Angry in the Great White North

Last month, Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez landed himself and his party in some hot water when it was revealed that he was acting as a sock puppet for a CBC reporter.

The still unnamed reporter dictated questions for Rodriguez to ask of Brian Mulroney, who was being questioned about the Karlheinz Schreiber affair.

The question had nothing to do with Schreiber, Airbus, or the Mulroney lawsuit of twenty years ago.  It was about whether Brian Mulroney had had any contact with the current government with regards to the wireless spectrum auction.

The question was clearly an attempt by the CBC and the Liberal Party, working together, to link the Schreiber controversy to the Conservative government of Stephen Harper:

There can be little doubt a CBC reporter ghostwrote questions for Quebec Liberal Pablo Rodriguez to ask former prime minister Brian Mulroney at the House of Commons ethics committee during its pre-Christmas hearings into Mr. Mulroney's dealings in the early 1990s with notorious German arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber. When the story first broke nearly a month ago, CBC spokesman Jeff Keay even admitted to The Canadian Press that one of the Crown corporation's reporters had acted in an "inappropriate way" and violated CBC's "journalistic policies and practices."

The unethical journalism revolved around an interrogation Mr. Rodriguez conducted of Mr. Mulroney that had nothing to do with the old scandal being investigated and everything to do with an attempt to create a new scandal tying a Mulroney albatross around the neck of the current Conservative government.

This is pathetic on two levels.

First is the embarrassment of Liberal MPs lending to CBC reporters the power of a parliamentary committee by agreeing to be messenger boys for these reporters.

But besides that, the whole thing about linking Brian Mulroney and Stephen Harper is absurd.  Examine this timeline (click to enlarge):

This whole Schreiber thing is a waste of time.  Send him to Germany.

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