Lawyers for the retired judge and the ex-prime minister began squaring off in the latest legal skirmish in their lingering feud over Gomery's devastating report on the sponsorship scandal.
A federal lawyer defending Gomery's findings said the commissioner's job description didn't include protecting the reputations of Chretien, his ex-chief-of-staff, Jean Pelletier, or former cabinet minister Alfonso Gagliano.
Francisco Couto says Gomery was on a fact-finding mission.
"His role as a commissioner is to name names," Couto said.
Lawyers for Gomery and the federal government will be in court through Friday trying to safeguard the former Quebec Superior Court justice's report from a challenge by Chretien, Gagliano and Pelletier.
All three want the report quashed. They accuse Gomery of bias, of reaching damning conclusions against them without evidence and of stirring up a hornet's nest of media attention.
The hearings in Montreal will establish what evidence will be allowed at other proceedings set to begin next week in Ottawa.
In his 2005 report, Gomery found Chretien and Gagliano shared some responsibility for the millions skimmed by Liberal-friendly ad agencies in the sponsorship program.
"The commissioner (Gomery) put on blinders which prevented him from looking where he ought to have for causes," Peter Doody, Chretien's lawyer, told Federal Court Justice Max Teitelbaum.
Gomery found Pelletier was at the heart of choosing the ad agencies and that his testimony was less credible than that of Chuck Guite, the disgraced fraudster bureaucrat behind the scheme.
The conclusions "were inappropriately drawn, based on no evidence," Pelletier's lawyer, Guy Pratte, said in an interview.
"Those conclusions cannot hold, given the damage they've caused (Pelletier's) reputation."
Lawyers for all three men have suggested Gomery was biased from the start, pointing to reams of media coverage, including interviews granted by Gomery in the middle of his inquiry where he seemed to cast judgment on some players.
"He was so involved in publicity, he knew any errors would ruin reputations," Pratte said.
"When you are the one encouraging such intense media coverage, you must administer the evidence with extreme rigour."
Chretien also points to Gomery's hiring of Bernard Roy as commission counsel.
Roy was a Conservative adviser under former prime minister Brian Mulroney and went on to be a partner in a Montreal law firm with Mulroney and Gomery's daughter, Sally Gomery.
Couto said Roy's "career and acquaintances can in no way be seen as a reviewable error."
The lawyers also say Gomery was too loose with evidence, reaching conclusions without sufficient factual underpinnings.
Teitelbaum insisted public inquiries are not supposed to follow the stricter rules of evidence of the courts in order to take a wide-ranging look at issues.
Gomery said Chretien was repeatedly cautioned by the clerk of the Privy Council about the lack of oversight of millions in sponsorship funds which were poured into Quebec ad agencies following the 1995 referendum.
Chretien launched his challenge shortly after Gomery tabled the first volume of his report in November 2005. He was quickly followed by Pelletier and Gagliano.
