Month: May 2009

Over lunch at the Oliphant Commission, I've been thumbing through some of the documents that have been tabled today as exhibits, here at the Oliphant Commission. Among them is this letter [PDF] sent to Mulroney on Feb. 22, 2005 from the CBC asking for an interview. Frustratingly, only the first two pages of this interview request are part of the exhibit (It is Exhibit 46, tab 20 [PDF]) and not the last pages of the request. As a result, there is no signatory on this letter. I just asked CBC producer Harvey Cashore, however, if he was the author and he says he is. Cashore, as Mulroney's team has just alleged, was laughing at Mulroney as he closed his testimony before lunch.

But despite the personal animosity Mulroney clearly feels for Cashore (and Stevie Cameron, a former colleague of Cashore's at The Fifth Estate) Cashore's interview request contains some important questions for Mulroney that, it seems to me, remain unanswered so far at this commission.

For example, in the last day-and-a-half this commission has heard Mr. Mulroney describe under oath how his relationship with Schreiber developed and how he was compensated by Schreiber and for what purpose. And yet, as Cashore points out in his interview request, Mulroney also said under oath in 1996 that he “had never had dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber.”

And on Nov. 20, 1995, lawyers acting for Mulroney filed a Statement of Claim, in connection with the libel suit over the RCMP Request for Assistance, in which Mulroney claimed “he has never received any of the alleged payments, in any form, from any person, whether named or not in the Request for Assistance, for any consideration whatsoever.”

But, of course, we heard this morning, from Mulroney himself, that, in 1993-94, he received $225,000 in cash from Schreiber, who was named in that RCMP Request for Assistance.

Now, Warren Kinsella, who doesn't much like Mulroney, wrote a column for National Post on Feb. 1, 2007 framing some of these uncomfortable questions in about that manner. That prompted Mulroney's legal team to ask the Post to publish a prominent correction, which it did. Here is the letter from the Post's lawyer to Mulroney's lawyer suggesting the wording of that correction. Effectively, Mulroney is saying he had no dealings with Schreiber in the context of Airbus in his 1996 testimony.

UPDATE: Here's Mulroney himself speaking to that issue last December, before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Ethics and Privacy:

In my defamation lawsuit arising from the Airbus allegations, government attorneys asked to examine me on discovery before plea in April 1996. In Quebec, the law is crystal clear that a defendant who chooses to do this before filing his defence can only ask questions relevant to the allegation contained in the statement of claim. The claim I had made against the Government of Canada was confined to the defamatory nature of the statements they had made, namely, the allegations that I had received bribes during my time as Prime Minister, notably in relation to Airbus.

   That was the legal background to my appearance in the Montreal court house. When I took the stand that morning, the Government of Canada was represented by no less than nine lawyers.

   After only one and a half days of the scheduled two-day hearing, the nine government attorneys said they had no further questions and the examination was adjourned. They never once asked me directly if I had entered into a commercial relationship with Mr. Schreiber after leaving office.

   Much has been made in the media of an alleged statement by me that “I never had dealings with Mr. Schreiber” as amounting to a denial of the business dealings I had with him after I had left public life. This report of my testimony is clearly false, as even Mr. Schreiber himself made absolutely clear last week.

But although the charge has been resuscitated lately, it had been corrected earlier this year by both the National Post and The Globe and Mail, which published apologies and/or clarifications for having repeated this libel. …

  Any reasonable reading of my testimony indicates that when I used the language “I had never had any dealings with Mr. Schreiber”, I was clearly referring to the sale of Airbus aircraft and my time in government.

