No good will come from this

[a_majoor]

The opposition parties have opened a can of worms by demanding an investigation of former PM Brian Mulroney. As this blogger points out, if you have leave to investigate one thing, why should you stop there? There are plenty of similar events to investigate (and are demanding investigation). Given the "source" of these allegations is fighting extradition to Germany to face many charges, I would be very careful in accepting anything he has to say.

http://torydrroy.blogspot.com/2007/11/when-do-we-get-to-see-investigations-of.html

Friday, November 09, 2007
When do we get to see the investigations of pseudochretien and dithers?

Once again the Tories are being fair and open on an issue that should have been closed a long time ago. I am sure that HM PM Mulroney will be cleared and the grits will again have egg on their faces. I hope the grits will support probes into pseudochretien's dealings with the Business Development Bank, certain golf courses and his other shady dealings. Perhaps we will finally find out where dithers and pseudochretien hid the stolen adscam money.

$41 million is still missing. Who has that money? The grits of course prefer to talk about $300000 allegedly given to HM PM Mulroney after his time in office many years ago. The grits had tried to use the RCMP to persecute Mulroney and had to offer an abject apology.
I demand investigations of Pseudochretien, dithers, gagliano and the rest of the grit henchmen. Perhaps we could also reinvestigate the HRDC scandal, the sky shops Scandal, the dredging scandal, the gun registry scandal and any number of other grit dishonesty. Is this the only way the grits can be an opposition? Not making any useful statement but trying to throw mud? So much for dion being a clean and honest man. dion is not a decent man and he certainly isn't a leader. His own party members know that.

Harper announces review of Schreiber allegations against Mulroney
Published: Friday, November 09, 2007

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Friday announced an independent third party to review allegations made by German-Canadian Karlheinz Schreiber against Brian Mulroney.

Schreiber alleges in an affidavit filed in court on Thursday that an adviser to the former prime Progressive Conservative prime minister requested a transfer of funds to "Mr. Mulroney's lawyer in Geneva related to the Airbus deal."

The allegation, which is the first time Schreiber has directly linked the commissions from the controversial 1988 sale of 34 Airbus planes to Air Canada to Mulroney, is contained in an affidavit filed in Ontario Superior Court in relation to Schreiber's ongoing lawsuit against the former prime minister.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I don't expect Harper to call for any other new investigations - I don't think it would be very good politics.  It will be up to others to take up the cry to push the government's hand on any other potential investigations.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail is an article about Mr. Mulroney’s counter-offense:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071113.wschreiber13/BNStory/National/home

Mulroney calls for public inquiry
Full judicial commission 'is the only way to prove to Canadians that I have done nothing wrong,' former prime minister says

CAMPBELL CLARK

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail
November 13, 2007 at 2:00 AM EST

OTTAWA — Former prime minister Brian Mulroney is calling for the government to launch a full-fledged public inquiry into allegations against him, and skip the review by a neutral adviser announced by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Mr. Mulroney is to issue a statement Tuesday in which he will assert that the only way to “put this matter to rest” is through a full public inquiry, according to a spokesman, long-time adviser Luc Lavoie, who read the statement to The Globe and Mail.

“In order to finally put this matter to rest, and expose all the facts and the role played by all the people involved, from public servants to elected officials, from lobbyists to the police authorities, as well as journalists, the only solution is for the government to launch a full-fledged public commission of inquiry which would cover the period from 1988 to today.

“Only then will the whole truth be finally exposed and tarnished reputations restored.”

Mr. Mulroney said in the statement that he is willing to meet the special adviser that Mr. Harper is expected to appoint this week, and will repeat his call for a full inquiry then. “This is the only way to prove to Canadians that I have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Last week, German-Canadian Karlheinz Schreiber filed an affidavit in court in which he alleged that just before Mr. Mulroney left office in 1993, the two met and discussed an agreement to pay Mr. Mulroney $300,000 after he left public life.

