Airbus and the Ghost of Brian Mulroney

A blast from the past. A German-Canadian huckster. A former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister. A dodgy prime minister. A European aircraft giant with a reputation for handing out easy money.  Karl Heinz Schreiber, Elmer MacKay, Brian Mulroney and Airbus.

Schreiber went into a German jail cell. Elmer, late father of Peter, took his secrets to the grave. Brian went to a coffee shop to collect envelopes stuffed with cash. And Airbus - well it's still at it.

Airbus, Europe’s largest aerospace multinational, is to pay a record £3bn in penalties after admitting it had paid huge bribes on an “endemic” basis to land contracts in 20 countries. 

Anti-corruption investigators hailed the result as the largest ever corporate fine for bribery in the world after judges declared that the corruption was “grave, pervasive and pernicious”. 

The planemaker agreed to pay the penalties on Friday after reaching settlements with investigators in the UK, France and the US to end inquiries that started four years ago.

Like that horrible TV show where they're constantly trying to recover pirate treasure from Nova Scotia's Oak Island, the 'commission' Airbus admits it paid to cinch the Air Canada deal but never divulged to whom remains a deeply buried secret.

At Least They Gave Him a Warm, Safe Place to Die

74-year old Ted spent the last hours of his life in his favourite seat inside the Tim Hortons on West Broadway in Vancouver.

In the city with the most expensive houses in Canada, 24-hour restaurants have become a means of survival for many people. 

Advocates and experts say that Ted's death is an indictment of a system that has failed to provide shelter for the city's most vulnerable. 

John Gingham, who sleeps outside the Tim Hortons every night and said he had been friends with Ted for 10 years, described him as a "good guy" who "loved his cigarettes and coffee." 

"He'd talk. He'd joke around. He was friendly, right? If you didn't know him, he wouldn't say much to you," Gingham said. 

"Fast-food places take the place of the shelters that we don't have," said longtime homeless advocate Judy Graves. 

Graves knew Ted. She said he was struggling with extremely limited pensions to pay for both food and housing. 

"Ted was all but living in that particular Tim Hortons. So he was there all the time, and I think people were just used to him, used to him being there, and used to ignoring him." 

Graves said Ted knew he was close to the end, having been sick with cancer for some time.

It's wonderful that Tim Hortons was Ted's refuge, on his final day a warm, safe place to die. But in a city awash in wealth and high-end everything, it's also a disgrace.

Federal immigration laws have failed not just the homeless but Vancouverites generally going all the way back to Mulroney's "citizenship for cash" days. Trudeau's contribution has been to announce the opening of a network of new immigration offices in major cities across China. Because of the indifference and dereliction of people like Mulroney and Trudeau, young people, even with educations and what once were thought of as "good jobs" can no longer afford to live where they were born and brought up.

We Are, Indeed, Living in Interesting Times

My parents lived through the Great Depression. They lived through World War II. They lived through the Cold War. They lived in "interesting times" fraught with peril and struggle and yet emerged to be called by Tom Brokaw, "the greatest generation."

It was really difficult for me to imagine I might ever live through times even more "interesting" than my parents' and their generation's. Yet I increasingly fear that to be the case.

My parents' era was one of great progressive advancement. Perhaps lulled into complacency by the relative ease and prosperity that befell the post war generations, we have at almost every turn failed to defend that progress that was delivered to us with no sacrifice of any consequence on our part. Easy come, easy go.

We ruled the world in hubris, without regard to what follows, nemesis. And so today we stand unprepared to withstand the several monstrous calamities that loom around us in all directions.

We chose to be guided by a new rule, "Because We Can." At every turn we did whatever we could, as much as we could, as fast as we could. We didn't leave ourselves time to reflect and even ask whether we should.

We even mastered the skill of taking not only what was our fair share but what the next generations might rightly deserve. We've robbed them of their future. We did it because we could.

The transition into what would be known as neo-liberalism was ushered in by three conservative stalwarts - Reagan, Thatcher and Mulroney. All of them abdicated government responsibility to the commercial sector, surrendering critical aspects of national sovereignty along with the other powers given up in a totally one-sided deal. They freed commerce of the restraints of tariffs and trade regulation, endorsing the free movement of capital and, with it jobs and entire industrial sectors. They promised this would yield more and better jobs, higher wages. Environmental and labour laws were tossed on the block.

It would be unfair to blame this on Conservatism. Indeed what these leaders (and those that have followed them) did was antithetical to Conservatism, the political ideology. Just as Communism is rooted in the theories of Karl Marx, Conservatism finds its roots in the 18th century prescriptions of Edmund Burke.

Burke fully grasped the bond between Conservatism and conservation.

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust.

