Does Mulroney take us for fools?
Let’s get a few things straight off the top. There are three sets of events about which we need answers. The first has to do with the circumstances surrounding the payments in cash Mulroney admits to having taken from Schreiber after he was prime minister, that is from 1993 on: what he did for the money, why he took it in cash, why there are no records of it anywhere, why he went to such elaborate lengths to conceal it, and so on.
The second has to do with a number of contracts for government business for which Schreiber was paid millions of dollars in secret commissions by his German clients in the 1980s -- not only Airbus, but Thyssen and MBB: how those contracts were won, and what Schreiber did with the money, and whether the first had anything to do with the second. In particular, there is the question of Schreiber’s relationship, financial or otherwise, with several members of that group of Tories centred around Mulroney, going back to the days of the 1983 convention.
Each of those is significant, and troubling, in itself. They remain so, quite apart from whether anyone can connect the two -- that is, whether the payments that we know Mulroney received from Schreiber after he was prime minister were in consequence of anything he did for him while he was prime minister. This third scenario is the one that gets everyone excited. It is, to be sure, the most significant question, in the sense that if it were true, it would be the most serious possible outcome of all this.
But it is also the one for which there is the least evidence. None, in fact. No evidence has been produced to suggest Mulroney personally took bribes from Schreiber, either before or after he left office. It has not even been alleged, except in the infamous 1995 letter of request to the Swiss authorities. Moreover, both men have consistently denied there was any such exchange (though, it should be said, this is hardly surprising: if Schreiber had bribed Mulroney, it is unlikely that either party would be anxious to admit it).
But we do not have to leap all the way to prime ministers taking kickbacks to want the first two sets of events explained. And this Mulroney signally failed to do. He did not give convincing explanations for events of which he was a part in the 1980s. And he most certainly did not give a convincing account of his dealings with Schreiber after he was prime minister.
Instead, he spent most of his time attacking Schreiber’s credibility. This would be significant, and useful, if the business truly pitted one man’s word against the other’s. But in fact that is not the case.
Schreiber’s credibility would be the central issue in this case if we did not know that Mulroney took hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from him. But we do. His credibility would be the issue if we did not have his bank records, or the agreements he signed with Airbus, Thyssen and MBB -- but we do. We can trust our own eyes. We don’t need to trust him. We know from these records that Schreiber was paid millions, and we know where at least some of it went: to Frank Moores and his partners in Government Consultants International, and to Brian Mulroney.
To be told that Schreiber is a liar and a perjurer does nothing to explain why Mulroney took cash from Schreiber after he left office, or any of the rest of the story. It is, for the most part, beside the point. To be sure, it would be interesting to know whether they agreed to do business together before or after Mulroney stepped down as prime minister. But the relationship between them is troubling either way. It’s troubling even if you accept Mulroney’s version on every issue on which they disagree. All Mulroney needed to do was explain his side of it. And this is the story he told us:
He said he was hired in August of 1993 to promote the famous Bear Head project to build light-armoured vehicles in Cape Breton -- not in Canada, as Schreiber alleges (which would not only have been in contravention of the lobbyist regulations, inasmuch as he was not registered to lobby, but would also have have run afoul of the code of conduct for public office holders) but overseas: that is, to sell the vehicles abroad. There was no factory to build them, you understand, depending as the project was on government financing that had not proved forthcoming. But never mind. What could be more innocent: selling Canadian-made vehicles -- peacekeeping vehicles, no less -- to other countries?
Why, then, have we not heard this story until now? Mulroney has had seven years to tell his side of the story, ever since his dealings with Schreiber were first unearthed by the reporter Phil Mathias, and since Mathias told what he knew to Bill Kaplan, the lawyer and historian who eventually broke the story. Kaplan spent more than two years nailing it down. In that time, he talked to Mulroney probably a couple of dozen times. The former prime minister tried every possible tack to persuade him not to publish the story, sounding at times a pleading note, at other times a threatening one. In all that time, he never once disclosed this wonderfully exculpatory version of events. Nor has he or any of his spokesmen breathed a word of it since. Why? Maybe he was embarrassed about the cash? That would explain why he didn’t tell anyone before these became known. But after? What’s to lose?
I think we should hear more. Who did he talk to on these foreign journeys? According to Mulroney, he talked to Boris Yeltsin, and to Francois Mitterrand. Does he have any other names -- someone living, perhaps? He says he talked to government officials in China and the United States? Are there any records of these meetings?
Then there’s the little matter of the cash. According to Mulroney, it was Schreiber who insisted that he be paid in cash, in payments totalling $225,000, not the $300,000 Schreiber has maintained. Schreiber’s explanation for this extraordinary request, he says, was simple that he was an international businessman, and this was how he did business. O-kay. That does not explain why Mulroney -- former prime minister of Canada, former president of the Iron Ore Co. of Canada, experienced lawyer -- accepted the request. All that we heard, over and over, was: I made a mistake. It was an error. I’m sorry.
This at least has the virtue of being something we have heard before. Last month, Mulroney’s faithful former spokesman, Luc Lavoie, road-tested the international businessman-colossal mistake explanation. But Luc added another element: Mulroney needed money. Desperately. This was a rare point of agreement between Mulroney and Schreiber, who said the same thing in his testimony. Indeed, Mulroney once confided in Kaplan to much the same effect. “I can tell you,” he said in a June 4, 1998 interview, “when I first started out, I needed … money quite badly.”
But this was a hard sell -- not only did he have most of his expenses paid as prime minister, on top of his six-figure salary, on top of his pension, but the party also kicked in $4000 a month to boot -- and in any event, if he was so broke on leaving office, it was hardly likely to be more than a temporary affliction. He was a former prime minister, with business connections the world over; soon, he would be joining the blue-chip Montreal law firm of Ogilvy Renault. Why could he not have hit up a friend, Peter Munk for example, to tide him over until the directorships and legal fees started to flow? Or a bank? Or Ogilvy Renault? Why go to Schreiber? And why in such circumstances? Perhaps that is why Luc is no longer his spokesman.
So: ixnay on the overtypay. Stick with “colossal mistake”. Is this credible? Suppose it is. Stretch your mind around the notion of a man of Mulroney’s stature meekly acceding to Schreiber’s request. Maybe he was startled, temporarily flummoxed at the sight of all that cash, reluctant to give offense. It happens. But three times? Over sixteen months? By that time, you’ve presumably recovered your composure, not to say your common sense. And still you take the cash? Nobody does business this way. Nobody in business does, that is.
Even then, suppose that’s true. That still doesn’t explain why Mulroney himself kept no records of the transaction, or any subsequent disposition of the cash. Maybe Schreiber didn’t want to leave a paper trail. Why did that prevent Mulroney from leaving one? Yet not only is there no invoice, no contract, no receipt, nothing to link the two men in any way, but there is no record of what Mulroney did with the money at any point thereafter. No bank statements: he didn’t deposit the money in any bank account, he says, but rather in a safe, at his home in Montreal, and in a safety deposit box in New York. And no expense records: he can offer no receipts or records to account for how the money was spent, though he says it was used strictly for business expenses incurred in the course of representing Schreiber’s interests abroad, and though he says he paid for these with a credit card (paying off the credit card bill in turn with wads of cash). And this brings us to the tale of the taxes.
Mulroney did not pay tax on the $225,000 he says he received in 1993 and 1994 until 1999, when he made what’s called a “voluntary disclosure.” He filed tax returns for those years, but did not mention the payments he received from Schreiber. He says he only finally decided to pay taxes on the money because Schreiber’s 1999 arrest on charges of fraud, bribery and tax evasion in his native Germany convinced him that Schreiber was not the respectable businessman he had imagined him to be. Why that should have been the determining factor in his decision the committee did not explore.
