Schreiber Day 4: highlights
- He readily confessed to having bought the 1983 Tory convention that toppled Joe Clark from the leadership...
Karlheinz Schreiber’s fourth day of testimony before the Commons ethics committee was the usual farrago of teases, evasions, dropped questions, loose ends and general confusion. In all that, the Bavarian greasemonkey did leave the committee with a few leads to pursue. Highlights:- He readily confessed to having bought the 1983 Tory convention that toppled Joe Clark from the leadership, in concert with Franz Josef Strauss (the Bavarian premier and chairman of Airbus Industrie at the time) and “maybe the Christian Social Union,” the party Strauss led and sister party to the ruling Christian Democratic Union. Schreiber talked of personally contributing $25,000, but it's clear that much more money was spent than that.
For example, Schreiber and Strauss together bought a piece of property worth $369,000 from Frank Moores as a way of funneling money into the dump-Clark movement. Mulroney's Quebec people flew almost 200 delegates to Winnipeg (out of a total of 2400 at the convention) on two jets leased from Wardair, together with $56,000 to pay their registration fees and, according to Schreiber, some spending money for their wives. L. Ian MacDonald, Mulroney's former speechwriter, has written in his official biography of the former PM that the operation cost a quarter of a million dollars -- in cash.
- Mulroney not only had "dealings" with him after he was prime minister, Schreiber said, and not only at the famous Harrington Lake meeting (which may have taken place before or after the June 25 resignation date -- Schreiber has said both), but three months earlier, at a meeting with Mulroney and Elmer MacKay at 24 Sussex Drive, where Schreiber pitched the Bear Head project yet again -- the one Mulroney allegedly killed in 1990, after first ordering his chief of staff to "get this done."
- Schreiber said he told Mulroney at the time he paid him the $300,000 that the money came from the $4-million in "success fees" he was paid by Thyssen after it appeared the federal cabinet had given the project the go-ahead -- an understanding in principle signed in September of 1988 by three cabinet ministers. This seems dubious: the money came out of an account set up to hold all of his secret commissions, including both Airbus and Thyssen money.
- He repeated his charge that the RCMP never interviewed him between the time that Der Spiegel first reported on his involvement in the Airbus deal in 1995 and the settlement with Mulroney in January 1997. The force had last week issued a textbook non-denial denial, insisting that it had interviewed Schreiber several times -- between 2000 and 2006. Which is interesting, given that the Mounties formally discontinued the investigation in 2003.
- Schreiber at one point said Mulroney offered to finance his lawsuit against the government of Canada in Alberta. The case, in which Schreiber alleges the government and the RCMP abused their authority in their dealings with him, is significant for having first raised the notion that the RCMP were working with a confidential informant on the case -- who turned out to be none other than Stevie Cameron.
- Mulroney was allegedly present at a meeting where the alleged scheme to divide the spoils of government business with GCI was discussed. According to Schreiber:
It was agreed upon -- at least what Mr. Moores told me already in the eighties -- that GCI would look after Mr. Mulroney, and that when Mr. Mulroney is no longer the Prime Minister, he would work with GCI...It's not clear from this whether Schreiber himself was also in attendance.This is what my understanding was from Frank Moores, and especially from Gary Ouellet, and when all this was discussed at the beginning - that GCI would do the business and get the lobbying business in all this - this was in the eighties. The discussion was one day in the Ritz-Carlton, and Mr. Mulroney was present.
- Schreiber dropped the name of Benoit Bouchard, Transport minister from 1986 to 1988, as someone the commitee might want to interview, both with respect to Airbus and Bear Head. He coyly declined to offer further details.
- And then this incredible (possibly literally) passage:
I met quite often with Claude Taylor [Air Canada's chairman in the 1980s] and I didn't mention it but I was then approached [by] other members of the board from Air Canada ... who wanted just $400,000 from me or I would never get the Airbus contract done.Never mind the $400,000 -- what was he meeting with Claude Taylor about? At the time, no one knew that Schreiber had any involvement in the Airbus deal -- certainly not that he was being paid commissions on it, since these were prohibited. So what would he and Taylor have had to talk about?