...one of the first and most leading principles on which the commonwealth and the laws are consecrated, is lest the temporary possessors and life-renters in it, unmindful of what they have received from their ancestors, or of what is due to their posterity, should act as if they were the entire masters; that they should not think it among their rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying at their pleasure the whole original fabric of their society; hazarding to leave to those who come after them a ruin instead of an habitation—and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances, as they had themselves respected the institutions of their forefathers. By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways, as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.

It's plain that in Burke's Conservatism, we are "temporary possessors and life-renters" of our world and our society. He enjoins us not to, "think it among (our) rights to cut off the entail, or commit waste on the inheritance, by destroying it at (our) pleasure the whole original fabric of (our) society; hazarding to leave to those who come after (us) a ruin instead of an habitation - and teaching these successors as little to respect their contrivances as we had (ourselves) respected the institutions of (our) forefathers.

Some century and a half later, in Osawatomie, Kansas, Theodore Roosevelt said much the same thing:

Of conservation I shall speak more at length elsewhere. Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children, leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation. 

What we call "Conservative" today bears no connection to the conservation ethos of true conservatism. It simply exists to the far right of the dominant political spectrum that besets us today. 

Why should this matter? Because we cannot return to the society envisioned by Burke, Roosevelt and so many others until we break the yoke of neoliberalism that hangs around our necks today and "skins the land and leaves it worthless" to our children. How have we skinned the land? The evidence is everywhere. Climate change is one chilling example. The global freshwater crisis and the draining of our aquifers is another. Oceanic dead zones and the toxic algae blooms that now flourish in our lakes and rivers are others. We're consuming natural resources at 1.7 times Earth's carrying capacity, making up the excess by robbing future generations.

The hard truth is that we can't change this predation, we can't even our keel, until we're prepared to quit what we've been doing. Part of that entails restoring posterity to its rightful place in our government planning and policy. That means restraining our wants, abandoning our "because we can" mentality. It's going to be hard enough meeting our needs before long. Our wants that drive our growth-obsessed governments today will become a bad memory discarded of necessity.

We are indeed living in interesting times. How we come through this is up to us.                      

The Three Eras of Canada's Democracy or How We Got to Where We Are Today.

I first voted in the 1968 elections when Pierre Trudeau and Trudeaumania led the liberals to a massive majority and I've watched Canadian democracy evolve, not always in a good way, ever since.

I've witnessed three political eras in my lifetime.

There was an Era of Rights and Freedoms, the years of Diefenbaker, Pearson and Trudeau.  Some might not realize it but Diefenbaker was a true champion of human rights.  Pearson brought Canada to the world stage as honest broker and peacekeeper.  Trudeau, of course, patriated the constitution and left us with perhaps the most important legislative enactment in our country's history, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  That was the zenith of liberal democracy in Canada.  It truly was our Golden Age.

Although few of us grasped it at the time, Mulroney ushered in the Era of Neoliberalism in the guise of free trade and the incremental surrender of national sovereignty to the forces of market fundamentalism.  The era of neoliberalism represented the years of Mulroney, Chretien and Martin.  Neoliberalism became our orthodoxy until it was even embraced by the New Democrats.

The third era is upon us.  It is the Era of Illiberal Democracy marked by the rise of the authoritarian state and the ascendancy of the state over the individual.  This is Canada under Stephen Harper.

I don't single out Canada for criticism.  Illiberal democracy is spreading fast throughout the world.  We are just following suit.  It's marked by a general shift to the Right, a skewing of the democratic restraints on government, and the emergence of new power structures.

Ignatieff recast the Liberals as Conservative Lite with his endorsement of a "muscular foreign policy", petro-statehood, and his unbalanced support for Israel.  Layton and Mulcair likewise embraced neoliberalism as they abandoned the Left and Blairified the NDP.

Harper has left no shred of doubt that he holds liberal democracy and especially the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in contempt.  He has sought to flout the Charter over and again, only to run afoul of the constitutional guardians, the Supreme Court.  They alone, not our opposition leaders, have ensured we have something left to fight for.

Illiberal democracy is evident in the workings of the authoritarian state.  It is manifest in voter manipulation and fraudulent elections.  It is the vehicle for rising inequality.  It is masked in secrecy and deceit.  It is the modern surveillance state.  It is the advancement of corporate interests (i.e. pipelines) over the public interest (i.e. action to thwart global warming).  We're even seeing the early onset symptoms of a permanent warfare state, outsourcing much of our foreign and military policy to another nation.

This is where we are today, the era of illiberal democracy.  Left unchecked it will worsen and our democracy will continue to be degraded.  We only have to look at America's "bought and paid for" Congress and its corporatist Supreme Court.

How to get back to real democracy is the puzzle.  It certainly cannot be achieved with Liberals as Conservatives and New Democrats as Liberals.  We cannot even the political keel under that reality and the country can only continue to list to the Right.

