Ottawa -
It's the political scandal that has gripped Parliament Hill for the past two weeks - a steamy bouillabaisse that started with allegations of questionable business dealings, strip clubs and "busty hookers."
Other spicy tidbits - questions of inappropriate lobbying, a possible police investigation and a cabinet resignation - have since been thrown into the pot.
On Wednesday, the central figure in the drama - former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer - and his business partner, Patrick Glemaud, appeared at a parliamentary committee to defend themselves.
St. John's South-Mount Pearl MP Siobhan Coady was the Liberal point-person on the committee, beginning the grilling of Jaffer and Glemaud.
She probed Jaffer's communications with Conservative politicians and asked for the names of three companies who put in applications for cash from a government "green fund."
In Wednesday's committee hearing - which Jaffer characterized as a "circus" - the former Conservative MP denied lobbying his former colleagues.
He characterized the array of "second-hand allegations, rumour and innuendo" against him as "vicious attacks" by the media and the opposition parties.
Afterward, Coady told The Telegram Jaffer's testimony leaves many questions unanswered.
"He certainly wasn't forthright with the truth, was he?" she told The Telegram.
Coady cited claims made on Jaffer's website that contradicted his answers to the committee about the nature of his business.
The Liberal MP said the Jaffer affair should matter to all voters, including her constituents back in Newfoundland.
"This is a $2-billion fund, this is green funds ... monies for greening of our environment and greening of our energy," she said.
"A lot of other countries have moved way farther than Canada has on this, and we really, absolutely, need to move forward in this direction. What we don't need to do, and what we don't want to have, is the public being confused, the public thinking that you've got to have some kind of government access."
Previous reports in the Toronto Star cited Jaffer's alleged boasts that he could open doors in the Prime Minister's Office for a businessman who has since been charged with fraud in an unrelated case.
Jaffer's wife, MP Helena Guergis, recently resigned under duress from the Harper cabinet after a Toronto private investigator forwarded as-yet-unspecified information to the prime minister.
It's an issue that has sucked the political oxygen out of other priorities in Ottawa over the past number of days.
Question period in the House of Commons has been increasingly acrimonious. Earlier Wednesday, Liberal MPs repeated the line "Conservative culture of deceit" in Parliament to describe the ongoing ethics imbroglio.
The federal Conservatives have distanced themselves from Jaffer and Guergis, and said Harper took the proper steps to forward information about the matter to the appropriate authorities.
rantle@thetelegram.com
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