In other news, Schreiber could not name the lawyer in Geneva to whom Fred Doucet allegedly asked him to transfer money. He denied being the one who leaked the infamous letter of request to the Swiss authorities that formed the basis of Mulroney's lawsuit against the government. And he denied discussing a deal with the RCMP in which he would agree to offer information in return for being allowed to stay in Canada.
Comme Drudge, developing...
12/12/2007
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13 Comments
"Bavarian greasemonkey"?!!! ROTFLWMSOMN (rolling on the floor laughing with milk spurting out my nose).
AC,
I still don't think you have the numbers from the 1983 Winnipeg Convention to claim "He readily confessed to having bought the 1983Tory convention that toppled Joe Clark from the leadership,"
According to wiki:
At the party's 1981 convention, 33.5% of the delegates supported a leadership review; they felt that Clark would not be able to lead the party to victory again. At the January, 1983, convention in Winnipeg, 33.1% supported a review, even though the governing Liberals were slipping in polls. The fact that Clark had been able to increase his support among party members by only 0.5% [sic] was likely a contributing factor to his decision to resign as leader and seek a renewed mandate from the membership through a leadership convention.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Clark#1983_Leadership_convention
So, notwithstanding that it took four ballots for Mulroney to come from behind to beat Clark at Ottawa in 1983, and John Crosbie could conceivably have thrown his support behind Clark and affected the overall leaderhip race outcome when he was forced to be dropped from the ballot, I think it is very tenuous to suggest that KHS's money in flying delegates from Montreal to Winnipeg influenced Clark's decision to call a full leadership campaign, or fixed the final result.
Whether it was $56k or $250k of foreign financing, the difference between 1981 (33.6% voting for a leadership review) and 1983 (33.1% voting for a leadership review) appears to be insignificant.
An urban myth it seems.
Derek:
Good points. Another point thats often missed in the "Schreiber influenced democracy" is that Joe Clark himself called the leadership convention.
Mulroney is on record as saying that he was shocked when Clark called the convention as his own view was that Clark could have easily held onto the leadership with the 67% support he got. Clark's real problem is that he had only 25% of the caucus behind him.
This says nothing of the fact that Mulroney won 209 seats and over 50% of the popular vote in 1984.
I don't think it's that complicated, Derek. There were 2400 delegates at the 1983 convention. Of these, somewhere close to 200 were anti-Clark delegates from Quebec flown in by Mulroney's camp at Schreiber and Strauss's expense -- call it 180.
My understanding is that Clark had set a bar of 70% support before the convention in order to stay on as leader. In the event, he got 66% of the vote, or roughly 1600 votes out of 2400. Had those 180 delegates not shown up, it would have been 1600 out of 2220, or 72%, and Clark would have remained as leader. QED
What, the Quebec delegates would not have travelled to Winnipeg otherwise? I'll concede you may be the expert on that point. :)
Still, McTeer claims 75% many years later (in which case your numbers fall short). Why she would inflate the threshold is beyond me. But admittedly, Joe didn't have a great track record at that time when it came to counting votes.
Derek snd AC,
On thid one I think the number of delegates is a red herring.
Thr choice to call was Mr Clarks and Mr Clarks alone, as long as he exceeded the 50+1
The point is that there was foreign money and non canadian citizens supporting.
Now on that last question, one thing isnt clear, were Wolf and Schreiber Canadan residents? I do not believe there is a citizenship requirement for political donations or membership in a political party. If there was all parties would have major issues.
The Franz Josef Strauss issue is the big one as well as whether or not there was knowledge that the money coming to fund the leadership was ultimately foreign.
But this is all a sideshow, other than maybe setting context. If true that BM knew that the Chairman of Airbus helped him, was there an implication that the back scratcher that airbus would be rewarded? Once again everything seems to point to no direct links on Airbus.
The bigger concern is did GCI make a forward promise of reward that BMXPM used influence to reward the company during his time in office.
This is a general question that applies to other PM's and cab mins about Earnscliffe, Law Firms, lobby groups, interest groups etc across all parties.
As a slightly sarcastic example. Is fighting for funding for a social justice group that you then join after you leave parlaiment a conflict of interest or an example of back scratching?
Anyway, for me it is did Mulroney know source of funds and was there an strongly implied quid pro quo. As proof of that, was there influence over the decisions, such that a decision was made that wouldnt have been made otherwise. If you cant show the incremental change in decision then you cannot prove influence.