Mr. Mulroney has in the past been reluctant to discuss his dealings with Mr. Schreiber in interviews with journalists, and made no mention of the affair in his recently published autobiography, Memoirs.

In his statement, he notes that Mr. Schreiber has levelled new allegations from his Toronto jail cell where he is being held while fighting extradition to Germany.

He notes that he has been fighting allegations related to the so-called Airbus affair since 1995, and that the federal government was forced to apologize when government lawyers alleged he engaged in criminal activity in a letter to Swiss authorities.

The settlement of Mr. Mulroney's defamation lawsuit cost Ottawa $2.1-million.

The Airbus affair stems from the 1988 sale of planes to Air Canada, a deal in which Airbus paid a company connected to Mr. Schreiber $20-million in commissions that were not revealed at the time.

By saying 1988 onward that means any efforts that were made to unseat Joe Clark as leader would be off the table. In interviews, Mr. Schreiber has explained how in 1983 he, along with the late Frank Moores, the former Conservative premier of Newfoundland, helped fund and co-ordinate delegates from Quebec to vote for Mr. Clark to step down – paving the way for Mr. Mulroney's rise as leader.

Mr. Harper, who had resisted calls for a public inquiry, announced Friday that he would appoint an independent adviser to counsel him on the government response, after The Globe and Mail reported the allegation in Mr. Schreiber's affidavit.

Monday, a spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office confirmed to The Globe and Mail that the PMO received a letter six weeks ago from Mr. Schreiber that pointed to that allegation – but a PMO spokesman said aides filed it away without informing senior PMO staffers.The letter was the second sent by Mr. Schreiber, who mentioned the allegation in a letter to Mr. Harper sent in March.

But Mr. Harper's aides insisted the March 29 letter was never forwarded to them by civil servants in the Privy Council Office, the government department that reports to the Prime Minister.

Now, documents obtained by The Globe and Mail show that Mr. Schreiber did not drop the matter when he received no reply to his March letter. He sent a second one on Sept. 26 – and included a reminder, and a copy, of his first letter.

Mr. Harper's communications director, Sandra Buckler, said Monday night that the PCO forwarded a copy of the second letter to the correspondence unit of the Prime Minister's Office, but neither Mr. Harper nor his senior staffers were told about it.

“The letter was copied to PMO correspondence, but it was immediately filed and no action was taken because it dealt with an ongoing court case,” Ms. Buckler said.

“The Prime Minister was not aware of any letter,” she said, adding that neither she nor other senior aides were told of the correspondence before The Globe contacted them.

The opposition Liberals argued that it is now impossible to believe that Mr. Harper did not learn of the allegation until The Globe reported last week on the affidavit.

“If it was beyond imagining that they would have ignored this the first time, then it's completely out of the realm of possibility that they would ignore this a second time,” said Liberal MP Mark Holland. “It starts to get a little hard to believe, doesn't it?”

Mr. Schreiber's letters, written in a rambling and disjointed style, might have been dismissed if they had not come from a person at the centre of a high-profile legal battle.

His March letter to Mr. Harper mentioned the discussion with Mr. Mulroney, but he received no reply. His September letter complains that the Prime Minister was ignoring a conspiracy against him, and included a copy of the March letter. Both times, Mr. Schreiber included a copy of a letter to Mr. Mulroney that refers to discussions about the financial arrangement.

In the Sept. 26 letter, Mr. Schreiber alleges that he is the victim of a conspiracy among police, justice officials and politicians, and accuses Mr. Harper of taking part in it by ignoring his allegations.

