Brian Mulroney Media Room

Louis Bernard Letter to the Editor

 Email To Friend |  Print |31/01/08

Published in today’s Le Devoir (translated)

Norman Spector’s announced intent to disclose before a committee of House of Commons information he acquired while fulfilling duties as Chief of Staff to Brian Mulroney raises an extremely serious question with respect to the proper functioning of our democratic institutions. Having myself served as the Chief of Staff and Secretary General to the Premier of Quebec, I can testify that it is essential that a relationship of absolute trust exists between the Prime Minister and his closest advisers, without which the exercise of power would become almost impossible. How could anyone govern, deliberate, discuss, act, without being able to count on the unqualified loyalty of his closest advisor?

The obligation to exercise discretion that characterizes this intimate relationship is so evident that the legislature has never deemed it necessary to make it a legal obligation. And, to my knowledge, this would be the first time that this obligation would be violated in the recent history of Canada. This ought not to occur. In certain respects, the transgression contemplated by Norman Spector of his obligation to exercise discretion is even a more serious error than the alleged malfeasance he intends to expose.

No member of the House of Commons or any of its committees ought to be an accomplice to such a breach of one of the most basic tenets of our democratic system of government.

Ultimately, if ever the committee had good reasons to believe that this witness might be essential to the pursuit of its mandate — (this does not seem evident at this moment) — it should hear Mr. Spector under oath and behind closed doors.

Letter to Norman Spector

 Email To Friend |  Print |30/01/08

Mr. Norman Spector

Sir:

I am counsel to The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney and, as such, read in The Globe and Mail that you intend to testify before the Ethics Committee as you believe that you can “help the Committee understand the comportment and motivations of Canada’s 18th prime minister by referring to other controversial but largely unreported files with which I’m familiar. Finally, with supporting documents in hands, I’ll identify the source of large quantities of cash reported at 24 Sussex – which I understand from news reports is of interest to several MPs.”

As I assume you know, the mandate of the Ethics Committee has been interpreted by its Chair as follows :

“…review matters related to the Mulroney Airbus settlement, including any and all new evidence, testimony and information not available at the time of settlement and including allegations relating to the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney made by Karlheinz Schreiber and, in particular, the handling of allegations by the present and past government including the circulation of relevant correspondence in the Privy Council Office and Prime Ministers Office…”

It is patent from the text of this resolution and your own words that much of the the information you apparently intend to provide the Committee has nothing whatsoever to do with the Committee’s mandate.

Whatever might motivate you, as Mr. Mulroney’s former Chief of staff, to attack him under the cloak of parliamentary immunity is difficult to understand, to say the least.

In any case, I trust that you believe in the principles of fairness and equity and will therefore provide Mr. Mulroney with reasonable notice of the matters you intend to raise with the Ethics Committee, as well as copies of the documents you apparently have in hand. Since you have chosen to publicly raise these matters last week in Le Devoir and yesterday in The Globe and Mail, and have clearly been discussing your testimony with the Committee, I assume that you will agree to share this information with the person most affected by it.

If you are represented by counsel, I should be grateful if you would have that person contact me as soon as possible prior to your testimony.

Yours truly,

BORDEN LADNER GERVAIS LLP

Guy J. Pratte
/mv

An Open Invitation to Robert Thibault

 Email To Friend |  Print |30/01/08

The following was broadcast on Friday, January 25, 2008:

DUFFY: Can I interject with a new, non-controversial subject. I’ve just got a note on the old Blackberry here which tells me that last Wednesday here in Ottawa in, at a restaurant called Looks, Karlheinz Schreiber…

 

POWERS: Named after Scott and I, looks.