I fear the only antidote is progressivism, genuine bare-knuckle progressivism. Liberals need to restore their near-dead progressive wing.  New Democrats have to curb their centrism and return to their indispensable role of anchoring the Left and becoming the conscience of Parliament.  Who even speaks for labour any more?  Mulcair?  Spare me.

If we don't realize where we came from, everything great that we had accomplished, where we are today and just how we got here, we become party to ensuring the perpetuation and expansion of illiberal democracy in Canada.  We have a choice but we take it for granted at our and our children's peril.  Our freedom hangs in the balance.

Mulroney Excuse "Patently Absurd"

The Oliphant report into Mulroney/Schreiber contains a few scathing findings about the former prime minister and his credibility. From the G&M:

The conduct exhibited by Mr. Mulroney in accepting cash-stuffed envelopes from Mr. Schreiber on three separate occasions, failing to record the fact of the cash payments, failing to deposit the cash into a bank or other financial institution, and failing to disclose the fact of the cash payments when given the opportunity to do so goes a long way, in my view, to supporting my position that the financial dealings between Mr. Schreiber and Mr. Mulroney were inappropriate,” Mr. Oliphant said.

“I found that the business and financial dealings between Mr. Schreiber and Mr. Mulroney were inappropriate. I also found thatMr. Mulroney’s failure to disclose those business and financial dealings was inappropriate. Simply put, Mr. Mulroney, in his business and financial dealings with Mr. Schreiber,failed to live up to the standard of conduct that he had himself adopted in the 1985 Ethics Code.”

He included tough words in his report about the conduct of Mr. Mulroney, the prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993, during an examination as part of his lawsuit against the government of Canada. Mr. Mulroney has justified his answers at the time, in which he failed to disclose his dealings with Mr. Schreiber, by saying that the question was not asked
.
“For Mr. Mulroney to attempt to justify his failure to make disclosure in those circumstances by asserting that (federal lawyer Claude) Sheppard did not ask the correct question is, in my view, patently absurd.,” Mr. Oliphant said.

Unfortunately Harper ran effective interference for Mulroney, forbidding Oliphant from looking into the Airbus Affair, which pretty much takes Lyin' Brian off the hook forever. That is... unless Schreiber has a bombshell or two left to deliver from his German prison cell. Still and all, Oliphant reveals Mulroney as a devious, unethical, flat out lying bastard.

Milking It To The End

We the people are picking up Mulroney's 2-million dollar tab for his performance at the Oliphant inquiry.

You would think for that kind of money he would have answered some questions or at least given some plausible explanations where so many remain missing.

The funding appears to be a perk afforded Privy Councillors, a status that BMPM will cherish to his last breath. I'd love to get a gander at Guy Pratte's accounts for representing that old BM.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if he would just give us back the original two million he took us for back when his only dealings with Schreiber were a get togethers for coffee (and envelopes stuffed with thousand dollar bills).

Brian - People With Glass Jaws Shouldn't Throw Wild Punches

If the Oliphant inquiry will accomplish anything, it will be to have provided a forum for Brian Mulroney to demolish the last vestige of his reputation. He promised he would lay it all out and would be vindicated. But in his six days on the stand it became increasingly obvious that he was concealing far more than he was revealing and that his uncorroborated accounts simply didn't add up, didn't make much sense.

BMPM should have been remembered for his environmentalism or his courageous stand against South African apartheid but he's put an end to all that. Now he'll go down in the books as a shifty character who was always hiding something and consorting with n'er do wells on shady, undocumented deals. He'll be the tragic figure who demeaned himself with implausible explanations that defied all credulity.

I can't help wondering how Brian Mulroney saw Brian Mulroney when this inquiry began for it was certainly that self-image that shaped his performance over the past week. He must have given his counsel, Guy Pratte, absolute fits. Every lawyer dreads the client who gets up on the stand and rambles on foolishly, pointing out his own vulnerabilities to all who hear him. I've seen that thing played out more than once. There's a certain shared consciousness that spreads to counsel for all parties and to the bench. As often as not it goes unmentioned but everyone, save perhaps for the witness, knows the undeniable reality of what has just happened. Pratte and Wolson and Oliphant have undoubtedly had a few of those moments already - Mulroney's implausible account of how he simply kept bundles of cash gathering dust in his home safe or some bank safety deposit box, his inability to show anything tangible to evidence the work he supposedly did for Shcreiber, the glaring inconsistencies in his saga of his tax reporting and voluntary disclosure. What he kept saying simply made no sense.

One point that really piqued Oliphant's interest was Mulroney's revelation of an article the Globe and Mail was about to print that exonnerated him, an article that was pulled at the last minute as just another part of the plot to destroy Brian Mulroney. That claim led Globe editor, Edward Greenspon to dash off a denunciation to inquiry counsel Wolson:

In his testimony today, Mr Mulroney made reference to a supposed fourth article in the November 2003 series authored by William Kaplan and suggested this article, on which he "was counting very heavily," was suppressed by the Globe. There was no such fourth article ever contemplated. The number of articles in the series was always three.

