Category: Politics

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist writes that he and some students have resurrected the invaluable (to me, anyhow) CAIRS database.

“Today I launched CAIRS.Info, a new site that provides access to searchable PDF copies of the same information that was contained in the CAIRS database. Requests are sent to most government departments each quarter for a list of the most recent access to information requests. The resulting documents are uploaded and can be searched by government department, date of the request, or keywords within the requests. All request documents can be viewed online or downloaded as a PDF file. “

Hurrah for Prof. Geist and his students. Great job!

I've put up the excerpts from yesterday's transcript at the Oliphant Commission that prompted The Globe and Mail's editor-in-chief to write to Commission Counsel Richard Wolson.

On his second day on the stand at the Oliphant Commission, The Globe and Mail made Brian Mulroney cry.

On his penultimate day on the stand (yesterday), the former prime minister accused the newspaper of “suppressing” a fourth and final article in the series in which it was first disclosed that Mulroney took cash payments from Karlheinz Schreiber. This fourth article, Mulroney hinted yesterday, would have contained information which, if not favourable to him, would have diverted the spotlight to someone or something else. Under questioning from Justice Jeffrey Oliphant, Mulroney conceded he had no direct knowledge a fourth article was every prepared.

A few hours after that testimony, Globe and Mail editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon shoots back replying that, not only was there no fourth story, Mulroney actually called Greenspon directly and was so desperate to prevent the Globe from publishing details about the cash transactions that he offered up what he said was a juicier scoop if the Globe suppressed that story. The Globe turned down Mulroney's offer.

This morning, the public relations firm that has been retained by Mulroney says the Globe is hiding something.

To which I'd say:

You, me, and those who pay taxes on 100 per cent of their income every year are footing the bill for this inquiry and it is Mulroney's behaviour, not The Globe and Mail's, that we are interested in.

I won't get to ask Mulroney a question but I've got two:

1. Mulroney said, on the stand, yesterday that he knows the name of a Cape Breton political figure for whom Karlheinz Schreiber set up the BRITAN bank account. Ok, who was it? There's a handful we can suspect and now they're all under cloud unless you might clear the air.
2. If the Globe and Mail is hiding something, what is it? Why not table those documents to other news organizations? After all, we have a thriving, competitive media landscape in this country and there are many other reporters who, if offered such a scoop, would surely take more than a week to corroborate the “explosive information” you have. My contact details, as always, can be found here.

I'll have more on this shortly over at the sister site for this blog at www.canada.com/blogs.

MPs are on a break this week from the House of Commons and that means, without the requirement to be present for Question Period or committee meetings, they are travelling about the country.

Government MPs, but particularly ministers, will be busy here and there making various funding announcements all week, as they try to demonstrate that any criticism that they've been slow to get stimulus funding out the door is opposition hogwash. As usual, we'll be tracking the spending announcements on Twitter under the hashtag #ottawaspends. Feel free to jump in there. (You can follow me on Twitter @davidakin or take a look at the left hand side of this page for my live-Twitter feed or, finally, simply point your browser at this site.)

On deck so far today:

• In Calgary, Environment Minister Jim Prentice is up at noon local time at the Stampede Victoria Park LRT Station for an infrastructure announcement.
• Revenue Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn was in St. Hyacinthe, Que. this morning to announce funding for a food inspection agency lab.
• Heritage Minister James Moore is in Quebec City at the Musee de la Civilisation for a 1 pm announcement to prove yet again that “Conservatives support culture!”
• Labour Minister Rona Ambrose is in Edmonton for a 1430 funding announcement at the Rapid Fire Theatre Society.
• Saskatchewan MP Andrew Scheer has an announcement in Regina at 1000.
• Ontario MP Rick Norlock is in Kingston, Ont. this evening at 1930 to hand out some money.
• Ontario MP Greg Rickford is in Dryden to give money to seniors at the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation.

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is on the stand again today at the Oliphant Commission, an inquiry into certain business dealings of Karlheinz Schreiber and Mulroney. It is Mulroney's fifth day on the stand and, we are told, his last.

Commission counsel Richard Wolson will continue his cross-examination this morning. Other lawyers here will then get a crack at him, if they so choose. Schreiber's lawyer will certainly be among them but it's not yet been announced if that lawyer, Richard Auger, will proceed. That's because Auger's client — the aforementioned Karlheinz had emergency gall bladder last Tuesday night. As of Friday at noon, Auger had not yet had a chance to confer with his client. If he has had that chance over the weekend, expect him to follow Wolson.