 

DUFFY: …Lux, I guess, Looks, Lux, Karlheinz Schreiber was spotted having dinner with the honourable Robert Thibault, member of parliament for Nova Scotia. And I’m told by my informant that the table was covered with documents and papers and lots of notes were being taken as they planned the return of the commons ethics committee next week. So much my question to you, Mr. Reid, is yesterday we heard from the lawyer for Brian Mulroney saying that Mr. Mulroney has been treated unfairly by the committee. Given the fact that the chief protagonist, haven’t the Liberals taken sides in this and isn’t this a further indication of that? (CTV News, January 25, 2008) (emphasis added)

 

It is incongruous that a member of a committee responsible for defining ethical standards should appear to be acting in a way that suggests bias and partiality. Behaviour such as this and previous instances of actual bias threaten the reliability and objectivity of the committee’s actual report.

 

We are hopeful that Mr. Thibault does not wish to compromise the work of the committee and, therefore, will accept an invitation to meet with representatives of Mr. Mulroney at his earliest convenience.

 

Or does the courtesy he apparently offers to Mr. Schreiber not extend to others?

Media response to Pratte’s second letter to Szabo

 Email To Friend |  Print |30/01/08

Mulroney backs up testimony

In today’s Gazette:

Raising more objections to the work of a parliamentary committee looking into his dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber, Brian Mulroney has provided a letter of proof confirming he had a safety deposit box in New York City in 1994.

The letter from the JP Morgan Chase Bank confirms Mulroney’s testimony in December, when he told the committee he placed $75,000 in cash in the deposit box after receiving it from Schreiber during a meeting at a hotel.

Tax records should be off limits, Mulroney lawyer says

In today’s Globe and Mail:

Mr. Mulroney’s lawyer, Guy Pratte, argued in the letter that any review of Airbus is beyond the committee’s mandate.

He noted the RCMP wrote in 2003 that after an extensive investigation, no evidence of criminality was found.

But what appears to be of particular concern is the committee’s plans to hear testimony related to transfers of cash from the Prime Minister’s Office to the Mulroneys at their 24 Sussex Dr. residence.

Federal ethics committee going beyond scope: Mulroney

In today’s National Post:

Mr. Pratte goes on to demand the committee provide a list of upcoming witnesses and the dates of their appearances, “the assurance that their testimony and any documentation they might file would be directly related to the matters that are identified in your resolution,” and the right for Mr. Mulroney or his lawyer to object to “irrelevant or abusive questions or comments” if the former prime minister agrees to appear before the ethics committee again.

Lawyer complains ethics probe not fair to Mulroney 

In today’s Ottawa Sun:

A lawyer for former prime minister Brian Mulroney has sent a blistering letter of complaint to the House of Commons ethics committee, saying his client is being treated unfairly and warning the committee not to call witnesses who have “nothing whatsoever to do with your own mandate.”

Mulroney lawyer wants Spector testimony limited

In today’s Star: 

The letter to committee chair Szabo also challenges MPs’ right to examine Mulroney’s tax records.

Szabo wants to see them so he can verify Mulroney’s explanation that he took $225,000 after leaving office to lobby foreign governments on Schreiber’s behalf.

He said Tuesday that the committee has a right to see those records.

But Mulroney’s lawyer challenged him.

“You claim that Parliament has the power to examine any Canadian citizen’s tax records, whenever it wishes,” Pratte wrote.

“Combined with your assertion of unilateral power to determine relevance regardless of a witness’ objections, this means that you can rummage through their most private records whenever you want, whatever the invasion of privacy and violation of civil rights involved.”

Guy Pratte’s response to Paul Szabo

 Email To Friend |  Print |29/01/08

Mr. Paul Szabo, M.P., Chair
c/o Mr. Richard Rumas, Clerk
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ACCESS TO INFORMATION,
PRIVACY AND ETHICS

Dear Sir:

I acknowledge receipt of your letter of January 25, 2008, responding to mine of the 24th.

