CLIPPING: Gagliano, Volpe are suffering discrimination against Italian

Gagliano believes Volpe hurt by anti-Italian bias
Liberal leadership hopeful's campaign under scrutiny

Jack Aubry
CanWest News Service

Monday, September 25, 2006

MONTREAL - Continuing to fight his lifetime ban from the Liberal
party, Alfonso Gagliano said Toronto MP Joe Volpe should stay in the
party's leadership race since he is the victim of the same kind of
anti-Italian sentiment that brought down the former public works
minister.

In a wide-ranging interview to mark the launch of his book, Mr.
Gagliano said he believes Mr. Volpe will come out fighting at his
scheduled press conference today to answer the latest allegations of
misdeeds by his leadership campaign team.

"History repeats itself. Whenever an Italian-Canadian tries to go up
and succeed in politics, somebody tries to do something to bring him
down," said Mr. Gagliano, comparing Mr. Volpe's troubles to his own
as outlined in his recently released book.

"When I got to the top, that's when my troubles began."

Media reports on the weekend said that at least nine party members in
Montreal were signed up by the Volpe camp without their knowledge or
without paying the $10 fee. In two cases, the signed-up new members
are dead. Earlier in the campaign, Mr. Volpe refunded money raised
from donations from teenagers in wealthy families in what appeared to
be an effort to skirt the $5,400 donation limit. Party rules require
that all members personally sign and pay for their membership in the
party.

While saying he has not decided who he will support in the race, Mr.
Gagliano seemed to be leaning toward his fellow Italian-Canadian
politician by his comments.

"Naturally, I know Joe Volpe but again, is the party and the country
ready for an Italian to take the lead?" he said. The Montreal
resident, who now spends his winters golfing in Florida, does not
believe Mr. Volpe is seriously damaged by the revelations,
downplaying them as a regular happenstance in leadership races.

"Definitely it is going to be a news story for a few days. The party
will do the investigation and if something improper was done, the
person will probably be struck from the list. But I don't think Joe
Volpe was aware and I don't think it will be a determining factor on
whether Joe Volpe wins the leadership or not," he said.

Mr. Gagliano, who maintains that he did no wrong as minister of
public works and was a victim of a smear campaign by the camp of
former prime minister Paul Martin, wrote in his book that ethnic
prejudice played a prominent role in his fall from grace.

He also confirmed in the interview that the RCMP have never
interviewed him about the sponsorship scandal in its ongoing
investigation and discounted rumours that he has heard himself about
personally knowing the commissioner, Giuliano Zaccardelli, or that he
was directly responsible for his appointment.

"Because he is Italian and I am Italian, it was automatically assumed
in the force that he got appointed because of me. They gave me powers
that I never had," said Mr. Gagliano.

While acknowledging that he knew Commissioner Zaccardelli's brother
when he was a school board commissioner in the 1980s, Mr. Gagliano
says he only met the commissioner when he became the ambassador for
Denmark and they were seated at the same table at a function for
ambassadors earlier this decade.

He declined comment on the calls for commissioner Zaccardelli's
resignation this weekend.

Meanwhile, the Liberal party moved quickly to end Mr. Gagliano's
speculation on the weekend that he has managed to rejoin the party by
simply buying a $10 membership card on the Internet. The Grits issued
a terse press release stating that Mr. Gagliano remains banned for
life from the party after being expelled in November, 2005, after his
major role in the sponsorship scandal was confirmed by the Gomery
commission.

Mr. Gagliano, who has lost 40 pounds since leaving office, said he
was given a membership card to print on the Internet after rejoining
on June 8 and the party has not returned his money or sent him a
written notice with reasons for his expulsion.

"The Liberal party has a constitution and it has rules that do not
allow a prime minister, like Paul Martin, to single-handedly throw
someone out of the party. He did not have the power to do it. I
intend to write them a letter asking some questions about this," said
Mr. Gagliano.

He stands by Jean Chretien as "a great leader" and acknowledges that
he might have avoided the entire arduous affair if he had accepted
two earlier offers from the former prime minister to become Canada's
ambassador in Rome before accepting the one for Denmark under
pressure when the scandal was breaking in the news.

In his book, Mr. Gagliano wrote that Mr. Chretien had been "hurt"
when former prime minister Brian Mulroney had declined to shake his
hand in public during the state funeral for Pierre Trudeau. Later on
the train back to Ottawa, Mr. Chretien told Mr. Gagliano that it was
because Mr. Mulroney blamed him for the Airbus investigation even
though he had nothing to do with it.

Mr. Gagliano is officially launching his French-language book -- Les
corridors du pouvoir (The Corridors of Power) today.

© National Post 2006

Copyright © 2006 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest
MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

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