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.