First, as to the documents and information requested, I include the following:

• A letter from the JPMorgan Chase Bank confirming that Mr. Mulroney had a safety deposit box in New York City at the time of his meeting in December 1994 with Mr. Schreiber, as he stated in his testimony before the Committee on December 13, 2007;

• The relevant excerpt from Mr. Mulroney’s agreement with Ogilvy Renault setting out the arrangement with regard to his consultancy practice, again confirming his testimony;

• The April 17, 2003 letter from the RCMP confirming that, after an exhaustive domestic and international investigation into the Airbus matter, there was no evidence of any crime being committed and the investigation was closed;
• The Settlement Agreement of January 5, 1997 regarding the Airbus matter and the cost award of the Late Alan B. Gold dated October 6, 1997.

• The dates of Mr. Mulroney’s foreign trips wherein he performed the services on behalf of Karlheinz Schrieber described in his testimony : China : October 1-11, 1993; Paris : October 11-15, 1993; Russia : August 22-29, 1994; Paris : September 28-30, 1994.

Secondly, as to your response to the substantive concerns raised in my letter:

1. What fairness demands:

I am astonished that you find it difficult to identify what fairness requires in this case: confining questions to the specific matters which the Committee that you chair - as defined in your Committee’s resolution and in the Clerk’s invitation to Mr. Mulroney to testify - would be recognized by anyone as the most basic requirement of fairness. Nowhere in your letter do you disagree with my suggestion that the questions you allowed violated the clear parameters of the inquiry you and the Clerk had defined. In fact, you concede as much by referring me instead to Standing Order 108;

2. Standing Order 108 does not enlarge your mandate:

Your reliance on Section 108 of the Standing Orders is without foundation. First, because you have identified no specific section which would have made legal or fair the questions you permitted. Secondly, because your logic would be equivalent to allowing any question in court even though utterly irrelevant to a specific lawsuit, simply because of the general powers of a court to entertain whatever lawsuit were filed. But the general powers is not the point. The point is that your committee’s resolution has identified a specific subject for investigation, and you have transgressed the boundaries you yourself defined without authorization, warning or justification whatsoever. Furthermore, there is no indication that this resolution followed a reference from the House of Commons, which raises a further question concerning the conduct of your inquiry;

3. The Chair’s authority to decide relevance:

You claim for yourself the absolute power to decide what is relevant or not, and compare that authority to that of a court of law. Yet no court has the power to decide on the scope of its authority over a party without hearing from that party: that is a fundamental tenet of fairness and of the rule of law, and that is the principle you violated when you refused to hear from Mr. Mulroney who, after all, is the very object of your inquiries. He is not just another witness, as your Committee’s resolution makes crystal clear. No court in this land would rule on an objection that affected a party, without allowing him or her to speak to the point. And, if it did, it would be reversed on appeal for breaching the most basic right that obtains in any court: the right to be heard;

4. Parliament’s “right” to examine any Canadian’s confidential tax returns:

You claim that Parliament has the power to examine any Canadian citizen’s tax records, whenever it wishes. Combined with your assertion of unilateral power to determine relevance regardless of a witness’ objections, this means that you can rummage through their most private records whenever you want, whatever the invasion of privacy and violation of civil rights involved. Is that really consistent with the Bill of Rights, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the privacy rights guaranteed by Québec Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Civil Code of Québec, or are these fundamental laws irrelevant? Was it really that difficult to see that basic fairness required that you inform Mr. Mulroney of your efforts to have the Auditor General look at his income tax records? Given that you must have known that the law did not permit the Auditor General to acquiesce to your inquiry without Mr. Mulroney’s consent, one wonders why you did not advise him in advance of your intention to seek her assistance;

5. Refusal to comment on members’ behaviour:

You state that you will not comment on individual committee members’ behaviour. Why not? Are you not concerned that when one member exhibits patent bias; another asks questions provided to him by the media and denies it; and yet another reportedly shares a fancy meal with Mr. Schreiber, Mr. Mulroney’s “accuser”? Is it not the role of the Chair to control the fairness of the process? Are you not there to make sure that Mr. Mulroney – a former Prime Minister, parliamentarian and a Canadian citizen – should be treated fairly and with dignity? If not you, who will control the fairness of the process and rule out of order members who offend that fundamental principle? Why should Mr. Mulroney not be entitled to at least the same standard of courtesy as Mr. Schreiber? After all, Mr. Mulroney has not been charged with or convicted of any crime or violated any ethical guideline that your committee has identified thus far.

