Mulroney calls for public inquiry
November 13, 2007 at 2:00 AM EST
OTTAWA Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is calling for the government to launch a full-fledged public inquiry into allegations against him, and skip the review by a neutral adviser announced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Mr. Mulroney is to issue a statement Tuesday in which he will assert that the only way to put this matter to rest is through a full public inquiry, according to a spokesman, long-time adviser Luc Lavoie, who read the statement to The Globe and Mail.
In order to finally put this matter to rest, and expose all the facts and the role played by all the people involved, from public servants to elected officials, from lobbyists to the police authorities, as well as journalists, the only solution is for the government to launch a full-fledged public commission of inquiry which would cover the period from 1988 to today.
Only then will the whole truth be finally exposed and tarnished reputations restored.
Last week, German-Canadian Karlheinz Schreiber filed an affidavit in court in which he alleged that just before Mr. Mulroney left office in 1993, the two met and discussed an agreement to pay Mr. Mulroney $300,000 after he left public life.
Mr. Mulroney has in the past been reluctant to discuss his dealings with Mr. Schreiber in interviews with journalists, and made no mention of the affair in his recently published autobiography, Memoirs.
In his statement, he notes that Mr. Schreiber has levelled new allegations from his Toronto jail cell where he is being held while fighting extradition to Germany.
He notes that he has been fighting allegations related to the so-called Airbus affair since 1995, and that the federal government was forced to apologize when government lawyers alleged he engaged in criminal activity in a letter to Swiss authorities.
The settlement of Mr. Mulroney's defamation lawsuit cost Ottawa $2.1-million.
The Airbus affair stems from the 1988 sale of planes to Air Canada, a deal in which Airbus paid a company connected to Mr. Schreiber $20-million in commissions that were not revealed at the time.
By saying 1988 onward that means any efforts that were made to unseat Joe Clark as leader would be off the table. In interviews, Mr. Schreiber has explained how in 1983 he, along with the late Frank Moores, the former Conservative premier of Newfoundland, helped fund and co-ordinate delegates from Quebec to vote for Mr. Clark to step down paving the way for Mr. Mulroney's rise as leader.
Mr. Harper, who had resisted calls for a public inquiry, announced Friday that he would appoint an independent adviser to counsel him on the government response, after The Globe and Mail reported the allegation in Mr. Schreiber's affidavit.
Monday, a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office confirmed to The Globe and Mail that the PMO received a letter six weeks ago from Mr. Schreiber that pointed to that allegation but a PMO spokesman said aides filed it away without informing senior PMO staffers.The letter was the second sent by Mr. Schreiber, who mentioned the allegation in a letter to Mr. Harper sent in March.
But Mr. Harper's aides insisted the March 29 letter was never forwarded to them by civil servants in the Privy Council Office, the government department that reports to the Prime Minister.
Now, documents obtained by The Globe and Mail show that Mr. Schreiber did not drop the matter when he received no reply to his March letter. He sent a second one on Sept. 26 and included a reminder, and a copy, of his first letter.
Mr. Harper's communications director, Sandra Buckler, said Monday night that the PCO forwarded a copy of the second letter to the correspondence unit of the Prime Minister's Office, but neither Mr. Harper nor his senior staffers were told about it.
The letter was copied to PMO correspondence, but it was immediately filed and no action was taken because it dealt with an ongoing court case, Ms. Buckler said.
The Prime Minister was not aware of any letter, she said, adding that neither she nor other senior aides were told of the correspondence before The Globe contacted them.
The opposition Liberals argued that it is now impossible to believe that Mr. Harper did not learn of the allegation until The Globe reported last week on the affidavit.
If it was beyond imagining that they would have ignored this the first time, then it's completely out of the realm of possibility that they would ignore this a second time, said Liberal MP Mark Holland. It starts to get a little hard to believe, doesn't it?
Mr. Schreiber's letters, written in a rambling and disjointed style, might have been dismissed if they had not come from a person at the centre of a high-profile legal battle.
His March letter to Mr. Harper mentioned the discussion with Mr. Mulroney, but he received no reply. His September letter complains that the Prime Minister was ignoring a conspiracy against him, and included a copy of the March letter. Both times, Mr. Schreiber included a copy of a letter to Mr. Mulroney that refers to discussions about the financial arrangement.
In the Sept. 26 letter, Mr. Schreiber alleges that he is the victim of a conspiracy among police, justice officials and politicians, and accuses Mr. Harper of taking part in it by ignoring his allegations.