I'm at the Oliphant Commission, blogging Brian Mulroney's testimony. You can follow me on Twitter (@davidakin) where you'll find links to all the blog posts. For your one-stop shopping convenience, I provide them for you here:

• Canada.com: [Oliphant] Morning press roundup: Some of the interesting tidbits in this morning's c.. (expand)
• Canada.com: [Oliphant] The Spin War at MulroneyMediaRoom.com: Brian Mulroney wanted this commission, .. (expand)
• Mulroney goes to France: (expand)
• Canada.com: [Oliphant] Day 2 begins with a trip to Asia and update on Schreiber's health: And we'.. (expand)
• Canada.com: [Oliphant] Schreiber falls in love with the Liberals: Mulroney went to China on a busines.. (expand)
• Canada.com: [Oliphant] Mulroney gets another $75,000 from Schreiber: At the coffee shop, in the hotel.. (expand)
• Canada.com: [Oliphant] Mulroney goes to France: Mulroney goes to France[PDF] in September of 1994 and.. (expand)
• Canada.com: [Oliphant] Mulroney gets his last $75,000 in New York: On Dec. 8, 1994, Mulroney has a me.. (expand)

Some of the interesting tidbits in this morning's coverage of yesterday's activities at the Oliphant Commission or, as it's more formally know, the Commission of Inquiry into Certain Allegations Respecting Business and Financial Dealings Between Karlheinz Schreiber and the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney.

First, this odd development was first reported by my colleague Norma Greenaway:

Schreiber, who listened to Mulroney's testimony in the morning, disappeared from the inquiry in the afternoon.

His wife, Barbel, said Tuesday night that he had gone to hospital and was scheduled for an emergency gallbladder surgery late Tuesday night.

She said Schreiber was experiencing a lot of pain, which is why he went to the hospital.

This morning we learn that Schreiber is recovering and should be out of the hospital Friday. Writing in The Globe and Mail, Greg McArthur  points us at this interesting nugget:

As Mr. Mulroney began the first of an estimated four days of testimony, inquiry lawyers introduced reams of never-before-seen pages of Mr. Schreiber's diary. The notations reveal that there was a period in 1997 when the German-born lobbyist was preoccupied with something involving the former prime minister, former German chancellor Helmut Kohl and European manufacturer Airbus Industrie.

Over a two month-period in 1997, just shortly after Mr. Mulroney received an apology from the federal government and a $2.1-million settlement in connection with the Airbus affair, Mr. Schreiber made four entries in his agenda books related to “Kohl” and “Mulroney.” Twice he scribbled next to their names “AB” – his shorthand for Airbus, the part-German company that paid Mr. Schreiber about $20-million in secret commissions after Air Canada bought 34 of its airplanes.

On Jan. 14, 1997, just a week after justice minister Allan Rock apologized to the former prime minister over an RCMP letter that alleged he had received kickbacks on the Airbus sale, Mr. Schreiber wrote in his agenda book “Kohl” and “Mulroney” above the words “AB” and “Steuergeheimnis,” a German word meaning tax secrecy.

McArthur also looks at Mulroney's offered excuse (I'm not sure that's the right word but there it is) for accepting cash payments and wonders if there is an unexplained time element issue there:

On Tuesday, Mr. Mulroney tried to address the secrecy surrounding the payments, saying he believes gossip and rumour led the Mounties to send the 1995 letter stating that he had received kickbacks, and that it threatened to ruin his family's name.

That devastating experience “explains my conduct in trying to keep private the private commercial transaction I entered into with Mr. Schreiber after I left office, so as to avoid the same kinds of deceitful and false purveying of information that had led to the original Airbus matter in the first place.”

The RCMP's letter of request was sent in 1995. Mr. Mulroney received the cash from Mr. Schreiber in 1993 and 1994.

Chantal Hebert makes, what seems to me, a not inconsiderate point in The Toronto Star:

Based on what Justice Jeffery Oliphant has heard to date, his conclusions will almost certainly involve a judgment call as to the relative credibility of the conflicting versions put forward by the two main protagonists….It can't harm Mulroney to remind the commission that when it comes to professional accomplishments he and Schreiber are not on a level playing field. Or that in his daily decision-making as prime minister, he was not solely surrounded by cronies but also by a cohort of advisers, including senior civil servants with impeccable ethical credentials. Or that he did have legitimate international access and expertise to offer for the money Schreiber was paying him.
The next few days under cross-examination will tell whether he can hold the high ground he tried to stake out yesterday.