So if Mulroney killed the Bear Head project then is that not proof that there was no influence? or effective influnce.
In business you will hold the door open for favoured vendors but a proper process yields a correct decision. Now if you are paid for holding that door open that is a different story.
Anyway, we are trying to determine influence. I care about the 1983 stuff but it is more historical artifact and those looking at it need to go deeper and compare to other situations. Not as in a everyone does it but in a was there really anything wrong with what happened.
Mr Clark choose to call the convention and he was not required to do so.
Assuming that the 200 people flown in by this money would have not arrived by any other method and that they all voted to ditch Clark removing them brings Clark's approval to just a shade under 73%. A level at which Clark may have felt was strong enough to keep on trucking ... I think this is still a big deal.
And if we had leaves we would be trees.
Mr Clark chose to call a convention when he was not legally required to do so. There was lots of debate at the time about whether he had made the correct judgement call.
Lets seperate the issues. Clark is responsible for his own idiocy of calling the convention. Let's do the thought experiemtn of it being only one person that pushed him under 70% is that an issue?
The issue is the potential source of funds not the effect of the funds. You should be just as concerned that it happened whether or not Joe called the convention or not.
You need to show that there was knoweldge of the source of funds and that the source was illegal. If the source of donations was a canadian resident then then it is legal. If the canadian resident knew that the source was foreign and not theirs you have to check with the laws of the day.....but likely illegal. Did the knowledge of the source go up to the CFO of the campaign snd did it go beyond the CFO....these are the questions that need to be asked if you want to pursue this matter.
But more importantly, do our laws and oversight TODAY enable this kind of thing to happen. I care more about Tamil money Chinese (the country) money in our political process.
Rather than chase zombies from 1983you should be concerned about the wraiths that float in 2007.
Don't mske the allegation without the proof, snd do solid analysis. Anything else is not worthy of this blog or the owner.
Well, I'd like to know where the 70% number comes from. AC is using it. Lawrence Martin used the same number in a G&M column today:
Mr. Clark decided at the Winnipeg convention that his 66.9-per-cent approval vote was not enough. He had wanted closer to 70 per cent, which could well have come about if the Mulroney campaign had been unable to airlift Quebec delegates to Winnipeg and cover their expenses.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071213.wcomartin13/BNStory/specialComment/columnists
No one provides a source, and this analysis does not work if the Clark threshold was 75%.
My vague memory of the Clark opposition during 1980-1983 was that it was quite a dysfunctional group, and it is conceivable that had he not received a strong endorsement (significantly greater than the 1981 vote) he would call for a full leadership convention.
Maureen McTeer has written in a book that Clark wouldn't have accepted less than 75%, according to this wiki entry I had provided in an earlier blog entry:
Clark's wife, Maureen McTeer, elaborated on Clark's decision in her 2003 autobiography, In My Own Name. McTeer suggested that for her husband, anything less than a 75% endorsement would not have been a clear enough mandate to forge onwards from the party membership. Clark feared that the 34% of PC members who did not support him would become his most vocal critics in the upcoming election campaign and his continued leadership would have led to fractures in the party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Clark
Why would McTeer say 75% if it was 70%? Surely, she knew best and by 2003 she had heard these allegations. Why not support 70%? Would it not suggest Joe Clark had been denied his rightful place in history, the stronger case being made using the lower number.
I too think its a red herring. And perhaps with today's financing rules, limiting corporate or individual donations to $1100, the issue is not as relevant today.
On a related point, Schreiber I believe became a Canadian citizen in 1982.
Derek,
Isn't the idea that foreign money was used to try to swing the results of a Canadian political party's leadership convention important regardless of whether or not the money was effective in doing so?
Isn't using $250,000 in foreign funds from shady characters on leadership delegates to the PC convention a problem, regardless of the effect it had?
I think that the red herring is the idea that their attempt to use large amounts foreign funds to effect the leadership convention was a failure. Surely that they tried to do it at all is the issue.
Is the argument really "Sure, we TRIED to use foreign funds to rig the vote, but it turns out our efforts were redundant and we didn't actually need to, so 'no harm, no foul'"????
LKO,
First off, the allegation as I understand it, is that the money was used to transport delegates to Winnipeg who would vote in favour a leadership review. So, the suggestion that you made that "foreign money was used to try to swing the results of a Canadian political party's leadership convention" I believe is incorrect. The actual leadership convention was in Ottawa sometime later.