But Mulroney says he was not obliged to pay tax on the income he received from Schreiber, because it was not really income, as such, but merely a kind of expense account for him to draw down as need be. O-kay. Did he keep any records of his expenses? Oh yes. Where are they, then? Did he submit them to the tax department, when he finally did file? No: He paid taxes on the whole amount, claimed no deduction for the $40,000 in expenses he says he incurred. Again, this had something to do with Schreiber’s arrest, though again the link is unclear. But what is clear is that this relieved him of the need to file any supporting receipts. But then what about those records he says he kept? Oh, he destroyed them once the tax matter was cleared up. Of course.
Does he take us for fools? No cheques, no invoices, no receipts, no contracts, no bank statements, no withdrawal slips, no credit card bills, no expense records, nothing: not a single scrap of paper exists, it appears, anywhere in the world to support Mulroney’s version. Well, there might be: his tax records. In order to make a voluntary disclosure, you have to make a full explanation of everything to do with the income: how you earned it, what you did with it, etc. Is there a letter to the tax department somewhere offering such explanation? Apparently not. What about his income tax returns, then? Can we at least see them? Uh-uh, he said: those are private. I say again: Does he take us for fools?
All of these questions, all of these doubts, as I said before, are raised not by anything Schreiber said, but by Mulroney’s own testimony. But then, nothing Mulroney said today made much sense. He is still insisting that he barely knew Schreiber -- against a mountain of letter, visits, photos, and telegrams going back to the early 1980s -- and that, so far as he knew him, he was merely a hard-driving business man, the head of Thyssen’s Canadian subsidiary, a man of accomplishment, employer of 3,000 souls. It was only with his arrest in 1999, apparently, that the scales fell from his eyes -- though by that time Schreiber had been a fugitive from German justice for four years.
If so, Mulroney was perhaps the last person in Canada to harbour such illlusions. John Crosbie, Peter MacKay, Rhys Eyton, Paul Tellier, Robert Fowler and Peter Lougheed are among the political, bureaucratic and business leaders who have said they had misgivings about Schreiber, or indeed refused to have anything to do with him. Public inquiry? Schreiber has already been the subject of one -- 26 years ago, in 1981, over a notorious purchase of land outside Edmonton, Alberta, one that had uncannily anticipated a provincial land-use decision, which may or may not have had something to do with the several former provincial cabinet ministers Schreiber had taken into his employ. Of all this Mulroney was apparently blissfully unaware.
Likewise, he continues to maintain that his statements under oath prior to his 1996 libel trial -- to the effect that he had never had any dealings with Schreiber -- were the literal truth, if you interpret “never had any dealings” to mean “never had any dealings involving the exchange of Airbus contracts for cash.” No one but he can know for sure what was in his mind at the time, but I defy anyone reading the statement in its original context to discover that interpretation. Understand: the letter of request was seeking access to the Britan account -- the very account from which Mulroney was, in fact, paid (notwithstanding his bizarre attempt to deny this in front of the committee).
Even more dubious is Mulroney’s imputation of the same selective interpretation to Schreiber’s Edmonton lawyer, Bobby Hladun. Asked about the call he is alleged to have made to Hladun in 1999, asking Schreiber to sign a document asserting he had never paid Mulroney any money for any purpose -- a call that Hladun described in a letter to Schreiber’s other lawyer, Eddie Greenspan -- Mulroney insisted that Hladun, too, had meant by this, or had understood Mulroney to mean, that Schreiber had never paid him any money in connection with the Airbus contract.
But if that were true, why would Schreiber refuse to sign? Why would Greenspan, as Schreiber has testified, forbid him to sign (it would be interesting to hear Greenspan on this -- no solicitor-client privilege can exist on a matter that the client has already disclosed). Mulroney was, by his own account, asking him to do nothing more than tell the truth -- a truth that he, Schreiber, had already stated publicly any number of times. So why wouldn’t he?
On and on it goes. At times, Mulroney seemed genuinely confused as to the facts, claiming that Government Consultants International, the notorious lobby firm at the centre of this whole affair, did not yet exist when he appointed Frank Moores, its chairman, to the board of Air Canada (in fact, it had been incorporated two months before) -- this, though Moores was lobbying for Airbus at the time. Mulroney even claimed that Schreiber had disavowed any involvement in financing the airlift of 450 delegates from Quebec to Winnipeg to vote against Joe Clark at the 1983 Conservative leadership review, when Schreiber has in fact affirmed his involvement on numerous occasions, most recently in his appearance before the committee on Tuesday.
Mulroney had no convincing explanation for either event. Nor could he explain why, after Schreiber sent him a letter in May of this year accusing him of all sorts of misdeeds and threatening to expose him if he did not help him on his extradition case -- the “blackmail letter,” Mulroney called it -- he did not immediately turn it over to the police. Or why Elmer MacKay would have drafted Schreiber’s letter to him of the previous year. His testimony is, quite literally, incredible.
And on those rare occasions when he was pinned down, when the illogic of his position was pursued to its logical conclusion, when all the spin and bafflegab had been worn away, leaving only the stark inexplicabilty of Mulroney’s behaviour, he fell back on his handy, all-purpose, non-explanation: it was an error of judgement. I made a mistake.
But that’s not an explanation. It’s at best a description. It tells us nothing about his motives, reasoning, or objectives. It merely categorizes the result. It tells us neither why nor how he did it, but merely that he did it.
That’s not an error. It’s a pattern.
12/14/2007
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65 Comments
Those who might have been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt until now will have a harder time of it after the preposterous story he told the ethics committee today....
By which you mean you...? Are you trying to let on that there would be any circumstance that you'd be willing to give Mulroney the benefit of doubt? Hardly.
The first has to do with the circumstances surrounding the payments in cash Mulroney admits to having taken from Schreiber after he was prime minister, that is from 1993 on: what he did for the money, why he took it in cash, why there are no records of it anywhere, why he went to such elaborate lengths to conceal it, and so on.
Just because you don't like the answers doesn't mean they weren't provided. Since when does any politician have a duty to disclose every business relationship they have AFTER leaving office? They don't. This is about the private dealings of private citizens. The tax records of Brian Mulroney is neither yours or my business.
The second has to do with a number of contracts for government business for which Schreiber was paid millions of dollars in secret commissions by his German clients in the 1980s -- not only Airbus, but Thyssen and MBB: how those contracts were won, and what Schreiber did with the money, and whether the first had anything to do with the second
Mulroney was asked versions of this to which he said "I have no clue". How does it fall on Mulroney's shoulders to answer about the business dealings of KHS with other people?
To be told that Schreiber is a liar and a perjurer does nothing to explain why Mulroney took cash from Schreiber after he left office, or any of the rest of the story. It is, for the most part, beside the point.
Actually it is the entire point. I would suggest respectfully that you are missing the point. This entire process/witch-hunt is based on new allegations in Schreiber's latest affidavit. (i.e. Schreiber's word which has been contradicted by Schreiber himself under oath)
Maybe if the media did its job and located half the things Mulroney came up with today on Schreiber's previous testimony, Mulroney wouldn't have spent so much time feeling he had to discredit Schreiber. The media would likely have done more investigating if they weren't allegedly writing the liberals questions for them....hmmm?
