Mediascout roundup on Shrieber/Mulroney/Parliament "event"

SHOWTIME FOR SCHREIBER
by Daniel Casey
November 29, 2007

As MediaScout writes these words, the wires are humming with the news that an aging, portly Bavarian has crossed the threshold of Centre Block as the first prisoner of the Speaker of the House of Commons since 1913: Ladies and gentlemen, Karlheinz Schreiber is in the building. Schreiber was transferred to the Ottawa-Carleton detention centre last night, in preparation for his extraordinary appearance before the Commons Ethics Committee today. Some of the Ottawa press corps smell blood on this one, and are making an impressive effort to provide background and set the scene, from Jane Taber’s one-two-three portrait of the parliamentary figures involved in serving the Speaker’s warrant, to Elizabeth Thompson’s burrowing for Schreiber’s donations to Liberal candidates in the Citizen. Others, like James Travers and Les Whittington of the Star, seem a little less impressed with the story, or at least with the potential for new revelations from Schreiber in his testimony before the Ethics Committee. Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney has his back to the wall in all of this, and the Post charts his lawyer’s affidavits trying to discredit Schreiber—who, lest we forget, is suing Mulroney to recover the $300,000 in cash he paid the former prime minister, payments that Mulroney says was a bad deal for a pasta company, and that Schreiber says was for services never rendered.

The Citizen focuses on the maneuvering to stay Schreiber’s extradition, which under the current order has to take place by December 30. The federal Justice Ministry has offered to consent to an extension to the order—which Justice Minister Rob Nicholson claimed he was powerless to modify earlier this week—if Schreiber’s attorneys will speed up his Supreme Court appeal that seeks to void the extradition altogether. Now, Nicholson acknowledges that Schreiber “isn’t going anywhere for the moment.” The Globe and the CBC’s fifth estate share what might be the biggest scoop yet: An email, sent from the address of the wife of Mulroney-era Solicitor General Elmer MacKay to the address of Schreiber’s wife, proposing the text of an open letter exonerating Mulroney that Schreiber issued last year. Schreiber says that MacKay suggested that this letter would lead to Mulroney raising the issue of his extradition with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. But as the Post points out, this claim, and the assertion that Schreiber made a deal for cash payments with Mulroney before he left office in 1993, flatly contradict his earlier statements. Cash in envelopes, the father of the sitting defence minister negotiating deals using his wife’s email account, RCMP officers leading a shackled prisoner into Parliament itself—this is fun stuff.