. I don’t think it will do quite that. But it’ll be bad. “Vote for the crooks, not for the fascists,” only works for so long and, frankly, the Tories have spent most of the time since the last election carefully moving to the left (or, if you prefer “center”) on just about everything. The delusive abilities of our national media only extend so far. It’s going to be increasingly hard to convince the Canadian people that the Tory proposal for a 5% increase in spending is evil, as opposed to the Liberal proposal for a 7% increase in spending, which has the sanction of the risen Christ.

In truth, it’s bad enough to give me a little fear. After all, I live in British Columbia, where the provincial Liberals are the “right-wing” party. The information is, in my view, bad enough to taint the Liberal name and it does look like we’re going to have nearly-simultaneous Provincial and Federal elections.

If we have an election in the near future, I expect that the Liberals won’t quite suffer the fate of the PC’s of 1993. But I do think that the end result will call to mind two other words: John Turner.

Turner, as you will recall, was the much-heralded successor to Pierre Trudeau. The former Finance Minister, a “moderate” by reputation, was utterly destroyed after a short time in power, largely as a result of the people’s exhaustion over Liberal corruption.

I think that, in an election today, we’d be looking at either a very slight Conservative majority or a large Conservative minority. Something like 150 Tory seats, 80 Liberal seats, 60 Bloc seats, and 20 NDP seats. An election now would be very bad for the Liberals.

That’s why it needs to be brought on. We need an election now. There should be no chickening out to wait for the fall. This loses urgency and its “rage factor” if we wait.

We need to hit them now. If the Bloc move for no-confidence in the government tomorrow, we need to bring the government down and go to the polls.