Heading into Wednesday’s caucus meeting, several MPs disagreed. “He is a member of the party, there’s no doubt,” MacKay told reporters. Jean-Pierre Blackburn added: “For me he will be a Conservative forever, and I’m sure that’s what he feels.”
Harper enforces discipline and secrecy on his party’s weekly caucus discussions. But Harper was in Europe, and in his absence the caucus’s factions bickered over the Mulroney question. Days later they were astonished to read a blow-by-blow account of their discussion in a Canadian Press report from Alexander Panetta. Who was breaking caucus secrecy?
Just before midnight on Saturday night, with the story now five days old and the CP story sure to give it legs, the PMO sent out a new set of talking points: play down the rift, refuse to talk, take the air out of the story. Somebody leaked the talking points to CTV reporter Bob Fife, who read them live on the air.
On Monday Michael Ignatieff, the new Liberal leader, got into the act. He said he had telephoned Mulroney to wish him a happy 70th birthday and that he was sorry Harper couldn’t show the big guy a little respect. Harper used to brag that he could “take a punch,” but those days are over. At a news conference in New Brunswick, he rose to Ignatieff’s bait.
“Mr. Ignatieff and the Liberal party—when this matter first broke—were practically demanding that I throw Mr. Mulroney in prison without a trial. Now they are out there pretending that somehow they are his best friends,” he said.
“I think what Canadians will see is that when it comes to a very difficult issue of government conduct and government ethics, this government has behaved responsibly and the other leader has absolutely no moral compass when it comes to dealing with this kind of a matter.”
No moral compass. Check. Hey, was Mulroney still a party member? “I can’t address that subject. I don’t honestly know the answer,” Harper said, nine days after his own staff had started telling reporters Mulroney wasn’t a member. “I’ve been reading and hearing different things.”
And with that, the story gurgled to a halt, at least officially. It’s a measure of the acrimony in this debate that Mulroney’s membership status could be debated for two weeks without being settled categorically. Is Mulroney a party member? “I confess I don’t know where the fact lies in this thing,” Sears said, disarmingly.
Don Plett, the Conservative party president, was more categorical. Mulroney had a membership during the calendar year 2006, and when it lapsed at the end of that year he didn’t buy a new annual card. Nor has he since.
Could Mulroney be a “member for life”? Perhaps he was in the Progressive Conservative party, Plett said. But that party ceased to exist in 2003. The new Conservative party doesn’t offer lifetime memberships.
By this point in the tale, Don Plett is in no mood to dig his heels in. “If Mr. Mulroney says he is a Conservative for life, that’s wonderful, so am I. Whether someone is a party member doesn’t, to my mind, affect whether they are a Conservative or not.”
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