Secondly, I assumed that these 200 or whatever delegates were democratically selected in their Quebec ridings prior to being delivered to Winnipeg. I haven't heard any suggestions that they were bribed to switch their votes, only that, it is assumed, they would have not travelled to Winnipeg otherwise.
As far as the use of foreign funds, I look upon this as a technicality, and sure a shot to our national pride (what, we don't have our own corrupt business leaders who wanted to secretly fund BM's leadership aspirations, so we have to look outside?). But, let's put it in context.
Brian Mulroney was not just anyone that German interests picked out of the crowd. He was the third place finisher at the 1976 PC leadership, and had been active in the PC party since university.
Some suggest he had been trying to unseat Clark since that event. Obviously, he and his supporter's efforts intensified after Clark's disasterous period as PM in 1979.
Frank Moores was obviously looking for money to support BM's covert efforts to unseat Clark, and would probably have taken it from anyone and anywhere at that time. In KHS , and Strauss he found it - allegedly for future consideration through purchases of German equipment or technology.
But, how is this any different than a large industrialist in Canada doing the same thing? Say a large gold mining conglomerate didn't like the current Liberal or the PC party's position under Clark wrt opening up the far north to mineral exploration and development? Mulroney was at the time an executive at Iron Ore Canada, so presumely he was pro mining. What's the fundamental difference with this hypothetical case and what KHS and the German money did? We'll fund you, but in the future we expect access to the north for mineral development, your gov't builds the roads etc. I'd say nothing.
The bottom line is that the fault, if there is any, in accepting foreign money, or any other money for future consideration lies with Frank Moore and Mulroney's campaign team.
Purchasing influence to me is the issue. Whether or not it was foreign and whether it did result in a change of government is a side issue or a technicality in this specific case (maybe Turner would have been elected PM had Clark stayed on, who knows).
My mistake. According to Mulroney's testimony yesterday, there were 450 delegates flown in. Without them, Clark would have had 1600/1950=82% of the vote.
This transcript from the National Post suggests the number of 450 was purely rhetorical. Mr. Mulroney was trying to make a point that such a large number of delegates would not be possible to have transported unnoticed. And furthermore, he claims KHS (foreign money) had nothing to do with the 1983 convention. So, if you accept the first point as true (450) then you must also accept his second point (KHS had no involvement). QED.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/posted/pages/unedited-transcript-brian-mulroney-at-the-commons-ethics-committee-dec-13-2007.aspx
Mr. Pat Martin: I'm not calling you a liar, Mr. Mulroney, but I don't want anybody here to think I believe you. Put it that way. One of the most disturbing allegations is that Karlheinz Schreiber and Franz Josef Strauss interfered with Canadian politics with foreign money to unseat, in 1983 Winnipeg, Joe Clark who may in fact had been the next Prime Minister of Canada had foreign money not intervened from this neo-Conservative Government who by Mr. Schreiber's testimony was going around the world trying to promote neo-Conservative governments and interfering with their money.
Were you aware at that time that Walter Wolf, Franz Josef Strauss, and Karlheinz Schreiber were parachuting delegates in by charter plane to unseat Joe Clark's leadership and to place you and Frank Moores, and to place you as the next leader and the next Prime Minister of Canada?
Right Honourable Brian Mulroney: Mr. Chairman, the idea that somebody would charter two Boeings loaded with 450 delegates fly them into Winnipeg in the middle of a snowstorm in January of 1983 without anybody about it's pretty exceptional at a Conservative meeting.
Let me, you quote Mr. Schreiber approvingly. He was asked this question under oath, what role he played in 1983. Okay, asked by Mr. Bernstein. Who did you understand this donation was in favour of? I donated this for the leadership campaign of Mr. Mulroney 1976. And just to be clear was this the leadership which resulted in Mr. Clark's election? Yes, yes. Question, did you support Mr. Mulroney's leadership in the second one, the one in which he ultimately won? No.
He had nothing to do with the 1983 campaign, zero. You, sir, and I say this respectfully, I hope before we leave you'll find it in your heart to withdraw that charge. It's completely false because it's repudiated by your friend Mr. Schreiber right here.