UPDATED: Reno 911: Hold that tax credit!

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 8:54 PM - 106 Comments

Okay, I admit it —  I just really wanted an excuse to use that headline.

From CBC:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper urged Canadians on Wednesday to take advantage of the home renovation tax credit, even though the credit hasn’t actually been approved by Parliament.

The 15 per cent credit is the subject of a massive advertising campaign and is designed to be part of the government’s economic stimulus package. It could see eligible applicants receiving as much as a $1,300 refund on their taxes if they invest up to $10,000 on improving their homes between Jan. 27, 2009, and Feb. 1, 2010.

The prime minister visited an Ottawa home improvement centre on Wednesday to press the message that Canadians have just six months left to take advantage of the credit, which he said is “a way that every family can participate in our economic recovery.

“There has never been a better time to renovate your home,” Harper said.

The Finance Department intends to introduce the HRTC as a bill later this year.

But a number of things might happen this fall that could derail that plan, such as opposition parties defeating the minority Conservative government and triggering an election, said Keith Brownsey, a political scientist at Calgary’s Mount Royal College.

Brownsey said he feels the credit will be approved, noting that other budget measures have been dealt with in a similar fashion in the past. But he said he thinks the timing of the HRTC is pure politics.

“For me, it’s telling me there’s a election coming up, that the government wants to give a gift to those who renovate their homes and do it quickly,” he told CBC News.

Elaine Foulon, who was looking to buy an area rug from a Calgary flooring store, said she was shocked when she was told the HRTC is not a done deal.

“I don’t understand why it hasn’t passed because they have been talking about this for quite a long time,” she told CBC News.

David Matley, the owner of the store, was so sure the credit is in place, he offered to match it for his customers. Matley said he will live up to his pledge and wants the government to do the same.

He added he doesn’t appreciate the fact the Harper government is spending taxpayer money on ads promoting the credit while he has to tell his customers there’s still a chance it won’t be there for them.

Now, call ITQ crazy — really, do it; it won’t even be the ninth worst thing she’s been called today — but isn’t there actually a House of Commons rule about spending public money to promote legislation that hasn’t yet been passed as though it’s a done deal, since it’s sort of abrogate-y of the role of Parliament? Didn’t the Mulroney government have its knuckles rapped by the Speaker for doing pretty much exactly the same thing by running ads before the GST had actually gone through? Or is ITQ hallucinating again? (It’s been a long day, so that’s a distinct possibility.)

UPDATE: The perennially helpful Mike Storeshaw over at Finance, who, ITQ is obliged to note, did once mock her in his Hill Climbers columnette, but who has subsequently been forgiven because she eventually forgot about it, sends along the following clarification:

To be clear, the Home Renovation Tax Credit does have parliamentary approval, via the passage of a Ways and Means motion that accompanied the Budget.  It is fairly commonplace for tax measures like this to proceed this way, allowing the Canada Revenue Agency to begin administering the change immediately upon passage of Ways and Means, and having it fully legislated by amending the Income Tax Act at a later date. Notice of ways and means was in the Budget document starting on page 335, or you can find it here.

In a subsequent conversation with ITQ by phone, he confirmed that if the as-yet-not-officially-introduced measure were to be explicitly defeated by the House, that would, in fact, render the promise of a tax credit null and void; it’s not actually clear what would happen if there was an election between now and next April, when it would – in theory – be claimed by those filing their 2009 tax returns. Presumably, if the Conservatives were returned to power, they’d just go ahead with introducing the legislation as planned; if another party formed government, it’s not clear whether they would have to explicitly cancel the credit, or whether the claims would be processed even without formal legislation to enshrine the program.

Apologia old and new

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 12:31 AM - 4 Comments

“…Meletus evidently convinced the King Archon that there was a case to be heard, and the archon set a date for the trial. Some weeks passed between the preliminary hearing and the trial. This should have been a time for the defendant to prepare his defence, but on the day Socrates claimed to be speaking off the cuff and even told one of his associates that he had spent his entire life preparing his defence, by consistently doing no wrong.”

