Two major events that broke into the news in November that year were 1995’s biggest scandalous political stories in Canada, as detailed in Part 11 of this blog article.
First, in the early morning wee hours of November 5, the day when Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien and wife Aline were to leave for Israel to attend the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin assassinated the day before, a man broke into the Prime Minister’s Residence at 24 Sussex Drive in Capital Ottawa, holding an open jackknife and came face-to-face with Mrs. Chretien just outside the couple’s bedroom.
Then on November 14, Royal Canadian Mounted Police held a media interview to announce its Airbus Affair criminal investigation, confirming news reports originating from Europe that at RCMP’s request police in Switzerland were searching for evidence of multimillion secret commissions from the European Airbus company to associates of former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney for the $1.8 billion sale of 32 planes to Air Canada under the Mulroney government in 1988, prior to Air Canada’s privatization in 1989.
In both instances, RCMP appeared to be handling the matters dutifully, but media coverage soon showed very different pictures, critical of RCMP performance as discussed in Part 11.
In the case of the PM’s residence break-in, the house ground was guarded by several RCMP Special Constables and Constables, the lowest-ranked members in the force and they, along with guards at the Governor General’s residence and at the Prime Minister’s summer residence outside Ottawa, were together led by a Corporal, at just one rank above, posted at the GG’s residence. Most of the officers guarding the Chretien residence had no training in VIP protection, and none had been inside the house.
When Mrs. Chretien phoned them about an intruder the onsite guards simply surrounded the house and called for help, until the corporal arrived and entered by himself to make an arrest. Fortunately, the 34-year-old intruder Andre Dallaire, a convenience store worker from Longueuil, a suburb of Montreal, Quebec, did not try to break into the bedroom or fight the police.
Notified of the break-in, the senior RCMP supervisors didn’t bother to attend the scene or to immediately increase protection for the Chretiens. Later, the RCMP management blamed the poor police response on the onsite personnel, announcing disciplinary measures against them while quietly shifting the senior officers’ duties.
Intense media interests in this dangerous breach of the national leader’s security led to disclosures that there had been internal RCMP reports since 1989 about poor security at the Prime Minister’s residence due to low quality of the surveillance cameras, the guards’ dismissiveness toward alarms, and lack of monitoring on the backside of the ground, but that those reports were ignored by the RCMP management or by the Prime Minister’s Office.
In the Airbus commissions case, RCMP first exhibited a similar type of callous dismissiveness toward allegations of corruption in Brian Mulroney’s political circle.
Anti-corruption journalist Stevie Cameron’s best-selling book, On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, published in October 1994, referred to possibly $20-70 million Airbus secret commissions paid to Government Consultants International, a Ottawa lobby firm founded by Mulroney’s friend, former Newfoundland Premier Frank Moores, likely funnelled through German Canadian businessman Karlheinz Schreiber.
In January 1995 RCMP Inspector Carl Gallant and Sergeant Fraser Fiegenwald privately met with Cameron about the allegations.
In March, both Der Spiegel magazine in Germany and Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Fifth Estate program publicized further details, about a Liechtenstein company reportedly owned by Schreiber that received multimillion commissions from Airbus, and bank accounts held by Schreiber and his friend Moores at Swiss Bank Corporation. German tax investigators quickly started an investigation into Schreiber’s activities, but Carl Gallant, promoted to Superintendent, said RCMP was not investigating.
As in Part 11, Journalist Paul Palango lamented in June 1995:
“In virtually every other Western democracy in recent years, serious and successful investigations have been mounted against former government and business leaders for corruption. Only in Canada has such judicial scrutiny failed to materialize.”
Eventually on September 29, Justice Department lawyer Kimberly Prost sent a letter to the Swiss authorities to request assistance probing certain bank accounts in that country, alleging “criminal activity” and “an ongoing scheme by Mr. Mulroney” to defraud Canadian taxpayers of millions of dollars during his entire time as Prime Minister, including taking a $5 million kickback from Airbus. But with such serious accusations the RCMP criminal investigation assigned only one investigator, Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald, to the case – not much better than the low level of protection for Prime Minister Chretien’s residence.
After Swiss investigators gave Karlheinz Schreiber a copy of the September 29 letter from Canada, written in German, Schreiber informed Mulroney and had a Swiss law firm translate it into English. It was then quoted by The Financial Post reporter Philip Mathias on November 18, in the first media report that Mulroney was personally a target of the investigation.
Seizing the public-relations initiative, Mulroney immediately launched a $50 million libel lawsuit against RCMP and the government. Disclosures from the civil litigation showed that as early as in December 1993 – after the Liberals had in October defeated the Tories led by Mulroney’s successor, Vancouver Member of Parliament Kim Campbell – Justice Minister Allan Rock made a request to Herb Gray, Solicitor General overseeing RCMP, for an investigation into the former Mulroney government’s contracting practices but it was declined by RCMP.
By November 1995 there was a publicized Airbus Affair criminal investigation, but RCMP was put on the defensive by Mulroney’s lawsuit, the first ever from a former prime minister against the government, and by Mulroney’s show of indignity, disgust and self-righteousness, who described the investigation’s allegations against him as “fascism”. Meanwhile, RCMP didn’t report progress in the investigation even after transferring Inspector Peter German from British Columbia “E” Division to lead it in July 1996, while in May 1996 Schreiber won at the Federal Court of Canada blocking RCMP access to his Swiss bank account information, until the Supreme Court of Canada sided with RCMP 2 years later.
As in Part 11, the RCMP later closed the Airbus Affair investigation in 2003, but subsequent revelations about $300,000 cash from Schreiber to Mulroney in 1993-94 led to the so-called Mulroney-Schreiber Affair in 2007-2009, with a public inquiry ordered by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, limited to exclude the Airbus Affair issues. New revelations also showed that as Schreiber first handed cash to Mulroney in August 1993 – after Mulroney had stepped down in June – the next day Mulroney’s tax lawyer and financial trustee Bruce Verchere, a board director of Swiss Bank Corp., died of a reportedly suicide – facts unknown to the public during the Airbus Affair in 1995-97.
In contrast, criminal investigations in Germany made significant progress and discoveries. Investigators searched Schreiber’s home near Munich, and found a money distribution list containing coded info, including on a bank account “Frankfurt” with money reportedly for Frank Moores to distribute in Canada. Police then searched the homes and offices of several of Schreiber’s German friends, including: Max Strauss, son of Franz Josef Strauss, the late Airbus board chairman, leader of the West German Christian Social Party, West German defense minister and governor of Bavaria; Ludwig Holger Pfahls, former head of West German domestic intelligence and junior defence minister under Chancellor Helmut Kohl; and Winfried Haastent, board chairman of German manufacturer Thyssen. Pfahls was later convicted and sent to jail in 2005 for taking bribes through Schreiber for the sale of Thyssen armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War, and was sent to jail again in 2011 for hiding additional bribe money.
Pale in comparison, the Canadian government and RCMP were only able to achieve a libel-lawsuit settlement with Mulroney, in January 1997 just one day before the lawsuit trial, admitting lack of evidence to conclude “wrongdoing”, issuing an apology and paying for his legal expenses of around $2 million. RCMP was allowed to continue the criminal investigation at the time.
Two major reasons were cited for the government’s settling with Mulroney: due to international law enforcement “confidentiality” RCMP refused to disclose some information to the civil-lawsuit trial; and Sgt. Fiegenwald made a late admission that in November 1995 before the case became public he had confirmed to Stevie Cameron, and according to the Mulroney side to other reporters, that Mulroney was named in the September 29 letter – it was careless lack of professionalism.
Like with the Chretien residence break-in, the low-level officer Sgt. Fiegenwald faced disciplinary actions, but otherwise no one else in the RCMP was officially blamed.
As the media pointed out, a full civil trial would have allowed the public to learn much more about the facts; instead, questions remain, such as who in the RCMP approved the letter accusing Mulroney of criminal activity when evidence was lacking, who first leaked the letter to the media in November 1995, and what evidence RCMP collected after all.
In Part 11, my detailed analysis of the press data has pointed to far more complex, very political roles of the RCMP in handling both the PM’s residence intrusion and the Airbus Affair, and has also found tantalizing links between the Chretien residence break-in and the Airbus Affair criminal investigation publicity, or at least links between RCMP handlings of the seemingly unrelated events.
In the residence break-in case, a shocking history has emerged in the career record of then RCMP Chief Superintendent Al Rivard responsible for VIP security, including protection for the prime minister, cabinet ministers and foreign diplomats: back in 1989 – the year when internal RCMP reports began about poor security at the PM’s residence – in the province of New Brunswick, for 10 months leading a force of over 100 elite officers including SWAT teams Rivard was unable to catch escaped murderer Allen Legere, who was hiding not far from their searches; Legere killed 4 more people during that time, and after capture taunted “that RCMP Rivard” in a letter to the media.
As in Part 11, one day after the PM’s residence break-in Rivard was quietly moved to a new job, and RCMP spokesman Inspector Jean St. Cyr asserted it was an unrelated reassignment.
In the Airbus Affair, on November 4 only hours before the intrusion at Chretien’s residence, Brian Mulroney’s side made its first contact with the government regarding the criminal investigation, with Mulroney lawyer Roger Tasse phoning Justice Minister Allan Rock.
Such simultaneous timing would normally have been unrelated, but in this instance it appeared conspicuous and suggestive of a possible connection, for several reasons.
Firstly, Mulroney’s Tory party and Chretien’s Liberal party had been the only governing contenders and the main political foes in Canadian history, Mulroney’s party under Kim Campbell had been nearly wiped out by Chretien’s party in the 1993 election, and now the Airbus Affair criminal investigation and the Prime Minister’s residence intrusion mutually targeted the two men personally.
The Chretien residence intruder Andre Dallaire, though with a knife, didn’t appear aggressively violent. He was found guilty of attempted murder but not criminally responsible due to “Paranoid Schizophrenia”; soon released, in 1998 Dallaire moved to live only a few blocks from Chretien’s residence; as in Part 11, at that point RCMP spokesman Sgt. Andre Guertin even said, “We don’t see any more problems with Mr. Dallaire”, that Dallaire understood he could not come within 500 metres of the prime minister.
Likewise, in November 1995 only about 10 days after the break-in, the newly featured RCMP Airbus Affair investigator Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald privately – almost wilfully according to Mulroney’s side – let reporters know that Mulroney was being investigated, and the reporters then swarmed Mulroney and his lawyer Roger Tasse with many phone calls.
These could be low-level skirmishes happening to both Chretien and Mulroney.
Secondly, by letting low-level personnel be in charge with the Chretien residence security and with the Mulroney criminal investigation, RCMP left rooms for confusions and incidents while maintaining deniability by senior management.
The RCMP spokesman Sgt. Guertin who said in 1998 that the freed Dallaire understood he could not come within 500 metres of the prime minister, had been RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray’s spokesman in early 1997 regarding the legal settlement with Mulroney in the Airbus Affair. That could be a subtle indication that in the intrusion case the RCMP’s highest level knew what RCMP was dealing with, that the probability of real violence was low; when a little intimidation of Chretien was tolerated, Mulroney could be a beneficiary.
And thirdly, the two cases appeared conspicuously related because, as I have identified in Part 11, there was one RCMP senior leader figure likely responsible for supervising both events, and when the residence break-in occurred in the early morning of November 5 he chose to oversee “damage control”, i.e., public relations, rather than the Chretiens’ safety: then RCMP Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell, commanding officer of the Capital Ottawa “A” Division with jurisdiction for guarding the Prime Minister’s residence and for the Airbus Affair criminal investigation.
As presented in Part 11: after the break-in it was McConnell who made announcements to the media, including for his decision to discipline the onsite junior officers but not the senior supervisors; that decision drew open criticisms from “A” Division staff elected representative Staff Sgt. Joe Brennan; the poor security also drew criticisms from Canadian Police Association president Neal Jessop, representing “40,000 police officers across Canada, including many RCMP members”; then on November 18, RCMP announced security upgrades for the residence, with better monitoring equipment, VIP-protection trained guards and direct reporting to RCMP headquarters, and the next day Chretien said the RCMP was now doing enough and a public inquiry was not needed.
One can speculate that taking the ultimate command of his security out of A/Comm. Bryan McConnell’s hands made a difference to Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
In January 1997 when the Mulroney lawsuit reached settlement and the media criticized RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray’s performance, his spokesman Sgt. Guertin responded by saying, without naming McConnell, that the responsibility for the letter to the Swiss police had not been in Murray’s hands but in the “A” Division’s, as quoted in Part 11:
“His spokesperson, Sgt. Andre Guertin, said Murray cannot be expected to take a hands-on approach to every criminal investigation undertaken by the force.
…
Guertin later said the letter never made it to RCMP headquarters and the ranking officer to sign off on the accusatory missive would have been in Ottawa’s A Division, someone between chief investigator Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald and deputy commissioner Frank Palmer.”
Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell’s departure from RCMP soon after the Mulroney lawsuit settlement, by February 1997 as in Part 11, suggested a link to the Airbus Affair, much like the reassignment of Chief Superintendent Al Rivard away from VIP security the day after the Chretien residence intrusion in November 1995 – Rivard had been his subordinate.
If so, i.e., McConnell’s departure was a result of his bad performance during the Chretien residence intrusion and in supervising the Mulroney criminal investigation, as he appeared to have bungled it in each case, then his new appointment as Executive Director of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police – as in Part 11 recorded in Parliament of Canada records – was a subtle but more troubling sign, namely a vote of confidence in McConnell by the police chiefs across Canada, to have him as an executive in charge for them.
In Part 11 I have pointed out that letting low-level officers be in charge in both cases actually favored Mulroney over Chretien, because when security was lax an armed intruder got through and nearly harmed Mr. & Mrs. Chretien, whereas when a criminal investigation was lax the suspect, i.e., Mr. Mulroney, got away with a government apology and payments for his lawyers.
A deeper question that needs answering is whether the RCMP mishandlings were intentional, and whether they indeed had to do with ‘Brian Mulroney versus Jean Chretien’.
These two cases were by no means the first time RCMP Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell favored Brian Mulroney.
During my activities to bring about political changes in 1992, pursuing a dispute with Maria Klawe, my former boss at the University of British Columbia’s Computer Science Department, and attempting to challenge Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s leadership conduct, I sent press releases to two TV media venues, and in the morning of November 30 faxed them to the local office of MP Kim Campbell, with the allegation of political persecution by the PM in my cover note to her, as quoted in Part 5:
“I have strong reason to believe the CBC regional management has informed against me and a political persecution ordered by the PM is underway. I need the immediate support of my MP and the B.C. Tory MPs. Charlottetown constitutional process was an elaborate setup by the PM to settle political scores and eliminate potential political opponents.”
As in Part 6, in that afternoon RCMP Sergeant Brian Cotton and a Constable showed up at my apartment unexpectedly, allegedly to see how I was since a July 2 eviction by RCMP from my former UBC office when my job had ended; when Sgt. Cotton learned that I had been persistently phoning CBC about the political issues, he took me to UBC Hospital for a psychiatric assessment allegedly requested by newly promoted B.C. Supreme Court Justice Pamela Kirkpatrick, whom I knew because her husband David had been a UBC Computer Science colleague.
Then in early January 1993, the documents sent to Campbell were forwarded to RCMP “E” Division in British Columbia, but as a complaint only about the July 2 UBC eviction and brief detention, even though Mulroney’s leadership conduct was the primary topic in my documents; A/Comm. J. W. B. McConnell, RCMP Director of Enforcement Services, specified in his January 6 letter to “E” Division commanding officer, as in Part 6:
“Subject: Dr. Feng Gao
Complaint Concerning his Arrest
by University Detachment Members…
Correspondence has been prepared for the Minister’s signature advising Dr. Gao that the CO “E” Division or his delegate would examine his concerns as they relate to his arrest and imprisonment and would respond to him direct.
…”
In press archives there is an October 2, 1991 reference to the RCMP director of enforcement services as Bryan McConnell, about tackling a serial rapist case (“RCMP analyst called in to help MUC police track serial rapist”, October 2, 1991, The Gazette):
“RCMP Inspector Ron Mackay, a top criminal analyst, is helping Montreal Urban Community police construct a psychological profile of the serial rapist that has been terrorizing West Island women.
… Mackay, head of the violent-crimes analysis section, was trained by the FBI.
At the Ottawa office of Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell, director of the RCMP’s Enforcement Services branch, an aide said it was unusual for Mackay to get involved in a rape case.
“It’s the first time I can recall him doing something like this,” said the aide, Danielle Hanson. “He usually works on serial murders, homicides, that sort of thing.”
Police blame the rapist for four attacks in the past seven months, including three since August. Police went public after the last attack occurred Sept. 22. Three victims live in Dollard, one in Ste. Genevieve.”
So J. W. B. McConnell was also named Bryan McConnell.
I have not come across any info indicating that this RCMP director of enforcement services in 1991-1993 was not the same person as the “A” Division commanding officer in November 1995, But a more detailed profiling would help clear any potential mix-up.
Like the “A” Division commander in 1995, this Bryan McConnell also exhibited willingness to discipline lower-level officers, and in doing so favor Brian Mulroney.
