The latest poll from Praxicus, a public strategies company, shows that the majority of Canadians do not believe Prime Minister Paul Martin when he denies all allegations of involvement in the Sponsorship Scandal. Of course, denial is nothing new to Martin which may be the main reason why it has become so difficult to believe his preposterous allegations that he "didn't know" what was going on.
             Looking back to the tainted blood scandal of the 1980's we meet again with Paul Martin and one of his most flagrant of denials.
             During almost the exact time frame in which the HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C tragedy played itself out, Martin was on the board of the Canada Development Corporation (CDC).
             It was the CDC who had a controlling interest the Connaught Laboratories who used, in part, tainted blood from U.S. prisoners, which ended up being a root cause of the tragedy. But it took another 13 odd years before Martin's involvement was ever revealed. When he was asked the question of what he knew about the tragedy at the time he responded with a quaint "It never came up."
             Denial, the likely answer. Martin was a Liberal businessman whose responsibility was the oversight of Connaught Laboratories as well as a dozen or so other companies. With the problem of Hiv/AIDS due to tainted blood all over the newspapers and Connaught being the leading supplier of blood products in Canada, it never came to his attention to possibly ask if Connaught was part of the problem?
             During his time as Finance Minister, Martin and his department were pleaded with to review the flaws in the tax laws.
             The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) found serious problems including a gaping loophole in the GST law that virtually begged people to defraud the government – which they did. This was something only Paul Martin and the finance department could change.
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