Of Rats and Sinking Ships

The Tories would have us believe them to be the party of transparency, accountability, honesty, fidelity, rigtheousness and everything espoused in the Boy Scout oath. And then there's Brian Mulroney.

These same lilly-whites are now furiously bailing out on their pal and mentor, Lyin' Brian. It's as though Mulroney has the avian flu and is trying to bed them.

Relax, Mulroney stopped screwing Canada when he got $2-million of our taxdollars by claiming he barely knew Karlheinz Schreiber. The only bunch he seems to be screwing now are the - lordy, lordy - Holier than Thou Tories.

The Conservative hypocrisy is so blatant as to be rebuked by the National Disgrace's own Don Martin:

Brian Mulroney was declared a parliamentary pariah last week by a Conservative government that had hailed him as its mentor and elder statesman.

Cabinet ministers and Conservative MPs are abruptly bailing from a health research gala this Thursday in Montreal, where Mr. Mulroney is scheduled to speak after receiving a "rarely awarded" medal of honour.

Organizers say he has not yet followed insider advice to miss the event, knowing it will become a Mulroney-stalking media frenzy instead of a salute to his former government's medical-research support.

Senator Marjory LeBreton has also fallen strangely silent, unusual behaviour for a chatty Cabinet minister who serves as Mr. Mulroney's loudest and proudest cheerleader on Parliament Hill.

And from inside the Stephen Harper Cabinet, a bizarre blame game has been started by Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon, who says former prime minister Jean Chrétien should have nailed Mr. Mulroney with a public inquiry a decade ago instead of apologetically paying his $2.1-million legal bill.

This is particularly odd coming from Mr. Cannon, whose chief of staff served as the usher for Mr. Mulroney's 1998 Swiss hotel meeting with Karlheinz Schreiber, the lobbyist who forked over three $100,000 cash payments nobody knew existed when the court settlement was announced.

The troubling side of Mr. Mulroney's predicament is that while Mr. Schreiber has sworn out an incendiary affidavit, the former prime minister's advocates have been silenced and the former leader has been shunned by his own party before he's uttered a public peep in his own defence.

Of course, Mr. Mulroney is not above apparent nose-stretching of his own and there's no doubt this saga suggests he's an alarmingly poor judge of character.

For Mr. Schreiber to know, for example, that Mr. Mulroney had a meeting with the ultra-secretive Stephen Harper at his Harrington Lake retreat in the summer of 2006 shows a shocking lack of discretion on Mr. Mulroney's part.
And for the former prime minister to allegedly agree to hand Mr. Harper a friendly letter from Mr. Schreiber to curry political favour suggests a frightening desperation by Mr. Mulroney to fix a problem from his past.

So far, Prime Minister Harper's only risk in this ruckus is confined to questions about Mr. Schreiber's seven-month-old taddle-tale letter to the Privy Council. It was filled with many of the Mulroney allegations, but Mr. Harper insists it never reached his office. If this is true, it suggests a failure to communicate in the top bureaucracy. If this is not the case, cover-up allegations beckon.

But this much is certain: The investigator tagged to study this mess will need Solomon's wisdom to sort facts from fiction.

With so many exaggerations, distortions and outright lies being spread by people who place a priceless value on self-preservation, the truth may be impossible to find.

So the rats are deserting the sinking ship. I guess the guy just outlived his usefulness.