Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Can the Blogosphere Help Catch Adscam's Lies?

According to the Canadian Press, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee's commissioned a study to find out if somebody lied to them:

In a rare show of unanimity, Liberals joined opposition members to commission a study comparing what was said to them with what was said to a public inquiry headed by Justice John Gomery. If discrepancies are found, anybody accused of lying to the MPs could be held in contempt of Parliament or even face criminal charges of perjury.

Nobody was singled out by the committee, but Chuck Guite, the bureaucrat who headed the sponsorship program, has come under fire over alleged inconsistencies in his story.

The study comparing testimony at the committee with the evidence heard by Gomery will be conducted by researchers at the Library of Parliament.


Now, it's not that I want to do the Library's work for them ... but you know, this sounds like a project that's tailor-made for the blogosphere. Because the transcripts of both the Gomery Inquiry and the Public Accounts Committee are available online.

The Gomery transcripts are available here.

The Public Accounts committee materials are are available here. There are a few more meeting transcript links to check out at this site, but they shouldn't be too hard to find.

Personally, I plan on spending at least some of Thanksgiving weekend comparing the two sites and seeing if I can identify some inconsistent testimony, but if you've got time on your hands, I'd encourage the bloggers who read this right now to visit both sites and see what they can dig up.