That’s from the opening pages of Robin Waterfield’s excellent new book Why Socrates Died. This passage struck me, because it reminded me of something another wise man said not long ago: How much preparation does it take to tell the truth?

The Green Shift, part two

By Alex Shimo - Tuesday, October 14, 2008 at 5:13 PM - 0 Comments

Thank you to every one who posted comments – almost every one took the time to write thoughtful and well-researched criticism.

I’d like to address the comment from that “Canada’s 2.3% of global emisions” don’t actually matter “in respect to the fate of the planet.” As a small country, it is quite easy to feel irrelevant, especially when you’re stuck next to an elephantine super power. However, Canada Continue…

Dept of non sequiturs

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, June 20, 2008 at 7:22 PM - 0 Comments

During question period on Wednesday, Mr. Thibault asked the government why it is “hiding the truth” in the Mulroney affair. Tom Lukiwski, a parliamentary secretary, responded by attacking the Liberals’ plans for a carbon tax.

So that's why Mulroney couldn't make it to committee …

By kadyomalley - Thursday, June 12, 2008 at 12:05 AM - 0 Comments

He’s in London, doing important international business stuff:

Dissident investor’s calls for INM board shake-up rejected

Attempts by the Irish entrepreneur Denis O’Brien to vote out large elements of the board of Independent News & Media, the international media group which owns The Independent, were firmly rebuffed at a shareholders’ meeting in London yesterday, with one director branding Mr O’Brien’s campaign as “offensive and juvenile”.

Mr O’Brien, who did not attend the meeting, voted his 25 per cent shareholding against all resolutions put to shareholders, including adoption of the accounts and re-election of a number of directors. But his efforts drew limited support and the resolutions were passed comfortably. [...]

Mr O’Brien’s strictures failed to make headway at a generally supportive meeting which saw Sir Anthony give an upbeat assessment of the outlook for the company.

Defending the company’s corporate governance record, Brian Mulroney, a non-executive director and former prime minister of Canada, said that he had served on many boards including Barrick Gold and Blackstone and none of them exceeded Independent News & Media in terms of transparency and integrity.

Mr. Mulroney regrets …

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at 11:21 AM - 0 Comments

At least he “respectfully declines” the invitation, and doesn’t just tell them to sod off, which is what I’m sure he’d like to do, but was advised against by the always serene Guy Pratte.

So what happens next? I guess we’ll find out at Ethics this afternoon.

Oh, and note how he refers to the “upcoming public inquiry.” At least someone still believes that it’s ever going to happen!

From the Mulroney/Schreiber Files: So … is that a yes or a no?

By kadyomalley - Friday, June 6, 2008 at 3:06 PM - 0 Comments

From the Mulroney Media Room:

The following letter was delivered to Richard Rumas, Committee Clerk, today:

Sir:
Continue…

ITQ Witness Watch: M(ulroney) R(ecall) Day Minus Nine (and counting)

By kadyomalley - Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 7:32 AM - 0 Comments

… and still no word from the official site on whether former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has accepted the invitation from the House Ethics committee to make a return appearance before June 12th. Of course, if the current Prime Minister finally gets around to setting up the fabled promised public inquiry, the whole issue could become moot — but unless and until he does, the clock is ticking.

In other, vaguely Mulroney-related news …
Continue…

ITQ Committee Lookahead Thingy – Let the final round of legislative haggling begin!

By kadyomalley - Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 11:24 PM - 0 Comments

… or, at least, let the haggling over the few pieces of legislation that actually have to get through before the summer recess begin. With just three weeks left in the session – assuming we go right to the official adjournment date of June 20th, a dire (and often hot and sticky) outcome that rarely comes to pass – there aren’t many committees angling to take on new business. Well, except for Ethics (Mulroney/Schreiber, Conservative in and out scandal; Public Safety (Bernier Affair); and possibly Foreign Affairs and/or International Trade (Brodie-Clinton-Obama-PMO-Wilson-and-don’t-forget-CTV NAFTA leak debacle).

Continue…

It's 8:15 am: Do you know where your ITQ is?