It may be that what Mr. Mulroney is referring to is information he offered me in an effort to induce The Globe and Mail not to publish Mr. Kaplan's third article revealing that Mr. Mulroney had accepted cash payments from Mr. Schreiber. When he found out that the Globe intended to publish Mr. Kaplan's story, Mr. Mulroney contacted me several times trying to appeal to me not to publish the story. In at least one of the conversations, Mr. Mulroney offered to trade me information about a story that he said was explosive and would be of greater interest to The Globe than Mr. Kaplan's story about the cash payments.

As though Brian Mulroney's dwindling credibility needed, or could withstand, another hit. So much for his claims that he's always been fothright about his dealings with Schreiber, gladly willing to answer any questions put to him.

It's too bad - for Mulroney - that he used his appearance to take swings at those he feels have betrayed or persecuted him, the current prime minister, Jean Chretien, Norman Spector, William Kaplan ...the list goes on. In doing this Mulroney revealed that the once great prime minister now stands alone, weak and vulnerable.

$300,000 Is Not Peripheral To A Poor Man

Jeffrey Oliphant's hardest job may be to put sensible meanings to Brian Mulroney's words.

Brian Mulroney cannot accept the normal interpretation of words so he's invented his own. Take his description of his relationship with Schreiber as "peripheral."

By all accounts, Brian Mulroney was not a wealthy man while he was prime minister. We have that from his aide, Norman Spector. When we do have a wealthy prime minister, a Paul Martin or a Pierre Trudeau, we know about their wealth and where it came from.

Do you remember how Mila Mulroney carried on when it was time for them to vacate 24 Sussex Drive? She even wanted the National Capital Commission to pay her for the wallpaper in the place! Finally the NCC cut her a cheque for $150,000 for furnishings the Mulroneys decided to leave behind at 24 Sussex Drive and Harrington Lake but the cheque was returned after a controversy erupted over just who had paid for those furnishings in the first place.

So a man hands Mulroney envelopes stuffed with thousand dollar bills, a hundred grand a pop, three times, and to Mulroney this was "peripheral"? Now it might have been peripheral to a man who was actually vastly wealthy, someone who could leave his public service job, buy a $1.7-million dollar home and toss in a further million dollars on renos. But Brian Mulroney wasn't a wealthy man, was he? Was he?

Brian's Little Bags of Cash

Brian Mulroney did his best to act perplexed that Karlheinz Schreiber gave him envelopes stuffed with cash. Cash of all things! Thousand dollar bills no less. Mulroney seemed downright vexed at having to deal in grimy paper currency although he did point out it was valid, legal tender - perhaps simply wanting to use the word 'legal' in conjunction with his loot.

Mulroney gave the impressing he really didn't know what to do with cash so he just stuffed it in his safe at home or in a safety deposit box.

And yet, by some accounts, cash was the Mulroneys very favourite variety of capital. Norman Spector wrote of making a bank run once a month to fetch a supply of cash for Mila.

"Mulroney was not a rich man. Party funds were being drawn, and one of our staff was assigned to pore through personal expenses to determine if some might be reimbursed. Every month I cashed a cheque at a local bank and remitted the funds to Mila," Spector wrote.

Then there was the former prime minister's chef who once claimed he ran a regular shuttle picking up envelopes stuffed with cash from Fred Doucet and delivering them to Mrs. Mulroney - although he later denied every saying such a thing.

Schreiber picked up the 'not a rich man' theme in his evidence when he claimed he was approached by Doucet to give money to the boss because he was hard up.

And then there's the return to Montreal. The oh so not rich Mulroney began his return to private life by purchasing a posh home for $1.7-million. You don't find a lot of poor people who can manage that little trick. Better yet, before they moved into their 'fixer upper' they put around a million dollars into renovations. That's a lot of new toilets and counter tops.

The kicker though, according to Stevie Cameron, is that most of the cost of the renos was - paid in cash.

It strikes me that if this last point can be proven, somebody's got some 'splainin to do, somebody who was oh so not rich. Then again, Cameron seems to have gotten a couple of things wrong before.

Did Mulroney Just Admit Committing Perjury?

The man who set the gold standard for Conservative integrity, Brian Mulroney, says he concealed his dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber, "...to avoid the same kinds of deceitful and false purveying of information that had led to the original Airbus matter in the first place."

Say what? Under oath you gave counsel a false account of your dealings with Schreiber to avoid ...deceitful and false purveying of information? What kind of self-serving delusion is that?