An on it goes. You claim that we have evidence - we don't need Schreiber's word. True and Mulroney disputes none of the measely evidence you have.
The burden of proof is on the state and ultimately the accusers. Where is the proof that Mulroney is lying -- aside from your personal feelings -- there is none. Until you can back up your claims, this post should be considered extremely biased and unprofessional.
Don't be disuaded, AC. I remeber you and the rest of the media clamouring for Chretien's tax returns to substantiate his version of the golf course sale.......oh wait, he had the cocktail napkin, which was good enough for you all then....I guess if Mulroney comes up with one for next February that will square things?
Its also important to note that:
1. Approximately 95% of the pundits disagreed with your view today. While most said that there are credibility problems on both sides -- it really boils down to a private business deal.
Of course, your usual reaction is to discredit those pundits and their lackluster knowledge of the case by comparison -- which is a sort of condescending view in and of itself.
2. If the CBCs At Issue crowd was supposed to represent the viewpoints of all Canadians tonight, its clear that this story is completely dead.
From my count, you heard one question on the Mulroney-Schreiber affair and, much to your dismay, the questioner asked why the government would focus on a 15 year-old issue when there are much more important things facing the country?
I highly doubt the CBC had that in mind when they assembled their crowd specifically to discuss the non-story.
Given two of the previous posts, it appears that the Conservative Party's disinformation strategy has clicked into action. Brian Mulroney is a flim flam man. He believes that not only he can sell any load of goods but also that he can convince you that it's not horseshit. Andrew, you have this guy figured out. Keep up the good work. By the way, the Canadian people know horseshit when they see it.
The best work on this issue in the media. Well done. And you should not for one single moment think that the views of Mulroney's lobbyists above are representative of any genuinely held opinion on this ... affair.
"The best work on this issue in the media." When the rest of the media is either writing questions for the Liberals or covering it up, that might be a back-handed compliment.
Well you can get at his tax records if you want. All it takes is the use of that wonderful instrument, the Speakers Warrant....ahh for the good old days of Cromwell when men were men and Parliament was supreme and the courts mattered not a whit.
Bets on who is first to ask, Jim Martine or M. Thiebault?
Sorry Pat Martin is the name of the horse you can bet on, not Jim.
More concisely, by taking the money from the guy at fairly widely spaced intervals during which he had plenty of time to think, now every time Mulroney trashes Schreiber, he trashes himself. Sadly, they are both swimming in the same pool.
Mulroney "declined" to testify under oath - why?
Mulroney now thinks there's no need for an inquiry?
I think the truth lies between the lies of both Schreiber and Mulroney.
Oh, and, Mr. Mulroney - cry me a river about how hard it's been on your family and gee you had to look after your mother - oh the burdens when you are rich. Did it occur to you Mulroney that when you trashed Trudeau and blamed everyone else for your woes - they have family too?
Mulroney a former PM of Canada, a "lawyer" and internationally sophisticated believed Schreiber when he said that's the way business is done in Europe - please come up with something better than that.
We need an inquiry!
Since when does Mulroney have a say as to whether we have an inquiry or not.
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No evidence has been produced to suggest Mulroney personally took bribes from Schreiber, either before or after he left office.
At the risk of exposing my youthful ignorance, I have to ask: if there's no bribery here, what's it all about? AC identifies two other important questions: the nature and circumstances of the post-1993 payments to Mulroney, and the nature and circumstances of commissions paid to Schreiber. But if there's no evidence (I was going to say no suggestion, but obviously that isn't true) that either of these sets of payments involved the bribing of a public official, then what's the point of all this - beyond some fanatic fascination with the personal affairs of a widely despised former prime minister?
Don't get me wrong: I'm all for finding the truth. I have nothing invested in Mr. Mulroney; he left office when I was eleven, and I don't define my (small-c) conservatism by him. (Although as an aside, even if he were shown to be a crook, that wouldn't change the fact that Free Trade is a Good Thing.)
But AC's comments - and similar comments by Warren Kinsella - suggest that there isn't really that much at the end of this whole yellow brick road. Oh, there may be shifty wrongdoing by some of the players, but not wrongdoing - as best I can see - involving the corruption of public officials or the political process. Doubtless we can all agree that political affairs at the time lacked accountability, and we can all be glad that such impulses have since been to a certain degree restrained. But it becomes increasingly clear that this isn't Watergate; isn't it time to stop treating it as such?
Teach us, AC - we sit at your knees awaiting enlightenment. What's the bottom line here? That you shouldn't do business with Karlheinz Schreiber? That Brian Mulroney is shifty? Do we really need an RCMP investigation, a Parliamentary inquiry, and an official inquiry to tell us that?
Is it really worth the money?
Peter Lougheed met with Schreiber and following the meeting warned that anyone in his party who met the man would be expelled. The appropriate saying is "birds of a feather". The lying bully Stephen Harper is my MP and I voted for him and Preston Manning and regretably Brian Mulroney. I will never "flock together" with federal conservatives again. Federal conservatives consistently fail to meet ethical expectations. Hello Elizabeth, keep up the ethical performance we deserve as Canadians but be careful not to walk into the Liberal/NDP arena where government can solve all of our problems. Use the carrot not the stick- provide incentives.
Richard Harris
Calgary
P.S. I wish that I could write as well as the first two respondents. How much do you get paid?
The Ethics Committee has deteriorated into a partisan pissing match with each Party trying to score political points with an eye to the upcoming election. There is absolutely nothing to be gained in future by this Committee or a full public inquiry. What is the possible end game? Nothing illegal, no jail sentences; what is to be gained? Stop this madness now!
Andrew: Please spend some time and watch the video of your own performance. You sound like the President of the Liberal Party of Canada. maybe you are. you won't tell us.
Richard said " wish that I could write as well as the first two respondents. How much do you get paid?"
Good question Dick. The better question is: which CBC journalists were colluding with the liberal party MPs and researchers yesterday to the draft questions of liberal members at the committee?
Mike Duffy reported that the CBC feed questions to Liberal members of the Ethics Committee to put to Brian Mulroney. Was there any truth to this serious allegation? Nothing this AM in the MSM.
If the CBC did feed questions to the Liberal party a Full Public Inquiry is needed to investigate this very sad development in journalistic ethics.
Who cares if the CBC wrote the questions that Pablo Rodriguez ultimately used? I've seen many many journalists (including the owner of this blogsite) compiling lists of questions to be posed to KHS or BM. Even Kaplan who wrote a couple of books on this issue with Mulroney has suggested questions he'd like answered in these Committee hearings.
So, if some politician uses some of his or others questions there is something wrong with this?
Now, if the alleged writer of the questions was a competing Telcom who didn't like the decision to open up wireless competition to upstarts, well, that may be a different matter.
But a journalist? How scandalous!
No it's not worth the money Mader.
It's as simple as this. Mulroney tried it on and cut a few corners and hasn't been man enough to step up to the plate and take responsibility for his actions with a full and up-front disclosure. Instead of coughing up the real story and coming clean he has insulted Canadians with versions and sub-versions of 'the truth'.
Mulroney has become a pathetic figure. What is tragic about that is the fact that he served for many years as PM of a country that is known internationally for upholding values related to fair play and justice.
This obfuscation and double talk on the part of a former Prime Minister hurts Canada. This isn't about the damn money alone. It's about a man who has dragged the good name of this country through the mud by insisting on projecting his personal mess into the public arena for years, because he hasn't been man enough to take on the chin - and let's face it he has a big enough one.