By kadyomalley - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 8:36 AM - 0 Comments

Drinking a super-sized sugar-free Red Bull and preparing for another committee triple-header, of course.

For anyone interested in, oh, let’s see – Insite, ethics and/or Foreign Affairs, a quick preview of what we have in store for you here where democracy never sleeps, which is why it occasionally gets a bit cranky:
Continue…

Hurray for Pat Martin!

By kadyomalley - Monday, May 12, 2008 at 5:58 PM - 0 Comments

I have to admit that those are words that I really never would have imagined myself writing in that order, but what can I say? Absurdly unworkable rulings by well-meaning ethics and conflict of interest commissioners lead to strange bedfellows:

Notice of motion from Pat Martin

May 9, 2008

That the Standing House Committee on and [sic] Ethics report to the House that the Standing Orders of the House of Commons be amended so that in s. 3(3) of Appendix I, Conflict of Interest Code for Members of the House of Commons, the word “or” is dropped after the word “public” in subsection (b), and in its place the following words be added:
Continue…

ITQ Committee Lookahead Thingy – Update for Thursday, May 1, 2008

By kadyomalley - Thursday, May 1, 2008 at 9:22 AM - 0 Comments

It’s back to PAC for the ITQ liveblogger, who is apparently unable to resist the lure of its siren song.

On the agenda today: the role of the Parliamentary Budget Officer, which sprung, fully formed, from the forehead of then-Treasury Minister John Baird during the making of the Federal Accountability (in Theory) Act. Unfortunately, nobody – not even the government – seems to know what, exactly, what this strange and marvellous creature – who, for your files, is named Kevin Page, and seems to operate under the aegis of the Library of Parliament – will actually do, now that we’ve got him.

Over in West Block, Kai Eide, the newly appointed United Nations Special Representative for Afghanistan, meets with members of the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission. In an interview with Voice of America earlier this week, Eide called for more cooperation amongst NATO partners, and better coordination of aid delivery – but insisted that the Afghan government must take the lead role, putting him somewhat at odds with the recommendations of the Manley Report, and, by extension, current Canadian policy.

“The international community can never play a leading
role in this respect,” he told VOA.”As with the military campaign, it is not the
internationals who will win the hearts and minds of Afghans. It is the
Afghans themselves. That we must understand and I am not sure it is
fully understood everywhere.” It’s a position that should make for a fascinating discussion, particularly if the government hasn’t done its homework on Eide, and has prepared its members’ talking points on the assumption that he supports the three-D approach – diplomacy, development and defence – that represents the government’s best chance to maintain even the current level of popular support for the mission in Canada.

Other notes:

In what can only be seen as a brazen attempt to pander to the Inkless demographic, the Industry committee continues its examination of the state of Canadian science and technology, including – yes, Colleague Wells – research and development. Dare we hope for a guest liveblogging? (No, probably not, but we can dream.)

Hey, wasn’t it just last week that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was hauled before Official Languages to explain how they screwed up the broadcast of the Canadian Music Awards, right around the same time that another committee was putting the finishing touches on its report on the future of public broadcasting in Canada? Well, they’re back.

The Ethics committee – which, now that the Mulroney hearings are over, we should probably go back to calling the Privacy committee – will find out whether Treasury Board Chief Information Officer Ken Cochrane shares its members’ view that the current Privacy Act is in need of reform

Hmm, three opposition motions at the Agriculture committee? That could be interesting. Our bet: Revenge of the Wheat Board, and maybe tobacco farmers, too.

Look, francophones and other minority language communities! At Official Languages! Who would have thought this day would come? And, in a related bulletin from the Department of When Committee Worlds Collide, the Official Languages Commissioner is over at Status of Women discussing - oh, come on, do I really have to tell you? – gender budgets.

It depends on what the meaning of the words "bank account" is

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, December 21, 2007 at 12:09 PM - 0 Comments

Mulroney’s 1996 testimony (transcripts: day one and day two) is hugely entertaining in other ways, not least in light of his belated admissions before the Commons ethics committee.

