He may have come from a modest family on the North Shore, but Brian Mulroney had tastes of grandeur that he was criticized for all his life.
From 1976, his costly leadership campaign earned him the title of “ Cadillac candidate “. The label sticks so much that, on March 21, 1983, when he was about to announce that he was trying his luck again, he refused the car in which his collaborators had planned to take him to the press conference. He feared the stretched Cadillac — which he dubbed the Elvismobile in his memoir — would make headlines for him.
During his reign, Mulroney was criticized for his love of Gucci shoes. Controversy arose when the Canadian government offered to buy back from the Mulroneys at the end of their mandate the furniture and decorative items they brought to 24 Sussex. The $150,000 bill, and in particular the $23,000 for the formal dinnerware service for 50 place settings, fuels the column. He is criticized for his international farewell tour made in 1993 at taxpayers’ expense which took him to Germany, Great Britain, Russia and France. He visited his friend François Mitterand in Paris, participated in a state dinner in Moscow given in his honor and even went wild boar hunting with Boris Yeltsin.
Even after the swearing in of his successor, Kim Campbell, Brian Mulroney will remain at 24 Sussex because the renovations to his future Montreal home have not been completed. Renovations which, according to rumors, were paid for in cash, alleges journalist Stevie Cameron in her book On the Take, published in 1994. The work chronicling what she calls “corruption” and “greed” during the Mulroney years became a best-selling book.
Because serious allegations weigh on Brian Mulroney. When in 1988, Air Canada, then a Crown corporation, purchased 34 Airbus aircraft at a cost of $1.8 billion (the largest contract in the history of civil aviation at the time), lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber receives an $8.8 million commission from Airbus. Rumors have it that he then shared the windfall with conservative politicians who helped him influence Air Canada in the choice of its aircraft. The RCMP opened an investigation that would last 14 years. In 1995, because of a letter sent by the Liberal government in Switzerland, we learned that Mr. Mulroney was the subject.
The former prime minister initiated a defamation suit, which was settled out of court in 1997 and resulted in the payment of $2.1 million in compensation. But here it is: during his pre-trial interrogation by the government lawyer, Mr. Mulroney is asked the nature of his relationship with Karlheinz Schreiber. To which he replies that it is “peripheral” and boils down to having “a cup of coffee”.
We know the rest. In 2003, we learned that Mr. Mulroney obtained envelopes filled with $1,000 bills from Mr. Schreiber on three occasions, in chic hotels in Montreal and New York. The amount paid was $300,000 according to the lobbyist, or $225,000, Mr. Mulroney will admit. Mr. Mulroney was still an MP when the first payment was made. The money was placed in safety deposit boxes at his home and in the United States and was not declared to the tax authorities until six years later.
The matter will be the subject of a highly publicized study by a parliamentary committee in 2007, during which Mr. Mulroney will appear for four hours. The parliamentarians will try to humiliate him, for example by asking him to mime the thickness of the envelopes received with his fingers. There will then be a public inquiry led by Judge Jeffrey Oliphant.
Mr. Mulroney will not reimburse the $2.1 million received in compensation. And we will never know exactly why he received money from Mr. Schreiber. To promote a pasta factory, as its spokesperson first said? For an international representation mandate for Thyssen with former leaders (all deceased at the time of the investigation), as Mr. Mulroney subsequently claimed? Judge Oliphant will accept this latest version, but will also conclude that the work was never done. And if the money did indeed come from a bank account called “Britan” in which Mr. Schreiber’s bribes had been placed, the judge will accept Mr. Mulroney’s thesis that he was unaware of it. , the source.
Nonetheless, the judge concluded in June 2010 that Mr. Mulroney had violated his own code of ethics and that his deliberate attempts to hide these transactions “were not acceptable.”