Your letter gives no assurances whatsoever that Mr. Mulroney will be treated fairly, whereas he has thus far fully cooperated by giving four (4) hours of testimony, and provided the relevant documentation you have asked for in conformity with his undertaking to do so.

On the other hand, you still have not provided the list of witnesses you intend to call or the dates of their appearances. Media reports suggest, however, that you propose to call witnesses whose evidence has nothing whatsoever to do with your own mandate and the questions which Professor David Johnston has identified as relevant to the public interest. I remind you in this regard that all political parties - including your own - hailed Mr. Johnston’s appointment as adviser to the Prime Minister to define the appropriate terms of reference for a public inquiry. The Prime Minister has accepted Mr. Johnston’s recommendation to await the outcome of your hearings in order to provide an opportunity for additional evidence relating to the specific questions which he believes are still outstanding. Those remaining questions do not include Airbus (which Mr. Johnston has made clear is not worthy of any further investigation) and there is absolutely nothing in his report or any mandate that you may have that would remotely justify inviting witnesses to testify about the life of the Mulroney family while at 24 Sussex, almost 25 years ago.

Indeed, in this regard, the January 28 edition of The Globe and Mail contains a letter addressed to you by Norman Spector, Mr. Mulroney’s former Chief of Staff and apparently a witness you have invited, where he announces that he “…can help your committee understand the comportment and motivations of Canada’s 18th primer minister by referring to other controversial but largely unreported files with which I’m familiar. Finally, with supporting documents in hand, I’ll identify the source of large quantities of cash reported at 24 Sussex - which I understand from news reports is of interest to several MPs.”

On its face, Mr. Spector’s “evidence” has clearly nothing to do with your inquiry and it would not only be grossly unfair to allow it to be given under the protective cloak of parliamentary immunity, but would attest to the deliberate abuse of the Committee’s process to maliciously cause as much damage as possible to Mr. Mulroney and his family’s reputation, for partisan purposes. Surely, there can be no doubt in your mind that this breaches the most basic requirements of fairness.

Therefore, I request that you provide my client with:

1) A list of the upcoming witnesses, and the dates of their appearances;

2) The assurance that their testimony and any documentation they might file would be directly related to the matters that are identified in your resolution and fall within the matters that Mr. Johnston has identified, and that copies of such documents will be provided in advance;

3) The confirmation that you will allow my client (or me), in the event that Mr. Mulroney should appear again before the committee, to exercise his right to object to irrelevant or abusive questions or comments.

Yours truly,

BORDEN LADNER GERVAIS LLP

Guy J. Pratte
/mv
Encl.

N.B. : An official translation of the present letter will be available tomorrow.

Peter Munk Letter to the National Post

 Email To Friend |  Print |29/01/08

The following letter, to the editor, written by Peter Munk, was published this morning in the National Post:

Most of us assume that Canada today is hardly the place for witch-hunts or mobbings. Yet clearly we underestimated the relentless determination of those with an agenda to prove Brian Mulroney guilty. The various agendas are advanced through innuendo when fact fails, and from behind the safety of Parliamentary immunity. No effort is spared as the partisan circus parlays itself in front of the TV cameras. Regardless of the current shenanigans, I firmly believe that Mr. Mulroney’s enduring reputation has been built on a record of achievement that Canadians are benefiting from today. Initiatives such as the U.S./Canada Free Trade Agreement, the GST and Acid Rain Accord will long be remembered once this sideshow has folded. These vital contributions to Canada’s prosperity were pursued by him at a great cost to his popularity. The ultimate test of true leadership is putting your country’s interest ahead of your own. Thousands of people who have had dealings with Mr. Mulroney have nothing but the highest regard for him as a man, as one of our best prime ministers. History books will recognize him as such, long after the current frenzy has died off.