With a report from Greg McArthur

I think Mulroney is trying to seize the strategic high ground early in the war. Like it or not this is a political issue with, maybe, some legal, maybe even moral overtones. While I agree with Normal Spector that a public prosecutor ought to be appointed, with subpoena powers, etc, etc, I think that almost all concerned (except for Spector), led by Mulroney, have very little interest in getting the ‘truth’ our in front of Canadians, much less in restoring Canadians’ ’faith’ in politics. That’s why Mulroney wants a judicial inquiry: he hopes to turn it into a repeat of Gomery. His lawyers will be able to call all his enemies (and he has a bunch) beginning with Stevie Cameron and Jean Chrétien – both of whom will be smeared. (The fact that both might deserve a good smear is neither here nor there.)

I think a judicial inquiry effectively shuts down any parliamentary inquiry. I’m not sure about the legalities but Canadians don’t trust politicians and they do trust judges – Gomery saw to that!

Also: watch for calls for inquiries into Shawinigate (again) and into Paul Martin and Canada Steamship Lines. (The former, I believe, does require further investigation, the latter seems to me to be more poor judgement than anything illegal or dishonest.) The Conservatives and, mainly, their friends, ought to be in full howl any time now.

I agree with a_majoor: nothing good will come from this. Reputations – of the guilty and innocent not so guilty, alike – will be tarnished. Much heat will be generated but little light will be shed on the whole affair. We, Canadians, will end up being more and more certain that all politics and all politicians are dirty.

 

[GAP]

I see the whole issue as the opposition parties pandering to find something, anything that will stick to Harper.

It's a shill game, and I think most people see it for exactly that.

 

[Staff Weenie]

Of course, left out of Dionne's diatribe, is the fact that any inquiry will cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not over a million. In the end, it will probably prove little other than the fact that something may have happened, but that there is insufficient evidence to proceed with charges or recovery. Mulroney will then probably counter-sue again for defamation, costing more $$$. He probably has an even stronger claim for defamation, as this is clearly Liberal vexation.

The taxpayers will again be on the hook for the Liberal Party's whims......

 

[Reccesoldier]

The fact that Mulroney and Harper were never even in the same party during this affair or after(unlike Martin Dion and Cretien during and after the sponsorship scandal) appears to be completely lost on the Canadian public.  :

As far as scandal, hint of scandal and corruption are concerned when will our senior politicians learn that it is best to get to the problem right off the bat than to leave anything like this lying around to be used by your political enemies later.  Mulroney called for a public inquiry long ago, and it should have been done long ago.

An independent adjudicator should be appointed to look into every one of these types of issues so that the people we pay to run the country can actually run  the country instead of playing infantile games. 

Year after year our parliament becomes a forum for bread and circuses and IMO less and less governing is done. We should take the TV cameras out of the HoC, and make the crapslingers level their accusations outside of the house where libel laws can be brought to bear.  Then see how much grandstanding and slander there is.

 

[Staff Weenie]

No argument from me - after seeing how the House of Commons behaves, I can tell you that my 6 year old son's Grade 1 class are far better behaved, and show more respect for the rules of the classroom.

It disgusts me that these people make so much money to behave like idiots.

 

[Edward Campbell]

I have been, off and on, listening to/reading all the talking heads and it looks to me as though Stephen Harper walks funny because he has a horseshoe up his you know what.

The consensus seems to be that the public inquiry will have to go back to 1988 and will have to deal with Schreiber’s 29 Mar 07 letter to Harper – that means that the entire period from 4 Nov 93 until 6 Feb 06 will be available for examination and, as I have said before, not all, not even most of the examination will be designed to elicit the truth. The parties with standing, and Mulroney will have lots of standing and something akin to a platoon of lawyers, will be able to probe, insinuate and smear at will. It is entirely possible that we will hear several more calls for public inquiries – into, as I said before, things like Shawinigate and the $10 or $20 million that Schreiber may have thrown around to people in Ottawa – including senior civil servants and Liberal politicians and bagmen.

Here, for example, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail is Jeffrey Simpson’s take:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071114.wcosimp14/BNStory/Front/home

By demanding a public inquiry, Mulroney left Harper no choice

JEFFREY SIMPSON

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
November 14, 2007 at 4:40 AM EST

So there will be a public inquiry into allegations against former prime minister Brian Mulroney after all. Where the inquiry will lead and what its terms of reference will be, no one can predict.