As outlined in McConnell’s January 1993 letter, only RCMP University Detachment members’ conduct that was of concern to me would be examined. As in Part 6, the documents I had sent to Campbell referred to RCMP in the context of my July 2 eviction and arrest at UBC by University Detachment’s Corporal Nancy E. McKerry and Constables A. M. Bangloy and C. L. Dinham-Jones, months before I started criticizing Mulroney’s conduct; after University Detachment’s Sgt. Brian Cotton came took me to a psychiatric committal on the day after my fax to Campbell, a second letter was sent to Campbell on or around December 7 to complain about the escalated persecution by psychiatry – this second letter has never been acknowledged.
Thus, under A/Comm. J. W. B. McConnell’s direction my concerns “relate” only to the low-level RCMP officers at UBC in my dispute with a department-level management personality, while issues about Prime Minister Mulroney – the main target of my communications to Campbell – were excluded.
One fact that is clear is that J. W. B. McConnell was previously the RCMP officer in charge of criminal operations in Quebec, based in Montreal, cited in that name in April 1990 on the case of Cpl. Michel Boyer, a member of the RCMP national security investigations section charged with 2 counts of corruption, one of drug trafficking and 9 of breach of trust (RCMP officer arrested on corruption charges”, April 6, 1990, The Ottawa Citizen):
“When Cpl. Michel Boyer, a 20-year career RCMP officer, reported for work Thursday at C Division headquarters just west of the Montreal Forum, a fellow officer arrested him.
Boyer, 41, was charged with two counts of corruption, nine counts of breach of trust and one of trafficking in a narcotic.
He works with the Montreal detachment of the RCMP’s national security offences investigation section.
“The charges he faces are not related to national security,” said Chief Supt. J. W. B. McConnell, officer in charge of criminal investigations.”
Besides in The Ottawa Citizen, for this case “Chief Supt. J. W. B. McConnell” was also cited in The Gazette (“RCMP security officer arraigned on 12 counts”, April 6, 1990, The Gazette), and The Vancouver Sun (“Mountie charged with corruption, drug trafficking”, April 5, 1990, The Vancouver Sun).
As in Parts 6 & 7, in 1989-90 the RCMP national security investigations section was headed by C/Supt. Patrick Cummins, who by January 1993 would be in charge of Contract Policing at “E” Division in British Columbia and would block an investigation for my complaint forwarded to “E” Division by A/Comm. J. W. B. McConnell.
But my search of the newspaper archives led to the spectre of a possibly different type of “mistaken identity”.
I found only one article referring to J. W. B. McConnell as “Bryan McConnell”, quoted earlier about a serial rapist in 1991 when he was RCMP director of enforcement services – J. W. B. McConnell as in his January 6, 1993 internal letter I obtained via personal-information disclosure.
On the other hand, many newspaper articles in 1989 had referred to the RCMP officer in charge of criminal operations, or criminal investigations, in Montreal as “Brian McConnell”.
For instance, in The Ottawa Citizen on December 12, 1989 (“MPs unease over rash of RCMP probes”, by Iain Hunter and Graham Parley, December 12, 1989, The Ottawa Citizen):
“[RCMP Commissioner Norman] Inkster caused a sensation three weeks ago when he admitted Chief Supt. Brian McConnell, the head of RCMP criminal investigations in Montreal, delayed search warrants against Grise until the day after the Nov. 21, 1988 federal election.
McConnell said later he did not want to “improperly influence the electoral process.””
And in Toronto Star a day later (“Top Mountie misled his chief, MPs informed”, by Patrick Doyle, December 13, 1989, Toronto Star):
“Search coincidence
Inkster testified before the committee in June that the search of Grise’s offices on Nov. 22 last year, the day after the general election, was simply a coincidence entirely unrelated to political considerations.
Last month Inkster stunned the committee with an admission that he had misled it in June and that the investigator in charge of the case, Chief Superintendent Brian McConnell, had in fact delayed getting search warrants against Grise in order not to interfere with the election.”
Perhaps J. W. B. McConnell is only “Brian McConnell”, i.e., the lone article referring to “Bryan McConnell” as “director of the RCMP’s Enforcement Services branch”, on October 2, 1991 in The Gazette, inadvertently spelled differently.
But Assistant Commissioner J. W. B. McConnell has in fact identified himself as “J. W. Bryan McConnell” in the directory of the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs. In Part 7 I have cited CACP’s 2002-2003 membership directory to identify RCMP officer P. M. Cummins as “Patrick Cummins”. But after my posting of Part 11 critical of RCMP “A” Division commander Bryan McConnell’s roles in handling the Jean Chretien residence intrusion and the Airbus Affair criminal investigation, the CACP website document has become inaccessible to the public. So here is my downloaded copy, which shows there was one and only one McConnell in that year’s directory: “J. W. Bryan McConnell”.
Given that the former RCMP “A” Division commander Bryan McConnell became CACP Executive Director in early 1997, there was no reason in 2002-03 for that Bryan McConnell not to be in the membership directory if he was alive; and the only McConnell in the directory was “J. W. Bryan McConnell”, i.e., J. W. B. McConnell, the person who in January 1993 directed that the press releases and cover note I had faxed to MP Kim Campbell be treated as a complaint only about low-level RCMP members at UBC, not about Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
So the conclusions are: the two Bryan McConnell’s were almost without a doubt the same person, and it was no coincidence that in my case in January 1993, and then in the Airbus Affair criminal investigation in 1995-97, Mulroney was craftily let off the hook by Assistant Commissioner J. W. B. McConnell, or Bryan McConnell; the threat of violence against Prime Minister Jean Chretien through the November 1995 residence intrusion might have also been tolerated by McConnell.
As for reference as “Brian McConnell” besides in 1989 in Montreal by the major press, there have been a small number of mentions in that name but outside of the major media.
As its executive director, McConnell was occasionally identified by CACP as Brian McConnell (“Canadian Police Research Centre Annual Report”, 1998, Government of Canada).
While still in the RCMP, on June 8, 1995 – only months before Justice Department’s September 29 letter to the Swiss police for assistance in investigating Mulroney’s criminal activity – McConnell was reported as “Assistant Commissioner Brian McConnell” by The Klondike Sun, when he accompanied RCMP Commissioner Philip Murray and Deputy Commissioner “Benoit” to Dawson City,Yukon, to celebrate the retirement of Yukon Territory Commissioner Ken McKinnon at his last Commissioner’s Ball (“Red Serge at the Palace”, by Dan Davidson, June 8, 1995, The Klondike Sun):
“McKinnon noted that this final ball was the first time that his entire family (Judy, Craig and Alexia) had been able to be together at this event.
…
The Commissioner’s guest this year read like a who’s who of the R.C.M.P. establishment.
“I can see there’s more red serge here tonight then there has been at any time since Arizona Charlie Meadows opened the dance hall here” he said as he began his introductions. “Of course, that’s because of the 100th anniversary of the R.C.M.P.”
Guests included the Commissioner of the R.C.M.P., Phil Murray, Deputy Commissioner Benoit, Assistant Commissioner Brian McConnell, Inspector Gary Leopke, aide to Commissioner Murray, all from Ottawa. From Yellowknife came Superintendent Brian Watt, commanding officer of G Division. From Whitehorse came Chief Super. Ed. Henderson, commanding officer of M Division, Inspector Russ Juby, the chief organizer of the force’s centennial schedule, and Insp. Barry Kutryk, McKinnon’s aide de camp.”
Clearly identifying almost every RCMP guest’s job, this news story however didn’t mention if Brian McConnell was director of enforcement services or commanding officer of “A” Division. Deputy Commissioner “Benoit” was also not a full name; as in Parts 9 & 11, Commissioner Murray’s second-in-command was Frank Palmer, promoted from the B.C. “E” Division in June 1994 to succeed Murray as deputy commissioner for criminal operations when Murray succeeded Norman Inkster, and was still at that job as of 1996 and early 1997, using “international law enforcement confidentiality” to object to disclosing information for Mulroney’s lawsuit trial.
But the Yukon Commissioner’s happy last Ball attended by his entire family and the RCMP brass from Ottawa, organized by the women’s organization IODE, Klondike National Historical Sites and Girl Guides, was somewhat spoiled by IODE’s charging admission fees to make up for its charity shortfall due to lack of river ice for its annual Ice Pool (“The Commissioner’s Last Tea”, by Dan Davidson, June 8, 1995, The Klondike Sun).
Looking ‘wimpy’ for this Royal Canadian Mounted Police centennial year of 1995.
Still earlier in April 1992, a Canadian government news release on combating tobacco smuggling referred to “Brian McConnell” as RCMP director of enforcement services (“news release, April 8, 1992, Government of Canada”, The Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, University of California, San Francisco.
So Bryan McConnell was sometimes “Brian McConnell”, in government documents or out-of-town news stories.
But my study of the major newspaper archives has uncovered a more definitive pattern of how the two different first names were used when McConnell was with RCMP: working in Montreal he was identified as “Brian McConnell” or “J. W. B. McConnell”, and working in Ottawa he was referred to as “Bryan McConnell” – the only exceptions, as noted in Part 11, was handling the Prime Minister’s residence break-in in Ottawa amid intense media scrutiny in late 1995 when The Globe and Mail used “Brian McConnell” twice.
As a matter of fact, Bryan McConnell had been an RCMP senior officer in Ottawa before Montreal, as early as in July 1982 (“ACROSS CANADA Ex-bureaucrat sentenced”, July 22, 1982, The Globe and Mail):
“A former senior federal public servant was sentenced yesterday to two years less a day in jail for misappropriating $226,749 in Government funds. Paul Becker, 40, now of Toronto, was also placed on probation for three years … RCMP Insp. Bryan McConnell told the court Mr. Becker had misappropriated funds from the Health and Welfare Department and the Ministry of State for Social Development.”
As in Part 3 I was still in China then, about to go to graduate school in the United States.
In 1985-86 Bryan McConnell headed RCMP’s 45-man drug squad for the Capital region (“The life of a drugbuster; 7 Ottawa undercover officers battle street traffickers”, by Ian MacLeod, October 5, 1985, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Ottawa police concede it would be folly to think they could ever put a stop to the illegal drug trade.
Instead, seven men work undercover to keep the street traders off balanced and nervous.
…
Ottawa also has a 45-man RCMP National Capital drug squad located in offices on Cooper Street. It monitors major drug trafficking operations in which drugs flow in and out of this part of Ontario from other provinces and countries.
In one of the drug routes, for example, narcotics arrive in the country at Montreal or Toronto and are sometimes shipped here to be divided up and sent by road or mail to places like Northern Ontario, parts of Quebec and Western Canada. Because the shipments usually cross provincial and municipal boundries, the RCMP is the only police force with jurisdiction in all areas.
To combat the trade at those levels, roughly defined as quantities involving more than an ounce or pound of narcotics, the Mounties have, “access to a budget adequate to the level of the problem,” says Insp. Bryan McConnell, head of the federal squad.
As well as considerable drug-buying cash, that budget allows the RCMP to supply, when required, expensive cars and hotel rooms so their men can
pose as out-of-town buyers.Street drug enforcement, which is targeted mainly at low-level pushers selling quantities measured by the gram, falls to the municipal squad. It is equipped with modest unmarked cars and an equally modest five-figure drug-buying budget, partly because of other demands on the police force’s budget.”
McConnell’s 45-man RCMP drug squad actually wasn’t as successful as the Ottawa police using 7 undercover cops and the help of Ontario Provincial Police: the biggest drug bust of 1986 in Ottawa was carried out by RCMP with 24 arrests and trafficking charges against 30 suspects, whereas the Ottawa and Ontario police forces’ operation in December 1985 had napped nearly 100 suspected traffickers (“24 arrested, six still sought in year’s biggest drug investigation”, by Ian MacLeod, November 28, 1986, The Ottawa Citizen).
One of the suspects who slipped out of RCMP’s arm in 1986 was 40-year-old Allan Strong of Cantley, Quebec, who according to Inspector Bryan McConnell had sold a pound of the narcotic stimulant “amphetamine speed” to an RCMP undercover agent but when RCMP looked for him again Strong had disappeared (“Police want Cantley man on drug charges”, by Ian MacLeod, December 15, 1986, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Crime Stoppers is appealing for public help in finding a former Cantley, Que. man named in an RCMP warrant for trafficking in an estimated $75,000 worth of the amphetamine speed.
RCMP Insp. Bryan McConnell, head of the force’s national capital drug squad, says an undercover agent bought about one pound of the narcotic stimulant from a man in the summer of 1984.
Police say they were planning to make another purchase from the man later in an attempt to catch other people suspected of working with him, when he disappeared.
Wanted is Allan Strong, 40. He is five foot, 11 inches, about 240 pounds, with brown hair and eyes and possibly a moustache. He has a heart-shaped tattoo on his upper left arm.
Since the arrest warrant was issued, McConnell said Strong is reported to have been seen in the Ottawa and Montreal areas.”
In most likelihood Allan Strong was no longer in Canada, but had fled to Florida in the United States and had already been a murderer, as told in writer D’Arcy O’Connor’s 2011 book, Montreal's Irish Mafia: The True Story of the Infamous West End Gang (March 2011, John Wiley & Sons):
“Following the murders of Ryan and Phillips, Singer, now living in Pompano Beach, Florida, was the next witness targeted for elimination. On May 12, 1985, he was found shot dead at the age of thirty-one with three .38-caliber bullets to his head and chest, his body sprawled across the back seat of a stolen car that had been abandoned in Tigertail Like Park in Dania, Florida, just south of Fort Lauderdale.
…
Two days before his body was found, Singer had been “taken for a ride” in the stolen car by two West End Gang hoods, Allan Strong and Raymond Desfosses. Their mission, which allegedly was ordered by Alan Ross, was to get rid of the first-hand witness to the murder of Eddie Phillips.
Strong, who also went under the Aliases of Jean-Guy Trepanier and Yvan-Jacques Rousseau, was originally from Cantley, Quebec. He’d been serving a 10-year sentence for armed robbery at the Cowansville penitentiary until his escape on May 9, 1973. He was next arrested, at the age of twenty-seven, during a gun battle with police following an aborted Montreal bank robbery on March 15, 1974, during which an innocent bystander was shot and killed by a stray bullet. His accomplices were William Lydon, twenty-nine, and William White, twenty-three, both of whom were prison escapees from the Massachusetts Correctional Institute. After his release in 1984, Strong became an international drug trafficker with ties to Colombia’s Cali cartel, and was second in command to Alan Ross, who had taken over as leader of the West End Gang following Ryan’s assassination. Shortly after that, Strong fled to Florida.”
The place of origin and age of the two Allan Strongs’ were so alike I would have to think they were the same person. A big-time Montreal West End Gang leader and murderer had slipped out from under his watch, and RCMP Inspector Bryan McConnell wanted the public to think it was only about some stimulant drug.
With such a pale and blemished record not recognized by the public, in 1989 McConnell, by now Chief Superintendent “Brian” McConnell, received major national media attentions for his work in charge of criminal operations in Montreal.
Then in 1990 in Montreal he was reported as “J. W. B. McConnell”, and by October 1991 he was back in Ottawa again as “Bryan McConnell”, Assistant Commissioner overseeing RCMP enforcement services across Canada.
It was not until early 1992 that Allan Strong and his Montreal West End Gang cohorts were indicted for murder in Florida, and his cohorts arrested, following a 6-year investigation involving police agencies around the world, including Montreal police, RCMP, Surete du Quebec, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the U.S. Marshal Service, and police from the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. (“Busted; Quebecers face murder, drug charges in Florida”, by Catherine Buckie, March 28, 1992, and, “Lawyers to offer no evidence in Ross’s defence”, by William Marsden, May 13, 1992, The Gazette)
But Allan Strong was nowhere to be found. In 1992 he slipped away from the international police dragnet just like he had done from RCMP Insp. Bryan McConnell, and the media failed to even note that it might be the same Allan Strong.
Then starting on December 22, 1992, the murder suspect was reported as “Alain Strong” in the media, with the reported suicide of RCMP Inspector Claude Savoie – an underling of A/Comm. McConnell – while under investigation for ties to the West End Gang (“RCMP ex-drug-squad head kills self; Thought to have links to Allan (Weasel) Ross”, by William Marsden, Mike Boone, Eddie Collister and Charles Lewis, December 22, 1992, The Gazette):
“The assistant director of the RCMP's criminal-intelligence service in Ottawa, who killed himself in his office yesterday, was under investigation for leaking information to a former Montreal crime boss.
Inspector Claude Savoie, 49, who was head of the Montreal drug squad from 1989 to 1991 before being transferred to the intelligence department in Ottawa, shot himself with his service pistol at 9:15 a.m., the RCMP said.
Savoie was alone in his office at the time and all indications point to suicide, Ottawa coroner James Dickson confirmed.
One source said Savoie had been under investigation for a year for leaking information to convicted drug dealer Allan (The Weasel) Ross, former head of Montreal's West End Gang. But the official RCMP statement said the investigation was several months old.
…
Savoie shot himself a day before the CBC current-affairs show, the Fifth Estate, was about to air a segment on Ross and the West End Gang.
High-placed informants
The program, to be broadcast tonight at 8 o’clock, concentrates on information made public at Ross’s trial on drug-conspiracy charges in Florida last spring after which Ross was convicted and given three life sentences.
It also airs a widely held belief that Ross was never prosecuted in Canada because he had high-placed informants within Canadian police departments.
