Hot Damn! He Did It!

Still, politics being what it is, he's damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. But this is one foxy man, this current prime minister of Canada. Stephen Harper has an instinctual grasp of performance, and he has little difficulty in distinguishing right from wrong. His very own ethical antenna are well tuned and more than adequately practised. His integrity shouts its presence in his responses to cogently urgent situations. Usually.

Now he has seen the merit in reversing himself. He recognizes that a murky matter of fairly recent history which almost everyone would like to shove back into the hole it now and again pokes itself out of, can no longer be ignored. It's there, front and centre, and with new allegations against the integrity, honesty and morality of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, threatens the public's trust in the highest office of the land.

Besmirched by Mr. Harper's Conservative predecessor. In a way that the morally corrupt dealings the ruling Liberals, when in power, never reached low enough to accomplish themselves. It would take a smarmy, self-congratulatory, social-climbing, power-hungry and cash-strapped individual like Brian Mulroney. Whom no one in Canada voted into office.

That loose change, represented by three hundred thousand dollars in cash, purportedly handed over to Mr. Mulroney by Karlheinz Schreiber for innocent business lobbying efforts on the part of a retired prime minister appear to have been propositioned to a very receptive sitting prime minister for something entirely other. Something for which a previous, suspicious Liberal government and the RCMP unsuccessfully attempted to find evidence of.

Here we are now, a decade later with a sworn affidavit that in 1998 a Mulroney advisor, Fred Doucet asked Mr. Schreiber to transfer funds "related to the Airbus deal" from lobby firm Government Consultants International to Mr. Mulroney's Swiss lawyer. Ah, that infamous Swiss bank account that the Mounties travelled to Switzerland to examine in an effort to link Mr. Mulroney to Airbus kick-backs.

And for which effort Mr. Mulroney in his great good wisdom and innocently hurt feelings launched a $50-million suit for defamation of character against the government. Actually, the people of Canada - informing them in his back-handed way that he had as high a regard for them through the access to their tax dollars, as they had for him, for somewhat like reasons and many others as well.

Absent hard evidence the pursuit ended, the case was closed and Mr. Mulroney was awarded a settlement to assuage his hurt feelings to the tune of $2.1 million. We, the people of Canada, want that money to be restored to us. We want it back. We want it all back. Including the apology offered to Mr. Mulroney by the Government of Canada, as part of the out-of-court settlement.

So thank you, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for launching an independent examination in light of new allegations. Look for the evidence, it's a daunting task, but it's there. Mr. Mulroney is clever too, in his twisted way, but he's been out-clevered by someone who faced no difficulties in suborning his frail integrity.