Stephen Harper has a mentor, a guy named Brian Mulroney. It's no secret they talk regularly, sometimes daily. Mulroney still dreams of the day his greatness will be acknowledged by a grateful and repentent Canadian people. Dreams.
In today's NatPo, columnist Andrew Coyne writes of Stevie Cameron's latest troubles and also raises a few loose ends Mulroney needs to clean up:
So Ms. Cameron's reputation is shot. What of Mr. Mulroney's? If his long-time antagonist has been discredited, does that mean he has been vindicated? Not a bit. It was partly as a result of those same Eurocopter hearings that evidence came to light of Mr. Mulroney's dealings, shortly after he had stepped down as prime minister, with Mr. Schreiber -- namely, that he had accepted a total $300,000 from Mr. Schreiber, in cash, in a series of hotel-room meetings.
That Mr. Mulroney had taken money, after leaving office, from the very man he was accused of taking bribes from while in office, in the Airbus affair, was a shocking revelation -- particularly so, since Mr. Mulroney had stated, under oath, in his famous 1995 libel suit against the government of Canada, that he "had never had any dealings" with Mr. Schreiber, short of meeting him once or twice for coffee. Whether Mr. Mulroney deliberately misled the court is an open question, but it is a certainty that the government of Canada, had it known of the Schreiber payments, would never have agreed to settle with him, or to pay him $2-million in compensation.
That Mr. Mulroney had taken money, after leaving office, from the very man he was accused of taking bribes from while in office, in the Airbus affair, was a shocking revelation -- particularly so, since Mr. Mulroney had stated, under oath, in his famous 1995 libel suit against the government of Canada, that he "had never had any dealings" with Mr. Schreiber, short of meeting him once or twice for coffee. Whether Mr. Mulroney deliberately misled the court is an open question, but it is a certainty that the government of Canada, had it known of the Schreiber payments, would never have agreed to settle with him, or to pay him $2-million in compensation.
Mr. Mulroney does not deny -- now -- that he took Mr. Schreiber's cash. And he insists that the money was declared, and taxes paid. But he has an obligation-- to the public, to the office he once held, to his own reputation -- to explain himself further, including what he did for the money, and when he declared it.
Unfortunately for Mr. Mulroney there's even a tape of his sworn deposition so we can all hear his sonorous voice unequivocally stating, under oath, that he had no dealings with Schreiber. It was on the strength of that forceful denial from a former prime minister that the Chretien goverment folded and handed Big Brian two million dollars of our money.
The other facts surrounding this story, unearthed by CBC's Fifth Estate, are even less flattering for Muldoon. He and Frank Moores got their money but neither declared it on their tax returns. Huh, why not? Only after the dealings were unearthed did Mulroney and Moores made "voluntary disclosures" to Revenue Canada and pay up their back taxes.
Yes, Mulroney should be returning that two million, with interest and the government's costs in the form of a nice cheque he can put straight into the hand of his new pal, Stephen Harper. He should also give this country and all Canadians a full apology. He owes us that.
7 comments:
Now ain't that a cute couple -- Lyin' Bryan and Deceivin' Stephen... one took a pick axe to the Canadian economy (thru his sloppyily created gst and the mishandling of free trade) and the other is using a jackhammer to nationalism.
Fred and Ginger they're not.
What a delightful metaphor, "pick axe to the economy". Even if it's nothing but a fallacy. GDP rose consistently throughout the 90's and the 00's.
http://www.demographia.com/db-ppp60+.htm
The 80's were the death of Keynesian economics in the UK and the US, we didn't quite get as far as them though and still haven't. I have hope.
Cheers,
lance
Hey, lancer you must be missing the days of big deficits i guess. Sure, Mulruney didn't invent them, but by the end of his term he had mastered deficit spending. Then his final blow came to his own party.
But I guess that's why you love Decevin' Stephen so much, too. He's spending like the stereotypical Liberal you put your hate hat on, buying luxury toys for wars that apparently we won't be fighting in when the deliver truck arrives. He's whittling down a huge surplus through 'buy now, pay later' election gizmos, most of which are copies from those 'hated liberals' again. And then he pulls out these Soupy Sales economic ideas that, splat, like a pie to the face, is setting the stage for one slippery mess.
He's out now to buy the maritimers vote - hey remember those loverly quotes by Harpor about 'climate of defeatism' and welfare comparisons? Now he's eager to fuel that analogy... I know and you know, that if that elusive majority comes to shore life will be quite different for those people, First Nations, arts groups, literacy programs, child care advocates, public sector workers, municipalities, farmers, etc. They'll all need megaphones to get their voices heard after all the massive cuts your Deceivin' Leader has under the table...
Yes, Keynesian economics and Reaganomics will collide and i bet even Lancer might have to look up from his cappachino to find out who's going to be doing the work now.
Lance is right about increasing GDP. Any economic statistic, taken in isolation, can be construed to fit almost any argument. Reagan was all about "trickle down" economics. He got it from a guy named Stockman, as I recall. Reagan's economic guru went back to farming in northern Michigan and later wrote that it was all a scam to accumulate wealth for the wealthy. Go figure.
Reagan was a vile, murderous son-of-a-bitch. There, I said it.
burley, you affirm my point.
"we didn't get as far as them and still haven't"
Read _all_ of the words.
Cheers,
lance
Mound, I agree with you.
I much preferred Thatcher's hachet to Reagan's wishy-wash policies.
Thatcher faced down and beat the unions that were bleeding the gov't, sold off almost all of the crowns, and lo and behold, it worked.
Hayek was a better teacher than Stockman.
Cheers,
lance
Lance, I don't think there was much wishy-washy about Reagan at all. He took what was the world's largest creditor nation when he became president and transformed it into the world's largest debtor nation by the time he left. Baby Bush is just following in Reagan's shoes waging an incredibly expensive war and cutting taxes at the same time, funding both on deficits that two generations to come will have to pay.
As for Maggie Thatcher, I only partly agree with you. She too was an ideological thug, happy to see Mandella remain in prison. She did some good for the UK economically but beyond that she was mediocre at best.
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