Judge rejects bid to delay Mulroney-Schreiber inquiry

A judge on Friday rejected Brian Mulroney's bid to delay an inquiry into the former prime minister's dealings with businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.

Justice Jeffrey Oliphant ruled hearings will begin on March 30, not two weeks later as Mulroney's lawyer Guy Pratte had requested.

The former prime minister requested a postponement so that Oliphant might clarify some ground rules and review documents filed with the inquiry.

Pratte will appear before the Manitoba judge again on Tuesday to argue Oliphant has a duty to explain — before the commission starts — what elements of Mulroney's business dealings he will be probing.

The judge will take two days to consider that request and will issue his response in a verbal presentation Thursday.

The inquiry has already faced delays. In January, Oliphant said problems with document disclosure and technological problems with the inquiry computer system forced a six-month extension of his report deadline, which is Dec. 31, 2009.

Inquiry will not assign liability

Mulroney wants the investigation to focus primarily on his time in office, and not on his dealings with Schreiber upon his retirement from politics in 1993.

David Johnston, an advisor to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, recommended last year the inquiry not rehash the 25-year history of dealings between the two men, but focus on the money Mulroney received from Schreiber, who is facing extradition to face tax, bribery and fraud charges in Germany.

The inquiry will not find criminal or civil liability.

In testimony to a federal ethics committee in 2007, Mulroney said he received cash payments from Schreiber after he left office in June 1993. He said he was paid $225,000 in three instalments, and that the money was payment for his efforts as an international lobbyist on behalf of Thyssen, a German armoured vehicle company.

He has acknowledged waiting until 1999 to pay tax on the money.

Schreiber has argued that the total was $300,000, and that the arrangement was reached while Mulroney was serving his last days as prime minister in 1993. Schreiber, who appeared before the ethics committee on four separate occasions, said Mulroney did nothing to earn the money.