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.
Don Newman interviewed two lawyers who flew to Ottawa to witness Wolson cross-examining Mulroney and neither of them seemed to think Mulroney had been as truthful as he claimed to be. I got the feeling that the lawyer who said he's be prepared to accept a much lower fee if he could cross examine Mulroney said so because he was fed up with Mulroney's evasiveness.
It seemed to me that Wolson was able to establish today that Mulroney's past and present descriptions of the nature of his relationship with the German lobbyist are, at the very least, inconsistent. The fact that a former PM would deliberately withhold information about it from a discovery examination speaks volumes about his credibility – why did he try to hide the fact that Schreiber was much more than a casual acquaintance with whom he had had coffee a couple of times?