In order to further avoid deceitful and false purveying of information, Mulroney said there are two Schreibers: the upright businessman he dealt with back then and the scumbag who has supposedly caused him such grief today. In other words, Mulroney took cash-stuffed envelopes from a really great guy and it's all Schreiber's fault for, well, for spilling the beans.

Lyin' Brian Gets Up to Bat, Brings Own Pitcher

The Brian Mulroney/Jeffrey Oliphant inquiry really gets underway today when Justice Oliphant hands the proceedings over to Mr. Mulroney for a two-day carnival show intended to "frame" the issues.

If the witness was a mortal, like you for example, he would be called, sworn and then questioned by the inquiry counsel, the guy who's supposed to frame the issues. But in this inquiry there are mortals and there is Brian Mulroney, the guy who lied under oath about the very subject matter of this inquiry, the schmeergelder he received via cash-stuffed envelopes from Karlheinz Schreiber.

Recognizing the divinity of The Witness, Justice Oliphant has decided that the inquiry will grant The Witness the indulgence of being allowed to be questioned, not by inquiry counsel, but by his own lawyer, his own advocate for the first day and a half.

An opening statement is one thing - five, ten maybe even twenty minutes. But a day and a half of spin spread in a thick, smothering blanket by Mulroney counsel, Guy Pratte? You may still think this inquiry, with its artificially narrowed scope (don't look here, don't look there, no talking about that or that or that), is legitimate but I don't. Mulroney is the culprit in this proceeding, it's only because his heart still beats that Stephen Harper was forced to stage this set up at all. That he should then be allowed to run the show leaves little doubt this is a grotesque travesty.

Why Is Mulroney Such a Burr Under Harper's Saddle?

By all accounts it's a good thing we don't let Tory MPs and Senators carry knives or there would have been blood all over the lawns of Parliament when the subject of Brian Mulroney came up at their Conservative caucus meeting last week.

The Tories are split into two camps. One wants to shun the former pm who delivered their party two consecutive and massive majorities. The other side stubbornly insists on defending Brian as one of the flock. The Mulroney supporters appear to be defying Steve Harper's command that Mulroney be 'disappeared' from the party. According to the G&M, Harper has ordered all members of his government, including Mulroney friends, to sever all ties with his predecessor. The only thing Harper hasn't done is declare Mulroney a terrorist.

Steve is acting like a politician in full panic. He plainly sees his former mentor as lethally toxic to his government. Why? Harper must know something is coming Mulroney's way, probably in the Oliphant inquiry. Does Karlheinz Schreiber really have the goods on Mulroney, some smoking gun? Is there some aspect of the Mulroney business that could actually harm the Harper government?

Something is afoot here that's not being explained, at least not to the public. It's said that Karlheinz Schreiber is the next witness scheduled to testify at the inquiry. If there are to be any bombshells they'll probably be launched by Schreiber.

What Do the Tories Know That We Don't? Ask Mulroney

Is the Pope Catholic? Is Brian Mulroney a Tory? Yes to the first, depends who you ask to the second.

The Conservative Television Network reports there's some disagreement between Conservative 'sources' and Mulroney as to whether Lyin' Brian is still a Tory.

Senior Conservatives contacted select reporters Tuesday to tell them Mulroney had effectively torn up his party card.

"I can confirm he is no longer a member," said one Conservative source.

Mulroney briskly fired off an unequivocal statement through his public relations team.
"I remain a member of the Conservative Party and I will remain so until the day I die," Mulroney said.

The bizarre dispute over Mulroney's party membership is a sign of just how bilious the relationship between the Harper government and Mulroney has become.

Makes you wonder whether the Harpies have sized up what's coming at the Oliphant inquiry and figure it'd be a good idea to try to distance the CPC from the former Tory PM.

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20090331/mulroney_tories_090331/20090331?hub=TopStories

Gomery Slaps Harper on Mulroney

There was a time when retired judge John Gomery was Stephen Harper's darling. That was when the sponsorship scandal was underway and Gomery was handing Harper a ticket to 24 Sussex Drive.

Now it's Harper who's in Gomery's crosshairs, this time over the enquiry into Mulroney's shady dealings with KarlHeinz Schreiber.

Gomery's comments to Canadian Press suggest he sees what's coming as a set up:

"The man who headed the inquiry into the Liberal sponsorship scandal is questioning how serious Prime Minister Stephen Harper is about an inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair.

"It's clear this is not a high priority for him, because he's not treating it as a high priority," retired judge John Gomery told The Canadian Press in an interview Wednesday.

"Once you've said you're going to do something, usually you're expected to do it within a reasonable period. And the period is getting beyond reasonable."

But the prime minister has delayed action, first while the Commons ethics committee conducted hearings, and then while a special adviser, University of Waterloo president David Johnston, compiled two preliminary reports on the affair.

