FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.
Not guilty?
Mulroney still responsible for offences against Canadians
By Nick DevlinThe hyenas of Ottawa have been busy eating their own this week as the ripples of post-Airbus turmoil wash across the capital. First came the mumbled official half-apology, followed by the chorus of insincere repentances issued by various ministers and sundry bureaucrats. All the while, behind this paper-thin curtain of remorse, fingers were being pointed so fast and furious that it's a miracle no one lost an eye.
Even worse has been the cannibalistic frenzy in the media. The reams of self-flagellatory drivel rolling off the nation's presses this week, as editorialists fall over one another to make penance for their sins against the "Chin" have been a degrading and pathetic spectacle.
And so, Brian Mulroney is an innocent man - never charged, never tried, never convicted.
Only innuendo remains. Journalist Stevie Cameron's scathing book On the Take documents dozens of alleged acts of impropriety in the Mulroney governments, some against Mulroney himself. But, as no one has ever sued Cameron over any of them and the RCMP has now lost all credibility in this matter, these will remain untested and unproven.
Still, in all the hype over Mulroney's new-found coat of lily-white innocence, what is really lost is the memory of what this man did with the power that was entrusted to him in nearly nine years as prime minister. I'd be willing to bet a year's salary that a majority of Canadians believed before the Airbus affair, and continue to believe right down deep in their souls, that Mulroney is a scoundrel. Whether he's a criminal in the strict legal sense is almost irrelevant. If he were ever to face a jury of Canadians to answer for his years in office, dollars to doughnuts they'd throw the book at him.
For most of us, the evidence of Mulroney's moral culpability is a part of everyday life: a crippling debt, the GST and a nation whose institutions and unity lay in tatters. To add insult to injury, Mulroney ducked the bullet of popular retaliation - leaving Kim Campbell as the target-dummy in his place - and retired to a life of comfortable wealth, while ordinary Canadians labor ever harder to make ends meet.
No one has had the courage to recite the real indictment: contributing so much to the nation's bankruptcy, ramming through free trade and the GST against the clear majority's will, gratuitously taking the nation to the verge of disintegration in the Meech Lake and Charlottetown debacles, giving birth to the political career of Lucien Bouchard and gradually killing off the institutions which bind this nation together (the post office, the railroads, and the CBC).
No one has had to courage to ask: what claim to justice and fairness does this man have?
Why is the vulture now squawking for justice?
Mulroney's real crimes are the ones he committed fully within the law. They are crimes against Canada. Sadly, only the court of history will ever call him to answer for those.
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