The Fifth Estate reports private meetings between Ross and Savoie at a downtown restaurant and in the offices of Ross’s lawyer, Sidney Leithman, who was murdered in 1990.
The report, titled The Weasel, was ready for broadcast when producer Julian Sher heard about Savoie’s suicide.
…
The RCMP would not allow the Fifth Estate to interview Savoie on camera and would not authorize anyone to discuss the Ross case which, Sher was told, was still under RCMP investigation.
…
After former West End Gang leader Frank (Dunie) Ryan was murdered in 1984, Ross took command. He paid $200,000 to a Hell’s Angels contract killer to avenge Ryan's murder. Four suspects in Ryan's killing were blown up in a de Maisonneuve Blvd. apartment.
…
In 1985, West End Gang member David Singer was murdered in Florida, apparently because he knew too much about Ross and the de Maisonneuve Blvd. killings. Ross is awaiting trial in Fort Lauderdale for the Singer slaying.
…
Ross’s main pilot was veteran U.S. smuggler Bert Gordon. …
…
Gordon and another Ross associate, Alain Strong, were supposed to handle the shipment when it arrived. (Strong, also known as Jean- Guy Trepanier, is a fugitive charged in the U.S. with the Singer slaying and with drug dealing.) But the shipment was seized by Portuguese police and U.S. narcotics agents.”
The ‘name change’ to Alain Strong had the effect that future media publicity would not be linked to the Allan Strong that had slipped out of Insp. Bryan McConnell’s grip in 1986.
What other reason could it be? J. W. B. McConnell’s loyal lieutenant in Montreal, promoted to follow him to RCMP national headquarters I presume, had helped a big-time gang leader escape?
Quite possibly.
At the time of the Savoie suicide story before Christmas 1992 I had just been discharged from my first psychiatric committal, on December 21 – the day of Claude Savoie’s death – as in Part 6, having been taken to UBC Hospital on November 30 by RCMP Sgt. Brian Cotton. A/Comm. McConnell’s internal letter forwarding my complaint to “E” Division would not be issued until January 6, 1993, and none of the The Vancouver Sun articles on the Savoie story mentioned Alain Strong (“TV probe linked to Mountie’s death”, by Bob Cox, December 22, 1992, “Mountie's suicide linked to violent trail of crime”, December 23, 1992, and, “RCMP says it will do a full probe of inspector’s suicide”, December 31, 1992, The Vancouver Sun).
Prior to that, Claude Savoie seemed to have been reported in The Vancouver Sun only once, in 1987 when the Montreal RCMP, with help from the Soviet Union, made a huge bust of a $100 million worth of drug shipment from Afghanistan (“Soviets helped in drug bust”, August 21, 1987, The Vancouver Sun).
Alain Strong was eventually arrested in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in February 1994 after a 3-year search, and RCMP was reportedly anxious to learn from him more about the dead Claude Savoie (“Police manhunt nabs suspected drug dealer; Three-year search by RCMP, MUC police ends with arrest in Amsterdam”, by William Marsden, February 16, 1994, The Gazette):
“The RCMP also are eager to talk to Strong about the corruption of police officers and specifically Inspector Claude Savoie, former head of the RCMP’s
Montreal drug squad who committed suicide in 1992.The RCMP says Savoie received about $200,000 between 1988 and 1991 from the West End Gang for information about police investigations.”
Wow, the West End Gang paid an RCMP drug squad boss as much as they had paid a Hell’s Angel contract killer – $200,000 as in the December 22, 1992 The Gazette story quoted earlier. For that kind of cozy relationship and money prospect, Strong’s 1986 escape may indeed have been helped by Savoie, and for McConnell the police search for Strong had been 8 years, not 3 years.
Strong was extradited back to Canada and then to Florida, where he was convicted of drug trafficking – but not murder – on March 29, 1996 (“West End Gang member convicted of trafficking: Florida court could impose life sentence”, by William Marsden, March 30, 1996, and, “Florida prosecutor looks for witnesses for trial of ex-West End Gang members”, by Lisa Fitterman, May 2, 1996, The Gazette; and, “High-profile Inmate Pleads No Contest To Killing Charge”, by Jose Lambiet, May 29, 1998, Sun Sentinel).
According to D'Arcy O’Connor’s book on the West End Gang cited earlier, Allan Strong received a 25-year jail term. Published in 2011, the book contains the crucial info identifying Allan Strong’s age and his being from Cantley, QC, matching the December 1986 The Ottawa Citizen article about the amphetamine speed dealer wanted by RCMP Insp. McConnell. I cannot find that info, be it for Allan Strong, Alain Strong or the aliases as in D’Arcy O’Connor’s book, in any other article in the major newspaper archives.
“Allan” and “Alain” could be just an English-French difference. Could it be like that when it came to “Bryan” or “Brian” McConnell?
I don’t know if anyone should still be so naive to look upon it as only different letters in a name. Instead, I look into whether some sort of favor for Brian Mulroney was involved, and there would be a positive answer – similar to McConnell’s handling of the Chretien residence intrusion and the Mulroney criminal investigation in 1995-97, and his handling in January 1993 of the documents I had sent Kim Campbell.
Recall as in Part 9, in 1989 Richard Grise, a Member of Parliament in Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s Tory party quit the parliament and pleaded guilty to 11 corruption charges, but other fraud charges against him lingered until June 1994 when RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster was about to retire.
The story had been much worse for RCMP back in November-December 1989, when Inkster had to admit that timing of the Richard Grise affair had been delayed by RCMP to avoid the November 1988 federal election (“Mounties stalled raid on MP's office until after election”, by Patrick Doyle, November 21, 1989, Toronto Star):
“The Mounties intentionally delayed a probe of a Quebec Tory MP suspected of fraud until after last year’s federal election, RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster admitted today.
…
Until today the RCMP insisted that it was simply coincidence that search warrants were delayed until the day after the Nov.21 election.
Grise was re-elected in that election, but resigned May 30 after pleading guilty of fraud and breach of trust. He was sentenced to one day in jail and a $20,000 fine.”
It was the fault of Chief Superintendent “Brian” McConnell, who decided to postpone a warrant search of Grise for a corruption complaint first filed in the summer, until after the November 21 election so as not to be “unfair” (“Probe of MP delayed until election over”, November 21, 1989, The Vancouver Sun):
“Inkster had told the Commons justice committee last summer that the timing of the investigation of Grise - who later pleaded guilty to 11 charges of fraud and breach of trust and resigned from the House - was purely coincidental.
But Inkster said today that he had been misinformed by aides.
The commissioner said that Chief Supt. Brian McConnell, head of criminal investigations in Montreal, made a decision to delay the execution of search warrants in the case until Nov. 22, 1988, the day after the election.
…
The commissioner said he just found out last night and had not yet had a chance to speak to McConnell and ask him to explain his action.
But he indicated that it appeared the Montreal officer acted on the mistaken belief it would be unfair for the investigation to become public during the election campaign.
Allegations against Grise were raised in the summer of 1988 by Phil Edmondston, a New Democrat candidate who lost the Chambly riding south of Montreal to Grise.
Inkster, testifying on a range of issues, said he is not aware of any improper political influence by the government in any RCMP investigations.”
Corruption allegations against Mulroney’s associates had been a recurring theme his government had to face, as detailed in Stevie Cameron’s 1994 book cited earlier. Commissioner Inkster’s disclosure amounted to an admission that RCMP had played favorites with electoral politics.
He could be sincere that he had just found out about the problem, but I see Inkster’s finger point at a Brian, not the real name Bryan, McConnell in charge of criminal investigations in Montreal.
C/Supt. Brian McConnell nearly contradicted Inkster, stating that he had informed superiors in RCMP headquarters ahead of time and received approval. On an official visit in the Soviet Union, Mulroney asserted that no one should even question RCMP’s independence on a matter like this (“Probe delay was okayed, Mountie says”, by Stephen Bindman, November 22, 1989, The Vancouver Sun):
“… McConnell told Southam News he informed assistant commissioner Marcel Coutu last Nov. 14, the same day he decided to postpone the search.
“I made my decision and then I advised Ottawa of a decision I had already taken,” McConnell said in an interview.
“The decision was accepted at that time. The decision was made, the searches were delayed and that was that.”
…
“The RCMP is an independent agency run by an independent career officer,” Mulroney said.
“It is a profound disservice by the opposition to even suggest anything to the contrary.”
Mulroney is on an official visit to the Soviet Union.”
McConnell disclosed that the investigation delay in November 1988 also applied to Tory politician Joseph Hamelin (“Allegations repugnant, Mountie says”, by Stephen Bindman, November 22, 1989, The Vancouver Sun):
“McConnell said he also discussed the postponement with other senior Mounties.
…
McConnell added later that he also put off an investigation involving Joseph Hamelin.
Hamelin, the riding secretary for St-Hubert riding near Montreal, faces charges of bribery and fraud, while Danielle Hervieux, who resigned as Tory candidate in the riding before the election, is charged with fraud.”
McConnell explained that the decision came up on November 14, a week before the election, because RCMP investigators asked him on that day (“Brass OK’d delaying probe, says Mountie”, by Graham Parley, November 22, 1989, The Ottawa Citizen):
“McConnell said investigators told him on Nov. 14, a week before the election, that they planned to obtain search warrants in both the Hamelin and Grise investigations.
The chief superintendent said he was convinced there was no urgency and “proceeding with these searches less than one week before the federal election could have harmed a number of innocent people, including many having nothing to do with the investigations.””
Commissioner Inkster reacted to McConnell’s explanation by saying that he had not been informed (“Mountie put off Grise raid to avoid influencing vote”, by William Marsden, November 22, 1989, The Gazette):
“McConnell said he immediately relayed his decision to Marcel Coutu, acting deputy commissioner of criminal investigations in Ottawa. He said Coutu told him “he had no problem” with the delay.
Informed later of McConnell’s comments, Inkster said: “This is news to me.””
McConnell reassured that no politician had tried to contact him about the matter:
“Yesterday, McConnell told The Gazette he was never contacted by any political official during the Grise and Hamelin investigations.
He said he made the decision to delay the searches at a meeting with chief investigating officer Yves Berube and two senior officers.
He said everyone at the meeting agreed “nothing would be lost to delay the searches for a few days.”
“But, on the other hand, proceeding with those searches in less than one week before a federal election ... perhaps could have influenced the election on a local and national level,” McConnell said.”
Brian McConnell was right that the Tory corruption bad news at that time “could have influenced the election on a local and national level”; two weeks before the election, a major national poll had shown that the opposition Liberal party would win a majority (“Business worry: Can Mulroney win election and save free trade?”, by Larry Walsh, November 21, 1988, Toronto Star):
“The Toronto stock market tumbled more than 75 points in one day after a Gallup poll released two weeks ago showed the Liberals had enough support to win a majority government if the election were held then.”
Instead, Mulroney won his second majority in a row (“THE LESSONS OF CAMPAIGN ’88 Now it’s Tory Quebec”, by Lisa Bissonnette, November 26, 1988, The Globe and Mail).
When the political wind was so changeable, anything could matter: there had been communication from the Prime Minister’s Office to the RCMP earlier in November 1988 about the Grise and Hamelin cases.
Back in June 1989 Inkster told a parliamentary committee that Mulroney’s principal secretary Peter White had sent a letter to RCMP on November 8 – about a week before McConnell’s decision to postpone the warrant search (“Mountie put off Grise raid to avoid influencing vote”, by William Marsden, November 22, 1989, The Gazette):
“The RCMP received a letter from Peter White, Mulroney’s principal secretary, on Nov. 8, 1988, which discussed accusations against Grise and Hamelin involving an alleged unemployment insurance paycheque scam, Inkster acknowledged to the committee in June.
Inkster refused at the time to make public the letter because, he said, it involved a case still before the courts.
Grise’s complainant Phil Edmonston, New Democrat Party candidate who had filed the complaint in August 1988, called the investigation delay a betrayal by RCMP:
“Allegations against Grise were originally brought to the RCMP in August 1988 by his main opponent in Chambly, New Democratic Party candidate Phil Edmonston. Grise won the election by about 8,000 votes.
Edmonston said in an interview yesterday that he felt “betrayed” by the RCMP decision to delay the searches until after the election.
“They (the RCMP) changed the normal routine for political reasons,” he said. “You are supposed to have blinders in an investigation. You are not there to be affected by outside things.””
Opposition Liberal leader John Turner – not yet Jean Chretien at that time – asked the Mulroney government what was in the PMO letter (“PM aide’s statement to Mounties queried”, by Jim Brown, November 23, 1989, The Vancouver Sun):
“The government should come clean and explain what Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s right-hand man told the RCMP about a Tory MP accused of corruption during last year’s federal election, Liberal leader John Turner says.
…
Chief Supt. Brian McConnell, the officer who made the decision, has said he feared that carrying out searches during the campaign would have “improperly affected the electoral process.”
Turner rejected that explanation in the Commons, saying “the public interest demands prompt and impartial investigations . . . whether or not there’s an election on.”
Noting that McConnell’s decision came just after the Mounties received White’s document, Turner demanded: “What was in that document?””
Turner viewed it as a part of a wider pattern of government misusing RCMP for political purposes (“Misuse of Mounties could be widespread Liberals charge”, by Patrick Doyle, November 23, 1989, Toronto Star):
“Three apparent cases of government interference with RCMP investigations may be part of a wider pattern of the Progressive Conservative government’s misuse of the federal police force, Opposition leader John Turner has charged.
…
At issue are three cases that opposition critics say give the impression the government is manipulating the RCMP for its own purposes:
* A trial in which Global TV reporter Doug Small and two others face charges arising out of the leak of the federal budget last April. An RCMP staff sergeant has testified that he did not think the charges should have been laid and that the case went to court only to please the government.
* An admission by RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster this week that an investigation of Quebec Tory MP Richard Grise was delayed until after last November's federal election - in which Grise was re-elected - so as not to interfere with the vote.
* Allegations that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s principal secretary Bernard Roy was improperly involved in an RCMP investigation of convicted Quebec Tory Michel Gravel.
Roy has denied such involvement.
Outside the Commons, Turner told reporters, “These are perhaps not isolated cases. These are perhaps a course of conduct on the part of the government. The political interference issue must be cleaned up as soon as possible.””
So two of Mulroney’s principal secretaries, Peter White and Bernard Roy, appeared to have interfered when Mulroney’s underlings were investigated by police.
RCMP scoffed at the “big fuss over nothing”, explaining that the info from Peter White had helped police prosecute Richard Grise (“PM’s aide’s letter helped RCMP probe of Grise”, by William Marsden, November 29, 1989, The Gazette):
“Referring to repeated demands in the House of Commons that the government make public the letter, one RCMP source said: “It’s a big fuss over nothing.”
…
A memorandum from the prime minister’s office obtained by The Gazette shows that White initially sent his written statement Nov. 7, 1988, to Ward Elcock, former assistant secretary in the Privy Council and now deputy clerk of intelligence and security. Elcock in turn gave it to then RCMP assistant commissioner Rod Stamler on Nov. 8, 1988, who relayed it that same day to RCMP investigators in Montreal.
The investigators then interviewed White.
Police sources said the essential facts of White’s statement were revealed in four police affidavits that accompanied requests for search warrants for Grise’s home and offices in Longueuil and Ottawa.
According to the affidavits, White told police that Grise confessed he was “worried because he thought he had been implicated in some improprieties in 1985 and 1986.”
White also told the RCMP in his statement that Grise said Hamelin was implicated with him “in contractual arrangements between Grise and a woman connected with Hamelin.” About a week earlier, the woman had alleged to police that Grise and Hamelin had used her to commit fraud.
The warrants also state that Grise confessed that a company called “Les Consultants Sorig International Inc. was involved in the improprieties.” Grise was the president of this company.
White’s statement was used to support demands for four search warrants obtained Nov. 21, 1988, and Jan. 16, 1989.
Timing of the Nov. 21 warrant became an issue in Ottawa last week when RCMP Chief Supt. Brian McConnell said he delayed the execution of the warrant until after the election.”
In a nutshell, Grise confessed to Mulroney’s office about “improprieties” in business practice, and that info was relayed to RCMP which, in turn, decided to prosecute the case only after the election.
To be fair, RCMP did get a concession from Mulroney’s side. However, it wasn’t clear when the RCMP request for info was first made for a complaint filed in August, that it took the PMO until just 2 weeks before the November 21 election to reply.
My guess is that Prime Minister Mulroney wouldn’t risk incurring public condemnation by dragging the matter to post-election but also wouldn’t want to give the political oppositions an election opportunity, so the incriminating info was given to RCMP with a very short, 2-week window of time, and C/Supt. Brian McConnell was there to let the time run out.
And Mulroney likely also deployed national security gimmicks for his interests: facing re-election in 1988 his office’s letter on the Grise case was not sent directly to RCMP but via Ward Elcock, Privy Council “deputy clerk of intelligence and security” as in the above quote; later in January 1993 when RCMP “E” Division decided to use my pending lawsuit as the reason not to investigate my complaint forwarded from A/Comm. McConnell, it was per the recommendation of C/Supt. P. M. Cummins, former RCMP national security investigations head transferred to B.C. not long beforehand, as in Parts 6 & 7; then in 2007 when Mulroney faced fresh allegations about money from Karlheinz Schreiber, as in Part 11, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Mulroney-era RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster as his national security advisory council chair.
