Thursday evening, Prime Minister Martin apologized to Canadians, on national television, for the sponsorship scandal, outlined what he has done to address it and promised to call an election within 30 days of receiving the Gomery report.

It’s worrisome that a prime minister has to respond to the media frenzy driving the sponsorship story. It’s worrisome that the media is able to transform an inconclusive public inquiry into a Ku Klux Klan lynch mandate. The sponsorship trial is far from over, yet spectators demand a hanging before the judge delivers his decision. Has due process become a thing of the past in Canada?

There is no defense for wrong-doing. If people profited illegally from the Quebec sponsorship program, they should be prosecuted and if found guilty, punished.

Having said that, I think it’s important to add some perspective to the situation. As I understand it, the sponsorship program was confined to Quebec. Quebec has a long history of dubious behavior when it comes to use of government funds, especially when they come from the federal government.

The Union Nationale and the Duplesis era comes to mind. Expo 67 and the Olympic Stadium with allegations of payoffs and kickbacks come to mind. The shenanigans of Jacques Parizeau during the Quebec referendum are legend.

Brian Mulroney won the country in 1984 by stitching together a band of separatists and opportunists who collectively produced an electoral majority for him in Quebec and in so doing, a majority government in Canada. He fell from office, in part because Quebec separatists deserted him and the opportunists undermined the integrity of his government and his party.

None of this is to suggest for a moment that the people of Quebec are corrupt. That is no more likely than the possibility that all Canadians are corrupt.

Quebec has a history of blackmailing Canada for money and power in the political arena. The threat is always about separation and the disruption of national unity. Near loss of the 1995 Quebec referendum was frightening. Initial response from the federal government was shock and discombobulation. The notion that flags and sponsorship signage could overwhelm the emotions of a people flirting with nationhood and separation was and is a joke. The referendum wasn’t about the need for visual reminders of Canada, it was about language and history and the perceptions of insult and injustice.

The Gomery Commission is dealing with a situation precipitated by an ill-advised response to the 1995 referendum. The response may have been naively conceived. It may have been badly executed. It may have been confiscated by a Quebec wing of the Mafia but surely it was not and was never intended to be a fraudulent grab for Canadian tax dollars.

There has always been two parts to Canada’s Liberal Party – the Quebec Liberal Party and the Liberal Party of the rest of Canada. The Quebec Party has traditionally been left to its own devices when it comes to elections and patronage. In return, it has delivered seats to the national Party that has enabled it to form majority governments for much of the last century. Quebec polls suggest that day has passed.

Two years ago, supporters of Paul Martin chose to push Mr. Chrétien from office. Their success created a backlash in Quebec. It appeared that Martin the Anglophone had humiliated Francophones by publicly driving one of their own from office. One of Martin’s first acts as Prime Minister was to cancel the Sponsorship Program. When the Auditor General jumped on the Program, Martin reacted with high-profile dismissals of Chrétien-supporters and the calling of inquiries that have pillaged Francophone Quebecers. Instead of resolving the issue, the inquiries have prolonged the sacking of Quebecers.

The Gomery Commission is not finished. If we have an election now, we run the risk of convicting defendants without benefit of due process. The current rage is fueled largely by testimony from one Jean Brault - a man who is awaiting trial for fraud - and a few others whose credibility is less than sterling. The broad strokes of the sponsorship outrage were outlined three years ago.

The Auditor General’s report on the program was published more than a year ago. We had an election on the subject less than a year ago and yet politicians continue to rerun the rhetoric of that election.

We need to give the Gomery Commission time to conclude its hearings and prepare its report and recommendations. Surely we owe it to ourselves to await the report before plunging the Country into another election.

A public hanging of Paul Martin in an atmosphere of outrage and public accusation does nothing for the country. There is a chance that an election fought in the current atmosphere would boost the fortunes of the Bloc Quebecois and move the province of Quebec towards the perfect storm, one that would produce a positive vote for separation.

This brings us to our conundrum. Nobody wants to be seen supporting a bunch of wrongdoers and nobody wants to see Quebec separate because of some highly emotional prosecution of wrongdoers. We owe to ourselves as a nation to wait for Gomery.

In the last election, Canadians put the Liberal Party on notice that they were not happy with its involvement in the Sponsorship Program. They also pulled back from the alternative leadership of Stephen Harper.

If Gomery proves that a conspiracy existed to defraud government and/or to redirect funds to the Liberal Party of Canada, those responsible should be held accountable in a court of law. As best we know, members of the current government were not involved in any sponsorship wrongdoing.

It would be wrong to punish them for the sins of others.