The Mulroney Affair

Fate has its own sense of timing and of humour that we humans just do not understand. How ironic that the new Airbus 380 just landed in Montréal this week on a promotional visit, the same week that an Inquiry into the Mulroney/Schreiber affair is being set up.

It is pretty clear that Canadians still love to hate Brian Mulroney. How else to explain the recent poll numbers:

• "A new poll suggests 67 per cent of Canadians want to know why Brian Mulroney accepted $300,000 from Karlheinz Schreiber, while 51 per cent approve of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's appointment of an independent investigator."

Even amongst Conservatives

• "57 per cent wanted the matter investigated."

Really, what a slap in the face to Stephen Harper. Can you remember a matter so controversial involving a former politician? Get serious, Mulroney was Prime Minister until 1993, 14 years ago, and he still can make headlines that overshadow our present Prime Minister.

People must still think that Brian Mulroney is Prime Minister of Canada for them to get so excited about this matter. The frenzy upon which a public inquiry is being based is amazing to me frankly. Everybody is upset about allegations in an affidavit that has never been tested yet by cross-examination. I saw one story that suggested that this Public Inquiry could go on for years and cost millions of dollars.

• "Desbarats says the latest inquiry will be "a field day for some lawyers, or a payday anyway."
  
  Norman Spector, a former Mulroney chief of staff, predicted that the inquiry will head in unexpected directions and end up costing three or four times the $40 million spent by Gomery's commission."

I guess that this is payback time for the Adscam scandal that brought down the Liberal party. The allegations there were scandals within the party. Now there are allegations with respect to a scandal involving the former Prime Minister.

• "John Gomery, the retired justice who headed the sponsorship inquiry, said the latest inquiry will be sensational.
  
  He predicted that opposition parties will try to link the affair to Harper and that Mulroney will try to broaden the scope of the inquiry to include the conduct of journalists, bureaucrats and the former Liberal government, which Mulroney successfully sued for libel.
  
  "There'll be lots of ripples."

The tactics though that are being used by the Liberal party are very interesting to me. They're going after the Government on peripheral issues that may result in the resignation of Ministers. They have to do that because according to the same poll

• "66 per cent of those surveyed believe the allegations about Mr. Mulroney are totally unrelated to the current Conservative government."

Check out your Mulroney connections. You may find yourself on the hit-list if you are not careful. Why even the head of the Inquiry set up to determine the Terms of Reference of the Public Inquiry has been attacked. According to the Globe, David Johnston, the head of the University of Waterloo

• "Probe chief had links to Mulroney"

Oh my goodness, that damning word "links," I know how Professor Johnston must feel. According to the Globe, Johnston

• "once worked with and reported directly to Brian Mulroney on environmental issues."

Fortunately for Johnston, the Opposition understands that an attack on his character would go nowhere and would hurt them.

Not so lucky however is Justice Minister. He is being attacked in the following way as well:

• "the opposition charged that Justice Minister Rob Nicholson should withdraw from Schreiber's extradition case because his close connections with Mulroney place him in a conflict of interest."

However the more interesting part to me is the role of the Justice Department. In my view, the Liberals are going to focus on this part of the matter for a very long time in order to tie the Harper Government into the scandal. Otherwise, I don't see how it helps them politically whether anything is proved against Brian Mulroney or not.

Here are some of the allegations raised in the House of Commons:

• "Hon. Stéphane Dion (Leader of the Opposition, Lib.):
  Mr. Speaker, after the new Minister of Justice was appointed in early 2007, the justice department's internal investigation into the $2.1 million in compensation paid to Mr. Mulroney was conveniently blocked.
  
  Why wait for the public inquiry? The Prime Minister should tell us the truth.
  
  What role did he, his Minister of Justice and their respective offices play in blocking this investigation?
  


• Hon. Robert Thibault (West Nova, Lib.):
  Mr. Speaker, Canadians find it hard to believe that the Prime Minister was kept in the dark about something as sensitive as criminal allegations about a former prime minister and his political mentor, Brian Mulroney, but if that is true, it suggests the Prime Minister deliberately insulated himself from the facts in this matter.
  
  Ignorance is not an excuse. He should have known and he should have demanded to know. Instead, he demanded to be kept in the dark. Why? What is the Prime Minister hiding from?
  


• Hon. Robert Thibault (West Nova, Lib.):
  Mr. Speaker, apparently the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice did everything they could to be kept in the dark in order to be able to plead ignorance.
  
  Why did one of the minister's representatives say: “A decision has been made and this note concerning Mr. Schreiber will not be forwarded to the minister's office”?
  
  Did that order come from the minister? Where did it come from? From the Prime Minister?
  
  
• Hon. Lucienne Robillard (Westmount—Ville-Marie, Lib.):
  Mr. Speaker, through access to information, we know that the Department of Justice produced files on the Airbus affair. Furthermore, we learned that the minister refused to look at those files. Yet, the minister wrote to Mr. Schreiber twice, informing him that there was no new evidence to delay his extradition.
  
  If he never agreed to receive information about the file, how can the minister affirm that there was no new evidence? How can he make such an important decision without even examining the file?
  


• Hon. Scott Brison (Kings—Hants, Lib.):
  Mr. Speaker, the justice minister was a parliamentary secretary in the Mulroney government. Now evidence suggests that he or his office tried to avoid responsibility by selectively receiving and evading information on the Schreiber affair."
  
  


• Mr. Mark Holland (Ajax—Pickering, Lib.):
  Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Prime Minister made jokes rather than answering when his office received explosive letters about Mr. Mulroney, letters containing the same information that the Prime Minister claimed was new, and the same information that forced a full public inquiry.
  
  Canadians are not laughing. We know every piece of paper that goes into the PMO is tracked. We know these letters would have been given to senior staff in the PMO. Canadians know his office knew everything yet did nothing until it was forced months later.
  
  Will the Prime Minister table in the House all routing slips and dockets pertaining to this correspondence and reveal the truth, yes or no?"

You get the picture. By the time this is done, Brian Mulroney will be long forgotten if the Liberals have their way. What this will turn into is how the Conservative party as the Government tried to cover up matters.

How long do you think that this defence will last:

• "Hon. Rob Nicholson (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, CPC):
  Mr. Speaker, the government has acted with responsibility and has put in process a scheme that I think will work in terms of an independent third party and a public inquiry. If the member has any questions, I am sure he would like to direct them to that."

As Watergate taught us and as the Liberals are learning in their attacks:

• "It's not the crime. It's the cover-up."

This whole matter is going to turn very ugly by the time it is finished. It seems to me that in Canada now federal elections are won or lost not on a policy platforms but on scandals.

What will then next big scandal be and which political party will be involved?