I feel for his kids. His son Ben has stuck by him in fine form and you have to respect that. But Mulroney does no service to his family by implicating them in issues that he could clear up tomorrow by getting to a microphone and setting the record straight in a forthright and honest fashion.
He calls Schreiber a liar. I don't buy the campaign to blackball Schreiber. He may be a fly operator on some levels, but let's face it show me a political wheeler dealer who isn't. On the Fifth Estate show, Schreiber came across as more of a straight shooter than Mulroney.
I don't think Brian Mulroney is a bad or an evil man. He had a vision as PM and he stuck to his guns despite being vilified by a large number of Canadians. He also has a decent streak to him as a human being. But when it comes to pride and his 'legacy' he is caught between a rock and a hard place on this one.
I think it is the fear of a damaged legacy that has compelled him to take extraordinary steps to try and cover his traces. The problem is Canadians and their officials are obliged to continue addressing an affair that demands resolution.
If Canadians need closure on this - forget looking to Mulroney for the final word. He would rather go into the history books belligerent, tattered but with a shred of pride, rather than accept the consequences that would come with spilling all the beans.
Apparently Brian preferred not to take an oath before giving his explanations to the committee. For most - his self serving attitude and belief that he is better than the rest of us follows what he and his colleagues did during their days in Parliament. A sentiment that seems follow many parties though I must confess. What is the most distressing, is that Harper has admitted that he considers Mulroney a close confident and advisor. Is Mulroney tutoring Harper on the use of his political-moral compass or how and were best to get safety deposit boxes for any large cash payments that might seem to arrive from destinations unknown?
If it's not worth the money - or about the money - is it really justifiable on the ground that Mulroney has "dragged the good name of this country through the mud by insisting on projecting his personal mess into the public arena for years"? I'd be willing to bet good money that not one person in ten outside Canada knows who Brian Mulroney is; and as for our own grievances against the man, it seems to me that's precisely what Parliament is not for.
Although I'm always willing to be persuaded otherwise, I think Chantal Hebert got it bang on when she called this "a tawdry, private affair."
Not so fast Derek, I care and for only one reason. The questions Rodriguez asked Mulroney had the current government as their target, and were in no way related to the mandate of the committee, or Mulroney. This is a publically funded broadcaster on a fishing trip to try to damage a sitting government by subverting an unrelated process. If you don't care, maybe you should, their target may not always also be yours.
Andrew and media -- I'm losing the thread here. We're having a Parliamentary Committee to find out that Mulroney might not be as forthright as he should be?
I guess I'm wondering what a committee/inquiry is going to give us. Campaign finance laws? New accountability laws?
I think you want a convicted Mulroney. That's a job for the police.
The questions Rodriguez asked Mulroney had the current government as their target, and were in no way related to the mandate of the committee, or Mulroney
While I myself felt the questions were irrelevant and unfair, the Committee chair ruled the first time that they were, and the second time, the Committee voted on it as a whole and the motion passed that they were.
Personally, I think it reflected more poorly on the Liberals for being so obvious, but that was their choice.
It seems to me the G&M is also following this cellphone/lobbying story. Would it have been more acceptable to you if he had rather obtained the questions from them?
Derek:
Yes, journalists often ponder what they think committee members should ask. That is OK, but deliberately coaching members in order to solicit information is unethical especially for a publicly funded broadcaster, who in its mission statement claims to be unbaised.
I do keep in mind that it is a charge that is unproven at this point.However, it should be investigated for possible substance.
AA, your viewing of Mike Duffy, who strangely has denigrated and ridiculed the entire set of hearings again and again, also showed you Joe Comartin saying reporters constantly ask MP's questions they would like to see answered. In fact, that's their job.
It doesn't take a far stretch of the imagination to understand that MP's might have the same questions the reporters and the Canadian public do.
Are questions copyrighted or something?
There are important questions to answer. Money, power, influence - a great Canadian soap opera. Let's get on with the inquiry and get to the bottom of this. The whole affair between these two gentlemen is very fishy, and as the layers are pulled further and further back a facsinating story emerges. Thank you Andrew for making this case in such a forthright manner.
Derek seems to be going off on the rails again. That he doesn't find the alleged conduct of CBC journalists to be utterly disgusting -- is a story in and of itself. Are we so cynical that we can't find it scandalous when journalists (particularly those paid for by the state) seem to have an interest in keeping one political party in power? Do we expect this sort of behaviour?
Don Newman et all were very dismissive of Mulroney's claims that the media were enablers in an effort to smear his name. Ten minutes later we learn from a former Liberal Cabinet Minister that the CBC is working hand-in-hand with Liberal MPs and researchers -- planting questions.
I'd say Mulroney had it about right.
Say, can't all of you anonymous folks pick a name of some sort? Even a single letter would be less confusing.
Anyway, Anonymous CBC concerned, you're point is very Chomsky-esque.
I'd rather that all MSM be treated equally, regardless of their ownership. Implicitly, you are suggesting the CBC reporters should act differently than the G&M, National Post , CTV etc. in terms of posing questions to be asked by MPs.
Speaking of CTV's Mike Duffy Live, whenever I watch it he is constantly checking his blackberry, and on occasion, it seems this prompts a comment or question in realtime. I assume these are not from fellow CTV employees, but rather from individuals with an agenda. Should the CRTC investigate what is on Duffy's blackberry and censor him? It seems this is the direction you are heading on this CBC question thing.
The CBC receives over $1 billion in taxpayer money which happens to make up over 70% of entire revenues.
Leaving aside the fact that we could make 5 blockbuster movies with that money each year instead of reporting the "news" (as is already provided to us by the private sector in hundreds of other streams) Its obvious to everyone that the CBC has a direct interest in maintaining this massive subsidy -- its lifeblood.
That one party seems to align itself with removing or reducing that subsidy while the other party has promised to increase that subsidy is besides the point.
I'm not arguing that the CBC should be held to a higher standard (which I could since I pay for it) I'm arguing that the perception that the CBC was working directly with and on behalf of the Liberal Party is disgusting, unprofessional and unethical.
That you would defend this with a "Mike Duffy reads his blackberry sometimes defense" is not only weird but unusual - and again you've missed the entire point.
The CBC is a news reporting organization not a news making organization.
What a relief to read this clear, elegant and rigorously-argued piece after all the craven twaddle ("bravura performance"etc) that the mainstream press has printing. Thank you, Andrew Coyne!
Ok, let me try a different tack.
When KHS was being questioned by Russ Hiebert, it appeared that RH had specific info on a meeting that the RCMP had with Mr. Schreiber and his lawyer where it is alleged KHS was willing to negotiate a deal with the RCMP in exchange for info.
Pat Martin deduced this, and questioned KHS whether he or his lawyer had released such info to RH, to which KHS replied "no", and therefore deduced with Mr. Martin that somehow the RCMP was briefing Mr. Hiebert or the CPC on some investigations.
Now, this goes beyond simply supplying questions- it appears confidential investigative info was being provided (beyond what you or I would have access to through an FOI request).
Now, I don't recall any great outcry here on this issue. So, where do you fall on it? More, equivalent, or less concerned than your CBC outrage? If you wanted an inquiry, which issue would have priority? The RCMP issue or the CBC issue?
Great article! Should be required reading for the ethics committee before they reconvene. I applaud the handful of journalists who did what our national police force couldn't or wouldn't ... attempt get to the bottom of this. My concern is that the craft of investigative journalism is being pushed aside in the race to cover breaking news, or dying a death by a thousand cuts. Andrew (since you've worked for a number of national publications now)what is the state of investigative journalism in today's newsrooms?
