Rahim Jaffer, Noted Businessman Who Is Smart, says he wouldn’t touch Nazim Gillani with a bargepole:

“We realized very quickly after a few meetings with him that our firms were very divergent, that we had no synergies where we could develop a relationship, so that exploration ended at that stage,” Mr. Jaffer said.

“If you are a businessman who is smart, you don’t jump into bed with anyone immediately. You take the time to learn about them, and if you find there is no synergy, you leave them in good nature and you don’t work with them. That is what happened with Mr. Gillani,” he said.

Ah, but Gillani has a bunch of recent emails and signed contracts that say different, and the contract explicitly touts “connections” with government departments and ministries as being “valuable”:

Nazim Gillani’s business dealings last year with former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer were more extensive and formal than previously thought, according to documents tabled at a parliamentary committee today. […] Mr. Gillani has revealed details of a written contract with Green Power Generation, the company founded last year by Mr. Jaffer and business partner Patrick Glémaud.

In the contract, signed by Mr. Glémaud, Green Power Generation states that “it is in ongoing dialogue with, and has valuable connections to and with, the government of Canada and various departments, ministries, and wholly or partially owned entities thereof.”

The whole story is worth reading here, along with the Globe‘s live-blog of Gillani’s testimony.

Bonus round: notice the hilariously vague, semi-grammatical corporate slogans on Gillani’s website, including “Assisting companies identify and access various resources which they may be unaware of,” and “A relationship based approach makes it possible to source the level of people required to successfully grow a business.” Businessmen Who Are Smart are always looking to Access Various Resources through a Relationship Based Approach, but perhaps “Being Married To A Sitting Cabinet Minister” isn’t quite what those motivational posters were implying.

You know something is afoot in Ottawa when the lobbyists are worried. When those brave souls who venture to Parliament Hill in search of handshakes and backslaps—and make a small fortune in the process—get their hackles up, something is surely out of order.

This week, order was shaken off its moorings by Rahim Jaffer.

Since Jaffer was hauled before a Parliamentary committee, it’s been a bit awkward for even the best influence peddlers in the nation’s capital. That’s because lots of people who usually don’t pay too much attention—mostly journalists but civilians too—are talking about the ethics of lobbying.

Of course, one organization has been talking about these issues, as well as others, for the better part of two decades. Democracy Watch has fought for stronger ethics rules since the final months of the Chrétien Era. And the organization’s public face, Duff Conacher, has been there the whole time.

I had a chance to interview Conacher about why he does what he does, what’s left to do (hint: a lot), and how he puts up with it all. Under our normal schedule we wouldn’t put the interview up until May 3rd, but we’re moving it up to Monday, April 26 because the issues that Conacher and I talked about have quickly become hot topics. (Depending on scheduling, we’ll either return to our regular podcast schedule with a three-week gap, or just embrace this lost week and keep going every other Monday. Haven’t decided yet.)

Visit this.org/podcast next Monday for the podcast interview. You can instantly subscribe to the podcast through iTunes by visiting this.org/itunes

Former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer was clocked doing 93 km/h in a 50 zone one evening last September. At the time, police charged him with impaired driving and cocaine possession. A few months go by, and—abracadabra!—the drunk-driving and the drug possession charges disappear, replaced by a guilty plea for “careless driving”:

Crown attorney Marie Balogh told the court the initial charges were dropped because there was no reasonable prospect of conviction.

The judge, Mr. Justice Doug Maund said he could read “between the lines” of the evidence presented to him.

“I’m sure you can recognize a break when you see one” the judge told Mr. Jaffer.

The former MP was sentenced to a $500 fine.

Of course, us Canada-hating commie crybabies are all whining that Jaffer is getting a wrist-slap just because he’s a former MP, just because he happens to be married to a federal cabinet minister, and just because the presiding judge was chief of staff to a Mulroney cabinet minister.

All in all, the John Howard Society, which advocates for justice reform, seemed to have the most substantive, sensible take on the whole mess:

“It’s really easy to disparage discretion for judges — until you need it,” [John Howard Society executive director] Craig Jones told The Canadian Press in an interview. […] Conservatives, up to and including the prime minister, have publicly criticized judges for sentences they deemed too light. Harper, unsolicited, publicly questioned the sentence handed to a Toronto terrorism convict in January. […]

The experts say the truly perverse aspect of mandatory minimums and “truth in sentencing” provisions is that in real life they actually make the administration of justice more “surreal and bizarre and unjust,” in Jones’ words. […] “Prosecutors and judges strike deals to preserve proportionality. But because they can’t do it in public, they do it behind closed doors.”

At the moment, this is an optics problem for the Conservatives, a few sleazy headlines and nothing more. But it does highlight a serious, pervasive inequity in the justice system, in which “respectable” people get nudges, winks, and savvy deals from prosecutors, while the destitute, the mentally few-bricks-shy, the politically unpopular and the un-snappily dressed are swallowed whole.