‘Trial’, ‘commission’, ‘inquiry’; call it whatever you like, cause we Canadian taxpayers are all stuck with the $16 million tab. Fellow Canadians and global citizens, I am outraged at the wishy-washy details of the proceedings being held for former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.

The Toronto Sun reported May 21 that the tuition for all four of Brian Mulroney’s children were paid through his private dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber. This includes Canadian Idol host Ben Mulroney’s History and Law degrees from Duke University and Université Laval respectively. I am sure you have heard some vague details including the words Brian Mulroney, Karlheinz Schreiber and money, but let us find out what is really going on.

Karlheinz Schreiber is a German-Canadian linked to controversy in both countries. In 1991, he donated DM (Deutsche Mark) 1 million to then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s party the Christian Democratic Union. These donations were put into ’shadow accounts’ which were not reported by CDU. The scandal was discovered a year after Kohl had been defeated in the 1998 election although much of the affair was never fully explained.

In Canada, Schreiber is the reason behind the current Oliphant Commission inquiring into his dealings with Brian Mulroney.

Airbus Affair

The original allegation was corruption in a transaction between Airbus and Air Canada.  Boeing and Airbus had a bidding war to supply Air Canada with new aircrafts. Airbus won and supplied 34 Airbus A320s, as well as the sale of some of Air Canada’s existing Boeing 747 fleet. The 1988 controversy is that Schreiber, on behalf of then Airbus Chairman and Bavarian politican Franz Josef Strauss, gave commissions to Brian Mulroney to ensure that Airbus would receive the contract. All parties denied the RCMP allegation. In 1997, Brian Mulroney vehemently denied accepting money in this occurrence and fired back with a $50 million defamation suit against Canada.

Mulroney, who claimed to barely know Schreiber, won the case and received $2.1 million and an apology.

T4

The second part of this tale is apparently unrelated to the first according to the parties involved – you can be the judge. Schreiber claims Mulroney accepted $300,000 to help build a factory. The project never commenced yet Mulroney claimed the income on his taxes a whopping eight years later and still insists the total was $225,000.

Schreiber spoke to the Ethics Commission insisting that funds were also given to former PM Joe Clark to help usher in the Mulroney era by holding leadership conventions, to secure other Conservative party members and to promote the interests of conservatism in governments around the world.

Allegation

In an interview on The National with Peter Mansbridge on Dec. 11, 2007, “Schreiber said he had met with Mulroney and cabinet minister Elmer MacKay at the prime minister’s residence, 24 Sussex Drive, in March 1993, to discuss the Bear Head project. This contradicted Mulroney’s sworn statement made at his 1996 libel trial that he had had no business with Schreiber. Schreiber said that no receipt or invoice was issued at the time for the $300,000 deal with Mulroney.”

Confusion

Currently, Brian Mulroney is testfying at the Oliphant Commission. This story has gone into multiple bureaucratic directions that are difficult for even the most attuned individual to stay above. You can keep up-to-date with the official proceedings as the details of my simple explanation sink in.

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