I haven't said much about the Brian Mulroney - Karlheinz Schreiber thing, in part because it was rather vague and yet it was clear it would quickly break in one of two ways:

1. All the allegations with regards to money being handed around were confined a time frame after Brian Mulroney left office. Prime Minister Stephen Harper made excellent sense when he argued that it is not the role of parliament to initiate investigations into the actions of private citizens, even former holders of public office, as long as those actions did not occur during their time in office.
2. The allegations would expand to include at least some of the time in which Brian Mulroney was in office, and so would justifiably raise concerns that Brian Mulroney's actions impacted the public interest, in which case Stephen Harper would do well to initiate some sort of preliminary review.

As we now know, events have proceeded and Stephen Harper has called for a third-party review of the Brian Mulroney - Karlheinz Schreiber story:

Stephen Harper moved to protect the integrity of the office of prime minister yesterday as he announced that a yet-unnamed neutral adviser will look at Brian Mulroney's cash dealings with a lobbyist and decide whether they warrant a public inquiry.

The Prime Minister dropped his late-afternoon bombshell after government lawyers met to discuss unproven allegations revealed in a sworn affidavit that Karlheinz Schreiber tabled in court two days ago and The Globe and Mail published yesterday.

Mr. Harper had offered his full support to Mr. Mulroney a week ago, but changed course after Mr. Schreiber claimed he and Mr. Mulroney made plans for a $300,000 deal while the latter was still prime minister in 1993. Mr. Harper also expressed surprise that there was a passing reference to his own name in the affidavit.

Of course, the Liberals are calling for full-blown judicial inquiry. It might yet come to that, but right now that would be premature.

Hypocrisy! cry the Liberals. There is nothing premature about it! What about Gomery?

And anyway, Brian Mulroney ended his tenure as prime minister 14 years ago. Going back to the past like that smacks of a witch hunt, where Canadians are more worried about what issues face them today.

Hypocrisy! cry the Liberals. What about the upcoming investigation in Paul Martin's finance ministry contracts with his friends at Earnscliffe? That happened in the past too!

The funny thing about these two arguments is that I can respond to them with the same answer -- Sheila Frasier's Auditor-General's report of November 2003.

When the Gomery Commission was created, it was not because Opposition Leader Stephen Harper held a news conference and held up a newspaper report. It was because the Auditor-General of Canada submitted a report that pointed strongly at the possibility that the Sponsorship Program had wasted and misused taxpayer's money, but worse than that, that the scope of the waste and the nature of the misuse was difficult for her office to ascertain because of the secrecy in the program.

Right now, we don't know if anything illegal happened with regards to the Shrieber story. We don't know if taxpayer's money was involved in any way, and certainly it does not seem like it was (though there is the question of the $2 million payout by the Liberal government as a result of a lawsuit brought against the government by Brian Mulroney, but that was money not directly involved in any transactions between Mulroney and Schreiber).

What Stephen Harper does not have is the equivalent of an Auditor-General's report to guide him in making the decision on how to follow up on this. Paul Martin had that report, and he made his decision to initiate the Gomery Inquiry.

As an engineer, I know exactly what this is like. You would never commit the resources of a full team to a project drawn out on the back of a napkin. You give that napkin to a small (and cheap) group that comes back with an analysis on whether the idea makes any sense, and how it would perform in the market. Then you make your decision on pursuing a product. The same sort of rational is at play here. Is there any reason to believe the parliament needs to be involved? And if so, what questions actually need to be answered?

So what about Earnscliffe? Is Stephen Harper applying a double standard? Is he resisting an inquiry into Brian Mulroney's relationship with Karl Shrieber using the excuse that the past is past, while gleefully going back to investigate the Earnscliffe contracts of previous Liberal governments?

Putting aside for the moment the obvious difference in that the Earnscliffe contracts were clearly paid for by the taxpayer, and also putting aside the fact Stephen Harper never said the "past is the past", there is another critical difference. That same Auditor General's report on the Sponsorship Program also devoted an entire chapter on questions concerning the way polling contracts were doled out, and that included the way Paul Martin's finance ministry dealt with Earnscliffe.

This was the infamous Chapter 5:

5.17 Communication Canada explained to us that it had been unable to release the results of a few research projects for the Department of Finance Canada because, according to the Department, it had received only verbal reports and had no written reports on these projects.

5.23 We expected Communication Canada's files on the survey to contain a clear statement of the need for and purpose of the survey as well as evidence showing how the results were used. We saw some indication that the Privy Council Office may have used the results to develop a government-wide advertising plan. However, the file documentation was largely incomplete, with little to show how Communication Canada had planned for the survey or determined its objectives. In contrast, public opinion research files in Human Resources Development Canada contained project summaries with detailed analyses of the research objectives and rationale.

5.24 We found no analysis in Communication Canada's files to support the need for carrying out the Listening to Canadians survey three times a year, and no evaluation of the survey's effectiveness over the last five years. Communication Canada's files did not demonstrate that the survey provided good value for the cost, as called for in policy guidelines.

When Paul Martin, as prime minister, defined the mandate for Justice Gomery's investigation, he directed to inquiry to explore how these contracts were managed, except for contracts covered in Chapter 5.

So with Earnscliffe, we have already had that initial evaluation and we have already raised issues that might be seen as sufficiently serious to warrant a fuller investigation. That the former prime minister decided not to pursue it was his perogative, but because it was the same person, Paul Martin, who would have been a key subject of an investigation who also decided not to proceed with one, it begs the question of whether that decision was arrived at fairly.

Clearly, the Conservative government decided it was not, and Daniel Paille was appointed to lead an inquiry.

But the Paille Inquiry will not be initiated on the basis of some allegations thrown about at press conferences. It will be based on the Auditor-General's report on potential problems, a report that was carefully omitted from further review the first time around.

Give Stephen Harper some credit. He drew a line in the sand with regards to when parliament should get involved. When it appeared that line had been crossed, he act in a manner consistent with what he said, even at the cost of appearing to change his mind (even though in truth, it was the circumstances that changed, not his mind). And he is proceeding in a manner consistent with common sense and past practise.

The Liberals are desperate. They can't seem to find a formula to win, so they are looking at how to make the Conservative lose. A big scandal might be the way to go, and so they are yelling for the inquiry. This doesn't smell like a scandal to me (certainly not involing the present government), and I expect most Canadians would agree. Let's wait until we have the preliminary look.

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