If Mr. Mulroney has his way, the inquiry will be vast, allowing him not only to refute the allegations but to see squirm in the witness box all of his tormentors since the first breath of the Airbus affair: politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, police officers and journalists - in short, anyone who's had a hand in the saga.

Mr. Mulroney intended to write a book about the original allegations against him that were apparently settled in a deal with the federal government under Jean Chrétien, and subsequent allegations made by Karlheinz Schreiber that became public through Mr. Schreiber's co-operation with certain media and his lawsuit against the former PM.

The public inquiry will supplant that early book and, Mr. Mulroney believes, vindicate him fully and discredit a whole bunch of people who sullied his name. At the top of the list will be Mr. Schreiber, who has managed to avoid extradition to Germany, where he is wanted on a variety of offences.

But Mr. Mulroney, his Irish dander up, has other people in his sights - which means that, if the terms of reference for the public inquiry are as large as he wishes them, the mother of all inquiries is at hand. To use an old Mulroneyism, it's the biggest "roll of the dice" of his life. His name will be in the news for months and possibly for years, as allegations are rehashed, evidence is adduced and lawyers do what lawyers do: claim and counterclaim while the cash register keeps ringing. Things might be said in testimony that could create bad headlines, even if they are subsequently refuted. And who knows if anything will come from the RCMP's announcement yesterday that it will review new allegations to see whether an investigation should be opened?

Last week, having previously rejected a public inquiry, Prime Minister Stephen Harper neither ruled one in nor out, preferring, instead, to ask a third party to advise him on the best course of action. On being abandoned by the PM, Mr. Mulroney, who might have thought the Conservative government would defend him, forced Mr. Harper's hand.

By demanding a public inquiry, Mr. Mulroney left Mr. Harper no choice but to create one, the only remaining issue being the terms of reference that the yet-to-be-named third party will propose. In the space of less than two weeks, therefore, Mr. Harper has shifted from (a) no public inquiry to (b) maybe a public inquiry to (c) yes to a public inquiry.

The opposition parties, predictably, were all over the PM in the House yesterday because of a letter Mr. Schreiber had sent to Mr. Harper that the PM insists he did not see. In point of practice, Mr. Harper was right not to have been shown the letter - from someone (Mr. Schreiber) involved in a private lawsuit and facing extradition. Imagine the stink if Mr. Harper had seen the letter and intervened in any fashion whatsoever.

The Mulroney defence/explanation probably will run as follows: I had nothing to do with Air Canada's original decision to purchase Airbus aircraft. The company board made that decision. The allegations that I took money for influencing that decision - allegations contained in a letter sent to Swiss authorities and mysteriously made public - were demonstrated to be false. I sued the government and won a settlement that exonerated me. Case closed.

But I did make a business deal to be paid for lobbying on behalf of Mr. Schreiber's interests after I ceased being prime minister. That Mr. Schreiber had been paid for lobbying on behalf of Airbus, and the deal I subsequently made with him, were separate matters. But because of all the innuendos that lingered from the Airbus affair, and Mr. Schreiber's sleazy reputation, I wanted to keep this transaction out of the public domain, as a deal between two private citizens. I did receive money from him, $300,000, and subsequently paid tax on it. Case closed.

Of course, the shortest distance between the points of this narrative of events is not likely to have been a straight line. A large cast of characters inside and outside government has played major or cameo roles throughout, with Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Schreiber being the stars. Their public statements have not always been consistent, and sometimes been contradictory.

