Ultimately no matter how you judge the ethical performance of Brian Mulroney on his way out the door; knowing what we know now you cannot escape the conclusion that he displayed poor judgment and should not have been accepting envelopes full of cash from a shady arms dealer. Whether or not he deserves criminal prosecution is irrelevant because the evidence does not exist to prosecute the 71 year old former PM. We spent millions of dollars to confirm what was already suspected prior to the inquiry, that he should not have accepted the money and there is not enough evidence to prosecute wrong doing.
The man's legacy is tarnished and his credibility is in question. For more on the Oliphant ruling, I defer to John Ivison and Kelly McParland.
The judge found that this was not poor judgment; it was a mutual attempt to conceal by both parties. Poor judgment does not happen 3 times, he concluded.
ReplyDeleteA tarnished legacy and lost credibility but he still got $2.1 million in taxpayer money for claiming he was slandered. He could restore a little credibility and regain some honour by apologizing and returning the $2 mil to the public coffers.
ReplyDeleteWhen a common criminal is sentenced, does a tarnished legacy and loss of credibility play into the punishment.
Defendant: "Gee, your honour, now that everyone knows I'm a crook, I've lost the respect of my community. That's punishment enough."
Judge: "You're not getting off that easy. I'm going to tell the press that you've displayed poor judgment."
You're right about us spending millions to track down 2 or 3 hundred thousand in payoffs. Maybe that's what Count Igor was talking about when he said, "there's accountability that is in itself a waste of public money."
Mulroney accepted money from Schreiber for whatever reason in envelopes. What we don't want to forget is that Mulroney and his cohorts also accepted money from Schreiber years earlier as they plotted the overthrow of Joe Clark for leadership of the Conservative party - this happening even though Mulroney told Canadians publicly that he was supporting Joe Clark in his leadership of the party prior to the Winnipeg convention. They succeeded in getting the review of the leadership and subsequent defeat of Joe Clark but Schreiber also was able to ingratiate himself with Mulroney and his cronies from that point forward. People who wonder where the millions of dollars went from Air Bus should not require any pictures be drawn for them and I expect most have drawn the correct conclusion even if they don't have the proof. Those that have concluded that the millions did not go to the Humane Society are also correct.
ReplyDeleteWhat will Harper do to get the taxpayers 3.8 million paid to Mulroney and his lawyers from this whole unethical debacle?
ReplyDeleteI am not 100% sure ,but didn,t ex PM Mulroney give the $2 million to charity.This was brought out during the Schreiber testimony,but yet all the MSM and even our buddies at CFRA radio want him to pay it back???Did he not pay it back already??Anyone??How do we check and find out.??
ReplyDelete