"Does Mulroney take us for fools?"
Why wouldn't he? And how does this make him unique?
Media, corporations, and politicians all take the Canadian people for fools; you yourself have written eloquently on this subject recently, Andrew, in a way, suggesting that there are few less intelligent subjects than Canadian politics.
Meanwhile, thousands of university students and low income Canadians in the Ottawa-Montreal corridor will be paying monopoly prices for their bus tickets home this Christmas. Why? Because Paul Martin owns the sweetheart monopoly bus line Voyageur Colonial. Seventy Eight bucks for a return ticket to Montreal from Ottawa, when the grey market "ethnic" vans charge only $20 return? No wonder the guy is a grillionnaire.
Imagine if Stephen Harper or Mulroney were getting rich off the poor via a sweetheart government monopoly, there would be riots.
Derek:
I think you should go back to the "They All Do It" argument. KHS told the committee that he never had any interviews with the RCMP. A few days later - he admitted that was basically a lie and that he'd met with them a few times. Whoops. Pat Martin can hardly be taken seriously.
Even if what you say is true (which there is no evidence to support) - you are basically arguing that the RCMP and the free press should have the same relationship with the Government of Canada.
Andrew : incredible article boosted by reform / alliance detractors
KHS told the committee that he never had any interviews with the RCMP
I'm not going to check the transcripts, but I believe his point was that it was his view that he was asked this wrt the investigation leading up to the Airbus settlement, not after. I could be wrong.
It should be noted that the first suggestion that this was in error, was as I recall, quickly put forward at every opportunity by Mike Duffy in an effort to discredit KHS, Duffy claiming he had been advised otherwise by the RCMP in a phone call. And I thought that would have been confidential as well.
Go figure. There appears to be a theme evolving here. Wasn't the CBC writing the questions story broken on his broadcast as well?
Someone should just give Mike the Order of Canada. He appears to be trying too hard. Maybe he'll retire then.
In addition to her Rockliffe mansion I read that Green Party leader Elizabeth May is the proud owner of a Nova Scotia compound. I'm no real estate expert but that's gotta be $1-$1.5 million in property right there.
Pretty impressive for a single mother who waitressed her way through university then took a succession of not-great paying nonprofit sector jobs and now pulls down a cool fifty grand a year. Hell, even I make more than that, and if I asked my bank to finance a Nova Scotia compound they'd tell me to pound sand.
Where did single mother\nonprofit sector employee Elizabeth May get the money and the financing to pay for a Rockliffe mansion and a Nova Scotia compound?
If Harper started buying condos in Banff left and right we'd start asking questions so I think it's only fair that the media investigate this matter thoroughly. After all, $300,000 paid to a long retired politician surely pales in comparison to an active politician and her unexplained multi-million dollar real estate deals, no?
Derek:
There is a huge difference between Mike Duffy getting a statement by and from the RCMP and CBC journalists writing questions and strategy for the Liberal Party.
The longer you try and make them look similar, the less credibility you have on this issue.
Why can't you just admit that its completely unprofessional conduct by the CBC?
Why cloud the story with weird arguments?
The CBC is doing it's own investigation now according the Canadian Press. For a complete breakdown goto www.stephentaylor.ca
...And there is a huge difference between an internal CBC investigation and what you were initially advocating:
If the CBC did feed questions to the Liberal party a Full Public Inquiry is needed to investigate this very sad development in journalistic ethics.
This is all political. Given that Doug Finley requested the CBC review the allegations, on a day when the Harper Gov't retired the head of Crown Corporation AECL, I'd have initiated an internal review as well if I was with the CBC.
This amounts to a partisan non-story. zzzz
There may be another significant problem with Mulroney’s new explanation of doing international lobbying for the LAV’s Bearhead was supposed to be making, as I recall from the parts of the hearings I have seen so far (I have been busy aiding family over the past several weeks so I only got bits and pieces although I have it all taped to watch over the holidays) that it was Mulroney who had killed the contract from the government before he left office. This would mean he is claiming that he took this money to sell internationally that which he knew was not going to be built because he had killed the contract, and he had no reason to think that the new Lib government would change that, certainly not when he originally accepted this job which was before the defeat of Kim Campbell, indeed before it even looked like she was in serious danger of not winning.
Andrew Coyne is quite correct when he says this latest and totally uncorroborated by anything other than Mulroney’s word itself (and we know he has been less than honest on this issue already going by the record of the past 14 years now) cannot be simply taken at face value. Especially not when the named leaders he lobbied are dead and the rest are unidentified, there is zero paper trail to support this, and as Andrew Coyne says this is the first time this argument has been advanced despite the length of time and after several other explanations were provided including the pasta explanation.
I also found Mulroney’s attempt to get around his misleading testimony in the lawsuit particularly weird, even for him. He says that none of those nine lawyers in a day and a half asked him the question, a question that Mulroney then says would have been entirely out of order (in other words improper/out of bounds) but he would have been ready and happy to answer it. Stop and think about that for a moment. He is defending his omitting his true relationship with Schreiber in terms of intimate history and in terms of having a financial relationship with him (regardless of legality/propriety Mulroney clearly had a financial relationship with Schreiber, the only question is exactly what kind was it in truth) because the government never once asked the question while stating that it would have been out of line/out of order for them to do so, which explains why they never asked it right there yet does nothing to explain why Mulroney clearly obscured his relationship and denied any financial relationship to Schreiber despite the truth being other.
People defending Mulroney want to talk about the conflicts in Schreiber’s story, yet strangely they are silent about examining Mulroney’s story for similar inconsistencies, especially since Mulroney has provided nothing but his solemn word for all of this (and given his sworn testimony in the libel lawsuit in the 90s that is highly questionable, especially if as I gather Mulroney was not sworn in under oath for this testimony) while we do have bank records and such to partly back up Schreiber’s claims. I mean really, if I can pick out having only heard roughly a half hour in total of Mulroney’s testimony this many problems with it and others who saw the whole thing can find far more then it is clear that Mulroney ‘s credibility if one is judging by consistency is on a par with Schreiber’s here.
Does Mulroney think Canadians are fools? Obviously he does, otherwise he would not be attempting to pull this nonsense with us. He is hoping that his impressive performance (and it was that, he has great force of personality and ability to use it to maximum effectiveness, it is what made him such a formidable politician) will cause Canadians to overlook/not see the inherent logical absurdities he is selling with such serious gravitas. I will admit I am pleasantly surprised to see Andrew Coyne taking the position he has here, it is the right one IMHO but I did not expect to see it so clearly laid out as it is in this post of his.
For those wondering whether this is important enough to deal with, we still have major questions regarding GCI and contracting under the Mulroney regime including with Schreiber’s employers, and there is also the grim possibility that the “kickback” for Mulroney came at the beginning of his career as PCPC leader and not at the end of his time as PM. If Schreiber really did play that significant a role in deposing Clark and helping Mulroney resource wise to win the leadership and then go on to become PM Mulroney would owe him big and would clearly be wanting to give him every consideration he could, including in terms of lobbying access and consideration for his employers. Which is why I agree with Andrew Coyne that examining the period dealing with the Clark deposition and Mulroney ascension is necessary even though it is almost 30 years old now, because it may well be the Rosetta Stone for understanding everything that came afterwards with Schreiber and Mulroney and his government‘s contracting practices and whether they were the result of influence peddling/buying.