Johnston recommended a relatively narrow probe into lobbying activities that Mulroney undertook for Schreiber after leaving office in 1993. That would exclude the so-called Airbus affair that centred on Air Canada's purchase of European-built jetliners while Mulroney was still in power.

Gomery called it "unprecedented" for Harper to ask an outside party to decide on the scope of the proposed inquiry.

The prospect of a narrow probe may be making it difficult for the government to find a judge willing to take the job, Gomery speculated.

Any commissioner "is going to be criticized from Day 1 if he follows that (mandate) and restricts the evidence to certain periods of time, certain facts. If he goes a little bit more broadly, he may be challenged in court for exceeding his mandate."

It was a different story, said Gomery, when former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin gave him a broad mandate to delve into the sponsorship affair that erupted under predecessor Jean Chretien.

"Generally speaking, I was able to go where I thought I should go to get the answers that I needed to get. I don't think that's the case for the (Mulroney-Schreiber) inquiry, if it's ever conducted."

What, a set up? By our Furious Leader, Little Stevie Harpo? To let Mulroney off the hook and spare his government embarrassment? Ya think?

Slap Him In Irons If That's What It Takes

Brian Mulroney's lawyer is hinting the boss may not make another appearance before the Commons ethics committee "unless he gets assurances from the committee that it won't stray from its mandate" or at least what Mulroney contends is its mandate.

It's becoming increasingly obvious that there are plenty of areas Mulroney doesn't want the committee exploring, plenty of questions he'd rather not have to answer.

If he doesn't come back, subpoena him. If he doesn't answer the subpoena, proceed against him for contempt and have him brought forward in cuffs if he makes that necessary. Get Mulroney in the witness chair and, this time, get him under oath.

Maybe that'll mean he'll claim the protection against self-incrimination of the Canada Evidence Act, but so be it. At least let him wear that for the rest of his life if he so chooses. This is a guy who claims he's done nothing wrong, he has nothing to hide. Odd how he's done such a fine job of hiding so far.

Heather Mallick's Take on Brian Mulroney

I've been bothered by a nagging, undefined feeling I was left with after watching Brian Mulroney's performance before the Commons ethics committee. That's why I found Heather Mallick's take on it positively uproarious. Enjoy. From CBC.ca:

"I'd have paid good money not to see Brian Mulroney testify to the Ethics Committee. It was like watching your father get drunk at a party or seeing your mother naked.* I kept having to straighten myself out of the fetal position.

It was excruciating because it was so revealing but only in the worst way, like a group therapy session for the nation.

Over all of us glowered the shadow of the family patriarch, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a man who inherited money and never developed a taste for it. It wasn't good for the deficit but at least we know Trudeau's deft, aristocratic hands never soiled themselves with thousand-dollar bills from any Mr. Dodgy.

A handful of MPs stood out. Pat Martin, the NDP's Ethics and Privacy critic and MP for Winnipeg Centre, is the stalwart son, Matt Damon in Syriana. "I'm not calling you a liar, Mr. Mulroney, but I don't want anybody here to think I believe you," he said wryly, which was as good a summing-up of our relationship with Brian Mulroney as has ever been spoken.

The essence of the intervention was all about dirt, in the anthropological sense. Dirt is matter out of place. Envelopes of thousand-dollar bills are matter that should never have touched Mulroney's hands. They did. Ergo, he has dirty hands.

It was a mistake, he tells the family, and besides they weren't really dirty in the first place. "I erred in judgment," he says. No. I erred in judgment when I didn't get my eavestroughs cleaned in November. You took cash from a German bagman. It's different.

He just can't help himself. Unctuous as ever, he goes over the top. He doesn't work at a law firm, but one of "the great law firms of Canadian history." He doesn't just have a family but a wife by his side and four young children and an ailing mother and a dead father … Brian, everyone in the room has a family. Everyone has a boss. It's not special.

"We all have enemies," he says, and waxes philosophical. But that's not how he really feels, so why pretend. He rails at Stevie Cameron, one of Canada's best and most implacable journalists, for talking to the RCMP in her office at home, which must mean she's some kind of informant. He doesn't realize that informants don't invite you to their home; they meet you in hotel rooms.

Canada is my family. I love them, I don't love them. After they looked like fools at the Bali summit, from now on when I go out with them, I'll pretend I don't know who these people are.

But I know Brian. Every family has a Brian."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_mallick/20071214.html

Is Mulroney Circling the Wagons?

Luc Lavoie says he is no longer Brian Mulroney's spokesman:

"Mr. Mulroney is fighting for his integrity and the integrity of his family, and I'm fully sympathetic to what he's going through and I wish him the best, believe me, and I still consider him a dear friend and always will."

"I wish him the best, believe me." Why wouldn't we believe that and why does Lavoie think he needs to ask us to believe him? So, he'll always be Mulroney's dear friend - does that mean he'll stay loyal even if Mulroney hangs Lavoie out to dry for the apparent admissions Luc has already made?