The issues to be decided at the Oliphant Commission, probing the dealings between Karlheinz Schreiber and former prime minister Brian Mulroney, have a lot to do with credibility. In today's testimony by Mulroney, it was clear that one of the documents presented by his team attempted to weaken the credibility of Schreiber. The document was a letter, written by Schreiber on May 7, 1991, nearly a month after Schreiber claims to have had a meeting with Mulroney, Paul Tellier, and Fred Doucet.

Tellier was, at the time, the Clerk of the Privy Council. Doucet was then a lobbyist but had been Mulroney's chief of staff while he was opposition leader and a senior advisor when he became prime minister. He and Mulroney also had a close personal relationship that existed decades before he became PM.

Mulroney disputed the notion that he took a meeting with Schreiber. He says he took a meeting with either Doucet or Elmer Mackay (Peter's father, who stepped down as MP for Central Nova so Mulroney could run there once) and if they brought Schreiber in to that meeting, well then, so be it, because he trusted both those men.

However it's characterized, it seems clear that Tellier, with Mulroney present, met with Schreiber on April 10, 1991.

Schreiber was pushing the deal for his company, Bear Head Industries Ltd. Bear Head's plan was to have German arms maker Thyssen build a manufacturing facility in Cape Breton, “a relatively simple proposition”, in Schreiber's words.

Mulroney – and Tellier – had soured on the plan early on because they concluded it was exactly the opposite of a “relatively simple proposition”. Still, some Conservatives — notably Sen. Lowell Murray — and Schreiber continued to press the plan.

So: After meeting Tellier on April 10 and believing that he had impressed everyone with his plan, he waits. And waits. And waits. He calls. He has Doucet call. And no one calls him back.

He can't understand why no one has followed up with him:

“At the conclusion of that meeting, it was understood that you [Tellier] would bring your personal leadership to the file and chari a meeting between Government and company officials as early as possible within one week's time.”

Tellier scrawls two words in the margin of this letter from Schreiber: “Not accurate.”

Later in this seven-page letter, Schreiber says he can't understand why this has become a problem, particularly since:

“.. The Prime MInister (Mulroney) … made it clear in his speeches that his Government declared in its Cabinet Policy to use the industrial benefits associated with defence procurement to strengthen regional economies and overcome regional disparities. Furthermore, the Prime Minister made his personal position on the subject clear on April during our meeting.”

Tellier scrawls again in the margin: “Not accurate.”

Schreiber continues with his theme on page 5 of the letter: “All parties, with the possible exception of our competitors, seemed in favour of the project.”

And again, Tellier's note reads “Not accurate.”

Read the letter, with Tellier's notes, yourself [PDF].

Before we got going this morning, I dashed about with my digital camera. The results (click through on the thumbnail to see a larger picture). A reminder that I'm live-blogging Mulroney's testimony over here:

I'll be live-blogging Brian Mulroney's appearance this week at the Oliphant Commission but not here. I'll be live-blogging over here, a new “franchise”, if you will, for “On the Hill” within the Canada.com network. If you subscribe to this blog via RSS, may I suggest you wander over to the Canada.com site and do the same there. Some posts here will be mirrored there and some posts there will be mirrored here but there will be some posts exclusive to both sites. For example, you can see what I hope will soon be an exclusive daily feature at Canada.com's On The Hill in the form of “The Agenda”, a daily peak at activity on the Parliamentary Precinct. And all the blogging I do from the Oliphant Commission will only be found at Canada.com's On the Hill as well.

And as an extra incentive to get you pointed in that direction, the Canada.com On The Hill is where you can learn about a new poll from Nik Nanos who asked Canadians if they thought Oliphant's inquiry into Schreiber and Mulroney is worth the time and effort . .