The 1996 Mulroney, for example, was greatly indignant at the suggestion that he had a Swiss bank account. Over and over he repeated:

I don’t have a bank account in Switzerland. I don’t have a bank account in any foreign country in the world. I never have.

After his ethics committee appearance, that absolute, unequivocal denial should carry this asterisk: *Except for a safety deposit box in New York City, where I kept $75,000 in cash.

The 1996 Mulroney was equally outraged that the RCMP, before approaching the Swiss authorities, had not first interviewed him. Had they done so, he said, he would have given them his full cooperation, in a way that would have put their concerns to rest. Over and over, he repeated: he would have answered all their questions, opened his books, given them everything they needed.

Would you like to examine my documents? Would you like to examine my bank accounts?

I had to file my income tax returns like everybody else. He could have had my income tax returns.

Anything that you need from me, from bank accounts to … to tax returns to whatever, I will give everything I have.

At the time, Mulroney would have known, though his listeners did not, not only that he had been paid a large sum of cash by Karlheinz Schreiber, but that neither his bank accounts nor his tax returns showed it. By his own admission, he had never deposited the money in any account (or not the kind that keeps records — see above), nor did he report the money on his taxes until 1999.

The letter of request was to gain access to Schreiber’s Swiss bank accounts. The money Mulroney was paid was drawn from one of those accounts. Had the police accepted Mulroney’s offer of “cooperation,” they would have known nothing of this.

All this, on top of his well-known — and spectacular — evasions with regard to his relationship with Schreiber. “We would have a cup of coffee, I think, once or twice… I think I had one in the Queen Elizabeth hotel with him… I had never had any dealings with him.”

What is perhaps less well known is this exchange, at the very end of the first day, in which Mulroney describes that “cup of coffee” at the Queen Elizabeth.

Q. But the.., so I… perhaps I misunderstood. When you talked about having coffee with Mr. Schreiber at the Queen Elizabeth, it was in the period subsequent to November nineteen ninety-five (1995)?

A. No. No, it was after I left office in nineteen ninety-three (1993), and that’s when he told me, as I indicated to you, that, that he was dismayed that my Government had not allowed him to proceed with his desire to build this Thyssen Project. And that’s when he told me that he had hired Marc Lalonde to represent him, because he figured that Mr. Lalonde could prevail upon Mr. Chrétien and the Government to have this done in the East end of Montreal. Which, by the way, had they been able to do it, I… I… I thought it was a good project, and so I wouldn’t have been critical of anything.

He told me he hired Mr. Lalonde to do that, he told me he was contemplating legal action against my Government, that he had hired a prominent law firm in Ottawa, I think Ian Scott’s law firm, very distinguished lawyer, to take action against the, the bureaucrats in my Government who, he alleged, had frustrated the fact that he was never able to get a deal through. This deal. That was the kind of conversation we had.

Q. M’hm.

A. He expressed the hope that Mr. Lalonde would be successful in persuading the new Liberal Government to agree to conditions that would enable him to proceed with the project. That was it.

Emphasis added. That was it. Not: And then he pulled out an envelope stuffed with $75,000 in cash and handed it to me. Not: This was in December 1993, the second of three such meetings in which Schreiber handed over envelopes full of cash to me. Not: But why am I talking about Lalonde? Schreiber hired me to represent the same project overseas.

Clintonian is hardly the word.

Old friends who never met

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, December 19, 2007 at 10:12 PM - 0 Comments

Just going over the last time Mulroney testified — well, I was going to say under oath, but this time he really was: at his 1996 deposition prior to his libel suit against the government of Canada. The testimony is notable for the number of things the former prime minister did not know or could not recall:

- He had “no specific recollection” of his first meeting with Schreiber, though he could say it was “in a business context” (he told the ethics committee it was “through the political process”)

- He didn’t remember whether it was in Alberta or Quebec

- He had “no idea” whether he was a political contributor

- He did not know of any relationship between Schreiber and Airbus (“not at all”) nor did he know of any commission sales agreement between them (“never”).

