Mulroney makes the case an inquiry is needed

I want an inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber scandal. It will cost a lot, say $75 million, and no one will likely be found guilty of anything.
But we need a light that can shine into the dark and sleazy world of lobbyists and pals and politicians in Ottawa. An inquiry might do that.
Brian Mulroney's testimony before the ethics committee was the last straw.
Sure, he succeeded in reminding everyone that Karlheinz Schreiber, the German businessmen who paid him with bundles of cash, has a tenuous grasp of the truth.
That was no surprise. Schreiber has shown he'll lie under oath if it's advantageous.
Schreiber had been distributing money and favours around Ottawa for years in an effort to get an arms plant built in Nova Scotia.
Mulroney testified he met with on June 23, 1993, while he was still prime minister. They didn't talk about future work, Mulroney said, "except to say that given my international background and contact he'd like to keep in touch and perhaps call on me again some day in the future."
Nine weeks later, while Mulroney was no longer prime minister was still an MP, he went off to meet with Schreiber in an airport hotel room.
According to Mulroney, Schreiber wanted him to lobby other countries to buy armoured vehicles from the same company that hoped to build a plant in Canada.
Schreiber says he was paying Mulroney to use his influence to clear the way for the Nova Scotia plant.
Both agree that Mulroney took an envelope of cash from Schreiber. There was no contract or written agreement or even a specific indication of what he was supposed to do. Just an envelope stuffed with $1,000 bills - $75,000 Mulroney says, while Schreiber says $100,000.
Mulroney's explanation was that Schreiber said he was an international businessman who dealt in cash.
But what kind of international businessman is that? Are we really to believe that Bill Gates and Richard Branson don't use cheques?
Mulroney says it was a mistake on his part.
But he repeated the mistake twice more, meeting Schreiber in hotel rooms in Montreal and New York over the next year and taking more envelopes full of cash.
Mulroney never deposited the money in a bank. He just kept in safe deposit boxes and "integrated" it into his requirements.
The former prime minister testified he lobbied world leaders on Schreiber's behalf, but there's no record of his activities or corroboration.
Mulroney also acknowledged that while he took the money in 1993 and 1994, he didn't report it to Revenue Canada until 1999, after Schreiber faced criminal charges.
His explanation didn't make much sense. He claimed the money was used only for his expenses; he took no money for his work. So it wasn't income.
But then once Schreiber got in trouble, Mulroney said he decided to declare it to Revenue Canada.
Mulroney also left questions about his 1996 testimony in his lawsuit against the federal government over allegations related to Air Canada's purchase of planes from Airbus. The government paid Mulroney $2.1 million to settle the suit, which he says all went to expenses related to it.
During that process, Mulroney testified under oath that he had met Schreiber "once or twice for coffee" after leaving office. He said the question he was asked only related to the Airbus affair, and he had no obligation to reveal the hotel room meetings to collect cash.
Who knows what to believe? And that's not even getting into Schreiber's other political donations, or his claim that he contributed money to the effort to oust Joe Clark, clearing the way for Mulroney.
Add the whole sordid mess to the corruption uncovered by the Gomery inquiry, and it is impossible to have confidence the federal government is not tainted.
An inquiry is the only way to restore public trust.
Footnote: Columnist Norman Spector had a front row seat as Mulroney's chief of staff. He wrote in The Globe and Mail that action needs to be taken to curb the influence of lobbyists who move back and forth between partisan activities and attempts to influence the politicians they support with time and money.