Mr. Mulroney once said that dealing with Mr. Schreiber had been one of his biggest mistakes. A public inquiry often takes on a life of its own, and heads in directions unforeseen at the beginning. Time will tell whether demanding a public inquiry was an even bigger mistake by Mr. Mulroney than dealing with Mr. Schreiber - or whether the inquiry will allow Mr. Mulroney, as he hopes, to set the record straight and so demolish before the bar of history the allegations and insinuations against him.
[email protected]

Although I hope Mulroney will not turn out to have taken bribes while still in office, it doesn’t much matter to Harper how badly Mulroney is smeared. He was never close to Mulroney (he (Harper) started life as a Liberal (circa 1975) but quit because of Trudeau and then quit the Conservatives ( 1986) because of Mulroney) – in fact he was a founding member of the old Reform Party. The issue of Schreiber’s letter is easy; Harper tossed off the right answer today in the House of Commons: letters like that are never sent ‘up’ when there is a legal proceeding underway, as there is with Schreiber’s pending deportation. Harper may have valued Mulroney’s advice, especially re: how to win in Québec but he can easily toss him aside. There are (Marjorie LeBreton excepted) few veterans of the Mulroney years in Harper’s inner circle. He’s probably bomb proof.

Not so M. Dion.

Raymond Chan, Ujjal Dosanjh, Hedy Fry, Keith Martin, Ralph Goodale, Mauril Bélanger, Carolyn Bennet, Maurizio Bevilaqua, Ken Dryden, John Godfrey, and, and, and were all in the Chrétien ‘team’ when some of the key decisions were made. One can imagine that Mulroney’s lawyers will not miss an opportunity to suggest impropriety here, there and everywhere.

The big losers will be the national media. It looks, to all those talking heads, as though Mulroney’s prime targets will be Stevie Cameron and the CBC, especially, I think The Fifth Estate for the 1995 and 2006 stories. The media will run for cover – going to court to be allowed to protect their sources, etc. The Mulroney and Harper teams will claim that the media cannot be trusted to bring out the truth because they are promoting and protecting their anti-Conservative agenda. It’s sweet. If the courts side with the media we end up with a deeply flawed process in which, evidently, Mulroney is treated unfairly; if the media is forced to speak out then we see that there really was/is an anti-Conservative agenda. Either way Harper wins.

 

[Reccesoldier]

This proves exactly what the Liberals are trying to do here.  I hope that this whole thing blows up on them.

 

[observor 69]

L.Ian Macdonald on CBC politics with Don Newman yesterday ref the inquiry into Mulroney doings.

"Anyone who wants to start a fight with him should never bring a knife to a gun fight."   

 

[Long in the tooth]

This is a complete waste of the Government's time and our money.  Brian is supposed to be a big boy; if he has to depend on the current government to defend him he should be dismissed as a child.  The government footing the bill for an inquiry provides him with a high profile and free forum that very few of us could afford.  Let this fool pay for it himself - he does have $300,000 more than most of us do.  I once respected him.

 

[Edward Campbell]

L.Ian Macdonald on CBC politics with Don Newman yesterday ref the inquiry into Mulroney doings.

"Anyone who wants to start a fight with him should never bring a knife to a gun fight."     

I smiled at that comment, too.

Ol' Fibber Muldoon appears to be spoiling for this fight. He holds some deep grudges, I guess. It appears to me that he either:

1. Actually intends to prove that he is innocent and is, indeed, the victim of decades of unfounded rumour mongering by dishonest journalists, etc; or

2. He is confident he can escape any criminal charges, etc, and he will be happy to smear his enemies more than they can smear him.

 

[Bane]

      I don't have any care for Dion, Mulroney, Harper, Chretien or Dithers. I hope the very small sum of money that this will take nails a whole array of butts to the wall. It is also the oppositions DUTY to throw mud, attack, dig up skeletons and out maneuver the government. All sides do it, it's their job.

 

[Kirkhill]

       I don't have any care for Dion, Mulroney, Harper, Chretien or Dithers. I hope the very small sum of money that this will take nails a whole array of butts to the wall. It is also the oppositions DUTY to throw mud, attack, dig up skeletons and out maneuver the government. All sides do it, it's their job.