- He did not know that Schreiber was a friend of Franz Josef Strauss, although he said he read it later.

Talking of Strauss, what Mulroney did not know about Schreiber paled in comparison to what he did not know about Strauss. “I did not know Strauss myself,” Mulroney said, “nor did I know any of his family.” Mind you, “I knew of Franz Josef Strauss,” but “I didn’t know him personally. I never met him.”

What did he know of him, then? Well, not that he was chairman of Airbus, that’s for certain (“no idea”), although he knew that he was premier of Bavaria, and had been minister of Finance in the Federal Republic of Germany.

But met him? Never. Didn’t know him. Nor any of his family. What are we to make, then, of this recollection of happier times from Pat MacAdam, Mulroney’s longtime aide, in a recent newspaper column?

I remember the first time Karlheinz and Brian Mulroney met in 1984. The office of Brian’s longtime secretary, Ginette Pilotte, was on one side of Mulroney’s office and mine was the other bookend. We were the “gatekeepers.”

Max Strauss, the son of Bavarian premier Franz Josef Strauss, paid a courtesy visit. Brian and the senior Strauss were old friends. Karlheinz Schreiber, who was unexpected, accompanied Max.

Emphasis added. Could Pat’s memory be playing tricks on him? Getting on a bit, isn’t he? Except here he is saying the same thing on CBC Television in the fall of 1999.

“I met him [Schreiber] when he used to call on Mulroney. He was looking after the Franz Josef Strauss interests. The father, Franz Josef, was a good friend of Mulroney’s in years gone by. The son used to call on him as a courtesy call. I was the gatekeeper then, and kept the appointments, and he’d come in with Max Strauss … oh, maybe five, six, seven times a year.”

Good friends? Six or seven times a year? How could MacAdam be so mistaken? Or has he not had time to read Mulroney’s testimony?

"Proceed in this manner."

By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, December 18, 2007 at 10:55 PM - 0 Comments

The Chair: Good morning, gentlemen.
Mr. Mulroney, I expect that you will recall the rules, procedures, and traditions of the House of Commons. In particular, you will recall the general expectation that witnesses appearing before the committees testify in a truthful and complete manner.
We could proceed on this understanding; or alternatively, would you feel more comfortable being formally sworn in by the clerk of the committee?
Right Honourable Brian Mulroney (P.C., As an Individual): Proceed in this manner.
The Chair: Thank you.

The closer you look at this Mulroney business, the crazier his story looks. I’ve taken a first stab at unwrapping it. But several loose ends remain. For instance:

Mulroney says that, contrary to Schreiber’s testimony, the two men never discussed doing business together until their August 1993 meeting at a hotel near Mirabel airport, where Schreiber, after a few preliminary pleasantries about suing the government of Canada, suddenly produced $75,000 in cash and offered him employment.

The money, as we now know, came from the Britan account Schreiber maintained in a Swiss bank, stocked the previous month with $500,000 out of the millions in secret commissions he received, most of it from the sale of Airbus planes to Air Canada. Bank records show that Schreiber withdrew $100,000 on July 27.

If we believe the former prime minister, then, Schreiber deposited the money into the Britan account, withdrew the cash, and brought it all the way across the Atlantic with him (are you allowed to bring that much cash into Canada?), just on the off chance that Mulroney might be willing to work for him — that is, before they had ever discussed it. It’s possible. But is it probable?

Mulroney’s deputy prime minister is among those who are finding it hard to suppress their doubts about his testimony. Which raises this question: Why wasn’t Mulroney sworn in? The chairman had the option of requiring him to do so, and Mulroney had the option of agreeing to, but neither chose to exercise their respective options. Inside the Queensway’s incomparable Lady K walks us through the implications. Upshot: Mulroney faces much less severe penalties if he’s found to have lied to the committee than Schreiber would.

Does Mulroney take us for fools?

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, December 14, 2007 at 4:21 AM - 0 Comments

So, after all this time — four years since it became public knowledge that he took cash payments from Karlheinz Schreiber, fourteen years after the actual event — Brian Mulroney finally comes forward to explain… and explains nothing. Or rather, digs himself deeper. Those who might have been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt until now will have a harder time of it after the preposterous story he told the ethics committee today.