Letter from Guy Pratte to Paul Szabo

 Email To Friend |  Print |25/01/08

Mr. Paul Szabo, M.P., Chair

c/o Mr. Richard Rumas, Clerk

STANDING COMMITTEE ON ACCESS TO INFORMATION

PRIVACY AND ETHICS

Dear Sir:

I acknowledge receipt of your letter dated January 16, 2008 requesting certain information and documents from The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney. As I had previously indicated in my letter of December 21, 2007, Mr. Mulroney has been out of the country until very recently. Accordingly, and as I had undertaken, I recently met with him to discuss your request and I will be responding to it presently.

Before doing so, however, I must bring to your attention very serious concerns as to how the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics (the “Committee”) is proceeding with its work. Indeed, a number of glaring violations of the most basic rules of fairness and natural justice have already occurred in the Committee’s treatment of Mr. Mulroney.

Thus, during Mr. Mulroney’s appearance on December 13, 2007, certain questions were asked of him by a member of the Committee (which questions we later learned had been provided to him by a member of the media) that clearly fell outside the scope of the mandate of the Committee as you yourself set it out at the outset of the hearing:

“That in order to examine whether there were violations of ethical and code of conduct standards by any office holder, the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics review matters relating to the Mulroney Airbus settlement, including any and all new evidence, testimony and information not available at the time of settlement and including allegations relating to The Right Honourable Brian Mulroney made by Karlheinz Schreiber and, in particular, the handling of allegations by the present and past governments including the circulation of relevant correspondence in the Privy Council Office and Prime Minister’s Office.”

Then, when Mr. Mulroney attempted to bring to your attention the terms of his invitation to appear as a witness, contained in an e-mail from the Clerk of the Committee, you interrupted him preventing him from doing so and ruled him and other Committee members out of order.
Continue reading Letter from Guy Pratte to Paul Szabo…

“The Mobbing of Brian Mulroney”

 Email To Friend |  Print |25/01/08

Found in today’s National Post:

Rapley makes no mention of a 21st-century witch hunt in Canada today: the persecution of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who has not been shown to be guilty of any crime. Mr. Mulroney has been investigated for at least 15 years by the RCMP; by an author with an apparent axe to grind; by the CBC and other media; and now by a Parliamentary ethics committee looking into his dealings with shadowy German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber. In a few months, a public inquiry will be launched by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper into Mr. Mulroney’s conduct, mostly after he left office and became a private citizen. None of these inquisitors has ever found evidence of a crime, and there is no indication there is any to be found. Yet the witch hunt goes on.

Read the full story here.

Statement concerning Maclean’s

 Email To Friend |  Print |17/01/08

Toronto, ON – The following statement, pertaining to “Secret U.S. Files Revealed” (Maclean’s, January 28, 2008), was released today on behalf of the Rt. Hon. Brian Mulroney:

“Nothing in these allegations presents anything new, including the complaints from American sources.

Boeing’s efforts to use their access to the embassy and other agencies of the U.S government to press their case are understandable.

The U.S. Ambassador was asked by the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Derek Burney, to bring forth documented claims of interference if he had any. If the FBI had evidence of impropriety, there was nothing to prevent them from providing it to the RCMP through their normal channel.

On April 22, 2003, after an exhaustive investigation in Canada and abroad, the RCMP concluded that the allegations of wrongdoing involving Airbus could not be substantiated and no charges would be laid. The case was closed. This was confirmed by David Johnston last week.

It should be noted that as a matter of public record Air Canada has said that there was no interference with its board of directors or its management in its arriving at its decision to purchase Airbus.” (“No arms twisted, Jeanniot says,” Globe and Mail, December 13,1995 and “Mounties push airbus probe,” November 14,1995, The Financial Post).

Continue reading Statement concerning Maclean’s…

Search