I'll be liveblogging the proceedings but not here. You'll have to head over to our sister site on the Canada.com network.

We're in the last 10 minutes or so of testimony this week at the Oliphant Commission. Brian Mulroney is on the stand, getting a grilling about the cash he received from Karlheinz Schreiber.

We've heard a lot about how, three times, Mulroney received envelopes stuffed with 75 $1,000 bills from Schreiber.

You ever seen $1,000 bill? I don't think I ever have. In fact, I don't think Canada prints them anymore but here's the ones that are out there:

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These images and more information, incidentally, are available at the Bank of Canada's Web site.

Richard Wolson, Oliphant Commission counsel, does a very effective job of using the documentary record to connect the dots to show that Schreiber had unique access to Mulroney, access that some might think exceptional for an individual that Mulroney said had a “peripheral” relationship with the PM.

Check out all the details here.

As Mulroney's second day on the stand under cross-examination from commission counsel Richard Wolson begins, we keep coming back to Mulroney's testimony on April 21, 1996 as part of his lawsuit against the federal government for libel and slander.

In it, you'll recall, he is asked if he knows Schreiber. He replies he might have had a cup of coffee with him.

As Wolson reminded him yesterday, it was more than a cup of coffee, it was a cup of coffee at the end of which, Mulroney walked away with $75,000 in cash stuffed into an envelope!

Why didn't Mulroney tell the court about the nature and circumstances of his relationship with Schreiber when asked about it by government lawyers in 1996. Mulroney replies (and this is my shorthand, not the official transcript):

“This might sound technical to some people but I ask you to simply remembr the context: At that point, I'm fighting for my life and my family's honour. I'm confronting the government of Canada who is spending millions of dollars on top-flight legal talent. I had offered the government full and complete co-operationg prior to the publication of the letter. They turned us down flat. I walk into the courtroom in Montreal and I'm facing 9 lawyers who are out to destroy me. …
So I'm told to go in there and deal with it in exactly the truthful manner that I did…”

Freezing at Oliphant on 12seconds.tv

Well, what are we to make of the first 90-minutes of what's certain to be a much longer relationship between Richard Wolson, the counsel for The Oliphant Commission, and the Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney?

Turns out they spent most of that 90 minutes trying to sort out just what it was Mulroney was talking about 13 years ago when he was deposed by lawyers representing the federal government, the very government he was suing at the time for smearing him with accusations that he took bribes from Airbus while in office.

I don't want to put words in Wolson's mouth but he seemed, at the very least, sceptical that Mulroney answered questions put to him in that deposition in a “fulsome” manner. Mulroney, having been sworn in to tell something approximating the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth seems, in Wolson's opinion, to have gone two for three in that department. Wolson seemed to be checking to see if “the whole truth” was, in fact, offered by Mulroney.

The “whole truth”, it seems from Wolson's line of questioning this morning would have involved Mulroney telling lawyers in 1996 who were asking him about his relationship with Karlheinz Schreiber that, yes, he certainly did have a commercial relationship with Schreiber, and, oh by the way, on three occasions, Mulroney accepted envelopes from Schreiber stuffed with thousand-dollar bills, cash that never made it into a bank account.

Mulroney agreed to disagree with Wolson's characterization, relying on the finer points of Quebec civil law, that, on advice of his counsel, he answered the questions truthfully and precisely and that no one every asked him if he had a commercial relationship with Schreiber.

Why is all this important? It all goes to credibility. At the end of the day, we, the Canadian public, have asked Mr. Justice Jeffrey Oliphant, to tell us if he believed Mulroney engaged in any behaviour which was unethical while he was in office or in the period shortly after he left office. Schreiber, a fugitive from German justice whose credibility is weak just on that point alone, alleges that Mulroney engaged in behaviour with him that would be construed as unethical. Mulroney's credibility could be weakened if what he says now about his relationship with Schreiber fails to match up with what he's previously told judges or parliamentarians under oath or journalists when they've interviewed him about this matter.

My opinion after 90 minutes? If you had a low opinion of Mulroney's credibility before these hearings, I bet you still do. If you think he's conducted himself appropriately, you most likely still feel that way.

There were no new facts presented this morning and both men, while appearing respectful of each other, also got a bit grumpy at times with each other.

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.