And there's a suitably cynical view.  ;D

 

[a_majoor]

As noted, Brian Mulroney is coming out swinging, and his call for the proposed inquiry to investigate elected officials, journalists and virtually anyone who had a pulse in Canada between 1988 and today will certainly stir up a great deal of mud to stick to everyone involved. I am sort of curious as to why the Liberals would risk the potential blow back (especially given how clever Prime Minister Harper has proven to be in deflecting opposition shots back into their own benches).

http://torydrroy.blogspot.com/2007/11/who-is-responsible-for-plot-against-hm.html

Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Who is responsible for the plot against HM PM Mulroney.

I am pretty sure that HM PM Mulroney will once again be vindicated and we can see the exposed liberal media exposed. The liberal media and gutter rats like stevie cameron, have never been made to pay for their campaign against the former PM. It will be fun to watch pseudochretien and the rest of the libranos who thought they could use the levers of power to persecute Mulroney forced to testify.
pseudoChretien knows there is nothing to this. Perhaps the liberal bias of the media will be finally fully exposed.

Only this time there would be no settlement on the courthouse steps, as in 1997, when the government apologized to Mulroney and his family for calling him a criminal in a letter to Swiss authorities, and acknowledged there had been no case against him in the first place. As for "the settlement," as in the $2.1 million, that's just one more example of shoddy journalism in this case. The settlement consisted of the apology; the $2.1 million was in costs ordered by an arbitrator, the late judge Alan B. Gold, to cover Mulroney's legal and public-relations fees. He never saw a nickel of it. (When Liberal whip Karen Redman accused him of lining his pockets with public money, she was fortunate to have said it in the House, under immunity from a libel suit. Were she ever to repeat it in the foyer, he would sue her down to her socks.)

In rolling the Airbus tape all the way back to Air Canada's acquisition of the A-320s back in 1988, Mulroney knows perfectly well there is no problem in it. He was never involved in the file. And the Air Canada procurement process was transparent and clean. All the airline executives, who would have testified to that in 1997 are still alive, and would be happy to do so again.

No, the story gets interesting in 1995, with the letter to the Swiss, with journalist Stevie Cameron being a confidential informant for the Mounties, with the first exposé on the Fifth Estate.

Here's where the tape stops. Mulroney wants to add new players, "elected officials ... as well as journalists."

Now there's something for everyone in the political village to think about.

Elected officials. That would be Jean Chrétien and his chief of staff, Jean Pelletier, and his senior advise,r Eddie Goldenberg, and his director of communications, Peter Donolo, and the clerk of the Privy Council, Jocelyne Bourgon, and the then-Solicitor- General Herb Gray, and the former justice minister, Allan Rock, and all their officials.

What did they know about the Airbus hoax, and when did they know it. What were their motives, then and later? Was it a diversion from the fact they had almost lost the country in the 1995 referendum? How about Shawinigate, the Auberge Grand Mère loan files, and the naked abuse of power by Chrétien in the case of François Beaudoin?


I also liked this letter in the Gazette

No crime - no investigation
Letter
Published: 16 hours ago

Re: "Mulroney wants full inquiry" (Gazette, Nov. 13).

Let's assume Karlheinz Schreiber paid former prime minister Brian Mulroney $300,000 in cash. But Schreiber is suing Mulroney because, he says, Mulroney did nothing to earn the money. So, Schreiber acknowledges Mulroney did not use his influence or position of office to facilitate a deal for Schreiber's benefit. How does this become a crime that the government must investigate?

If the government decides to investigate all instances where money is paid and expected services are not delivered, then it should start by investigating our tax system.


Steve Weir

Westmount

There was no crime , except in the minds of grit strategists and their media allies.

 

[Edward Campbell]

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act from today’s Globe and Mail, is a column by Lawrence Martin:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071115.wcomartin15/BNStory/Front/home

While they're at it, why not reopen Shawinigate?