Then there is the action of Mulroney in the mid 90s with his 50 million dollar lawsuit, which clearly made any investigations of Mulroney, his government’s contracting history/practices a whole lot harder with him and his PR firm and allies screaming about how this was a partisan witch-hunt without any basis. Given that he had that financial relationship with Schreiber and clearly wanted to hide that fact and the money he received (btw, I gather Mulroney around a year after Schreiber’s arrest did an interview with Brian Stewart where he was quite warm and complimentary towards Schreiber and that one should not jump to conclusions based on the arrest, which if he truly had dropped Schreiber and wanted nothing more to ever do with him again once Schreiber was arrested as he claimed yesterday makes no sense) there is a good case to be made that Mulroney was attempting to obstruct investigations with this act, including potentially criminal investigations, which is a very serious smatter to begin with, let alone when committed by a former PM to protect examination of actions from when he was the sitting PM.
Then there is the possibility of fraud being at the heart of the result of the 90s lawsuit and Mulroney taking taxpayer dollars to pay for the costs of a cover-up of Mulroney’s true relationship with Schreiber, also something very serious for a former PM and something that should not be brushed aside. So far from Mulroney’s testimony shutting down any need for the public inquiry I would argue that it underscored its necessity. With the powers a proper inquiry has to do properly prepared questioning under oath and with subpoena powers for documents there is the best chance of having these issues understood/clarified. As it is given the deaths of some prominent players in this already it will be difficult enough to get there, but to give up now is to allow Mulroney to finally end this which given the seriousness of the issues involved and the fact this revolves around his actions as PM as much as after that would be a very bad thing.
BTW, I have had two true near death experiences in my life, and I found they left me profoundly reflective of my life and my mistakes, and a willingness to face them and improve myself. For Mulroney to use that particular comparison to try and describe how much he and his family have suffered because of these questions being asked regarding his actions (which given they turn out to be a result of Mulroney’s own decisions primarily and therefore his own responsibility) was something I found profoundly offensive on a personal level and I suspect I will not be alone among those that have had such in this regard.
Derek:
Again - your statements and comparisons are quite odd and way off base. What does Doug Finley asking for a CBC investigation have to do with sacking someone at the AECL?
It appears that you're incapable of discussing ethics in journalism without drawing weirds correlations to unrelated events. If I hadn't read and genuinely respected your point of view from past comments, I would have to assume that either you are a different Derek or that the antenna on your tin-foil hat is in overdrive.
Scotian,
Its obvious that sparring with you would have dire consequences for the bandwith on this site.
The fact that you had admitted to not watching the case closely but went on to make several conclusions over 39 paragraphs says something about your objectivity.
After scanning your blog, its evident that your conclusions are entirely consistent with the fact that you can't stomach the conservative party and therefore anything that could hinder their electoral prospects is a-okay with you.
After reviewing Scotian's blog, its very clear that he's the liberalest liberal who has ever liberaled.
In other words, Scotian appears to be the type to scream up and down if Jean Chretien were ever investigated for his ethical conduct over Shawinigate and BDC loans but finds it perfectly acceptable and the duty of the nation to do the same to Mulroney.
What's also evident is that he excercised extreme caution by limiting his post to 900 paragraphs on AC's site. His blog is required reading for anyone who likes to read thousands upon thousands of paragraphs about how Stephen Harper is the devil.
AA:
I said I had not been able to follow the sworn testimony closely, not that I hadn't followed the story/issue closely, bit of a difference there. The areas of the testimony I did address in my comment were ones I saw for myself, and I have also read various examinations of this testimony from both the left and right of the online world. So nice try there.
As to your nice personal attack to attempt to dismiss/discredit me because I am opposed to Harper and his Calgary School Straussian rooted political ideology and not the traditional Canadian rooted Conservativism which he has dropped in favour of American rooted conservativism (which I might add is also at my blog as the basis for my strong opposition to Harper and his CPC) and want him defeated to claim without proof that I would embrace anything that would hurt the current government underscores just how much you are assuming without actual facts to support it, all to attack the messenger and not the message/substance. If I were the kind of person you described there would be a lot more on my blog regarding things I believe Harper has made mistakes with and that could be used to paint this government in a bad light, but I stick to those areas and elements I have some detailed understanding of.
I just love these anonymous folks who think their credibility is better than mine, especially given that I have a long and detailed history of where I stand and why, and that I am consistent over time in the application of my principles. I find this argument that if one is an opponent of someone then their words must be inherently false/suspect a classic form of dismissive argumentation where instead of dealing with the substance you claim the source is so contaminated there is no need to. Classic Conservative dodge these days, at least from the Harperites I find.
BTW, if you had bothered to learn a bit about what I have written online regarding the Mulroney/Schreiber affair instead of assuming you already knew and what my motivation was (which I might add is also incredibly arrogant of you unless you claim to be a telepath to be able to make such determinations with someone you just encountered) you would have discovered that my main interests in this deal with Mulroney's actions in the 90s, his contracting history, and the questions surrounding his lawsuit and testimony, not so much the current government being embarrassed by it. Well, except in terms of how close an advisor Mulroney was for Harper from the behind the scenes aid in the merger/takeover of the PCPC by the CA up to and including setting up his PMO and advising him periodically on governing right up until this scandal started breaking last month. So please, go find the evidence that my sole interest in this is because it may hurt the CPC, because otherwise you have asserted without corroboration making your main reason for dismissing my comments something you assumed/made up as opposed was rooted in hard fact and I know because I know what I've written that what you would turn up undercuts your claim.
So perhaps you should try actually dealing with the substance instead of trying to discredit the messenger, which I might add is a classic example of someone unable to deal with the substance and is afraid of it being taken seriously by others. Thank you so much for making that clear to all in such an obvious manner.
BTW, your bandwith excuse is particularly pathetic coming from someone who leaves some fairly lengthy comments themselves and only underscores that much more inability to actually deal with the substance and instead prefer to attack the person/messenger, especially in the case of someone that presents a detailed argument/presentation as opposed to short quips and snark.
Thanks for showing I needn't take you seriously since you clearly prefer to argue in a dishonest manner in which you project your belief of what motivates someone and/or what their thinking is regardless of the actual reality. I don't play with the intellectually dishonest, which you have shown yourself to be with this IMHO.
AA lies again, assumes wildly without proof, all because he doesn't like my being a dedicated Harper opponent who can actually present a reasoned argument to support my postions instead of AA's approach of having to smear another on personal grounds and trying to shoot the messenger instead of dealing with the message like the intellectually honest are supposed to. I am not a Liberal, belong to no aggregator, and have repeatedly made the point I have voted across the Canadian rooted political spectrum, as in PCPC, Liberal, and on occasion NDP (generally because I liked/trusted the local candidate and was displeased with my other choices) which if he bothered to actually read what I write he would be well aware of. To see the Libs as a far less serious threat to Canadian stability and long term future than Harper's CPC (I keep saying Harper's CPC because if it becomes more like the old PCPC once he and his coterie are out of power within it I may well consider them as a possible choice, but until Harper is gone that is not going to happen) and to be angered that the supposed defenders of social justice values do not recognize the threat of Harper and his style of politics as well as his core ideological roots does not translate into being, how did AA put it the "liberalest liberal who has ever liberaled" again shows the inherent dishonesty of AA's style. Not to mention his preference/reliance upon personal attack instead of responding to the actual arguments presented.
