Mulroney Appointee to Judge Mulroney/Schreiber Affair

PM appoints Manitoba jurist to head Mulroney-Schreiber inquiry
Last Updated: Thursday, June 12, 2008 | 5:04 PM ET Comments50Recommend22CBC News
Justice Jeffrey Oliphant sits in a courtroom in Winnipeg on May 7, 2008. (Phil Hossack/Canadian Press)Prime Minister Stephen Harper has appointed Associate Chief Justice Jeffrey Oliphant of Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench to head the inquiry into the business dealings of former prime minister Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber.

"A number of questions remain unanswered and it is in the public interest to investigate further and to find answers," Harper said in a statement released Thursday.

Oliphant's report from the inquiry is to be submitted to the government on or before June 12 of next year, the statement said.

Oliphant was appointed to the bench by prime minister Brian Mulroney in 1985.

The inquiry's mandate will be based on recommendations made by David Johnston, who had been asked to advise the Conservative government on what shape a public inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair should take.

Johnston said the inquiry should be limited and possibly include closed-door hearings.

The announcement comes six months after Harper said he would hold an inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber dealings.

It also comes on the same day the House of Commons ethics committee had wanted Mulroney to return to testify at its hearing. Opposition members of the committee had decided to resume the committee's probe into the affair because they hadn't heard anything about the promised inquiry.

But in a letter to the procedural clerk of the committee, Mulroney's lawyer, Guy Pratte, said the former prime minister "respectfully declines" the invitation to provide more testimony.

Pratte said "no useful purpose would be served by his re-attendance."

Pratte wrote that Mulroney has already provided four hours of testimony to the committee, along with relevant documentation. He also wrote that the committee had not specified what it wants to hear from Mulroney.

"In any event, the upcoming public inquiry should now be allowed to take its course."

No subpoena
The committee chair, Liberal MP Paul Szabo, has said the committee has already decided it won't issue a subpoena to Mulroney compelling him to testify.

Last April, the committee released a report calling for a broad, full-fledged public inquiry into the past business relationship between Mulroney and Schreiber, as German-Canadian businessman.

In previous testimony, Mulroney told the ethics committee that he received money between 1993 and 1994 to lobby internationally on behalf of Schreiber's client, Thyssen, a German armoured-vehicle company.

Mulroney said he was paid $225,000 cash in envelopes at three meetings between the two men, and insisted the arrangement was struck after he left office in June 1993.

While saying that accepting cash payments was one of the biggest mistakes of his life, Mulroney has said he did nothing illegal.

But Schreiber testified that the total was $300,000, and that the arrangement was reached while Mulroney was serving his last days as prime minister in 1993, something that could have put him in violation of federal ethics rules.