Lavoie has given yoeman service to Mulroney for fifteen years, so why would he bail out on the guy now in his moment of greatest need?

As I said earlier, I don't believe that Lavoie's resignation or the timing of it are haphazard. I don't believe these things aren't integrated into the next round of posturing we'll see from Brian Mulroney. I suspect (and I am guessing here) that Mulroney wants time to distance himself from Lavoie and you can probably expect a total information lockdown from the Mulroney camp until he testifies. He may be planning to dodge the ethics committee by saying he'll give his evidence to the public inquiry next year. We'll just have to watch how this unfolds.

So what is Mulroney going to say when it becomes his turn to talk? Believe it or not, I don't think he knows just yet. Schreiber is supposed to be back for two more days of testimony before the committee. Documents should begin appearing at some point. And then there are other potential witnesses such as Robert Hladun whose evidence, if reports are credible, could be damning to Mulroney's credibility.

Mulroney factum filed this week. From Canada.com:

"Mr. Schreiber does not say in his 7 November 2007 affidavit that his previous statements were inaccurate or untrue," the factum filed by Mulroney states. "He does not say that his letter of 20 July 2006 is inaccurate or untrue. He does not say that his statements to Mr. (William) Kaplan (the book author) or others were inaccurate or untrue. He makes no effort to explain the inconsistencies between his 7 November 2007 statement and his previous statements."

It adds: "Mr. Schreiber's evidence in prior proceedings was accepted by the court" - a reference to the Eurocopter fraud case where an Ottawa judge denied the Crown's request to have Schreiber declared a hostile witness and found his account credible.

Mulroney's latest court filing deliberately does not deal with two other new and damaging allegations Schreiber made in his most recent affidavit: namely that in 1998 he spoke to the former prime minister in Zurich about transferring money to his Geneva lawyer "related to the Airbus deal;" and that he hoped Mulroney would take his 2006 letter to Harper to secure his help avoiding extradition.

"For the most part, the matters to which Mr. Schreiber deposes have nothing to do with this motion, and will not be responded to," Mulroney's jurisdiction motion states.

Notice this factum gives absolutely nothing away. It is all about Schreiber and his inconsistencies. Nothing more.

I think you can expect to see that approach figure strongly in any public testimony Mulroney may give. Attack your accuser. Draw on Schreiber's inconsistencies, paint him as an abject liar and then say nothing that comes from Schreiber warrants rebuttal. The second approach is to slice and dice the facts and challenge as many as possible as irrelevant. Narrow the case you have to meet on relevance and credibility.

That's not to say that Mulroney still doesn't have a lot of explaining to do. He does. But it's far easier to explain away one set of facts than two.

Who Says Brian Mulroney Took a Dime from Schreiber?

Ask yourself this, when did Brian Mulroney admit taking $300,000 from Karlheinz Schreiber? When has he acknowledged taking Dime One from Schreiber? Have you ever heard him say it? Have you ever read where he's actually said it to anyone? I haven't and I'll bet neither have you.

We've heard Schreiber say it. We've learned about it in the great reporting from the Fifth Estate and the Globe & Mail but I can't recall anyone even getting a chance to ask Mulroney if he got the $300,000 he's alleged to have received.

Okay, okay, I know, Mulroney's supposed spokesman, Luc Lavoie, seems to have acknowledged the fact, even called it his boss's worst mistake. But that's Luc Lavoie, not Brian Mulroney. We've all heard about Mulroney promoting Schreiber's pasta venture of the Bear Head armoured vehicle plant proposal - but we haven't heard that from the mouth of the one guy who, at this point, truly matters - Martin Brian Mulroney.

Coming into the upcoming inquiry, Mulroney is seemingly trapped by facts. No one can know what he's facing better than Mulroney and his counsel. But take a hard look at the facts that confront him. For all we know, he may have a case built up that will blow Schreiber out of the water and make Lavoie look like an ill-informed,loud-mouth klutz.

Schreiber is vulnerable, that much we know. Lavoie can always say he was working from assumptions. Get enough of the clutter out of the way and all Brian Mulroney may have to overcome is Brian Mulroney.

That's not to say he doesn't have a lot of explaining to do. It's merely to say that a lot of what appear to be hurdles that lie in his path probably aren't as daunting as we might see them. What I'm also saying is that we're beginning to let assumptions get the better of us and, in these matters, that's like leading with your chin.

If It Walks Like a Duck

Trying to uncover what actually transpired between two suspect individuals is rarely easy and the outcome is even more rarely tidy. Counsel trying to unravel questionable dealings don't count on finding the great smoking gun. It does happen, but rarely. Instead, they usually have to be content with uncovering a fabric of little lies, half truths and inconsistencies. It's the way they point when they're all put together that settles the issue.