Let’s get a few things straight off the top. There are three sets of events about which we need answers. The first has to do with the circumstances surrounding the payments in cash Mulroney admits to having taken from Schreiber after he was prime minister, that is from 1993 on: what he did for the money, why he took it in cash, why there are no records of it anywhere, why he went to such elaborate lengths to conceal it, and so on.

The second has to do with a number of contracts for government business for which Schreiber was paid millions of dollars in secret commissions by his German clients in the 1980s — not only Airbus, but Thyssen and MBB: how those contracts were won, and what Schreiber did with the money, and whether the first had anything to do with the second. In particular, there is the question of Schreiber’s relationship, financial or otherwise, with several members of that group of Tories centred around Mulroney, going back to the days of the 1983 convention.

Each of those is significant, and troubling, in itself. They remain so, quite apart from whether anyone can connect the two — that is, whether the payments that we know Mulroney received from Schreiber after he was prime minister were in consequence of anything he did for him while he was prime minister. Continue…

Questions someone really ought to ask Mulroney

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 6:34 PM - 0 Comments

I was going to post a list of suggested questions for tomorrow’s ethics commitee hearing, but this cat beat me to it. It’s pretty comprehensive.

ERRATA: Aside from putting CGI for GCI throughout, I can see only one clear error in the piece — in question 4b, where it is stated that GCI had a commision sales agreement iwth Airbus. So far as I am aware, the only such agreement was with International Aircraft Leasing, Schreiber’s Liechtenstein-based shell company. Schreiber then paid Moores via a complicated chain of bank transfers.

As for omissions, if I think of any other pertinent questions I’ll post them.

Schreiber Day 4 highlights

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 at 5:44 PM - 0 Comments

Karlheinz Schreiber’s fourth day of testimony before the Commons ethics committee was the usual farrago of teases, evasions, dropped questions, loose ends and general confusion. In all that, the Bavarian greasemonkey did leave the committee with a few leads to pursue. Highlights:

- He readily confessed to having bought the 1983 Tory convention that toppled Joe Clark from the leadership, in concert with Franz Josef Strauss (the Bavarian premier and chairman of Airbus Industrie at the time) and “maybe the Christian Social Union,” the party Strauss led and sister party to the ruling Christian Democratic Union. Schreiber talked of personally contributing $25,000, but it’s clear that much more money was spent than that.

For example, Schreiber and Strauss together bought a piece of property worth $369,000 from Frank Moores as a way of funneling money into the dump-Clark movement. Mulroney’s Quebec people flew almost 200 delegates to Winnipeg (out of a total of 2400 at the convention) on two jets leased from Wardair, together with $56,000 to pay their registration fees and, according to Schreiber, some spending money for their wives. L. Ian MacDonald, Mulroney’s former speechwriter, has written in his official biography of the former PM that the operation cost a quarter of a million dollars — in cash.

- Mulroney not only had “dealings” with him after he was prime minister, Schreiber said, and not only at the famous Harrington Lake meeting (which may have taken place before or after the June 25 resignation date — Schreiber has said both), but three months earlier, at a meeting with Mulroney and Elmer MacKay at 24 Sussex Drive, where Schreiber pitched the Bear Head project yet again — the one Mulroney allegedly killed in 1990, after first ordering his chief of staff to “get this done.”

- Schreiber said he told Mulroney at the time he paid him the $300,000 that the money came from the $4-million in “success fees” he was paid by Thyssen after it appeared the federal cabinet had given the project the go-ahead — an understanding in principle signed in September of 1988 by three cabinet ministers. This seems dubious: the money came out of an account set up to hold all of his secret commissions, including both Airbus and Thyssen money.

- He repeated his charge that the RCMP never interviewed him between the time that Der Spiegel first reported on his involvement in the Airbus deal in 1995 and the settlement with Mulroney in January 1997. The force had last week issued a textbook non-denial denial, insisting that it had interviewed Schreiber several times — between 2000 and 2006. Which is interesting, given that the Mounties formally discontinued the investigation in 2003.

