Saturday, December 15, 2007

How to Save $50 Million

How about this... let's offer Brian Mulroney immunity from prosecution if he fesses up to all his wrongdoing, and then we could avoid the incredible expense of a public inquiry. We'd need to decide on the timeline: do we want to know about his foreign-backed leadership campaign, or just focus on his time as PM and beyond? The deal would be that he has to come completely clean. We may need to provide immunity to some corroborators, such as Fred Doucet and Robert Hladun.

I don't want to see Brian Mulroney go to jail or have his finances crippled by fines - it all happened a long time ago. I just want to know what happened and how it happened so that we can prevent it happening again. Scratch that - it's happening as we speak; I'd like to find a way to minimize its occurrence in future.

Karlheinz Schreiber said something interesting in his testimony, which was that the ministries of transport and defence are where most of the graft goes on, because they are the two ministries with huge budgets. My intuition is that Prime Minister Harper is honest, but I'm not so sure about many of his ministers, such as Defence Minister Peter MacKay. If Mulroney has taught us anything, it's this: our political system should not rely on the integrity of its elected officials.

An immunity deal with Mulroney would not only save us the time and anguish of a public inquiry; it would also allow us to extradite the scoundrel Schreiber.

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4 comments:

McGuire said...

This is actually the best idea i've heard yet. We don't need the whole inquiry song & dance, but we need answers & accountability & this is a great way of doing it.

Anonymous said...

The fatal flaw in your theroy is the assuption that Mulroney's greatest concern is legal repercussions.
Besides the fact that there is a very very weak case that anything illegal happened here (as opposed to sleazy, corrupt and scandaliss) the truth is the big chin is a walking ego trying to show what a great guy he is. He has always been that way.
I am certain that if offered immunity the man would reject it saying he has do nothing wrong.
He is more concerned with his self image (as warped as it is) than is fearful of procecution.

Yappa said...

Hi jcolin -

Good point. What if we did it like this - more inquiry to nail down what he did that was illegal (I already listed several things, like taking money as a PM, not paying GST, and perjury) and then we throw the book at him. Faced with a bunch of criminal charges, he might go for the deal.

But of course my other fatal flaw is that he might only admit to what he can't wiggle out of, and not come completely clean. Or, of course, he might not be guilty of anything else!

Anonymous said...

Why don't we extradite Mulroney to Germany and keep Schreiber in Canada.

That should please just about everybody.

Louise M.