How does one go about that? There are techniques that can be pretty effective. One of these is to steer clear of the principals at the outset. Leave them be while you pursue paper trails and get the evidence of knowledgeable third parties. There'll usually be some credible individuals out on the periphery of any suspect deal - lawyers, bankers, managers, clerical staff - the sort of people involved in any legitimate deal. Individually they may not have the big picture but it can be astonishing how much they know about key parts of the scheme.

What you get, or hope to get, from this approach of working from the periphery toward the centre are building blocks of evidence. They may seem almost useless until you find something else with which they fit and, gradually, you may get to something that becomes recongizable. One makes sense of something else or corroborates part of the emerging picture.

Slowly what develops will become more focused and directed. That's when you can tuck your documents, facts and analyses into your pocket and start talking to the principals.

Let's say somebody claims to have been involved in a particular venture or project. If they're telling the truth there ought to be documentary evidence to corroborate their claims. What if there's not? Then it depends whether the venture looks suspicious. If it looks like a duck and waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, the court is entitled to suspect that it is indeed a duck. Having come to that suspicion, the court is then properly entitled to call upon the people who claim it isn't and never was a duck to come up with corroboration.

Enter Koop v. Smith, a 1915 decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. The case involved a fraudulent conveyance but is useful for its wider discussion of badges of fraud and shifting onus of proof:

"Suspicious circumstances coupled with the close relationship between the transferee and the debtor make a sufficient prima facie case of fraud. From that point, the burden of producing credible evidence substantiating the transaction is upon those who set it up. If substantial valuable consideration is truly given for a transfer of lands, there must be better evidence of it than the recitals in the deed and the land transfer tax affidavit."

I think that this principle should apply to the Mulroney-Schreiber dealings. There was a close relationship going back to Mulroney's leadership bid. There are plenty of suspicious circumstances to be found in the record of both men. Mulroney's story has changed at least twice and his current position directly contradicts his sworn testimony many years ago. Schreiber too has changed his story when that has suited him.

I think there is an abundance of suspicious circumstances in this scandal to place a clear onus on Brian Mulroney to come up with "credible evidence substantiating the transaction" as he now alleges it. At the very least, Brian Mulroney has to come up with $300,000 worth of corroboration and that's a lot of paper and a lot of witnesses. And if he somehow manages to do just that? Well then he needs to explain why he said something entirely different at the outset.

Mulroney's Achilles Heel

It's reported that the Commons Ethics Committee will have government lawyers open the questioning of Karlheinz Schreiber when and if he appears before them tomorrow.

If it was up to me, my first question would be to ask Schreiber if he would release his former lawyer, Robert Hladun, from his privilege restrictions concerning any communications between Hladun, Brian Mulroney and Mulroney's lawyer, Gerard Tremblay, during October, 1999, pertaining to funds that passed from Schreiber to Mulroney or Frank Moores.

Why focus on this? The answer is contained in this account from the Fifth Estate of events said to have transpired on October 17, 1999:

October 17, 1999

"Mulroney contacts Schreiber's lawyer Robert Hladun and asks him to ask Schreiber for a written statement indicating that at no time did Mulroney solicit or receive compensation from Karlheinz Schreiber.

Gerard Tremblay phones Robert Hladun and asks for a letter to keep on file from Schreiber, which is not to be disseminated, so that he can send a letter to the CBC which "would in his opinion shut down the airing of the fifth estate story on the "Airbus"—October 20th.

Mulroney contacts Hladun and tells him he has instructed Tremblay to send a letter to the fifth estate "indicating that if there was the slightest implication that Mr. Schreiber, Mr. Moores and Brian Mulroney were involved in any way then there would be terrible consequences.

He would issue the letter but first wanted an assurance or comfort in writing from Mr. Schreiber saying that he would confirm what he had publicly on many occasions, that at no time did Brian Mulroney solicit or receive of any kind from Schreiber. Mulroney called Hladun again that day, at which time Mulroney was told "I was no sure whether or not a letter would be forthcoming."


These events, to my mind, could be the most troublesome for Mulroney because of what they say if they're true and because they can be confirmed or denied by a person whose integrity is not questioned, Robert Hladun.

If Hladun corroborates this account it would put Mulroney in the spot of having to explain why he personally contacted Schreiber's lawyer asking for a letter from Schreiber denying payments that even Mulroney himself now acknowledges he received. It would also make it vastly more difficult for Mulroney to lay on the blarney about what he said under oath in his lawsuit and why he forgot to declare this income for tax purposes until it was disclosed in the media. In other words, any guy who would try to pull this stunt has just kissed goodbye the benefit of the doubt.

If these events didn't happen I think Hladun would be eager to set the record straight, if only to extricate himself from the controversy.