The Richard Grise affair proved that Brian McConnell, i.e., Bryan McConnell, had a long history of giving Brian Mulroney political favor in handling investigations, dating back to 1988. The Allan Strong case proved that McConnell had an earlier history of being evasive about criminal information, and that his colleague/subordinate Claude Savoie likely helped very violent criminals.
But McConnell didn’t take the fall for the Grise affair in 1989; Deputy Commissioner Henry Jensen, who had failed to inform Inkster of the controversial delay, was blamed and took early retirement, succeeded by Gilles Favreau (“Top Mountie misled his chief, MPs informed”, by Patrick Doyle, December 13, 1989, and, “Rough ride for the Mounties; Fabled force finds trouble on the Hill”, by Patrick Doyle, December 26, 1989, Toronto Star; and, “Successor to Jensen appointed”, January 9, 1990, The Windsor Star)
The new RCMP second-in-command, Deputy Commissioner Gilles Favreau, was known to have been a target of disrespect by the Ottawa police when he headed the Ottawa region “A” Division, over handling of hostage taking of Bahamian vice consul Janet Rahming in Ottawa – because the city police did not need RCMP’s help according to RCMP Inspector Philip Murray (“Police, RCMP dismiss charges of squabbling during hostage-taking”, by Ian MacLeod, April 9, 1986, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Ottawa police Staff Insp. John McCombie, the chief negotiator during the night-long ordeal at the Kent Street building, acknowledges a senior officer from each force had “a difference of opinion” at the start of the drama over how the police operation was to be carried out.
He said the dispute was over technical operations, not jurisdiction, and did not jeopardize negotiations with the hostage-taker.
…
But RCMP Insp. Phil Murray said the dispute between the unidentified Ottawa inspector and RCMP Chief Supt. Gilles Favreau, head of the force’s Ottawa division, started when the Ottawa officer “said he didn't really need our help. But obviously, the RCMP had a role to play.”
Despite their different versions of the dispute, Murray and McCombie said the issue was soon resolved when more senior Ottawa officers arrived on the scene.
“From our perspective, the co-operation was very good. They understood there is a dual role to play,” Murray said. “The federal government, through the RCMP, has to protect internationally protected persons.”
…
Solicitor General Perrin Beatty also hotly denied that RCMP and Ottawa police had argued about jurisdiction, insisting instead that their superb work resulted in a peaceful end to an explosive situation.
…
“I think we got lucky... in that incident,” retorted Liberal MP John Nunziata, who had been questioning the minister about police actions after vice-counsul Janet Rahming was taken hostage last Tuesday.
Rahming was released unharmed after being held at gun-point for 15 hours. Clifford David William Maltby, 39, was sentenced to five years in prison when he pleaded guilty to unlawful confinement, possession of a handgun dangerous to public peace and threatening to murder Rahming.”
So the less-than-effective policing by RCMP was not confined to Bryan McConnell and Claude Savoie, but was a local police view in Ottawa toward the RCMP regional division headed by Favreau, later headed by McConnell at the time of the Prime Minister’s Residence break-in.
By 1991 known again as “Bryan”, McConnell was Assistant Commissioner directing enforcement services in RCMP headquarters. But his mid-1980s Ottawa contemporary, Inspector Philip Murray quoted above, who handled cabinet-level and VIP matters (“Mulroney initiated RCMP probe of leak: official”, May 11, 1985, The Gazette) when Insp. McConnell headed the drug squad, faired better.
Whereas McConnell let slip violent gang leader Allan Strong, nothing was left to chances under Murray’s VIP protection (“Television best place to see Reagans during Ottawa visit”, by John Kessel, April 4, 1987, The Ottawa Citizen):
“RCMP Supt. Philip Murray says anyone near Parliament Hill and along the Sussex Drive route the president’s limousine will take to and from Government House, are “just going to get a glance.”
Murray, who heads the RCMP “P Directorate,” responsible for security of VIPs visiting the capital, says the best view of Reagan and the First Lady will be on television.
He’ll be directing about 400 uniformed and plainclothes officers from five police forces - the RCMP , Ottawa, Gloucester, OPP and military - in the “blanket” security coverage Murray says has been set up.
…
Ottawa police Staff Insp. Bob Kelly said his force will have about 100 uniformed men involved in security.
…
Most of the demonstration will be aimed at the free trade talks between the U.S. and Canada, disarmament and acid rain.
Kelly said the group will be protesting everything from soup to nuts and his officers will be mostly responsible for manning the barricades on the Hill
and the streets which have been blocked off in front of Parliament buildings.…
The routes have been inspected for more than a week with special police units.
“Everything is already in place in regards to all levels of threat we can expect against the president,” Murray said.”
Murray was named Assistant Commissioner commanding the Capital Ottawa “A” Division in March 1991, then Deputy Commissioner of administration by year’s end, and in November 1993 the new Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s choice for the RCMP’s second-in-command, replacing Gilles Favreau (“RCMP names new top cops”, by Stephen Bindman, November 22, 1993, Edmonton Journal; and, “The RCMP gets its man: Commissioner Philip Murray’s low-key style has kept him out of the limelight and in touch with his force”, by Carolyn Abraham, August 3, 1996, The Ottawa Citizen).
As shown earlier from Part 11, Philip Murray was later the RCMP Commissioner who and whose underlings in November 1995 and January 1997 subtly suggested – at his high level of delicate attention – that mishandlings of the Chretien residence break-in and of the Mulroney criminal investigation were “A” Division commanding officer Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell’s problems.
But that wasn’t it.
I notice more in the stories, easy to overlook but tantalizingly intriguing: as in the November 29, 1989 news report by William Marsden quoted earlier, Richard Grise’s home and offices searched by RCMP in November 1988 were “in Longueuil and Ottawa”.
In the wee hours of November 5, 1995, it was from Longueuil, Quebec, that convenience store worker Andre Dallaire came with a jackknife in hand, breaking into Prime Minister Chretien’s residence, and the RCMP officer who had shown favoritism for Mulroney and Grise in 1988, C/Supt. Brian McConnell, was now A/Comm. Bryan McConnell supervising officers responsible for VIP security, and handling disciplines and media “damage control” in the aftermath.
But in November 1995 no one in the media even whispered that back in 1988-89 there had been another infamous Longueuil man Richard Grise, and that this RCMP McConnell might just be that McConnell.
I would think that, had he not strategically used one name in Ottawa and another in Montreal, McConnell would have run into serious objections to his promotion back to Ottawa by the Mulroney government after the Grise affair, and would have caused a public uproar in November 1995 when under his watch an armed intruder went so close to Mr. and Mrs. Chretien.
But the second time some in the media likely knew “Bryan” McConnell was “Brian” McConnell. As noted in Part 11, amid the intense media coverage of the Chretien residence break-in in late 1995, The Globe and Mail referred to Assistant Commissioner McConnell as “Brian”, twice, in a November 17 report by Hugh Winsor, and in the following year-end summary of annual events, about who’s hot and who’s not (“Here's looking at who’s hot, who’s not; Brian Tobin, who raised up turbots by their fingernails; ticked off taxpayers; the humbled Montreal Canadiens; a feisty British Columbia: These are among the year’s newsmakers as compiled by The Globe and Mail’s Ottawa bureau staff”, December 30, 1995,The Globe and Mail):
“Really hot - Aline Chretien, who remains calm and collected, locking doors and phoning police.
Cold - RCMP Assistant Commissioner Brian McConnell, who as head of A Division is responsible for 24 Sussex Dr. security, went to RCMP headquarters to oversee damage control rather than to the Prime Minister's residence to oversee security.”
Mrs. Chretien’s bravery when confronted by the armed intruder earned her a “really hot” accolade, while “Brian” McConnell wasn’t even “not”, but “cold”.
If some at The Globe and Mail knew Brian McConnell of 1988-89 and Bryan McConnell were the same person, then they likely were aware of things worse than reported to the public.
If so, then it had to do with the fact that back in November 1988 The Globe and Mail had acted the same way as C/Supt. Brian McConnell in the Richard Grise affair, delaying reporting until after the November 21 election. Paul Palango described in his book, Above the Law: The Crooks, the Politicians, the Mounties, and Rod Stamler, published by McClelland & Stewart in 1994 over a year before November 1995:
“… During the days leading up to the election, the Economic Crime police were investigating the case of Tory backbencher Richard Grise. On November 15 – six days before the election – investigators in Montreal determined that there was enough evidence to seek a search warrant against Grise for fraud and breach of trust involving his duties as a parliamentarian. At the time, most of the RCMP brass, including [assistant commissioner Rod] Stamler, were out of the office, Jensen and Inkster in Thailand at an Interpol meeting. The assistant commissioner sitting in for Jensen that day, Marcel Coutu, decided to sit on the application for a search warrant until November 21, the day of the election. Jensen didn’t learn about Coutu’s decision until two weeks after the election.
The fear of being accused of political interference on the one hand, and of angering or embarrassing the Mulroney government on the other, seemed to extend to the media, as well. The Globe and Mail, which had been in the forefront of writing about the petty and not-so-petty corruptions of the Tories, had its own Grise story ready for publication prior to the election. However, after much internal wrangling, the paper made the decision to hold off until after the election, on the grounds that it didn’t want to influence unduly the outcome of the campaign in Grise’s riding by providing an unfair advantage to his opponents.”
Unfortunately, in his 1994 book Paul Palango neglected to refresh his readers the name of RCMP officer Brian McConnell from the 1988 events.
The situation in November 1995 became worse: an armed intruder from Richard Grise’s old turf broke into the official residence of Jean Chretien whose Liberals had decimated the Tories in the 1993 election, and the RCMP commander supervising those responsible for VIP security was the same McConnell who had handled the Grise case in favor of Tories’ election prospect in 1988.
This time The Globe and Mail put off reporting the real story indefinitely.
There is a coherent explanation for this, that in November 1995 as 7 years earlier, The Globe and Mail continued to favor Brian Mulroney in the high-level political intrigues.
While he likely suppressed exposing the “Brian” McConnell story, The Globe and Mail editor-in-chief William Thorsell also acted as a special friend of Mulroney’s in the latter’s public-relations campaign against the RCMP’s Airbus Affair criminal investigation (“Editor subpoenaed: Mulroney gave Globe and Mail chief details before launching libel suit”, by Rod MacDonell, December 13, 1996, The Gazette):
“The editor in chief of the Toronto Globe and Mail, William Thorsell, was served with a subpoena yesterday ordering him to appear in Superior Court in Montreal on Jan. 6 to testify about his dealings with Brian Mulroney in the 20 days before Mulroney filed an unprecedented $50-million libel suit against the federal government.
…
On Nov. 19, 1995, Mulroney faxed Thorsell copies of legal documents that were to be filed the next day in Montreal in support of his suit against Ottawa.
Longtime Supporter
Thorsell is a longtime supporter of Mulroney and has written editorials denouncing Ottawa for its tactics in its investigation of the former prime minister. He also has called on Ottawa to apologize to Mulroney and settle the dispute out of court.
Mulroney’s fax to Thorsell gave the Globe the inside track on other media people who got the documents the next day from the Montreal courthouse.
Mulroney aide Luc Lavoie told the Globe last September that “Thorsell called because he had Mulroney’s personal home number and Mr. Mulroney, despite my advice, decided to send it (the stack of court documents) over to him.””
I note that the 20-day period the government lawyers requested William Thorsell to tell the Mulroney lawsuit trial about in his dealings with Mulroney, included November 4 when, as in Part 11, Mulroney lawyer Roger Tasse first approached the Justice Department about the RCMP investigation, and hours later November 5 when the Chretien residence was broken into.
Thorsell was never forced to tell as the lawsuit was settled a day before the trial’s January 6, 1997 start.
Long considering itself “Canada’s National Newspaper” as in Part 2, a venerable media venue such as The Globe and Mail was apparently highly partisan in its political news reporting.
But the Canadian government itself was far from beyond reproach: it not only settled with Mulroney in his lawsuit one day before the trial instead of letting the trial lead to public disclosure of significant facts, but also was the government supervising the RCMP which mishandled both Chretien and Mulroney matters.
Had the public become aware in late 1995 not only that Andre Dallaire was from the disgraced Richard Grise’s old turf of Longueuil, Quebec, but that the RCMP officer Brian McConnell who had given Grise and Mulroney an election-time favor was now Assistant Commissioner Bryan McConnell handling Dallaire’s breach of security and supervising the Airbus Affair investigation, they could have seriously questioned if the occurrences were merely coincidences.
Sensitive as it was, in a November 25 editorial Mulroney’s friend William Thorsell lambasted the notion of “the conspiracy culture surrounding Brian Mulroney”, referring to the allegations of Airbus kickbacks but not the Chretien residence intrusion (“What is fuelling the conspiracy culture surrounding Brian Mulroney?”, by William Thorsell, November 25, 1995, The Globe and Mail):
“… This week’s revelations about Ottawa’s unsubstantiated charges that Mr. Mulroney was on the take from three European corporations grow out of an extremely fertile field of dark, popular beliefs. …
…
… Why? Where is the equivalent of Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald in creating such momentum in Canada for conspiracy theories about Brian Mulroney?
It is true that some of Mr. Mulroney’s caucus members ran afoul of the law during his nine years in office, but neither the frequency nor the extent of those episodes was unusual in Canadian politics. An inventory of “scandals” during Pierre Trudeau’s or Lester Pearson’s time would be as impressive.
Was it how Mr. Mulroney lived at 24 Sussex Drive? The Conservative Party did pay for some much-needed house renovations…
…
Mr. Mulroney is certainly something of an operator, in the sense that he loves to play the negotiator and middle-man among competing interests. We saw that in Meech Lake, Charlottetown and international relations. Do Canadians have congenital intolerance of compromise, equating it with “double-dealing”?
He is obviously ambitious, rising from a poor, rural family in Quebec to become prime minister. He was an outsider from the lower classes who brought many similar Tories with him to Ottawa. Do Canadians despise the nouveaux riche?
He is enormously competitive and partisan in politics, but so are people such as [former New Democratic Party leader] Ed Broadbent and Jean Chretien. Was Mr. Mulroney’s crime that he let it show?”
One should view The Globe and Mail editor-in-chief’s message together with Paul Palango’s lament earlier in June 1995 about Canada ignoring a possible Airbus corruption scandal of the former Mulroney government, quoted in Part 11:
“Governments here seem reluctant to investigate their predecessors because their successors might investigate them”.
Thorsell’s message was stronger and unmistakable: those who rumored against Mulroney had nothing substantiating, and if those in power had dirt on him Mulroney would have as much on their past, and even their present – not even necessary to wait for a future government.
So Mulroney was unassailable, nearly untouchable.
The typical Canadian politically-correct attitude would simply ignore such a problem like Palango said, or blame the Americans, like Jeff Koftinoff of British Columbia did in late 1995 about an American conspiracy (“America’s secret, grand conspiracy to annex Canada”, by Susan Chung, December 22, 1995, Times – Colonist):
“Premiers Ralph Klein and Mike Harris slashing social benefits. The near breakup of Canada. The near break-in at Prime Minister Chretien’s residence.
Are these headline stories random events or are they part of an insidious conspiracy to annex Canada to the United States by the year 2005?
It’s the latter, it seems, if you surf to Jeff Koftinoff's web page on the Internet.
The 26-year-old Grand Forks, B.C., man has gathered together an impressive body of documents supporting a massive plot to break up Canada and annex every province but Quebec to the United States.
The key players in Project Continental Union include Mike Harris, the Ontario premier; Andre Dallaire, the allegedly deranged convenience store clerk who broke into the prime minister’s Sussex Drive residence last month; and Audrey Bouchard, the wife of outgoing Bloc Quebecois leader and separatist Lucien Bouchard.
The plot, more ingenious than any X-Files episode, goes something like this: In an effort to secure a fresh water supply for the United States in these uncertain times of global warming, the Americans take over Canada as the 51st state, except for Quebec, by the year 2005.
…
French-speaking Quebecers would never integrate well with the U.S. Therefore, the Americans hatched a deal with the separatists to break up Canada. Americans would get a politically and economically weakened country ripe for takeover, and the separatists would finally get their own
country.Is it any coincidence that Audrey Bouchard, wife of separatist leader Lucien Bouchard, is an American?
Conspiracy watchers also allege Prime Minister Chretien is a puppet to American interests. Chretien was strangely silent during the days leading up to the Oct. 31 referendum.
…
Indeed, the slim margin by which separatists failed to succeed angered the American power brokers so much they dispatched Andre Dallaire to break into the prime minister’s residence and give Chretien a “wakeup call.”
Denizens of conspiracy cyberspace note that Dallaire of Montreal has a psychiatric record, and may have been the product of secretly funded U.S. Central Intelligence Agency experiments done at McGill University involving psychiatric patients as mind-control guinea pigs.
The CIA financed the clandestine research of Dr. Ewen Cameron, a psychiatrist at the university’s Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal from 1957 to 1960. Dallaire was born a year after the experiments ended.
The good doctor had injected a variety of mind-altering treatments and drugs, including LSD, under the guise of psychiatric treatment to unsuspecting Canadian patients, according to a report in the Globe and Mail.”
