Mr. Mulroney’s punishment

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/06/2010 (5629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Former prime minister Brian Mulroney emerges from the Oliphant inquiry with his reputation in ruins. “So what?” will be the response of many Canadians who already believed that he had no reputation left to ruin after his record as prime minister and his post-prime ministerial dealings with German lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber.

The latter were particularly tatty, with Schreiber handing over to Mr. Mulroney at least $225,000 in cash in brown paper bags. The German clearly expected that the former prime minister would use his influence to help him procure contracts, but there is no evidence that Mr. Mulroney ever did anything for him except take his money.

There is, however, enough indication that he lied about taking the money and about his dealings with Schreiber to shock Justice Jeffrey Oliphant into spluttering outrage, and all Canadians should perhaps share that outrage. Mr. Mulroney’s behaviour was not what we expect from former prime ministers — indeed, we should not expect it from former politicians of any rank.

Justice Oliphant found that Mr. Mulroney had not been “forthright” in his testimony at a pretrial hearing for a libel case the former prime minister had launched against the Liberal government in 1996 over allegations that he accepted kickbacks in a deal to buy Airbus planes for Air Canada.

Mr. Mulroney testified that he had “never had any dealings” with Schreiber after he stepped down as prime minister, which we now know to be not true.

The libel suit was settled, with Mr. Mulroney receiving $2.1 million and an apology from the government. In the wake of the Oliphant inquiry, the opposition parties and many public critics want the government to retract the apology and to take the former prime minister back to court yet again to retrieve the money.

That would almost certainly be another, expensive wild goose chase that would, like the previous ones, end up with no goose being caught. Mr. Mulroney claims that he did not lie to the pretrial hearing, but that the lawyer did not ask him the right questions.

Canadians might think, as Justice Oliphant did, that this rationale is “patently absurd,” but legal experts argue that Mr. Mulroney’s misleading answer in that case does not amount to a lie; it is simply not telling the whole truth because the whole truth was not asked for.

It is time to let this sleeping dog lie. He will live the rest of his life in disgrace, he will die in disgrace and history will remember his disgrace. For a man like Brian Mulroney, that is a worse punishment than jail.