Published in the Western Standard (www.westernstandard.ca), May 22, 2009

 

Welcome to the club, Mr. Mulroney!
by
Pierre Lemieux

The Mulroney-Schreiber story has been long and complex. First, there was Schreiber I: in the 1990s, the federal government alleged that Mr. Mulroney had received, through lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber, kickbacks from the sale of Airbus airplanes to Air Canada, a state corporation at the time. Not only did the government eventually back off, but the former Prime Minister obtained financial compensation in an out-of-court settlement. Then came Shreiber II. It was later revealed that Mr. Mulroney, just after leaving politics in 1993, had accepted at least $225,000 in cash from the same shoddy character, allegedly in order to lobby foreign governments on behalf of Thyssen, a German arms manufacturer. Schreiber claims instead that the deal started just before the Prime Minister left office, and that he paid him to lobby the Canadian government. Last week, Mr. Mulroney testified before The Oliphant Commission, which is now holding public hearings into this matter. Why did Mr. Mulroney hide his arrangements with Schreiber in the second affair, and even waited years to declare to the taxman the cash he had received (under the novel excuse that the money, held in cash, had not yet entered his income stream)? His justification is that he had previously been scalded by the Airbus affair. “The enormity of those events,” he said, “scarred me and my family for life.” He had been confronted, he explained, “by a huge government apparatus spending unlimited sums of money to do me in.” Government officials “were out to crush me and my family.” It was, he said, “right out of Kafka.” Shouldn’t we give Mr. Mulroney the benefit of the doubt against the state? Yes, certainly, if we look at him as a private citizen. The catch, however, is that Mr. Mulroney was the state, or a very important part of it, from 1984 to 1993. He should be held to higher standards and more scrutiny. And it is relevant to know what he did when he was in politics: did he fight Leviathan, the growing state monster, able to crush any citizen? He made a few steps in the right direction. His Conservative government presided over the adoption of the Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. Keep in mind, though, that these trade agreements are often geared more to administered trade than to free trade proper. No doubt, Mr. Mulroney’s government did a few other good things, including the privatization of some Crown corporations. Yet, Mulroney was often content to conserve the state apparatus he had inherited and leave it ready for further enhancement by his followers. This is what “conservatism” is all about. His government ceiled the growth of real federal expenditures per capita at about $6,000 (constant 1997 dollars). Yet, the following Liberal government did better by modestly reducing these expenditures. Moreover, Mulroney’s Conservatives increased real revenues per capita (mainly taxes) from about $4,000 to $5,000. More significantly perhaps, this government merely kept regulation growth constant at about 7,000 new pages per year, after boosting it from 6,000 pages. Often, Prime Minister Mulroney was, very typically, worse than the ones who had preceded him and not as bad as the ones who would follow. The Goods and Services Tax was introduced in 1991, forcing all businesses and most independent workers to file quarterly (or more frequent) tax reports, and to get trapped into a complex web of tax collection for the state. During the same year, the Conservatives’ Bill C-17 introduced the main components of the gun licencing system that the Liberals would bring to its accomplishment a few years later. With this system, the police bureaucracy can now arbitrarily revoke anybody’s right to possess guns, and the unhappy applicant must shoulder the burden of proof and show to a judge why he should be granted a licence. This is your state, Mr. Mulroney. Of course, Mulroney may not have realized that he was just another naïve builder of the police state. But before weeping endlessly about his own predicament, he should admit his error and apologize to the other Canadians who face the Kafkaesque state on a regular basis. Explaining how he was hurt by the 1995 federal government’s allegations in the Airbus affair, Mr. Mulroney told the Oliphant Commission, “All of a sudden, out of the blue, I’m a criminal.” Get over it Brian, this can happen to everybody. Welcome to the club.