After his arrest Andre Dallaire did say that Quebec separation was his inspiration, as in Part 11. But the scenario that a hypothetical CIA experiment on future parents could produce a son under psychiatric control who could be dispatched to invade the Canadian Prime Minister’s residence, sounds far-fetched.
Nevertheless, the speculation that CIA-related mind-control and drug experiments could have links to political violence proved insightful – if anyone had paid attention to Jeff Koftinoff.
Several months later in April 1996, the U.S. FBI arrested Theodore Kaczynski, identifying him as “Unabomber”, who had waged a serial bombing campaign since 1978. It was surprising that this most hunted domestic terrorist at that point – a 150-person FBI-led task force had been investigating his cases – had once been a Mathematics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where as in Part 3 a bomb attributed to him exploded in 1985 while I was a Mathematics Ph.D. student (“FBI 100, The Unabomber”, April 24, 2008, The Federal Bureau of Investigation):
“How do you catch a twisted genius who aspires to be the perfect, anonymous killer—who builds untraceable bombs and delivers them to random targets, who leaves false clues to throw off authorities, who lives like a recluse in the mountains of Montana and tells no one of his secret crimes?
…
In 1979, an FBI-led task force that included the ATF and U.S. Postal Inspection Service was formed to investigate the “UNABOM” case, code-named for the UNiversity and Airline BOMbing targets involved. The task force would grow to more than 150 full-time investigators, analysts, and others. …”
It turned out that as a Harvard University student Kaczynski had been a guinea pig in a psychological study from 1959 to 1962, conducted by psychologist Henry A. Murray who had worked for the Central Intelligence Agency’s predecessor, Office of Strategic Services, and who also led drug experiments with Timothy Leary, a future advocate guru for the psychedelic drug LSD (“Unabomber Decoded: Did Harvard Study Fuel Rage?”, November 9, 2010, CBS News; and, “Harvard’s Experiment on the Unabomber, Class of ’62”, by Jonathan D. Moreno, May 25, 2012, Psychology Today).
In his 2003 book, Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist (published by W. W. Norton & Company), author Alston Chase offered a “logical”, instead of conspiratorial, view of how psychological guinea-pig experiences at Harvard led to Kaczynski’s evolution into a terrorist:
“Gradually, while he immersed himself in his Harvard readings and in the Murray experiment, Kaczynski put together a theory to explain his unhappiness and anger: Technology and science were destroying liberty. The system, of which Harvard was a part, served technology, which in turn required conformism. By advertising, propaganda, and other psychological techniques, this system sought to transform people into automatons, to serve the machine.
As he continued to suffer through Murray’s experiments, Kaczynski began to worry about society’s use of “mind control”. In the context, this was not a paranoid delusion. Kaczynski was not only rational but right. In Murray he had encountered the quintessential Cold War warrior, bent on perfecting behavior modification. The University and the psychiatric establishment had been willing accomplices in an experiment that treated human beings as unwitting guinea pigs, and had treated them cavalierly. Here was a powerful, logical foundation for Kaczynski’s latterly expressed conviction that academics—and in particular, scientists—were thoroughly compromised servants of “the system,” employed in the development of techniques for the behavioral control of populations.”
But Theodore Kaczynski didn’t become a terrorist immediately after Harvard. He graduated from the University of Michigan in 1967 with a Sumner Myers prize for the annual best Ph.D. dissertation in Mathematics, and then taught at UC Berkeley – both leading activist campuses in that anti-Vietnam War era – before dropping out of teaching in 1969, then going into the Montana wilderness.
His brother David who turned him in apparently thought the Berkeley background might be relevant (“FBI 100, The Unabomber”, April 24, 2008, The Federal Bureau of Investigation):
“The big break in the case came in 1995. The Unabomber sent us a 35,000 word essay claiming to explain his motives and views of the ills of modern society. After much debate about the wisdom of “giving in to terrorists,” FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno approved the task force’s recommendation to publish the essay in hopes that a reader could identify the author.
After the manifesto appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times, thousands of people suggested possible suspects. One stood out: David Kaczynski described his troubled brother Ted, who had grown up in Chicago, taught at the University of California at Berkeley (where two of the bombs had been placed), then lived for a time in Salt Lake City before settling permanently into the primitive 10’ x 14’ cabin that the brothers had constructed near Lincoln, Montana.”
Did the anti-war movement motivate him? Chase’s reasoning is that the political activism of the time was merely part of Kaczynski’s environments while he had his own mind:
“Eventually, May 15, 1969, would be known as “Bloody Thursday” in Berkeley. But until things got out of hand, it seemed like just another campus riot.
…
… Governor Ronald Reagan called in 2,200 National Guardsmen. Soon the place was a war zone. A police officer was stabbed. Three students suffered punctured lungs, thirteen protesters were hospitalized with shotgun wounds, and one was killed by police gunfire. Eventually, a thousand people would be arrested, two hundred of whom were charged with felonies.
All this happened just a few short blocks from the apartment where Ted Kaczynski lived, and along the route he walked to and from campus.
…
His own University of Michigan thesis adviser, Allen Shields, was already deep into antiwar politics, having even participated in street protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago the previous year. But not Kaczynski. He didn’t even join in the politics of his own mathematics department, which its chairman, John W. Addison, described as having been at that time “one of the three most radical departments on campus.”
Kaczynski ignored the riot because he had his own agenda. And that involved a different plan of action.
Just ten weeks earlier, on March 2, Kaczynski wrote Addison to say that he would resign his position as assistant professor of mathematics, effective in June. Addison was astounded. Although he thought Kaczynski “pathologically shy” and not a good teacher, nevertheless he recognized the young man’s brilliance. And Kaczynski published prolifically. Why leave?
…
… Kaczynski didn’t give up mathematics because he got bored. Neither was it because, as so many media commentators suggested after his arrest, he had become radicalized by the student activism of the 1960s. Rather, his decision to leave academe was made in Michigan that fateful fall of 1966, as he left the University Health Center psychiatrist’s office [he visited due to having thoughts for a sex-change operation]. He took the Berkeley job not to launch an academic career, but to earn a grubstake sufficient to support himself later, in the wilderness. When he arrived at Berkeley in 1967, his ideology and life’s plan were fixed. …”
The UC Berkeley bombings attributed to the Unabomber, on July 2, 1982 and May 15, 1985 – the second on an anniversary of the 1969 “Bloody Thursday” quoted above – seemed to corroborate Chase’s thesis that Kaczynski’s hatred was directed at technology, “the system” including the academic establishment, and possibly war by association, in that order – through some rather odd chances of fate.
Unlike some of the other Unabomber attacks when bombs were mailed to the intended targets, each time at UC Berkeley a bomb was placed in the Electronic Research Laboratory building like a misplaced item – anyone who handled it at this technology research place could have been the victim.
Somehow, the first time the Lab’s most established academic, long-time director Professor Diogenes Angelakos, handled it and was hit (“Diogenes Angelakos, 77, Scholar Who Was Target of Unabomber”, June 11, 1997, The New York Times):
“Diogenes J. Angelakos, a professor emeritus of electronic engineering at the University of California at Berkeley who was an early victim of the Unabomber, died on Saturday at his home here. He was 77.
The cause was prostate cancer…
…
Serving as director of the Electronics Research Laboratory at Berkeley from 1964 to 1985, Dr. Angelakos was also widely credited with building the small departmental research group into one of the university’s largest research laboratories, with a yearly budget of some $35 million.
Still, it was the event of the morning of July 2, 1982, that brought Dr. Angelakos’s life to the attention of the nonscientific world.
While lounging in a room near his laboratory, Dr. Angelakos happened on an oddly shaped device: a silver cylinder studded with gauges and dials. He later told reporters that he believed the object to be a misplaced construction tool.
But an instant after Dr. Angelakos grabbed the contraption’s handle, a pipe bomb secreted inside the cylinder exploded, ripping through his right hand and sending shrapnel tearing into his face.
Dr. Angelakos was spared worse injury, however, when a gasoline component of the bomb failed to ignite. The bomb was later determined by Federal law-enforcement officials to have been designed by the serial bomber known as the Unabomber.
Dr. Angelakos’s life was touched by the Unabomber’s violence again three years later when a Berkeley graduate student, Capt. John E. Hauser, was badly maimed by another bomb left in his laboratory’s building. Dr. Angelakos, who was working nearby at the time, was one of the first on the scene after the explosion.
…
Dr. Angelakos, who retired in 1990, made an almost complete physical recovery from the bombing. But in an 1993 interview with The New York Times, he said he blamed injuries he received in the bombing for robbing him of precious time with his wife, Helen, who died of cancer shortly after the explosion.”
Having earned a Master’s and a Ph.D. there many years before Kaczynski, Angelakos had far more prestigious Harvard academic pedigrees (“UC Berkeley emeritus engineering professor and microwave expert Diogenes Angelakos is dead at 77”, by Robert Sanders, June 10, 1997, The University of California at Berkeley).
Nearly 3 years later, graduate student John Hauser triggered the second bomb, who happened to be a U.S. Air Force pilot aspiring to become an astronaut (“ON THE UNABOMBER’S TRACK: THE VICTIMS; At the Places Where Bombs Killed, a Day for Memories and Nervous Optimism”, by Neil MacFarquhar, April 4, 1996, The New York Times):
“There was a tremendous bang, a loud concussion like zaaaaaaaaaaaack,” said John E. Hauser, an Air Force pilot who was working on a master’s degree at the University of California at Berkeley and dreaming of being an astronaut until May 15, 1985.
All he did was move a seemingly misplaced plastic box on a computer laboratory table. The bomb permanently shredded his right arm and fingers, ripping off his Air Force Academy ring with such force that it imprinted the words “Academy” on the wall behind him. Mr. Hauser, now a 37-year-old professor at the University of Colorado, says he remembers watching the pooling blood, screaming for help and wondering “Why would someone do this?””
“Why would someone do this?” That was Captain John Hauser’s question.
Some Unabomber victims who received Unabomber bombs in the mail seemed to have accepted that reality and asked a more personal question, ‘Why me?’:
“I never had a sense of why he targeted me,” said Percy A. Woods, 76, who retired as president of United Airlines in 1983, three years after the bomb that wounded him arrived at his home in Lake Forest, Ill., burrowed inside a novel. “I don”t think any of us ever had.”
…
Patrick Fischer, head of the computer science department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, was on vacation when the package arrived for him. His secretary, Janet Smith, opened a wooden box with a pipe bomb, and it blew up in her face. She recovered physically in weeks, but has refused to speak about the incident publicly.
“At first I always thought it had been a random thing,” Mr. Fischer said. “I figured the guy said this time I want to do a computer scientist. So he would go look up computer scientists in the Who's Who and take it from there.”
But the manifesto published last year changed Mr. Fischer’s mind. It smacked of careful plotting. …”
“Careful plotting”! That would contradict the FBI conclusion that the victims were “random targets”.
For the UC Berkeley bombings the question isn’t yet why, but how in the first place. How, each time, did a bomb that appeared as a misplaced item in a shared space in the university laboratory environment get to be handled by none other than a person most ‘deserving’ in the Unabomber’s twisted mind? First the lab director. Then a graduate student who was a U.S. Air Force captain – his astronaut dream aborted in a flash on the 16th anniversary of the Berkeley anti-war “Bloody Thursday”.
If one does not take the conspiracy mindset too far but uses a more forensic approach to review the facts, then one can reason that in November 1995 the Chretien residence intruder Andre Dallaire being from the town where the corrupt Richard Grise had been MP under Brian Mulroney, and the RCMP officer Brian/Bryan McConnell who had given Grise and Mulroney an election-time favor now being the commander supervising those responsible for the residence’s security, were most likely not mere coincidences.
Firstly, using different names to conceal his past RCMP service history of the Richard Grise affair and favor for Mulroney’s party should automatically make Assistant Commissioner McConnell a suspect where political bias and hidden motives might be involved – such as with the Chretien residence intrusion and the Airbus Affair criminal investigation – until proven innocent.
Secondly, the Allan/Alain Strong story was already a convincing case of such in his past: in hiding his error or poor oversight, not only that then Inspector and later Chief Superintendent McConnell misrepresented and minimized to the public the danger of a big-time violent gang leader, but that it concealed a more serious issue, namely his peer and later subordinate Insp. Claude Savoie’s friendship with the criminal gang, including possibly tipping off Strong to escape justice.
Thirdly, as in Part 11 but now looking like a repeat of the Savoie situation in light of the further evidence reviewed in this Part, on November 5, 1995 when Andre Dallaire broke into Chretien’s residence, McConnell’s subordinate officer responsible for VIP security in Ottawa was C/Supt. Al Rivard with a graver service record than McConnell’s, namely failing to capture escaped murderer Allan Legere for months in 1989 despite the large police force under his command, resulting in 4 more killings by Legere.
And fourthly, as commented on in Part 11, when the Chretien residence intrusion occurred RCMP personnel, from the lowest-ranked onsite cops to the Capital region “A” Division commanding officer Bryan McConnell – with the exception of a Corporal acting alone to confront and arrest Dallaire – showed a total lack of sense of urgency, and even displayed indifference to the life danger faced by Mr. and Mrs. Chretien in their home.
The following news report by Tim Harper on November 17, 1995, quoted in Part 11, showed how apathetic the senior RCMP officers were at the time:
“McConnell, as the ranking officer, should have told his subordinate Rivard to get to Sussex Dr. as quickly as possible the night of the break-in, sources say.
Instead, he called to the site and reported Dube was on his way.
But Dube was at least two hours away - even though he was supposed to be within easy response time of 24 Sussex Dr.
Rivard received a call at 3:30 a.m. after the suspect was arrested. He was expected to be at 24 Sussex and call bodyguards to the site to have the Chretiens escorted from the home, sources said.
He stayed at headquarters instead.”
As earlier, McConnell himself was chided as “Cold” by The Globe and Mail for going to the RCMP headquarters to handle “damage control” rather than immediately attending the site – no senior officers did under his command.
My comment in Part 11 has been:
“These senior officers had better be sure nothing worse could happen to the Chretiens.”
But these RCMP personnel’s acts of malfeasance, so contrary to professional standards but not due to lack of expertise or experience, can be explained if the facts that Andre Dallaire was from Richard Grise’s old turf and Bryan McConnell was Brian McConnell of the Richard Grise affair in 1988-89 were not coincidental, and the RCMP knew whom they were dealing with.
When briefing the media after the incident, McConnell tried to suggest that the RCMP response had been appropriate, as quoted in Part 11:
“The individual was in the house; there’s no question about that. The individual was armed, the individual did not attempt to get into the private quarters”.
Precisely. If the RCMP had prior knowledge about this intruder they would have assessed, and likely concluded that the real life danger to the Chretiens wasn’t great, wasn’t a cause for panic and – like the conspiracy minded Jeff Koftinoff speculated – they could afford to “give Chretien a “wakeup call”” this way.
Of course, this wouldn’t be risky only if the RCMP’s assessment and judgment were sound, that is, if an “amphetamine speed” stimulant dealer as McConnell had told the public about Allan Strong in 1986 weren’t actually a notorious criminal gang leader and possible murderer.
It was an early “wakeup call” for the Chretiens on November 5, 1995, as on that day they were leaving for the funeral of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated on November 4.
The conspiracy minded would be partially vindicated here, as Rabin’s killer Yigal Amir turned out to be closely linked to Avishai Raviv, an agent of the Israeli security agency Shin Bet, who was well-known for his own anti-Rabin views and was nearby when the murder took place (“Ex-Undercover Agent Charged as a Link in Rabin Killing”, April 26, 1999, The New York Times):
“Israel charged a former undercover agent and right-wing radical today with failing to prevent the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish hard-liner.
The former agent, Avishai Raviv, who had been an informer in the ranks of the militant right for the Shin Bet security service, was also charged with conspiracy and “support for a terrorist organization,” the right-wing group Eyal, which he founded and led.
…
Mr. Amir, who had been befriended by Mr. Raviv, vehemently opposed Mr. Rabin’s peace moves with the Arabs. According to the charges, on several occasions, Mr. Amir told Mr. Raviv that the Prime Minister had transgressed rabbinic decrees and “needs to be killed.”
Mr. Raviv was present at the peace rally in Tel Aviv where Mr. Amir shot Mr. Rabin twice in the back at point-blank range.
“The defendant knew that Yigal planned to commit a crime, and did not take all the reasonable measures to prevent its commission or its completion,” the charges read.
…
“Time after time, Avishai Raviv went out and convinced people to murder Yitzhak Rabin,” said Deputy Minister Michael Eitan, who had spearheaded the battle to bring the charges.”
If his was only a “wakeup call” lesson Jean Chretien understood, and he decided against any independent inquiry into RCMP mishandling of the intrusion incident, or into RCMP mishandling of the Airbus Affair investigation – but with caution in the intrusion case, as in Part 11, that Chretien waited until after RCMP announcement of transferring security command for his residence to its national headquarters, i.e., away from the Ottawa region “A” Division and commander Bryan McConnell, before telling the media there would be no inquiry.
Reviewing the various facts that have come together as strong, albeit partly circumstantial, evidence on RCMP mishandlings of the two seemingly related matters in 1995 affecting then Prime Minister Jean Chretien and his former political nemesis, ex-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, I have come to a conclusion that the RCMP was a very canny, if political deceptive, law-enforcement agency that held its decision ground firmly even in very compromising positions.
