Committee calls for wide-ranging probe into Mulroney-Schreiber dealings
A broad-based, full-fledged public inquiry should be launched into the past business relationship between former prime minister Brian Mulroney and German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber, the Commons ethics committee has recommended.
The committee spent weeks hearing testimony from witnesses, including Mulroney and Schreiber, and in the end recommended in a report, tabled Wednesday in the House of Commons, that the inquiry should look into their relationship dating back to the 1980s.
The committee's sole recommendation is in contrast to what was recommended by a special adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who called for the inquiry to be narrow in scope.
There was dissent within the committee over how wide the probe's mandate should be. Liberal, Bloc Quebecois and NDP members say it should be as broad as possible, while the Conservatives want a greater focus on setting ethical guidelines for the future.
"If there was to be a public inquiry, it should focus on the transition that public office holders make from public life to private life," Conservative MP Russ Hiebert, a committee member, told Don Newman on CBC-TV's Politics.
Hiebert said an inquiry digging into the past would be a "fishing expedition," since no evidence has been uncovered by the committee and Schreiber has indicated he has nothing new to add.
Ethics committee chair Paul Szabo said a copy of the committee's report has been sent to David Johnston, the president of the University of Waterloo. He was asked by the prime minister to establish an inquiry mandate based on the investigation conducted by the committee and his preliminary report.
Johnston called for the public inquiry to be narrow in scope, focusing on unanswered questions that are of true interest to the Canadian public.
He said the inquiry shouldn't rehash details already probed extensively in the RCMP investigations and lawsuits that have examined the 25-year history between Mulroney and Schreiber, but the committee disagreed.
"The Committee does not agree, however, that a politically charged inquiry such as this should be limited in scope," the committee's report states. "On the contrary, we believe that a broad mandate should be granted the Commissioner so that he or she is not unduly limited in terms of the scope of the inquiry."
CBC's Paul Hunter said the bulk of the committee's report consists of highlighting contradictory evidence heard at the committee. Individual parties also submitted supplementary opinions in the report.
NDP wants to get $2.1M settlement back
One includes a recommendation by the NDP that the Justice Department try to recoup the $2.1-million given to Mulroney in 1997 to settle his libel suit against the federal government over the so-called Airbus affair.
Johnston has been given until Friday to set the parameters for the hearings. Harper had said the inquiry would go ahead when the ethics committee completed its task.
The committee investigated cash payments Mulroney said he received in 1993 to 1994 from Schreiber to lobby on behalf of Schreiber's client, Thyssen, a German armoured vehicle company.
Mulroney said he was paid $225,000 cash in envelopes at three meetings between the two men and insists the business arrangement was struck after he left office in June 1993.
While saying that accepting cash payments was one of the biggest mistakes of his life, Mulroney has said he did nothing illegal.
Schreiber has said that the total was $300,000, and that the arrangement was reached while Mulroney was serving his last days as prime minister in 1993, something that could have put him in violation of federal ethics rules.