As the member of Parliament for his riding of St-Maurice, Mr. Chretien has every right, just like other MPs, to push for projects in his riding. He has used this reasoning to defend his actions. Another one of his main lines of defence is that he has been the victim of a targeted campaign by the National Post newspaper to bring him down. But with the confirmation of Post stories like Mr. Chretien's phone call to the bank boss, and with the police investigations and auditors' reports tending to substantiate many news reports, that line of defence has been weakening. The Shawinigan story is a quagmire.
Tentacles extend all over the place.
For Mr. Chretien there are as many as a half-dozen worrisome files. Potentially the most damaging among them involve a contract and a grant awarded to companies controlled by Claude Gauthier, a businessmen from the Shawinigan area with close ties to the prime minister. In other cases where Mr. Chretien is alleged to have bent or broken rules in arranging projects for his riding, he had no apparent financial stake. In one of the files involving Mr. Gauthier, however, questions arise as to whether Mr. Chretien had such a personal financial interest in play and whether he stood to gain as a result of dealings with the businessman. 161341 Canada Inc. Mr. Chretien was one of the founders of the company, which controlled the Grand-Mere Golf Club, located next to the land in question.