A good example is when C/Supt. Brian McConnell gave Mulroney’s party the favor of postponing a warrant search until after the election: Mulroney’s principal secretary Peter White had provided RCMP with evidence to help convict Richard Grise for corruption.
In other words, if a complainant pushed harder the RCMP would reply that, all things considered, we had already achieved better – but the agency would not disclose the full facts lest a hidden catch be revealed.
With this new insight, I look back at my activism in late 1992-early 1993 trying to dethrone Mulroney and account for his leadership misconduct, and the January 6, 1993 RCMP letter from A/Comm. J. W. B. McConnell, Director of Enforcement Services, to B.C. “E” Division commanding officer regarding my complaint, and ask: Did McConnell get something elsewhere from Mulroney to justify treating my complaint as only about RCMP in one UBC incident, and ignoring my statements sent to MP Kim Campbell about Mulroney’s conduct?
There was, at least by February-March 1993, with Mulroney announcing his retirement plan on February 24 as discussed in Part 7. But the public was not informed by the government or by RCMP.
The story was only recently disclosed, in a February 9, 2013 article by Patrick MacAdam, the Mulroney associate targeted by RCMP and Revenue Canada in early 1993, who was a member of Frank Moore’s lobby firm Government Consultants International (“Ricochet from Airbus affair cost me, but it ain’t over till fat lady sings”, by Pat MacAdam, February 9, 2013, Cape Breton Post):
“It will be 20 years ago next month that Luc Lavoie, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s press secretary, told the Toronto Globe and Mail that the prime minister intended to appoint me to the Senate. I was 57 and could look forward to 18 years in the Red Chamber.
It was not to be. A week or 10 days later, the PM called me and said he had to pull in his horns and put the Senate appointment on hold because Revenue Canada planned to charge me for income tax and GST evasion.
He did offer me a five-year stop-gap appointment to the Canadian Transportation Commission at $135,000 a year. I turned it down flat because: A) I knew little about transportation; and, B) I was only mildly interested in transportation.
One March morning, 32 Revenue officers and 12 RCMP officers, armed with search warrants, raided six venues hoping to find tax and GST information relevant to me.
I didn’t fall off the rhubarb truck from Glace Bay. I wasn’t the target. My employers — Government Consultants International (Frank Moores and Gary Ouellet) — were.
I can’t prove it, but I think the real target was Airbus and Revenue Canada was looking for a smoking gun to involve the prime minister, Frank Moores, Gary Ouellet and Karl-Heinz Schreiber.
General Ramsey Withers was the chief operating officer at Government Consultants International. He was one of Canada’s most decorated public servants; chief of Canada’s defence staff and deputy minister of transport.
Ramsey had to stand in the hall outside his small office while Revenue agents tossed his desk and files.
Dream on!
Their daylong search turned up nothing.
I was charged and the original 14-16 charges were reduced to two charges at trial.”
So in February 1993 when Mulroney decided to quit, his spokesman Luc Lavoie – same as late during Airbus Affair as in Part 11 – told his preferred news venue The Globe and Mail that Pat MacAdam would be appointed a senator. The Ottawa Citizen reported it as a rumor (“Patronage appointments likely today”, by Jack Aubry, February 26, 1993, The Ottawa Citizen):
“The speculation started with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s retirement notice Wednesday when he noted he would “soon fill 11 vacant Senate seats.
…
Rumors on Parliament Hill suggest that such Mulroney cronies as Pat MacAdam, his old pal from St. Francis Xavier University, and Marjorie LeBreton, who heads the Tory appointment machine, are on their way to the Senate.”
As MacAdam recalls, Revenue Canada then told Mulroney of its plan to charge MacAdam with tax evasion, and Mulroney rescinded the appointment plan. MacAdam strongly believes it was a pretence for the tax agency and RCMP to target his employer GCI owned by former Newfoundland Premier Frank Moores – and considered the main conduit for secret commissions from the Airbus company to Mulroney’s circle as detailed in Part 11 – and possibly target Mulroney personally.
So GCI in Ottawa was searched for a full day in March 1993, over 2 years before the RCMP sought Swiss police cooperation in September 1995 for its new criminal investigation targeting Mulroney.
But it’s only MacAdam’s belief that his bosses Moores and Gary Ouellet, and Mulroney and Schreiber were the target of the March 1993 raid – the only one ever criminally charged in Canada has been MacAdam himself.
There was absolutely no news coverage of this in 1993, what would have been a politically explosive story.
In June 1993 when Mulroney was stepping down, rumor about a patronage appointment for MacAdam came again, this time from inside GCI (“Three big ones flee ‘Fisherman Frank’”, by Greg Weston, June 4, 1993, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Another of GCI’s key insiders, Pat MacAdam, is this very morning packing up his beloved pictures of Brian Mulroney and leaving the firm. The PM’s buddy isn’t saying where he is going next, although one of his officemates offers this vaguest of clues: “Ask the prime minister. Stay tuned for tonight’s expected flurry of Mulroney farewell patronage appointments.
…
As for Mulroney pal MacAdam going to patronage heaven, and the three other heavyweights going into competition with GCI, Ouellet says “they are all being replaced by some very exciting names.”
His GCI friend was wrong; no patronage heaven befell MacAdam in this last round of the Mulroney era. But there was not yet criminal prosecution either – MacAdam’s recent article quoted earlier has left out the timeline of events.
Had anyone gone public with the story in 1993, RCMP would have had the basis to say that it did better this time than with the Richard Grise case, that MacAdam and GCI were warrant-searched in March 1993 while Mulroney was Prime Minister and before any expected federal election by his successor – but no one went to the media, and apparently neither did RCMP.
Kim Campbell was crowned Prime Minister and called an election, and MacAdam was invited, along with other Mulroney associates who had been “feeling left out”, to join her election campaign team (“ELECTION ’93 Campbell loop may not be there ANALYSIS ” In a bid to end the bickering and make a reality of ‘politics of inclusion,’ the PC campaign leadership is inviting a few of the Tories who have been feeling left out to accept roles”, by Jeff Sallot, October 1, 1993, The Globe and Mail):
“Ms. Campbell, who inherited an election campaign machine assembled by former prime minister Brian Mulroney, gives every indication that she calls the important shots herself.
…
Campaign chairman John Tory Jr. has moved this week to end the bickering and to make a reality of Ms. Campbell’s catchphrase “the politics of inclusion.”
He has invited a few of the Tories who have been feeling left out to contribute to the campaign, including Pat MacAdam, an old buddy of Mr. Mulroney from student days.
Mr. MacAdam has signed on as a speech writer for Ms. Campbell and is busily preparing quotable quotes for the TV debates that begin Sunday night.”
No story of his legal problem, and MacAdam was reported as an odd old pal “feeling left out” of Mulroney’s departure goodies.
The Tories under Campbell were nearly wiped out in the October election, even without any additional MacAdam bad news.
Former Liberal leader John Turner, who at the helm of the opposition in the November 1988 election had been robbed of a Tory corruption story by C/Supt. Brian McConnell’s decision to delay search of Richard Grise, now openly aired his contempt for the Mulroney-circle lobbyists (“Millionaire Tory lobbyists get shoved out into the Ottawa cold”, by Jonathan Ferguson, November 6, 1993, The Vancouver Sun):
“Former Liberal prime minister John Turner, who attended Thursday’s swearing-in of the Jean Chretien government, says the Tory lobbyists who’ve become millionaires in the past nine years are in for a rude awakening.
“I hope they stashed it away because the pipe is turned off,” Turner said.
“There’s nothing wrong in people approaching ministers and members of Parliament and bureaucrats, but I don’t like to see a toll-gating operation. I think we had a lot of sleaze around here and I hope that’s cleaned up.”
Out in the cold are Brian Mulroney’s notorious cronies Frank Moores, Harry Near, Allan Gregg, Bill Neville, Pat MacAdam, Michael Coates, Fred Doucet and Bill Fox, to name a few.”
But Turner might not realize that his party again missed the more exciting story for an election: a Mulroney associate like MacAdam didn’t even pay taxes for money made in the “sleaze”.
Finally a year later in October 1994, there was news that Pat MacAdam was charged for tax evasion (“Former Mulroney aide charged with tax evasion; Revenue Canada documents allege MacAdam made false GST return, failed to declare income of more than $938,000”, by Tu Thanh Ha and Edward Greenspon, October 12, 1994, The Globe and Mail):
“Three charges laid under the Excise Tax Act allege that Mr. MacAdam:
. Made a false and deceptive GST return for the third quarterly reporting period of 1991;
. Omitted information in corporate documents for the purpose of evading $16,355.14 in GST in 1991;
. Failed to declare taxable supplies in the amount of $250,000.
Earlier, in March, Mr. MacAdam was also charged with two violations of the Income Tax Act, according to the same court documents, in which he is listed as John Patrick MacAdam.
Both charges cover the 1989, 1990 and 1991 taxation years.
…
Mr. MacAdam, who has two bachelor degrees from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., is part of the network of friends and associates that Mr. Mulroney built while he studied there in the 1950s.
Mr. MacAdam, the editor of the Xaverian Weekly, the campus paper, was the first student that Mr. Mulroney introduced himself to when the freshman from Baie-Comeau first arrived in town in 1955.
Mr. MacAdam has been an active member of the Progressive Conservative Party since the 1950s, when he wrote speeches for Mr. Diefenbaker.
Fiercely loyal to Mr. Mulroney, Mr. MacAdam was, as caucus liaison, known as the prime minister’s eyes and ears on Parliament Hill. In 1983, Mr. Mulroney performed the duty of best man at Mr. MacAdam’s wedding.
In 1987, Mr. MacAdam was appointed a press counsellor at the Canadian High Commission in London but his term ended two years later amid health problems and opposition from local foreign service officers.
Mr. MacAdam then became a lobbyist for Government Consultants International and was widely expected in 1993 to be among a handful of close associates Mr. Mulroney would name to the Senate before he left office.
But to the surprise of many observers, Mr. MacAdam was left out while Mr. Mulroney picked other prominent Conservatives, such as party president Gerry St. Germain, adviser Pierre-Claude Nolin and deputy chief of staff Marjory LeBreton.”
Though with some details, the media reporting was quite lame: there was no news when the first charges were filed in March 1994, and reporting on the latest charges in October the media still didn’t note that MacAdam had not been a “surprise” “left out” of Mulroney’s patronages in 1993 – he had been under criminal investigation already.
Another news report disclosed that it was due to a first report by the satire Frank magazine that the mainstream media now covered it (“Mulroney crony facing charges of tax evasion in $800,000 case”, October 12, 1994, The Vancouver Sun):
“Pat MacAdam, who was one of Ottawa’s most prominent lobbyists during the Mulroney years, has been remanded until Oct. 20 in Ontario Court on three charges under the Excise Tax Act and two charges under the Income Tax Act.
The charges against MacAdam under the Income Tax Act are in connection with the Birkenhead Group, of which he is a principal. Revenue Canada alleges the company did not report income of $557,365 in 1989, 1990 and 1991.
In addition, MacAdam has been charged with not reporting personal income of $380,917 during the same tax years.
…
News of MacAdam’s legal problems surfaced in the latest issue of Frank Magazine, the satirical bimonthly, and were confirmed through court documents Tuesday.
MacAdam is known around Ottawa for his fierce loyalty to Mulroney and his dealmaking.”
The satire publication Frank magazine broke the story first! As in Part 1, this venue had held a “Deflower Caroline Mulroney” contest in 1991 that drew Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s vow to defend his daughter by force, “I wanted to take a gun and go down there and do some serious damage to those people”.
A related news story, about the declining fortune of GCI, mentioned a tax-investigation search of MacAdam in 1993, but still didn’t get to the fact that it occurred when Mulroney was still at the helm, or that others in GCI might have been targets – even after a bankruptcy trustee stated that the search led to GCI’s loss of all clients (“Once-powerful lobbyist bankrupt; Ouellet says Jeep is all he has”, by Andrew McIntosh, October 14, 1994, The Gazette):
“Quebec City lawyer Gary Ouellet, who became one of Ottawa’s most powerful, influential and wealthy lobbyists while former prime minister Brian Mulroney was in power, has resigned from the Quebec Bar and gone bankrupt.
Ouellet went bankrupt on Sept. 19 with $335,746 in debt and declared his only asset was a 1990 Jeep Cherokee, worth $8,000, according to documents filed in Quebec Superior Court.
He declared that he doesn’t have a cent in his personal bank account.
…
Quebec City bankruptcy trustee Michel Leblond is handling the case. He has scheduled a creditors' meeting at his offices for Oct. 20.
…
In court documents, Ouellet disclosed he still owns 33.3 per cent of the shares of GCI Inc. but stated that the shares are now worthless.
Ouellet is also a professional magician and works as a consultant and helps produce shows in the field. He is currently travelling on business in the United States and was unavailable to comment.
Trustee Leblond said Ouellet went bankrupt because GCI’s fortunes went into a tailspin after its Ottawa offices were raided last year by tax authorities investigating a client of the firm, Mulroney friend Pat MacAdam.
“The raid had an incredible impact. It created a panic and they lost all their clients. And then the Tories lost the 1993 election,” Leblond said.”
The mainstream political media was not merely lame; it was either tardy or thoroughly intimidated by Mulroney – as not to breach a thin veil upholding his authoritative image about his last months of official power.
Why were the charges moving forward at the court now in October 1994? The timing could be related to the high expectation for the publication of Stevie Cameron’s book, On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years (“New books season full of promise; Excitement from CanLit favorites and newcomers”, by Judy Stoffman, August 31, 1994, Toronto Star):
“Last year McClelland & Stewart’s big fall book was Pierre Trudeau’s own memoir, which sold more than 200,000 copies. This year it’s deja vu all over again, when M & S brings out the second volume of Trudeau And Our Times, by the Governor-General’s Award winning team of Christina McCall and Stephen Clarkson. Subtitled The Heroic Delusion, it takes up the former prime minister’s career after the ’74 election. A hot political book, awaited with trepidation by some, is On The Take: Greed And Corruption In The Mulroney Years by Stevie Cameron (Macfarlane Walter & Ross). Another book that will make Conservatives uncomfortable is The Poisoned Chalice: How The Tories Self-Destructed by David McLaughlin (Dundurn).”
Jean Chretien’s Liberal associates were happy about the coming of Cameron’s book (“NATIONAL NOTEBOOK”, September 17, 1994, The Globe and Mail):
“Liberals say the Prime Minister never looks better than when he is compared with former prime minister Brian Mulroney. So they expect to sustain high ratings in opinion polls and extend their political honeymoon well into the fall with the publication next month of journalist Stevie Cameron’s newbook, On the Take.
Mr. Mulroney, dolled up in black tie and tux, will be grinning at Canadians from the cover of a book that is likely to get prominent display in stores across the country. The subtitle is Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years.”
My point is that when in June 1995 Paul Palango accused the government and the RCMP of ignoring a scandal about the Airbus commissions story – more was quoted in Part 11 – the blames were not fully deserved because the media also ignored it; the MacAdam case showed that even after the government and RCMP had made limited moves, the media lacked investigative enthusiasm to get into the GCI dirt and hopefully through it to the Airbus money and Mulroney.
The media’s lack of pursue of the MacAdam case was better illustrated by its near absence of mention during the Airbus Affair period from November 1995 to January 1997, at which time Mulroney’s libel lawsuit reached a settlement with the government; I find only one relevant mention of MacAdam, in the context of Airbus Affair but not of his case (“Deal linked to other contracts BACKGROUND / Costly lobbying a common factor”, by Howard Ross, November 20, 1995, The Globe and Mail):
“The 1988 purchase of European aircraft by Air Canada that has prompted the RCMP to investigate any links to former prime minister Brian Mulroney has direct ties to two other major federal contracts that were marked by expensive lobbying efforts and allegations of insider influence.
In one case, a key company involved in the deal with Airbus Industrie - German aircraft maker Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm GmbH - ended up selling the federal government $25-million worth of helicopters in a deal that a federal audit later termed unjustifiable.
In the second case, German arms manufacturer Thyssen Industries spent millions of dollars lobbying for a $58-million military-equipment contract to be executed in Nova Scotia in fulfillment of Mr. Mulroney's promises to bring jobs to the depressed area.
…
In both contracts, as in the Airbus purchase, former Newfoundland premier and Mulroney confidant Frank Moores was the prime lobbyist.
The former prime minister, through his lawyers, has denied any involvement in the contracts or knowledge of the events surrounding them.
…
The project, named Bearhead after the name of the Thyssen subsidiary that was to operate it, was intensely sought after by then Nova Scotia premier John Buchanan and 3,000 steel workers at nearby Trenton who had been promised in 1984 by their MP, Mr. Mulroney, that they would be kept locally employed.
…
As late as 1990, the key lobbyists in GCI, including Mr. Moores, Fred Doucet, Patrick MacAdam and Gary Ouellet, were registered with the Lobby Registration Branch as working for Bearhead Industries.”
No mention of the MacAdam case at all! The media seemed to have treated MacAdam’s evasion of taxes on nearly $1 million income while working at Frank Moores’ GCI as a lone phenomenon, no relation to the Airbus Affair – even when reporting on RCMP investigation into “any links to former prime minister Brian Mulroney” in government lobbying and contracting.
