Martin's former Adscam communication director ambassador to Costa Rica
By Judi McLeod, Canadafreepress.com

The 100-million Canadian tax dollars, with which the federal Liberal government floated its Adscam sponsorship program, may be lost forever in faraway Costa Rica.

A popular playground for well-heeled Canadians with Liberal connections, Costa Rica is home to the United Nations University for Peace. Prime Minister Paul Martin mentor Maurice Strong, being litigated against by the Costa Rican government over a land deal, is still listed as president of the UPeace council.

Canadian Adscam legends, who washed up on Costa Rican shores, include the flamboyant Jean Lafleur, a key figure in the Adscam scandal, whose communication firm executives raked in us$15-million in government expenses over a four-year period.

Loud-living Lafleur has reached the dubious status of Costa Rica’s most infamous party boy, who neighbours wish would take a permanent hike.

But as loud and excessive as Lafleur’s late-night bacchanals are reported to be, he’s only a sometimes resident of Escazú. Missing from Costa Rica for the past month and a half, his expected return for Christmas has neighbours reaching for anti-acid relief.

But Mario Laguë, a second prominent Canadian with ties to the Adscam scandal is a permanent resident of the sun-blessed country. Lague, Prime Minister Paul Martin’s former director of communications, is the ambassador to Costa Rica.

That’s the same Laguë who was the senior bureaucrat in overall charge of Ottawa’s communications strategy, and the same one who reported directly to the same Cabinet communications committee, headed by then public works minister Alfonso Gagliano. Readers may recall that the disgraced Gagliano is the figure indirectly responsible for giving the Liberals their "Libranos" label.

Adscam, whose critics say was designed to put money into Liberal-friendly advertising firms, and involved double-billing, bogus invoices and payments for fictitious work, came back to haunt the Liberals on Monday night, when Opposition parties used it as the primer to call for a non-confidence vote, forcing the fall of their minority government.

On Thursday, September 16, 2004, Pierre Pettigrew, Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced Mario Laguë as the new ambassador to Costa Rica.

The antithesis of Lafleur, Laguë has kept such a low profile in his new post as Costa Rican ambassador that according to local news hounds, he’s only attended one official public function.

Laguë, who served as Martin’s communication director from December 2003 to July 2004, presented Adscam in the best possible light after Auditor General Sheila Fraser discovered and revealed it. Canadian media dubbed him as "Martin’s spin doctor".

A Canadian government-sanctioned biography states that Laguë ran his own communications firm from 1995 to 1997.

Management at the high-rise where Lafleur lives when in San Rafael de Escazú, has been inundated with complaints from tenants, who charge that wild parties thrown by the Canadian executive and his constant Tico companion, "Larry" are keeping them awake nights.

Having read all about the Adscam scandal via the Internet, some tenants say you’d think that Lafleur would want to keep a low profile.

Meanwhile, if anyone wants Lafleur to turn down the volume more than the neighbours, it could be Canada’s new ambassador to Costa Rica.

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Canada Free Press founding editor Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the media. A former Toronto Sun and Kingston Whig Standard columnist, she has also appeared on Newsmax.com, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and World Net Daily.