AA, please, feel free to stop digging, with each new offering you are simply making it that much easier for all but your fellow travelers to see exactly what you are doing. Anyone that actually is interested will find when they go compare what you say my blog shows and what I say it shows that your description is heavily shall we say coloured by your own prejudices whereas mine is an accurate reflection. I have never tried to claim I am not a Harper opponent, but contrary to the thinking of you and many Harper supporters that does not translate into being a liberal, it doesn't even translate into being a "leftie" be it centrist or far, just ask the many Progressive Conservatives in this country that feel they lost their home with the merger and find that the Liberals are these days the closest to their core principles which again speaks to how far right in the Canadian political context Harper's CPC truly is.
Give it up AA, if you must have the last word because you have insecurity issues then feel free to do so, as I am not going to keep playing this moronic game with you. I have sufficiently shown why you are wrong about me and why you do not deserve serious consideration of your claims regarding me and my thinking (not that you actually deal with that of course) for those who are not leaving in conservative hallucination/delusion city as you so clearly are with your outlandishly wild and inaccurate smears. After all, you attacked me all on your own initiative and did so in this incredibly dishonest manner instead of showing why my arguments were wrong. So all I have done is defend myself and my good name, and now having done that sufficiently for others to determine for themselves what is happening I am going to basically ignore you and your attacks because you have shown to me that you are not interested in dealing in substance only personal attacks.
geezuz scotian, that's just plain 'ol painful.
" after he was prime minister, that is from 1993 on: what he did for the money, why he took it in cash ..."
I'm no Mulroney apologist, but let's be honest here: this is NONE of anyone's business but his own. He paid his taxes on it, even if late (something of which millions of Canadians have also done). Sure, there's intrigue and mud to sling. But let's first solve some of the Bre-X problems. Then, maybe AdScam(tm). After that, maybe we can all delve into the personal and private business dealings of private citizens, and waste a whole lot of taxpayer dollars doing so.
"... for which Schreiber was paid millions of dollars in secret commissions ... "
Sure, let the police investigate any allegations of criminal activity. And if they find grounds to lay charges, let him face his accusers in court. Oh, wait. The Liberals are currently preventing him from facing justice in Germany on exactly such grounds.
"No evidence has been produced to suggest Mulroney personally took bribes from Schreiber, either before or after he left office. It has not even been alleged, except in the infamous 1995 letter of request to the Swiss authorities."
Since it was this very question which defined the scope of the Parliamentary inquisition, let's have done with it right now. Mr. Coyne appears to freely admit that Parliament has no grounds to continue with their questioning, having produced exactly nothing to substantiate a review of the settlement paid to the former PM when his name was sullied by exactly that accusation to Swiss authorities made public. There is no reason to continue the revisitation of the settlement.
Once that is agreed, nothing else is the least bit relevant.
These seem to be fairly simple and undeniable facts, regardless of one's own political stripe.
Why have Stephane Dion's Liberals failed to recognize such simple truths? And why have some members of the media remained fixated on this particular curiosity rather than on the business of the nation?
Scotian,
After my snarky comments about your policy of writing 1236 paragraphs-per-post, you went on to post 1237.
Despite your claims to the opposite, your blog suggests that you are a blindly partisan liberal hack who, if you had the option, you'd tick liberal off on your tax return on an annual basis. Even if Harper personally solved world peace, global warming, child poverty, developed a cure for cancer and miraculously ended all traffic accidents -- you'd find a way to vote for someone else.
My original questions stand. Your blog is full of defenses for the Chretien/Martin scandals and how the RCMP should be tasked with the investigation. That you are unable to apply the same principles to other parties is the subject of my posts.
Scotian,
This is my last post but I've just learned from your blog that you apparently based your vote in the last election on whether Stephen Harper would explain his personal dealings with the Gurmont Grewal issue right up to and including the possibility that Harper himself doctored the tapes.
In your view, this was the scandal of the century (despite the Gomery Inquiry effectively defining the entire Liberal party in Quebec as a criminal enterprise that funneled 100 million of taxpayers money into party coffers.)
Its proposterous and you know it.
Is "Scotian" simply Joe Green reincarnated?
The dig at Harper and his "American-style conservatism"...seriously, I suggest you get a 2007 vocabulary, lest you think anyone outside the minions of brainwashed Liberal sheep actually find that rhetoric convincing anymore.
Stevo:
Facts are facts, and Harper's core political influence is the Calgary School, which is heavily influenced by the American political philosopher Leo Strauss whose writings form the core of the neoconservative movement represented by Bill Krystal, Dick Cheney, John Bolton etc. Then there are the close links throughout this decade with key members of the GOP machine, people like Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, and most especially the GOP poll and spin master Frank Luntz, whom he met privately for an hour after he became PM.
So there are many legitimate grounds for claiming/arguing that Harper employs an American rooted political philosophy and GOP originated political tactics and gambits. So for you to try and dismiss this as without merit and worse that it somehow means I am too disconnected from reality to take seriously illustrates your own disconnect from factual reality not mine. When you can refute Harper's connections to the GOP and the Calgary School and the Calgary School's heavy Straussian influence (in case you don't know anything about Leo Strauss, two of his prime concepts are that it is only the elites in society that deserve to have any input into government policy formulation and that it is ok for politicians and political leaders to use "the noble lie" on the great heard/masses/voters so as to gain power to enact the needs of the elites, which is inherently and fundamentally anti-democratic and most certainly not rooted in any Canadian originated political school of thought) then you might have a valid position, but since the facts are exactly as I laid them out in this regard I'm afraid you will have a long and ultimately unrewarding experience if you actually try to refute these connections using hard facts as opposed to your faith/beliefs.
Sorry Stevo, you may not like me or my opposition to Harper, but unlike those I oppose I base my opposition and positions in hard facts, not fanciful delusions and willingness to swallow anything so long as those I dislike/oppose are harmed by it. I after all actually have a sense of honour and principles.
BTW, I notice that neither you nor AA actually addressed any of the points I initially raised regarding how implausible Mulroney’s testimony was, so it is clear for all to see that rather than defend Mulroney and defend the indefensible by doing so you would rather all try to attack me on the personal level. Nice example of the politics of personal smear and destruction you all provided there. I thought you Cons said only lefties do that, perhaps you should make sure you haven’t secretly been transformed into lefties given your behaviour here. How about actually dealing with the issue this thread is about instead of this wanking around you are doing trying desperately to deflect from the questions surrounding Mulroney and the inconsistencies between his various explanations for this money over the years. That is if you are more interested in finding truth and facts instead of partisan defences of anyone that points these things out as you have done here today.
I also find it funnier than you can know that so many Cons find my long writing style and my citing of facts so hard to handle that they refuse to even try. Especially when they then try to use that detail and length as a basis for dismissal altogether. Only the truly intellectually incurious/dishonest would make such an argument so thanks for making it obvious what it is you truly are for all to see.
Have fun with the last word Stevo, but you still in the end failed/lost.
There is something surreal about reading seemingly endless blog entries of anonymous or semi-anonymous (the ones that pick a pseudo name) writing at length to defend their cyber "reputations".
How does one go about obtaining the book and movie rights?
with so much bluster over $300k & Muldoon, imagine the outrage if this Committee ever screwed up enough brains to investigate the $1 billion HRD boondoggle organized under Cruton's watch that pumped the money into every slimy Quebec Liberal bagman & fartcatcher's greasy palm.
Nope, no need to send any effort there. It is more important to be played for fools & idiots by KSH how is only interested in staying out of Germany by any lie, deception, corruption or falsehood he can conjur up so the Liberals can support this taxpayer funded fishing trip where the only catch they want is the Muldoon minnow, its the 40 pound Harper Lake Trout they want to be there.