Thoughtfully, the Ontario justice system waited out the entire Airbus Affair period of November 1995-January 1997 – until the intense media coverage waned after the Mulroney lawsuit settlement with a government apology for using terms like “criminal” to describe him without solid evidence – before bringing Pat MacAdam to trial in April 1997.
The media resumed covering the MacAdam case in February 1997 – separately from the Airbus stories.
The first article, on February 1 in The Ottawa Citizen, had only one appearance of the word “Airbus”, about MacAdam accusing the Liberal government of using his case to “discredit Mulroney”. But despite his loyalty to Mulroney in public, MacAdam’s wife Janet openly aired anger about Mulroney not helping her husband (“A backroom boy out in the cold: Pat MacAdam was once Brian Mulroney’s partner in power. Now, he says, he’s down to his last 13 cents and faces tax charges”, by Mike Shahin, February 1, 1997, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Why should anyone care about Pat MacAdam’s downward spiral? He is well-known to political junkies and journalists. But most Canadians don’t know his name, because he did most of his work in the shadow of better-known men: Diefenbaker, Stanfield, Mulroney.
…
MacAdam is to go to trial in April on charges of failing to report more than $1.2 million in taxable income from 1989 to 1991, commercially through Birkenhead Group Inc., and personally. The charges allege MacAdam would have had to pay nearly $300,000 in taxes on the unreported income. He is also charged with failing to pay the GST on $250,000 in sales.
…
MacAdam blames his fall from grace, in large part, on the tax-evasion charges laid against him by Revenue Canada in 1994. He suggests that there was political motivation behind the investigation, which he says bordered on “harassment.” Echoing the views of much Conservative commentary on the Airbus affair, MacAdam says he thinks the current Liberal government might be engaged in a concerted attempt to discredit Mulroney and his political associates.
“If I was Joe Shmoe and drove a Zamboni, this wouldn’t be happening,” Pat says.
Revenue Canada investigator Richard Labelle says that if MacAdam had any evidence of a conspiracy or political pressure or media leaks in his case, he should present it as evidence in court. But Labelle, chief of special investigations, says the case has been handled fairly from the start and charges would never have been laid if evidence was “tainted” or obtained in a “wrongful manner.”
Of his old friend Mulroney, MacAdam refuses to speak a negative word, defending him as a “good, decent guy.” But Janet MacAdam is less diplomatic, and flashes anger where her husband shows only frustration. Both reveal considerable hurt: it is clear that MacAdam and Mulroney have grown apart, and have not spoken for quite a while.
“You did so much for him (Mulroney) for so many years,” she says, “and he just turned his back on you.”
“I went into this with my eyes open,” Pat MacAdam says. “I didn’t expect anything from Brian, I didn’t ask for anything. At least I can look in the mirror in the morning and see the face of an honest man.”
“But what good has it done you?” his wife says. “It never occurred to Pat, ever, that Brian would not be there for him as a friend, as a supporter.”
Through his legal secretary, Brian Mulroney was asked by the Citizen to discuss his relationship with MacAdam. Mulroney asked his spokesman, Luc Lavoie, to conduct the interview on his behalf.
“I know that Mr. Mulroney feels very sad about what is happening to Pat,” Lavoie says. “One has to realize that not one individual in the world has done so much for Pat.” Lavoie went on to list the various jobs Mulroney has given MacAdam, from senior adviser in the PMO to contracts in the private sector. Mulroney “can’t believe it” when people tell him that he might not have done enough for MacAdam, Lavoie says.”
Didn’t Luc Lavoie inform the media of “contracts in the private sector” Mulroney had given MacAdam? I haven’t come across any media report of the details. That could be the sort of thing Justice Minister Allan Rock had been interested in when he approached RCMP in December 1993 as in Part 11.
After an extensive review of press coverage during the Airbus Affair, I have opined in Part 11 that the RCMP let Brian Mulroney take the PR offensive and sue the government, and let the media publicities on the lawsuit cover for a criminal investigation not being seriously conducted.
The justice system’s timing control for the Patrick MacAdam case was strong evidence to corroborate my view on the Airbus Affair. It showed a scenario that the Chretien government and RCMP offered a ‘diplomatic’ handshake to Brian Mulroney over the Airbus Affair and received, in exchange, Mulroney’s acquiesce that his old pal Pat MacAdam, who likely had had involvement with Airbus money while at GCI, would be rigorously prosecuted in a separate case for the necessary political scores – an advance indication that in the end the criminal investigation of Mulroney would not achieve results.
Also a part-time journalist, MacAdam had worked at GCI for 4 years, 1989-1993, receiving over $480,000 (“Former Mulroney aide in court on tax evasion charges: ‘Quit bothering me,’ Pat MacAdam told Revenue Canada”, by Mike Shahin, April 8, 1997, The Ottawa Citizen)
“The only flashes of the drama behind Mr. MacAdam’s case will come if and when defence lawyers argue, as Mr. MacAdam has already done publicly, their client is a victim of harassment by Revenue Canada and of a conspiracy by the Liberal government.
The conspiracy theory revolves around Mr. MacAdam’s political and personal connection to Mr. Mulroney and to former Newfoundland premier Frank Moores, head of the now-defunct lobbying firm Government Consultants International.
…
Federal Crown David McKercher told the court that Mr. MacAdam’s unreported income came from Ottawa developer Pierre Bourque and Sons Ltd. ($250,000), the Ottawa Sun newspaper ($250 a week in payment for freelance writing) and Government Consultants International (GCI), a firm with close ties to the Conservative government of the time.
…
Mr. Moore’s firm paid Mr. MacAdam a salary of $80,000 a year for four years, from 1989 to 1993, according to testimony from his executive assistant, Nancy O’Neill. Monthly or quarterly payments totalled $20,000 a year for expenses, $12,600 for travel costs, and thousands more for additional expenses. Finally, Mr. MacAdam received $33,332 in severance pay after sending a resignation letter to GCI’s Gary Ouellet, also a former confidant of Brian Mulroney.
The money, more than $480,000, was paid directly to Mr. MacAdam, to Birkenhead (which is now dormant) or to his current firm, McMac Communications Inc., Ms. O’Neill said.”
Despite the remarkable GCI facet of the matters, the prosecution said that MacAdam’s tax problem was his own fault, his own intention (“MacAdam hinges defence on issue of criminal intent”, by Mike Shahin, April 12, 1997, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Crown prosecutor David McKercher argued that Mr. MacAdam “intended the natural consequences of his act.” Mr. MacAdam used delay tactics, made inconsistent statements to Revenue Canada investigators and kept no books or records on his company’s financial activities, Mr. McKercher said.”
Ontario Provincial Court Judge Patrick D. White found MacAdam guilty of the tax evasion charges. The Ottawa Citizen printed a long, edited version of the judge’s findings, which showed that MacAdam had first stopped paying taxes for 1989, i.e., the same year he started working for GCI (“‘Failure to file returns was a deliberate and wilful omission’”, April 18, 2997, The Ottawa Citizen):
“I find upon the evidence presented that the last income tax return filed by Mr. MacAdam was for the 1988 taxation year. It is common ground that Birkenhead never filed a return.
Robert Johnston, as part of his normal duties with Revenue Canada, was assigned the task of contacting Mr. MacAdam to request compliance with the filing requirements. He began by sending on August 20, 1990 a request for returns. He followed this by a demand to file.
On November 1, 1990, Mr. MacAdam wrote claiming that he had in fact filed his ’89 return and that he was at a loss to explain why Revenue Canada did not have it. This was untrue.
…
Finally, on November 23, 1992, Mr. [Revenue Canada auditor Thomas] Lavell, having met with virtually a total lack of cooperation, wrote requesting that Mr. MacAdam contact him within 15 days in order to arrange for his inspection of documents, failing which enforcement action might be taken.
…
On March 30, 1993, six (6) search warrants were executed and documents seized at various locations in Ottawa and Nepean.
…
The 1993 Income Tax Return filed by Mr. MacAdam failed to report a significant portion of his income in the form of a severance package from Government Consulting International (GCI).
Also in 1993, he arranged to divert his income from the Ottawa Sun to his wife, under her maiden name.
Neither he or she reported this income in 1993.
It is clear that following Mr. Lavell’s letter of November 23, 1992, Mr. MacAdam set about to evade the collection arm of Revenue Canada.
…
After the search warrants were executed, he changed his tactics completely. Suddenly, he became available to meet with representatives of Revenue Canada.
At this meeting, which took place on April 8, 1993, he first tried to invoke the ‘Fairness Package.’ He then tried to evoke sympathy by referring to his wife’s poor health and a representation that he was in financial difficulty.
This was very different from the representation he was making to his bank at that time.
Even as this meeting was taking place, Mr. MacAdam was engaged in evading the collection arm of Revenue Canada by having his income from the Ottawa Sun paid to his wife.”
The timing coincidence to my activism was interesting: on November 23, 1992 Revenue Canada began threatening MacAdam with legal enforcement, just after my sending out press releases challenging Mulroney’s leadership conduct on November 10 & 20 as in Parts 5 & 6.
Despite the very conspicuous co-relation between Patrick MacAdam’s working for GCI and his not paying taxes, media coverage of his trial toed the justice system’s line and treated his tax evasion as of his own making, as an isolated case unrelated to the Airbus Affair.
MacAdam was convicted, sentenced to probation and community service, and levied a $164,610 fine (“Ex-Mulroney aide fined for tax evasion; Judge orders Patrick MacAdam to pay $164,610, saying ‘no one to blame but himself’”, by Janice Tibbetts, June 7, 1997, The Globe and Mail).
But in his February 2013 article, MacAdam claims that the total fines and penalties were close to $1 million (“Ricochet from Airbus affair cost me, but it ain’t over till fat lady sings”, by Pat MacAdam, February 9, 2013, Cape Breton Post):
“Fines and penalties approached $1 million.
For the past 20 years, and most of my waking hours, I have been appealing and fighting, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. The opera ain’t over until the fat lady sings.”
Two decades later this man is still dreaming that his misfortune was a “ricochet from Airbus affair” that he can prove.
That’s probably because Pat MacAdam knew Brian Mulroney more than most people did, and had unique stories to tell, such as on Mulroney’s friendships with Karlheinz Schreiber and with the late Airbus Chairman Franz Josef Strauss and his son Max, to contradict Mulroney’s own statements under oath in his libel lawsuit litigation in 1996.
MacAdam talked about it during the later Mulroney-Schreiber Affair (“The scandal that keeps on flying”, by William Johnson, May 1, 2010, The Globe and Mail):
“… When questioned under oath for his 1996 suit against Ottawa, Mulroney minimized his meetings with Schreiber while prime minister and evaded any hint of the stacks of thousand-dollar bills he received in three meetings afterward, as he was later forced to admit.
“When he was going through Montreal, he would give me a call. We would have a cup of coffee, I think once or twice.”
The government’s lawyer asked: “And was he [Schreiber] known to you as a friend of Franz Josef Strauss?” Mulroney replied: “He was not known to me as that, but I subsequently read that he was known to Mr. Strauss. I did not know Mr. Strauss myself, nor did I know any of his family.”
He was asked: “Is it not a fact that Franz Josef Strauss was the chairman of Airbus?” Mulroney replied: “I knew of Franz Josef Strauss; I didn’t know him personally, I never met him, but I knew of him as the premier of Bavaria and as a minister of finance in the Federal Republic. I had no idea what his other occupations may be.” So he had never heard of the chairman of Airbus.
Mulroney hired his friend from university, Pat MacAdam, as the prime minister’s appointments secretary. MacAdam recalled Schreiber meeting Mulroney with Strauss’s son Max. “I was the gate-keeper then, and kept the appointments, and he’d come in with Max Strauss and say hello and leave.” And how often did Schreiber meet Mulroney back then? “Oh, maybe five, six, seven times a year.”
MacAdam also stated: “The father, Franz Josef Strauss, was a good friend of Mulroney’s in years gone by.”
A commission of enquiry called in 2008 under Mr. Justice Jeffrey Oliphant is scheduled to report at the end of May. But nothing conclusive is expected: Its terms of reference excluded investigating any connection Mulroney might have had to the Airbus deal. That’s staging Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.”
As in Parts 1 and 11, at the advice of then University of Waterloo President David Johnston, Governor General of Canada since, Airbus Affair issues were excluded from the 2008-2009 public inquiry into the business relationship between Mulroney and Schreiber.
MacAdam also knew, first hand, that the dictatorial Romanian communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu likened Brian Mulroney to Richard Nixon – even before Mulroney became the Tory leader (“My visit with The Chosen One”, by Pat MacAdam, May 29, 1998, The Ottawa Citizen):
“In the newspaper he was referred to as The Chosen One, The Genius of the Carpathians, The Treasure of Wisdom and Charisma, Most Loved and Esteemed Son of the Romanian People, The Creator of the Epoch of Unprecedented Renewal and The Presence.
I was bowled over when Brian Mulroney, Bob Coates, Ambassador Peter Roberts and I were ushered into the presence of the Comrade for a 20-minute meeting that stretched into an hour. I had an immediate grudging admiration for him even though our ideologies were poles apart.
…
Ceausescu opened the bilateral with a set piece on the glories of Marxist socialism. He didn’t get far. Coates stopped him cold with an upraised hand. “Hold it, hold it, isn’t it interesting, Mr. President, the four of us together in this room this morning -- Mr. Mulroney, the son of a unionized electrician in a pulp and paper mill, Mr. MacAdam, the son of a unionized machinist in a coal mine in Nova Scotia, myself, the son of a butcher in Nova Scotia, and, you, sir, the successful son of a Romanian peasant shoemaker?”
I thought Coates had gone too far this time. The Comrade positively beamed. He immediately tacked out of the socialism wind and began to talk about world trade, joint ventures and counter trade.
He then turned his attention to Mulroney, then President of Iron Ore Company of Canada. He said: “Mr. Mulroney, some years ago Richard Nixon was in this very same room with me and he was in disgrace. He had lost the presidency to Kennedy and he had been defeated when he ran for governor of California. He sat in the very chair you are sitting in, Mr. Mulroney. Richard Nixon didn’t give up. Don’t you give up either.”
When the interpreter translated his words we were absolutely stunned. He was obviously well briefed on Mulroney’s 1976 loss at the hands of Joe Clark. I often wondered later if there was a method to Nicolae Ceausescu’s invitation to Mulroney. Did he know then that Mulroney was a dauphin in waiting for the Tory party leadership?
We were there at Ceausescu’s invitation to discuss selling iron ore pellets and concentrates for Romania's steel mills. The Comrade told his Ambassador to Canada, Barbu Popescu, to make arrangements for us to fly over on TAROM -- gratis. Mulroney wasn’t having any of that because TAROM had the worst accident record of any airline. Iron Ore provided tickets on Swissair.”
Brian Mulroney has done absolutely better than either Nicolae Ceausescu or Richard Nixon in avoiding official ‘disgrace’. In 1995 several Airbus planes of the Romanian Tarom airlines, which Mulroney had refused to fly on in favor of Swiss Air as MacAdam noted, malfunctioned and one brought all its passengers to deaths as in Part 11, but Mulroney survived the Airbus Affair and made the RCMP criminal investigation of him look like a sham.
On that point, one year before my press releases calling for Mulroney’s removal from national leadership, in November 1991 a Toronto Star article cited that early Mulroney-Ceausescu meeting episode from author John Sawatsky’s new book, Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition, under the title “Worth repeating” in an apparent swipe at Mulroney’s helm. Here is the full article (“Worth repeating”, November 13, 1991, Toronto Star):
“During a ‘black’ period in his life after losing the Tory leadership to Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney, president of Iron Ore of Canada, wound up a fruitless sales trip to Romania by meeting dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. John Sawatsky describes the event in Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition:
The only positive note during his stay came on the last day when he received an audience with President Nicolae Ceausescu, who greeted Mulroney wearing purple lattice-weave shoes, purple socks, a purple suit, and a tartan shirt that would have done Don Messer proud.
“Mr. Mulroney,” Ceausescu said through his translator, “12 years ago Richard Nixon sat in that very same chair you are sitting in. Now, he didn’t give up. And look where he went. And don’t you give up either.”
“Oh Jesus,” Mulroney said afterwards, “he’s well briefed.” The meeting went smashingly well, lasting 40 minutes - twice as long as scheduled.”
The episode highlighted the fact that Brian Mulroney carefully cultivated relations with important figures whose political stripes were very different from his, and would use them when necessary. In fact, he used his friendship with Ceausescu – a violent dictator who later met with violent death – at least once to help a Romanian Baptist pastor in human-rights dire straights, as told by The World Evangelical Alliance global ambassador Brian C. Stiller recently – after the posting of Part 11, my first expose on the Airbus Affair (“When Mulroney saved a clergyman”, by Brian C. Stiller, November 4, 2013, National Post):
“Paul [Negrut], previously a clinical psychologist, had spent six years working in the local hospital but in time decided his real love was to serve as a pastor. In time he left the hospital and became minister of a Baptist church in Oradea, in northwestern Romania.
It was in the 1980s, when the harsh heel of communist dictator Ceausescu ruled the country. Rising to power in 1965, he modelled his regime after Stalin, creating the infamous Securitate, imposing control, surveillance and dominance from 1965 to 1989. It was considered the most repressive regime in Europe. Finally during the revolutionary days of 1989, after he ordered his troops to fire on crowds gathered in Timisoara, they revolted, and he and his wife were shot as they tried to flee.
