Mulroney wants right to object to 'irrelevant' committee questions

A lawyer for former prime minister Brian Mulroney said his client will appear again at a federal ethics committee hearing on the Mulroney-Schreiber affair only under a number of conditions.

In a Jan. 29 letter to the chair of the standing committee on access to information, privacy and ethics, Guy Pratte said all documents and testimony from upcoming witnesses should solely be related to the business dealings between Mulroney and German-Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.

The committee is probing cash payments Schreiber made to Mulroney between 1993 and 1994. It has already heard from Schreiber four times and Mulroney once.

During his testimony in December, the former prime minister said he received cash payments — $225,000 in three instalments — from Schreiber after he left office in 1993. Mulroney said the money was remuneration for his work as an international lobbyist for Thyssen, a German armoured vehicle company.

Schreiber testified that the payments amounted to $300,000 and that terms were reached while Mulroney was still prime minister.

Mulroney has objected to some questions asked during his December appearance that he said strayed from the committee's mandate.

In the letter sent Tuesday, Pratte accused committee chairman Paul Szabo of not ensuring that Mulroney was treated with fairness and dignity, taking issue with the committee's attempt to have the auditor general examine Mulroney's income tax records without informing him first. 

Should Mulroney agree to testify again, Pratte said, he wants assurances from Szabo that he would allow Mulroney "to exercise his right to object to irrelevant or abusive questions or comments."

He also requested a list of upcoming witnesses and the dates of their appearances, and questioned why the committee wanted to hear from Norman Spector, Mulroney's former chief of staff.

Pratte said evidence provided by Spector "has clearly nothing to do with your inquiry" and that allowing it would "maliciously cause as much damage as possible to Mr. Mulroney and his family's reputation for partisan purposes."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said a public inquiry into the issue will begin once the committee has finished its investigation, which could take several months.