What an awful waste of time and money. The Liberals and Dippers are Stuck on Stupid if they think the voters don't see through their cheap, sleazeball attempts to smear the current government.
Gawd no wonder so many people, especially young Canadians don't vote when this kind of stupidity goes on and the MSM cheers it from the sidlines.
Must be a slow month for advertising revenues in MSM land and they need cheap gossip to keep interest going.
Brilliant column, AC.
Having read the rest of the media reaction to Muroney's appearance, I really despair that we will ever get to the bottom of this. There just seems to be too much laziness in the media. All the same, I hope you keep at it.
Gawd no wonder so many people, especially young Canadians don't vote when this kind of stupidity goes on and the MSM cheers it from the sidlines.
Young people don't vote because they think Mulroney's getting a raw deal from the ethics committee. Yeah, that must be it.
If it was murder, where is the body?
We can hardly indict a man for a crime we have no evidence of. Do we take Mulroney for a fool? His only obligation to the ethics committee was to rebut KHS's allegations and nothing more.
It is inhumane to look for logical symetry in his testimony alone as ones presuppositions tend to make up for the imprecison of language without a context. Is pot-smoking biblically justified? You guessed it: it depends on whether you smoke or not.
Mulroney entered into a verbal contract for cash. The whole Conservative caucus figured KHS for a scumbag, so BM figures he can rip him off by doing nothing for big money and teach him a lesson.
WHen KHS's name started surfacing in conjunction with an international conspiracy of fraud and bribery, BM knew he stepped on a giant turd, realizing that KHS bought his reputation for $300K; he figured his best play was for time, waited for it to blow over; a conviction and jailtime for KHS in Germany would do nicely, except KHS ended up in front of a parliamentary committee. Without receipts, contracts or witnesses, KHS could say anything.
Mulroney's only play was to raise the bet: rebut KHS and maintain that nothing illegal took place. The only hand that can beat him now is genuine evidence to the contrary.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill the "Truth" is the first thing to go in the " Fog of War".Unfortunately the same can be said for the " Fog of Political Power,influence peddling and unethical monetary gain".Truth will be the ultimate loser.
If taking $225,000 from Schreiber was the biggest mistake of Brian Mulroney's life why doesn't he return the money?
Jean Lapierre works for TVA. TVA is owned by Quebecor. On the board of directors of Quebecor is Brian Mulroney....uh, huh..
I don't know what's happened to Mike Duffy, but he sure has lowered his journalism abilities -wink, wink, nudge, nudge Inquirer type reporting.
Mike Duffy is becoming a rather sleazy journalist/show host. Is it becuase of the connections the Mulroney's have with CTV, Ben working there, etc.?
Why doesn't Mike Duffy (Harper's newest Conservative strategist) just call his show what it is - The Mike Duffy Political Gossip Hour.
I would love to watch Andrew in a debate with Mulroney.
Andrew would be dragging out his half-assed Stevie Cameron innuendo and Mulroney would crucify him on the spot. The only person with a bigger ego than Coyne is his cousin-in law Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
In all his rage and the bias of a Linda McQuaig- Andrew embarrased himself on the At Issue panel.
This whole affair is a sideshow, Coyne, and you know it. Can we please extradite the fat man already and be done with it?
Anybody with half a brain knows two things:
1. No new real evidence will be uncovered on this story. Not by the ethics committee, not by the media, and not by a public inquiry. It is, and will remain, a "he said she said" story.
2. None of this is linked to the current Prime Minister or Cabinet. So what exactly is the point of attempting to get to the bottom of it? If anything, the real story here is how all the media attention is keeping scrutiny off the current government and its policies. Case in point: Bali.
Please, get back to work Coyne.
Anonymous wrote:
The only person with a bigger ego than Coyne is his cousin-in law Pierre Elliot Trudeau.
So he's got a big ego. So what? So do three-quarters of us knobs who post here. Why else would we spend hours posting here and trying to subject strangers to our cherished opinions?
The question is: can you refute any of his arguments?
"Anonymous:
Scotian,
This is my last post but I've just learned from your blog that you apparently based your vote in the last election on whether Stephen Harper would explain his personal dealings with the Gurmont Grewal issue right up to and including the possibility that Harper himself doctored the tapes.
In your view, this was the scandal of the century (despite the Gomery Inquiry effectively defining the entire Liberal party in Quebec as a criminal enterprise that funneled 100 million of taxpayers money into party coffers.)
Its proposterous and you know it." 12/15/2007
Nice misrepresentation there. What I wrote was I asked my local CPC candidate to explain to me how there was no CPC wrongdoing as Harper claimed since from the moment of recording to the May 31 05 release which Harper and the CPC leadership all vouched for as complete, unedited and uncut turned out to be heavily edited to make it look like Senate seats were being offered for MP votes/floor crossing when the unedited version showed the opposite since throughout that period from recording to release they were solely in CPC hands, let alone how Harper could claim that no CPC wrongdoing existed throughout the affair.
Me, I take it as a serious matter when a political rival makes serious specific criminal allegations based on "evidence" recorded by a CPC MP, passed over to the CPC LOO for authentication, translation and transcription, released under the imprimatur of the CPC as complete and unedited only to have it come out almost immediately afterwards that there was heavy editing, and then once that editing was exposed to have the leader of the CPC claim that any claims of CPC wrongdoing are solely the creations of the Liberal war room and the liberal media despite the inescapable chain of evidence showing these recordings were from creation to release solely in CPC hands. That is a major lie indeed, and a major cover-up of that lie which he only got away with because of the Liberal fatigue that was in the country and media by this point.
Grewal was a major scandal and was the moment when I went from thinking Harper was as honest ideologue to someone that will say and do anything to gain/hold power. The fact that my local candidate promised to get back to me with an answer before the election and never did strikes me as a good reason to not support his candidacy, especially when one considers he was in the legal profession himself and should have understood my chain of custody problem with the official Harper version of events. Remember, Harper said there was no CPC wrongdoing whatsoever in the Grewal affair, again, which do I believe Harper or my lying eyes on the chain of custody?
So you can take your snark and shove it, this was a major scandal and something unprecedented in Canadian political history on the federal level, I know of no comparable example to it nor could I find one either. I know of no case where any major party leader has claimed to have conclusive evidence supporting specific criminal wrongdoing against a sitting PM, let alone releases the first bits of it the day before a confidence vote, and then has that evidence turn out to be fabricated as regarding the charges laid out by that party leader via the use of extensive editing (taking 35 minutes out of a 105 minute recording is no minor editing) by someone within the CPC camp.
Some of us actually care about things like this, and as I have said many times before for me this is something I would have decried if the Libs or NDP had done the same. This is a corruption of our politics far beyond anything surrounding money, this is something far worse than mere theft, it is too bad you are unable to grasp that rather simple fact. If a leader is willing to lie on that blatant a level to first create a scandal against his main opponent and then cover up the scandal it turned out to truly be, namely his party forging evidence to make false criminal allegations, while in opposition you know they are going to be even more inclinded to cover up their scandals if/when they become a government, which is why I used this as a metric to decide my vote.
BTW, the late response is because I had offline considerations to deal with and little time for commenting, and since this is not a blog I frequent often I only came back today since I left the last comment. Incidentally, I note that to this day no one has actually dealt with the questions I initially raised about the Mulroney testimony and have only attacked me personally. That speaks volumes as to the inability of these people to refute the points I made at the outset on the actual topic of this blog, which is not me or my views on the Grewal affair, although that was a nice attempt to deflect and even there the person doing so significantly misrepresented what I had written.