Genevieve Simms

It’s an image that provokes the imagination. A gloried Conservative prime minister receives more than $300,000 from a foreign-born businessman. Shortly after, his government is toppled and voters install the Liberal party, ending its long spell in the wilderness of opposition. Yet the Tories regroup and, against the odds, are soon returned to government. The shock of scandal, it seems, is forgiven, if not quite forgotten.

That was then. To be precise: 1873. For that was the year that the so-called Pacific scandal forced Prime Minister John A. Macdonald to resign, bringing to an end to the Conservatives’ reign in government. In the federal election of the year before, Hugh Allan, owner of Allan Steamship Lines, had poured $360,000 into the Conservatives’ war chest to help key ministers secure re-election. In return, Allan anticipated that Macdonald would award him the lucrative contract to build the proposed Canadian Pacific Railway.

As it turned out, letters detailing this exchange of money found their way into Liberal hands; their subsequent disclosure stirred up public anger against the Conservatives. Macdonald denied that he been part of any “corrupt bargain” or that Allan had been promised the CPR contract, pointing out (fairly) that both parties were used to receiving campaign donations. However, whether because of the amount of money involved or the fact that it had been provided by an American citizen, Macdonald fell victim to Canada’s first major political scandal.

In 1988, two companies — Boeing and Airbus Industries — competed to secure the contract to supply planes to government-owned Air Canada. The government of the day — Mulroney’s Conservatives — eventually opted for Airbus.

In 1995, however, the RCMP alleged that Mulroney had received money from Airbus lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber. When these allegations become public, Mulroney launched a $50 million lawsuit against the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, claiming it to have masterminded a smear campaign against him. Under oath, Mulroney claimed that he had met Schreiber only “once or twice” and “had never had any dealings with him.” In 1997, the Liberals settled out of court, apologized and paid Mulroney $2.1 million.

The whiff of scandal never entirely went away. In 2003, it was revealed that Schreiber had in fact paid $300,000 to Mulroney in a series of meetings at hotels in New York and Montreal, shortly after Mulroney had left office in 1993.

All of which brings us to last week and Schreiber’s sworn statement that the agreement to pay $300,000 had been reached before Mulroney left office. If true, the image of Canada’s prime minister accepting envelopes stuffed with cash in some downtown hotel will almost certainly tarnish the recently restored reputation of Mulroney. More than that, it could lead to criminal proceedings.

This, in turn, leads to the question of a public inquiry into the whole affair. Having previously rejected the idea, last week Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that his government would launch such an investigation. This news, it seems, has been welcomed by almost everybody. The Liberals and NDP are obviously happy, perhaps hoping that the inquiry’s fan might fling some excrement in the direction of the present Conservative government. Mulroney himself acted as catalyst, demanding an inquiry in order to clear his good name and — perhaps more to the point — possibly to widen the scope of the investigation to include others. As for Schreiber, the timing of his accusation makes clear that he hopes his central role in any inquiry would forestall his extradition to Germany, where he faces criminal charges.

But what of the 67 per cent of Canadians who, according to one poll, also support the idea of a public inquiry? What’s in it for them? On the face of it, most people simply want to know what that $300,000 was really for. Beyond that, however, is a belief that the previous out-of-court settlement was probably a mistake, and that Mulroney should pay back the $2.1 million.

Would a public inquiry achieve either of these aims or anything else, for that matter? It’s hard to picture Mulroney breaking down and confessing his guilt. It’s equally difficult to imagine that anything Schreiber might have to say before the inquiry might approximate the truth.

More pragmatically, it’s likely that such an inquiry could last five or even 10 years, and run up a tax-paid bill far in excess of the $300,000 or even the $2.1 million paid to Mulroney. Should our collective thirst for knowledge be slaked at any cost?

Beyond all that, the whole affair is properly the focus of a legal, not public, inquiry. If either Mulroney or Schreiber has broken any law, then it is the job of the police — not some parliamentary commission — to investigate. And as the RCMP have indicated their intention to do just that, then why replicate the same investigation?

And investigate what, exactly? The fact that patronage is alive and well more than a century after Macdonald’s own scandal? The fact that money and favours continue to change hands in the hotel rooms of power? The fact that the world of politics is not pure and pristine, but down and dirty?

What a surprise! Stick a fork in Canadian history anywhere between Macdonald and Mulroney and you’re likely to come up with a political scandal of one sort or another. Corruption charges against the Liberal government of Mackenzie King triggered the constitutional crisis of 1925, in which the prime minister and governor general went head-to-head over whose right it was to call a new election. In 1959, Conservative John Diefenbaker suddenly cancelled production of the Avro Arrow, a decision which threw as many as 60,000 employees out of work overnight. And in 1970, Pierre Trudeau suspended civil liberties when he passed the War Measures Act as part of his own battle against militant Quebec separatists.

The point is that Canadian history is rich in political scandal. Some, such as the Alberta’s government’s policy of forced sterilization between 1928 and 1972, receive little if any attention. By comparison, and as much as I hate to admit it, Mulroney’s sins are minor league and hardly merit further scrutiny.