Justice Jeffrey Oliphant was appointed on June 12, 2008 by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to conduct an inquirty ito certain allegations respecting the business and financial dealings between Karl Heinz Schreiber and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Oliphant sat through 39 days of public hearings, including several days with Mulroney himself on the stand, heard from 28 witnesses, waded through 5,000 pages of transcripts and reviewed 150,000 pages of documentary evidence.
His report is released today. It includes a 67-page executive summary, a 400-page Factual Summary, a 382-page volume on policy and consolidated findings and recommendations; and a 137-page review of independent research studies.
The bottom line to all of this is neatly summed up by Oliphant at the beginning of the executive summary:
The genesis of this Inquiry is a relationship between a former prime minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Brian Mulroney, and Karlheinz Schreiber, a German-Canadian businessman. The relationship spanned two decades and included a secret agreement between the two men made approximately two months after Mr. Mulroney left the office of prime minister and was sitting as a member of parliament. For many years Mr. Mulroney concealed the fact that, on three separate occasions, in three different hotels in two countries, he had received thousands of dollars in cash, in envelopes, from Mr. Schreiber. There was no contemporary documentation, as is normally found in legitimate business dealings, for any of these transactions. No invoices or receipts were provided, no correspondence or reporting letters were written. I conclude that the covert manner in which Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Schreiber carried out their transactions was designed to conceal their business and financial dealings.
Mr. Mulroney accepted the first instalment of cash on August 27, 1993, while he was still a sitting member of parliament, and the other two instalments on December 18, 1993, and December 8, 1994. He had several opportunities to disclose these dealings – when he filed his tax forms between 1993 and 1999, for instance; when he gave evidence under oath in his lawsuit against the Government of Canada in 1996; and when he or his spokespersons were interviewed by various journalists – but he chose not to do so. Instead, at all times he attempted to prevent the public disclosure of his dealings with Mr. Schreiber.
…This Inquiry provided Mr. Mulroney with the opportunity to clear the air and put forward cogent, credible evidence to support his assertions that there was nothing untoward about his dealings with Mr. Schreiber. I regret that he has not done so. I express this regret on behalf of all Canadians, who are entitled to expect their politicians to conserve and enhance public confidence and trust in the integrity, objectivity, and impartiality of government. Mr. Mulroney’s actions failed to enhance public confidence in the integrity of public office holders.