LAWRENCE MARTIN

From Thursday's Globe and Mail
November 15, 2007 at 4:35 AM EST

A while back, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was issuing a threat of sorts, saying if Liberals kept demanding an inquiry into Brian Mulroney's dealings, he might be forced to dig up Liberal skeletons as well.

He wouldn't have to dig too deeply. In the Chrétien era, Shawinigate and other related intrigues left a stench like the sewers of 17th-century London. One shadowy spending controversy followed another.

That $300,000 sum -- the amount Brian Mulroney received from Karlheinz Schreiber -- rings a bell. That's the same total Jean Chrétien was trying to get in return for his sale in 1993 of the Grand-Mère golf club. From his government, a rush of subsidies went into his riding, subsidies that, the opposition alleged, clearly enhanced his chances of getting his money back.

Suspicious business dealings -- such as cash being handed over in hotel rooms -- strike a chord as well. For his bill of sale on the golf course, Mr. Chrétien produced not a formal contract with Toronto developer Jonas Prince but a scrap of paper with handwritten scrawl. Disputed grants and loans counted in the millions -- amounts larger than Mr. Mulroney received in legal settlements or Schreiber handouts. Opposition parties went to the RCMP with their outrage but were never able to get satisfactory answers.

On one of the controversies, Mr. Chrétien was cleared by his handpicked ethics counsellor whom opposition leaders accused of being a pushover and by an RCMP review that, they said, didn't even include interviews with principals. Gradually, the odour went away.

Then the sponsorship scandal hit. It showed, according to Mr. Justice John Gomery, that some Liberals were capable of serious financial mismanagement in Quebec. A new light was cast, but no one reached back, taking what the Gomery inquiry found and applying the template.

If the Conservatives want to delve in, their benches are stacked with parliamentarians such as Jason Kenney, Diane Ablonczy, Stockwell Day and others who led the charge on the Grand-Mère intrigues.

Many of the controversies involved Mr. Chrétien and the Business Development Bank. A Quebec Superior Court judge issued a chilling ruling on the dismissal of former bank head François Beaudoin, saying he was treated with "ferocity and maliciousness." But there are several other cases. There is the example of Claude Gauthier, a Shawinigan-area businessman who was one of Mr. Chrétien's major campaign contributors. In 1996, Mr. Gauthier bought a parcel of land next to Grand-Mère at a price that, the opposition charged, enhanced the financially troubled golf course's value and increased Mr. Chrétien's chances of getting back his money owed on it.

In the same time frame, one of Mr. Gauthier's companies, Transelec Inc., was awarded a disputed $6.3-million contract from the Canadian International Development Agency. Although the Gauthier bid was the lowest, then-auditor-general Denis Desautels ruled it so abused established procedures it should've been disqualified.

Despite the controversies, no wrongdoing has been proved in respect to Mr. Gauthier. He bought Placeteco Inc., a near-bankrupt plastics manufacturing company, and then received a much-disputed $1.19-million job-creation grant. Access to Information documents revealed that the Prime Minister's Office had instructed civil servants to do everything possible to make sure the grant went to the Gauthier company. An audit later found the grant money had been placed in a trust fund of a lawyer and friend of Mr. Chrétien.

When irregularities were found, then-human resources minister Jane Stewart had the trust fund closed. An investigation resulted in no criminal charges but didn't remove a heavy air of suspicion. On taking charge of her grant-dispensing department, Ms. Stewart said it was run like it was "in the dark ages."

Watching what went on in the Chrétien years, Brian Mulroney said the Liberals were "running a patronage machine that is probably without precedent in modern history and nobody says a word." In fact, a lot of words were said, but no one got to the bottom of the so-called cesspool. A Mulroney confidant said yesterday that the former PM would be targeting Shawinigate controversies in the course of the public inquiry into his activities.

Like Mr. Mulroney, Mr. Chrétien claims he was unfairly tarred. Modern-day media running wild. That type of thing.