- Schreiber at one point said Mulroney offered to finance his lawsuit against the government of Canada in Alberta. The case, in which Schreiber alleges the government and the RCMP abused their authority in their dealings with him, is significant for having first raised the notion that the RCMP were working with a confidential informant on the case — who turned out to be none other than Stevie Cameron.

- Mulroney was allegedly present at a meeting where the alleged scheme to divide the spoils of government business with GCI was discussed. According to Schreiber:

It was agreed upon — at least what Mr. Moores told me already in the eighties — that GCI would look after Mr. Mulroney, and that when Mr. Mulroney is no longer the Prime Minister, he would work with GCI…

 

This is what my understanding was from Frank Moores, and especially from Gary Ouellet, and when all this was discussed at the beginning – that GCI would do the business and get the lobbying business in all this – this was in the eighties. The discussion was one day in the Ritz-Carlton, and Mr. Mulroney was present.

It’s not clear from this whether Schreiber himself was also in attendance.

- Schreiber dropped the name of Benoit Bouchard, Transport minister from 1986 to 1988, as someone the commitee might want to interview, both with respect to Airbus and Bear Head. He coyly declined to offer further details.

- And then this incredible (possibly literally) passage:

I met quite often with Claude Taylor [Air Canada's chairman in the 1980s] and I didn’t mention it but I was then approached [by] other members of the board from Air Canada … who wanted just $400,000 from me or I would never get the Airbus contract done.

Never mind the $400,000 — what was he meeting with Claude Taylor about? At the time, no one knew that Schreiber had any involvement in the Airbus deal — certainly not that he was being paid commissions on it, since these were prohibited. So what would he and Taylor have had to talk about?

In other news, Schreiber could not name the lawyer in Geneva to whom Fred Doucet allegedly asked him to transfer money. He denied being the one who leaked the infamous letter of request to the Swiss authorities that formed the basis of Mulroney’s lawsuit against the government. And he denied discussing a deal with the RCMP in which he would agree to offer information in return for being allowed to stay
in Canada.

Comme Drudge, developing…

Questions someone really ought to ask Schreiber

By Andrew Coyne - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 10:38 AM - 0 Comments

Today is Karlheinz Schreiber’s fourth and possibly final day of testimony before the Commons Ethics Committee. Perhaps members of the committee will get around to asking the following...

