A Room Full of Liars

The Ethics committee has released its report on its investigation into Mulroney-era corruption. The title says it all: The Mulroney-Schreiber Affair: Our Case for a Full Public Inquiry. The report is brief, easy to read, and very, very interesting.

I dearly hope that we have a broadly mandated, full inquiry into the sorry mess of Mulroney's extraremuneratory shennanigans. As far as I can tell, Schreiber, Mulroney, Doucet and MacKay are all lying through their teeth to support their separate agendas. It's a mess. But the few facts we have indicate some serious corruption during Mulroney's days as Prime Minister and beyond (for further details, click "corruption" at the bottom of this post):

* While PM, Mulroney acted to get the Airbus deal approved (for example, he fired all the Air Canada directors and replaced them with pro-Airbus people).
* Airbus paid at least $10 million in grease money.
* Mulroney lived above his means, and he dealt in vast quantities of cash.
* Mulroney received at least $225,000 in cash from Schreiber.
* A Swiss bank account existed to funnel more money to Mulroney.

We may never get to the bottom of this important scandal, but if we do, it's going to take forensic accountants, investigators and other tools of a full-scale inquiry. Will the current Conservative prime minister launch an inquiry into a previous Conservative prime minister? Or will this have to wait till we trounce the Conservatives in the next election?

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