OTTAWA - The chairman of the Commons ethics committee is pressing Brian Mulroney to testify for a second time on his business dealings with Karlheinz Schreiber -- and threatening to subpoena him if he won't come voluntarily.
"Mr. Mulroney's attendance before the committee is vital to our work,'' Liberal MP Paul Szabo said in an interview Monday.
"There's quite a number of questions that have come up as a consequence of the testimony of other persons .... Some of the points are certainly important to clarify.''
Szabo said he's faxed a letter to Mulroney's lawyer, Guy Pratte, asking for an assurance that the former prime minister, who appeared before the ethics panel in December, will return on Feb. 28.
If no such assurance is forthcoming by this Friday, the letter warned, "a summons for his appearance may be issued.''
Pratte did not return phone calls Monday. In past correspondence with the committee, he has raised questions about whether Mulroney was treated fairly in December and suggested he may not come back.
Szabo said he's already dispatched a separate summons demanding that Mulroney provide any documents he has that could shed light on two key questions:
- Exactly what lobbying activities he undertook with foreign politicians and officials on Schreiber's behalf.
- What he did with $75,000 in cash that he received from Schreiber and kept in a safe deposit box at his home.
The $75,000 was a first instalment in an eventual $225,000 that Mulroney has acknowledged taking from the controversial businessman, who is fighting extradition to Germany on fraud and tax evasion charges arising from various arms deals.
Mulroney provided no paperwork, when he testified in December, to indicate how the money in the safe deposit box was spent.
Nor did he provide any documentation about his lobbying efforts abroad.
The committee wants names, dates and other details of meetings in France, Russia, China and the United States related to the Bear Head project, under which German-based Thyssen AG would have built military vehicle in Canada for export to other countries.
Szabo said he's hopeful Mulroney will agree to show up in person on Feb. 28. But if he doesn't, the committee chairman said he'll consult other members of the panel to see if an additional summons should be served to compel him to appear.
Mulroney has said that as prime minister he gave orders to cancel the Bear Head project after his chief of staff, Norman Spector, told him it would cost too much for the government to pursue it.
But Schreiber says he arranged with Mulroney, just before he left office, to lobby on behalf of the project himself once he left politics.
And another former Mulroney aide who later acted as a lobbyist for Schreiber, Fred Doucet, has testified that nobody told him the project was dead.
Szabo said he'd personally favour compelling Mulroney to return to the committee if he won't come back voluntarily to clear things up.
"He is one of the principals (in the affair) and the committee is trying to get the truth,'' said the chairman.
But other panel members, including some fellow Liberals, think it might be better to simply drop the mater if Mulroney balks at showing up.
"I wouldn't vote to summons a former prime minister,'' said Liberal MP Brian Murphy. "We're not a criminal court.''
Another Grit, Robert Thibault, said it may be preferable for the committee to wrap up its work and make way for the full-scale public inquiry promised by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
"That's the way we're going to get to the bottom of this thing,'' said Thibault. "We can't do it as a committee.''
A complicating factor for MPs is that they will soon run headlong into a series of confidence votes on the federal budget due to be tabled Feb. 26.
Mulroney, if he keeps his date with the committee two days later, will be testifying the same day the Commons votes on a Bloc Quebecois motion that could theoretically topple the Harper government.
If the Tories survive that test, they could still fall on a Liberal-sponsored confidence vote expected March 4. That would precipitate an election and pre-empt any further parliamentary examination of the Mulroney-Schreiber affair until after the campaign is over.
Szabo said he's been conscious since committee hearings started that MPs could find themselves up against an electoral deadline.
He hopes to table at least an interim report by March 4, thus clearing the way for Harper to launch the broader public inquiry.