1. You have claimed to have contributed $25,000 to Brian Mulroney’s leadership campaign as long ago as 1976. Is there any record of this? If not, why not? Was it in cash? Was the candidate aware of your contribution? Did you discuss it with him personally? Was he the only candidate you contributed to? Why did he merit your support? What did you hope to gain by it?
2. In the late 1970s, you hired or otherwise sponsored a number of ministers in the Alberta provincial government, current and former, including a loan of $150,000 to the late Hugh Horner, then the deputy minister, that was never fully paid back. What were your objectives in this? Was the sale of Airbus aircraft to Pacific Western Airlines, then government-owned, one of them?
3. During a 1981 public inquiry into your land dealings in the Edmonton area, in which you allegedly profited, via your connections, from cabinet confidences, you said you saw nothing wrong with hiring former cabinet ministers to advance your interests with the governments in which they had just served. Indeed you said you planned to hire “more cabinet ministers in the near future from other provinces.” Which other former cabinet ministers did you hire?
4. In 1982, you invested, along with Franz Josef Strauss, the premier of Bavaria and chairman of Airbus Industrie, $369,000 in a Newfoundland property owned by Frank Moores, the former premier of Newfoundland and fundraiser for a group of Mulroney supporters who were seeking to unseat the Conservative leader, Joe Clark. What was that money used for?
5. Describe your involvement in paying for anti-Clark delegates from Quebec to attend the leadership review conference in Winnipeg in 1983. Why did you do this? Was Mr. Mulroney aware of your assistance? When did he learn of it?
6. Did you contribute to Mr. Mulroney’s leadership campaign in 1983? Did you contribute to his own or the party’s campaign in 1984? If so, how much and in what form — cash or other? Is there any record of this? Was Mr. Mulroney aware of it?
7. Describe how the Airbus deal worked. Why did Airbus agree to pay commissions to your company, International Aircraft Leasing, on the sale of planes to Air Canada, when the payment of such commissions was prohibited under the terms of the contract? Why did Airbus need your help? What services were you expected to perform? What services did you perform? What was Frank Moores’s involvement in the deal?
8. The same questions, with regard to the sale of helicopters to the Coast Guard, for which you were secretly paid commissions by Messerschmidt-Bolkow-Bohm.
9. The same questions, with regard to the funding of the Bear Head project to build light armoured vehicles in Canada, for which you were secretly paid a “success fee” by Thyssen Industrie.
10. Your bank records indicate that you were paid nearly $20-million in commissions on the Airbus deal, $4-million on the Bear Head project, and $1-million on the helicopter deal. What did you do with the money? How much went to Frank Moores and his company Government Consultants International? Where did the rest of it go? Your bank records indicate half of it was distributed in Canada. Your German lawyer has testified in Canadian court that it was used to pay Canadians. Who?
11. In 1999, you were a fugitive from German justice, living in Switzerland. You are a Canadian citizen. You are worth millions. Why, then, did Elmer MacKay come all the way to Switzerland to bring you to Canada? Why did he buy your airline ticket? Is the timing, one day after the arrest of two Thyssen Industrie executives with whom you had conspired to bribe German politicians, a coincidence?
12. After your arrest in Canada in 1999, Marc Lalonde and Elmer MacKay each agreed to put up $100,000 to bail you out of jail. On your release, you made this statement in front of the television cameras: “It is, I think, a great pleasure to have friends. I have always had friends in my life. And I will never let a friend down. So they came here to get me out. I will never do anything to harm them.” What did you mean by that last sentence?

Like father, unlike son?

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, December 3, 2007 at 10:34 AM - 0 Comments

Peter MacKay is telling reporters he warned his dad, Elmer, to steer clear of Karlheinz Schreiber, of whom he said he was “leery.” He said he had held this opinion for “a number of years.”

That period would seem to have begun sometime after 1992, when the younger MacKay was employed for some months by Thyssen Industries, one of the companies Schreiber was then representing, in this case on the infamous Bear Head project to build light armoured vehicles — in Nova Scotia, as it happens.

MacKay says at the time he “had no idea who Mr. Schreiber was or what his association was with Thyssen.” So how did he get the job then?

Other questions: when did the younger MacKay first become aware of who Schreiber was? When did he become “leery” of him, and why? And why did his father ignore his warnings?

UPDATE: Luc Lavoie has signed off as Mulroney’s spokesman. This is a shocker. Luc was with Mulroney from the very beginning of his travails, twelve long years ago — about a quarter of the $2.1-million settlement was paid to Luc for his services — but now, now, he doesn’t have enough time for the job?

BACKDATE: It is, recall, the elder MacKay to whom we owe the pleasure of Schreiber’s presence in this country. After Schreiber fled his native Germany, a warrant for his arrest outstanding, and one day after the arrest, in May 1999, of two executives at Thyssen with whom he had conspired to bribe German political figures — this time in connection with a scheme to sell German tanks to Saudi Arabia — it was MacKay senior who flew over to Switzerland to bring him back to Canada. He even bought him his ticket.

This incident has always been a bit of a puzzle. Why did Schreiber need MacKay to come and get him? Schreiber is a Canadian citizen. He’s worth millions. Why couldn’t he buy his own ticket?

And of course it was MacKay, along with Marc Lalonde, who bailed Schreiber out when he was arrested later that year, each posting $100,000 to assure the courts he would not flee yet a third country. A former solicitor general and a former justice minister.

After he had been released on bail, Schreiber stood outside the court, cameras rolling, and delivered himself of this statement:

It is, I think, a great pleasure to have friends. I have always had friends in my life. And I will never let a friend down. So they came here to get me out. I will never do anythng to harm them.