Despite The Ruxted Group’s critiques of Martin (when he strays out of his lanes and into foreign/defence affairs), he is well connected in Ottawa and, as one of Chrétien’s biographers (see: http://www.amazon.ca/Chretien-Will-Win-Lawrence-Martin/dp/1895555957/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195137979&sr=1-4 and http://www.amazon.ca/Iron-Man-Defiant-Reign-Chretien/dp/0670043109/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195137979&sr=1-6 ), he is uniquely qualified to suggest that there is more to Shawinigate than we learned back in the ‘90s and up until 2004.

I will not be at all surprised when (not if, I think) Team Mulroney starts agitating for the RCMP to reopen the Shawinigate file.

I think PM Harper was serious when he said, essentially, “we (politicians, even all Canadians) don’t want to go there” (public inquiries into politicians) because it will lead down all manner of unpleasant roads. I suspect we’re headed that way unless David Johnston proposes very restricted TOR – something he may find hard to do.

 

[Kirkhill]

...he is uniquely qualified to suggest that there is more to Shawinigate than we learned back in the ‘90s and up until 2004.

This article has to qualify as my surprise of the week.  It is something I would never have expected from Lawrence Martin.  Either there is more to the man than I have given him credit for (always a possibility) or else there is something else.... IS this a warning from one Liberal to the others to heed Harper's words “we don’t want to go there” because, potentially, they have more to lose than either the Tories OR Mulroney.  The only problem, for Mr. Martin, in my view is that no matter how loudly he yells, he is speaking to the tone deaf, if not the stone deaf, Stephane Dion.

 

[TCBF]

If Mr Dion himself has an inkling where some of the skeletons in the closet are kept, he may see this as a puritanical act which may rinse out the corruption stench of the 90s and CONCIDENTALLY remove some of his detractors/competitors from play within the party.  If the PM remains squeeky clean and former PM BM gets to pad his bank account again at the taxpayers expense (and good for him!) then perhaps that is fine for Mr Dion, as long as he gets to secure his flanks and rear.

 

[Edward Campbell]

If Mr Dion himself has an inkling where some of the skeletons in the closet are kept, he may see this as a puritanical act which may rinse out the corruption stench of the 90s and CONCIDENTALLY remove some of his detractors/competitors from play within the party.  If the PM remains squeaky clean and former PM BM gets to pad his bank account again at the taxpayers expense (and good for him!) then perhaps that is fine for Mr Dion, as long as he gets to secure his flanks and rear.

You could be right; I like your analysis.

Dion has a squeaky-clean reputation - it seemed to me that the dirt from the Sponsorship Scandal stuck only to Chrétien, Pelletier, Gagliano, Guité, Corriveau and a few others. Other Quebec MPs - including Paul Martin, Stéphane Dion and Pierre Pettigrew – escaped without too much tarnish. Maybe the cabinet meetings were so boring that they slept through the juicy bits!

Dion straddled the wall between the Chrétienistas and Martinis and finished up on top of the heap. It’s still not clear, to me, that he was intimate with either camp. His speciality, we will recall, was the intellectual challenge to separatism and separatists.

 

[Reccesoldier]

Dion's leadership is a democratic accident fueled by bitter internal party politics.  His handling of the job so far is a demonstration (I think) that he doesn't have the political chess playing smarts to think and make his moves that far ahead. He's one of the guys playing checkers while PMSH is playing chess.

Dion is a one trick pony who can only formulate singular policies and not an entire game plan.  Take a look at Kyoto.  Lots of "what we should do" and practically no doing.  His recently announced poverty purge is another example of noble intentions(?) and no substance. Expect more of the same, singular "policy pieces" and no coherent plan to fit them together or make them work.

It is an intellectual schism that some people are so damn smart in the theoretical and, to use a military analogy, could plan the invasion of Normandy, but could not practically lead a two man rush to a three hole outhouse.