It's been pointed out on other blogs that while the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail's editorial boards appeared mildly supportive of Martin's appeal for delaying an election, their columnists did not.

Reuters actually wrote a story about it (posted at Yahoo! News -- I saw the link at AndrewCoyne.com).

Here's the Star editorial.

This is a key sentence:

Although (Conservative Leader Stephen) Harper is itching for an election now, (Prime Minister Paul) Martin is correct in saying that Canadians should have all the facts about the scandal before deciding whether or not to kick the Liberals out of office.

I agree more with the reasoning of Chantal Hebert, who wrote Friday:

At first glance, Martin's request for an eight-month reprieve — as extraordinary as it may be — would seem to be a reasonable one.

After all, what are eight more months in exchange for the definitive word on the sponsorship scandal through the final report of Justice John Gomery?

But the fundamental question is not how Gomery, after months of hard work, manages to connect all the dots of the sponsorship affair.

When he does report at the end of the year, no one seriously expects him to exonerate the Liberal party of responsibility in the scandal.

On the contrary, with every passing week of testimony, it has become increasingly clear that the squandering of millions of dollars of public money was not the result of the work of an obscure cell operating behind the back of the ruling party.

While the sponsorship money was possibly diverted by only a few, it does seem it was enjoyed by many, at every level of the Liberal Party of Canada in Quebec.

Indeed, some of the descriptions of the inner workings of the party put forward by former Liberal officials over the past few days speak to a way of life rather than a series of isolated incidents.

And so the real question is whether Canada can afford eight more months of weak vacillating government, liable to bend the way of every passing wind in its desperate quest for an electoral comeback.

In the Globe editorial, it said: "To pull (Martin) down over the sponsorship mess now, only a year after the last election and months before the inquiry report, would be an act of the purest opportunism -- especially given his promise to hold a vote after the report, regardless of what it says."

Memory Lane

If we're going to talk about opportunism, let's look back in the CTV.ca archives, shall we?

From June 4, 2004:

With so many questions about the sponsorship scandal still unanswered and the trust of voters growing more shaky, Canada AM's Seamus O'Regan asked Martin why he made the decision to go ahead with an election now, rather than wait until a public inquiry into the scandal was complete.

"That inquiry is going to take whatever time it takes," Martin said.

"I knew this was going to be a very tight election -- I've known that right from the beginning. But I've also known that once the party programs are out that Canadians are going to see there's a very, very clear choice."

Martin added that it was necessary to call an election now so that he could move forward with the Liberals' 10-year health-care plan.

"I have to ask for a mandate," he said. "I can't essentially ask Canadians to spend money for a generation without going to the people."

It might be helpful to know that before the vote was called, Liberal support in the polls had risen back to about 40 per cent, or within striking distance of a majority.

The Liberals added a largely useless fourth question to the Supreme Court gay marriage reference early in the winter. There was word campaign co-chair David Herle wanted the gay marriage issue put in the closet for the election, and the additional question pushed it off the Supreme Court's calendar for that spring.

But somehow, calling a vote when the polls are rising for you and manipulating a Supreme Court reference to make a thorny political problem go away aren't opportunistic.

Newsflash to the Globe editorial board: Politics is all about opportunism.

If the people really like the overall agenda of the Martin Liberals, they can re-elect them.

If the opposition really doesn't feel it can honestly support the Martin government any more, then they should trigger an election. If they do so in opposition to the people's wishes, then in a just world, they'll be punished for it at the polls.

In the dark

Anyway, from June 7, 2004 (a CP story):

Prime Minister Paul Martin conceded Monday that Canadians will be selecting a new government while still in the dark about the federal sponsorship scandal.

Nor can they expect enlightenment any time soon.

The remarkable admissions helped frame a day in which the question of trust took centre stage in the federal election campaign, with competing party leaders claiming Canadian voters have no faith in the other guys.

"I don't think we got, obviously we didn't get the answers that anybody would want," Martin said in a television interview with CPAC when asked about the progress of investigations into the troubled $250-million federal ad program.

"But it's going to take a long time. It may well take longer than we would have in terms of this mandate."

An aide later explained that Martin was referring to the current mandate's full duration, which could have run until November 2005 had the prime minister not chosen to go to the polls this month.

Martin staked much of his political capital this spring on getting to the bottom of the scandal "come hell or high water."

He promised that, before an election, Canadians would have a clear sense of what went wrong in the shadowy, multi-year program in which government-friendly ad firms charged about $100 million in fees and commissions for work the auditor general said was of little or no value.

But a Commons committee looking into the issue stalled in partisan bickering, while a judicial inquiry headed by Justice John Gomery won't start hearing witnesses until September.

So why didn't Canadians have enough information?

Here's a CTV.ca story from May 12, 2004 about the shutting down of the sponsorship inquiry by the Commons public accounts committee:

Some MPs suggested Tuesday the decision to wrap up the committee's work was orchestrated to come one day after the arrest of retired public servant Chuck Guite, who administered the sponsorship program, and Groupaction president Jean Brault.

They were each charged Monday with five counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy. They are accused of misspending $2 million of the government's money.

"Canadians aren't buying Chuck Guite as the 'lone gunman,' because they know there's a grassy knoll full of Liberals they want to hide until after Canadians get a chance to vote," said NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis on Tuesday in Parliament's question period.

"Aren't these charges just the tip of the iceberg of corruption that's been the hallmark of this government for more than a decade?" asked Conservative leader Stephen Harper.

Again, the committee was shut down just under two weeks before the election, after a few people were charged criminally -- and well before Canadians got the deeper look they're getting now into this ugly mess.

Harper made some sense in this remark Thursday (although some of his other assertions should be challenged):

Mr. Martin received his mandate by holding an election before any of the facts of the sponsorship scandal were known.

Here's another story from that period on the shutting down of the committee.

And here's Martin in a March 4, 2004 story:

Talking to reporters in Montreal on Thursday, Prime Minister Martin said he plans to drop the writ when he feels Canadians have enough information about the spending scandal.

"Canadians have got to know that we are getting to the bottom of it (the scandal) and I think they're in the process of seeing that. So there will be a judgment call made," he said after a meeting with doctors at the Montreal Heart Institute.

"We're committing to Canadians that there will be sufficient light cast on this matter and that they will be able to make a judgment call."

But there wasn't. And if one really digs, the Liberals had been hoping to call an election in early April, but sponsorship anger hadn't dissipated enough.

One could argue that Canadians should go to the polls in the near term because they were opportunistically hustled into an election  by the Liberals last year before they had a real picture of the sponsorship scandal.

Personally, I don't care when the election is held. But I did want to show there are arguments on why sooner rather than later could reasonably be considered, especially since the Globe and Star editorials ignored those arguments.