Yet while Ceausescu was in power, it was pretty much assured that once Paul had become a minister, it wouldn’t be long before the police would visit. He was picked up and sent to a concentration camp rather than a prison, sparing officials the annoyance of having to lay charges and fill out documents.
…
Some weeks after his arrest, a Canadian working in Romania heard of Paul’s arrest, went to his apartment and asked Paul's wife for his photo. Composing a letter describing the stifling oppression and lack of religious freedom, this Canadian stranger wrote to then-prime minister Brian Mulroney, not sure if it would ever reach the Prime Minister’s desk.
Canada, producer of the Candu nuclear reactor being built in Romania in the 1980s, had leverage. Bilateral talks necessitated Ceausescu visiting Canada. On one occasion, after official niceties, Mulroney and Ceausescu had a private discussion. After asking him about the state of religious liberties in Romania and getting the usual song and dance of how wonderful, peaceful and free was his nation, the prime minister had a surprise.
Reaching into his briefing file, he pulled out a picture of Paul Negrut and asked, “Then why is this Baptist minister in prison?” Buffaloed by this unexpected confrontation, within hours Ceausescu sent a curt message to Bucharest: “Get Negrut out.” In 1989, the wall of repressive communism tumbled and Romanians found themselves liberated. Paul Negrut completed a PhD and now serves as president of Emanuel University in Oradea. He may never have had the chance if not for the unheralded and critical initiative of one concerned Canadian, and the simple yet precisely timed question of a prime minister who cared deeply about human freedom.
Brian C. Stiller is global ambassador of The World Evangelical Alliance.”
“Oh Jesus”, if Brian Mulroney’s one “precisely timed” noble act of saying something to a foreign dictatorial figure to help free a clergyman was worth the conviction of eternal gratitude by The World Evangelical Alliance, for which Brian C. Stiller tours internationally, then Richard Nixon most likely had helped save many more and I would need to watch my back all the time – as discussed in a March 2009 blog post, “The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 3)”, my maternal grandmother’s extended Ling family, with a long Chinese Christian history, has been closely associated with Toronto’s Tyndale University College & Seminary where Winston Ling worked for years under Dr. Stiller (“Dr. Brian C. Stiller Appointed President Emeritus”, June 20, 2011, Tyndale University College & Seminary; and, “Neither Yes: Recruiting the right chief”, by Holly Miller and Jay Blossom, Summer 2011, In Trust).
I hope that in the 21st century Christianity will be a force for peace, through fairness and understanding, rather than for sectarian Holy warfare.
Nonetheless, there could be a Christianity dimension to Nicolae Ceausescu’s death as he was executed on Christmas Day 1989 after being toppled. But when he was alive, in 1981 the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. sold a CANDU nuclear reactor to Romania, and the project became one of his prides and – according to Brian Stiller quoted above – led to his visit to Canada. No other country bought CANDU again before his death. (“Ceausescu, wife shot; ‘Antichrist died on Christmas Day’--Bucharest radio”, December 26, 1989, and, “Ceausescu used forced labor to build Candu plant; CANDU”, by Dave Todd, December 30, 1989, Edmonton Journal).
Within Canada, an important figure of an opposite political stripe Brian Mulroney had cultivated good relations with over the years was senior law and government personality Roger Tasse.
In November 1995 filing his $50 million libel lawsuit against the government over the RCMP Airbus Affair criminal investigation, as quoted in Part 11 Tasse was one of Mulroney’s 5 lawyers:
“Mulroney has assembled a top-calibre team of lawyers to argue his case. The team includes Harvey Yarosky, one of Canada’s top criminal lawyers; Gerald Tremblay, one of the province’s top civil litigators; Fred Kaufman, a criminal-law expert and former justice of the Quebec Court of Appeal; Roger Tasse, a former federal deputy justice minister; and Jacques Jeansonne, a partner of Tremblay.”
As earlier, Tasse was the Mulroney lawyer phoning Justice Minister Allan Rock on November 4 to negotiate before the case became public, and hours later Jean Chretien’s residence was broken into.
But on January 5, 1997, at the final moment of negotiation for a legal settlement of his lawsuit, supervised by former Quebec Superior Court Chief Justice Alan Gold, Tasse was not among the lawyers with Mulroney at his home, as quoted in Part 11:
“Mr. Mulroney was at his home, waiting with his media adviser, Luc Lavoie, along with Mr. Tremblay and Mr. Jeansonne, for news of the negotiations.
The phone rang. It was Mr. Gold. Mr. Mulroney took the call, smiled, and simply said: “It’s done.””
So Gerald Tremblay and Jacques Jeansonne were law partners special to Mulroney’s lawsuit endeavour, personally with him when the settlement was won. During the Airbus Affair period from November 1995 to the settlement time, there was no press mention of which law firm they were a part of, but as in Parts 6 & 11 Tremblay was with McCarthy Tetrault – the former law firm of B.C. Supreme Court Justice Pamela Kirkpatrick who had played a role in the RCMP-initiated psychiatric oppression of me.
Once the settlement was reached, a news story stated the two lawyers’ law firm affiliation, and made an unmistakable point that these two were the key lawyers, with Tremblay the lead lawyer, winning the desired outcome for Mulroney, and that Roger Tasse and Harvey Yarosky were there to help (“Taxpayers on hook for $2 million”, by Sarah Scott, January 7, 1997, The Windsor Star):
“… taxpayers will pay for Mulroney's legal team, plus all the experts who furnished reports for the trial that didn’t take place.
Mulroney’s lead lawyer, Gerald Tremblay, told reporters Monday that the bills would be “very, very high.” But he wouldn’t confirm newspaper reports the Mulroney team’s bills were between $1 and $2 million.
Tremblay, a Queen’s Counsel, along with Jacques Jeansonne -- both of the prominent Montreal law firm McCarthy Tetrault -- worked on the Mulroney legal team.
They were helped by Ottawa lawyer Roger Tasse, a former deputy justice minister, and Montreal criminal lawyer Harvey Yarosky.”
It’s unclear when or why former Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Fred Kaufman dropped out of Mulroney’s legal team. Press archives indicate Kaufman was Harvey Yarosky’s partner at Montreal law firm Yarosky, Daviault and Issacs. As late as of August 1996 he was reported, along with Tasse, as among 5 prominent lawyers who “have worked on Mulroney’s side”, but by that time he had been appointed to lead a public inquiry into “the wrongful conviction of Guy Paul Morin” for the October 1984 abduction and subsequent murder of 9-year-old neighbor Christine Jessop. (“Morin inquiry launched”, by Greg Crone, June 27, 1996, The Windsor Star; and, “Ottawa's legal bill in Mulroney suit nears $500,000: Tally for expert opinions, many lawyers and court costs keep adding up”, by Stephen Bindman, August 19, 1996, The Gazette)
Like the MacAdam trial, the Morin inquiry began after the Mulroney lawsuit settlement – in February 1997 and Kaufman was called “a member of former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s legal team in the early stages of his libel action against the Canadian government over the RCMP's Airbus investigation” (“Gentleman judge ‘A problem-solver,’ Fred Kaufman presides over public hearings, starting tomorrow, into Guy Paul Morin’s wrongful conviction”, by Tracey Tyler, February 9, 1997, Toronto Star).
A few days after the legal settlement, an “insider” story from former Mulroney aide L. Ian MacDonald detailed Mulroney’s friendship with Tremblay and revealed “significant” reasons why Yarosky and Tasse had also been hired (“Mulroney’s fight for honor: ‘This is about my place in history,’ former PM tells law partner”, by L. Ian MacDonald, January 11, 1997, The Gazette):
“At a table by the bar of Le Mas des Oliviers, a legendary Montreal hangout of lawyers and pols, Brian Mulroney was finishing a long lunch on Thursday afternoon in the company of Gerald Tremblay, lead counsel in his libel action against the federal government.
“We’ve had a lot of meals together in the last 14 months,” Mulroney said, “and lots of them have had funny moments, and their share of laughter, but none of them have been joyous. This is joyous.”
The former prime minister took a sip of tea, and leaned back in his chair. “Life is good again,” he said. “Life is good.”
Tremblay is chairman of McCarthy Tetrault in Quebec, and its rainmaker. But it’s in court that he’s made his name not only as a leading litigator of the Montreal bar, but as one who comes to court impeccably prepared.
Over the last year, he built a case that left the government no alternative other than to settle on the courthouse steps. His case was in 26 boxes of paper, paper with a thousand cutting edges.
…
… Mulroney was the leader of his own Dream Team, composed of Tremblay and his colleague Jacques Jeansonne, noted Montreal civil-rights attorney Harvey Yarosky and, significantly in Ottawa, former deputy justice minister Roger Tasse, later a partner in the private practice of Jean Chretien, who had been his minister at the justice department.”
Aha, in November 1995 when faced with a criminal investigation, Brian Mulroney suddenly saw the need for “civil rights” and Yarosky was hired; and Tasse was hired because he had been not only Chretien’s deputy minister at the Justice Department but also Chretien’s law partner in private practice!
Mr. Mulroney certainly knew the value of the inside track in his “Dream Team”. But did the Canadian public really think in November 1995 that Mulroney could lose his legal battle against the government with a close associate of Prime Minister Chretien on his side?
Most of the public likely weren’t aware of that fact. In the major press archives from the Airbus Affair period before the legal settlement I can find only one mention of a law partner of Tasse’s, and it wasn’t Chretien (“No reason PM should have known of probe, senator says”, by David Vienneau, December 20, 1995, Toronto Star):
“There is absolutely no reason why Prime Minister Jean Chretien should have known anything about the Airbus affair, one of former prime minister Brian Mulroney’s solicitors-general says.
Senator James Kelleher based his comment on the policy that Mulroney established when he was the occupant of 24 Sussex Dr.
Kelleher said Mulroney did not want to know any details until hours before a charge was to be laid.
…
Chretien says in a CTV interview to be broadcast Dec. 26 that he knew nothing about allegations of alleged kickbacks paid by the European aircraft manufacturer. He also said he did not ask about them.
…
Kelleher, who was appointed to the Senate by Mulroney in 1990, said it was unbelievable to think that no one within the government would have heard of an investigation into the activities of a former prime minister.
“It’s a pretty serious thing for a country when you are investigating a former prime minister,” said Kelleher, who is a partner of Roger Tasse, one of Mulroney’s lawyers.
“I find it hard to accept that word of that would not have reached quite a few people. But I have no evidence to substantiate a statement like that.”
Tasse, who was Chretien’s deputy minister of justice in the early 1980s, called Rock at home one night to inquire about the investigation. Rock did not want to discuss the issue.”
So the public was only told that Mulroney lawyer Roger Tasse had been deputy justice minister, a lead civil servant position, under Chretien but was otherwise a law partner of Mulroney-era solicitor general – minister overseeing RCMP – James Kelleher.
On behalf of Mulroney, Tasse called Justice Minister Allan Rock at home the night of November 4, Rock did not want to discuss the issue and early next morning Chretien’s residence was broken into – so conspicuous, ‘God forbid’.
People with a longer memory might remember that when Chretien first became Prime Minister in November 1993, a press story referred to Tasse as Chretien’s former teacher on the politician’ role in government, and as the person administering the Justice Department while Justice Minister Chretien made political decisions (“Chretien accorded respect; THE PAST”Former deputy says next PM ‘easy to work with’”, by Murray Campbell, November 1, 1993, The Globe and Mail):
““He learns quickly, and he has very strong instincts to get to the issues and understand them in a political context,” said Roger Tasse, who served as Mr. Chretien’s deputy in the Justice Department from 1980 to 1982.
Mr. Tasse, now an Ottawa lawyer, recalled teaching a night class in law and government in the mid-1960s. Among his 12 students were two back-bench MPs - Jean-Luc Pepin and Mr. Chretien. They were eager students who wanted to soak up everything there was to know about how governments operated.
Years later, when Mr. Chretien was on the verge of being appointed justice minister, he called his former teacher and spelled out what he had learned in the classroom - that the civil service was there to administer and that he was there to make the political decisions.
“This was the first time that this had happened to me, that a minister had phoned me just a few minutes before he was to become the minister,” Mr. Tasse said. “I had the sense that he understood very well the role of government. We were welcomed and we were challenged to help him out on his task. This is the kind of thing a deputy minister appreciates in a minister.””
So Mulroney’s lawyer Roger Tasse had not only been a former government deputy and private law partner of Chretien, but a genuine confidante of him.
When the history from the 1980s forward is also reviewed, a clear picture emerges of how Mulroney got to have Tasse on his side when this critical time about his political legacy came.
The opening section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states, concerning the limits of rights and freedoms:
“1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
The phrase “as can be demonstrably justified” was said to be the “brainchild” of deputy justice minister Roger Tasse, one of the 1982 Constitution’s architects working under Justice Minister Jean Chretien in the Pierre Trudeau government (“ANALYSIS PM’s proposed charter of rights could have far-reaching effects”, by Robert Sheppard, February 14, 1981, The Globe and Mail):
“This new opening section, or limitation as it is called, is a dramatic improvement over the first draft, in the opinion of every eminent group that has studied the two. The original version was the most widely criticized section of the charter, seeking to appease the provinces’ concern for parliamentary supremacy by inserting a clause that made the rights subject “to such reasonable limits as are generally accepted in a free and democratic society with a parliamentary system of government.” More than 20 groups such as the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the United Church of Canada and the Canadian National Institute for the Blind had criticized the original limitation clause as a copout that did not put the entrenched charter out of reach of ordinary legislation as it purported to do.
All these groups suggested dropping the reference to “parliamentary system of government,” and many put forward their own versions, some of which would have put certain rights (in the legal and non-discrimination categories) beyond the reach of legislatures altogether, even in emergencies. The active phrase in the new version, “demonstrably justified,” is the brainchild of Roger Tasse, deputy minister of justice, in a late-night brain-storming session, according to drafters. The phrase reflects the concern expressed by Dr. Wilson Head, president of the National Black Coalition of Canada, that the burden of proof that rights can be restricted should be on governments, and that while it is common in French jurisprudence it has little usage in English law.”
“Brainchild” indeed. When the provincial minds were worried about too much rights and freedoms but many political activist groups wanted no limit, Roger Tasse, the man administering the Justice Department where legal limitations would originate, proposed the resolution: ‘if and only if I can justify the limits”.
As liberal as the Trudeau government was, Justice Minister Chretien had wanted the Charter’s equality rights to apply only to the public sector, but senior Justice Department officials pointed out that the United States courts had broadened constitutional rights application to the relevant private sector:
“Justice Minister Jean Chretien stated that the Government’s intention is that equality rights apply only to the public sector. But senior Justice officials acknowledge that U.S. courts have broadened the application of these laws substantially in that country by including private-sector firms that receive public funds or contracts or are government-regulated.
The U.S. experience could be germane to what happens in Canada after entrenchment of a charter of rights because the United States is the main Western nation with long-standing jurisprudence in this area, and Canadian jurists may begin looking there more for guidance.”
The elected Liberal overseeing Canadian law was actually less liberal than the senior mandarins under him, whose brains would determine how much Canadians could enjoy those rights and freedoms. Some of the other key Justice Department mandarins were: acting deputy minister Frederick Jordan, and chief legislative counsel Gerard Bertrand (“Chretien holds Ottawa dinner for fellow patriation backers”, by Zena Cherry, April 17, 1982, The Globe and Mail).
Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau stepped down in 1984, handing the reign to John Turner, who was soon defeated in a September election by new Tory leader Brian Mulroney. Despite announcing retirement from active politics in 1986, Jean Chretien was regarded as the most popular politician in Canada (“CHRETIEN; For a political pensioner he keeps a high profile”, by Hubert Bauch, August 9, 1986, The Gazette):
“Dame Fortune is smiling on Jean Chretien these days. Either that or he’s making all the right moves with no hands.
Four months after he announced his departure from active politics, a poll from a reputable firm dribbles out, leaked to the media by a Chretien partisan, showing Jean Chretien as the hands down most popular politician in the country.
If the poll gives him any ideas, Chretien isn’t saying.
“I know what you want to talk about and I don’t want to talk about it,” is the first thing he says when contacted.
Instead he hangs the gone fishin’ sign on his office door and slips off to Nova Scotia for a strictly private family affair.”
“Strictly private family affair”? Chretien’s Liberal mind had much more. Prior to political retirement he had returned to law practice, lured Roger Tasse away from the government to his Toronto-based law firm Lang, Michener, Cranston, Farquharson and Wright, and had Tasse and his own political organizer Eddie Goldenberg open a branch in Ottawa for him – not to leave all the spotlights to Mulroney’s circle (“Heavyduty legal beagles crowd local lawyers’ turf”, by Stephen Bindman, September 7, 1985, The Ottawa Citizen):
“More than the political face of Ottawa changed with the election of a Progressive Conservative government last Sept. 4 - the legal community took on a new look too.
Seven big law firms in Toronto and Montreal, many boasting prominent Tory partners, have opened offices in Ottawa or become associated with established Ottawa law firms since the election.
…
The big Toronto newcomers have also lured several highly-placed federal government lawyers out of the public service.
When Deputy Justice Minister Roger Tasse leaves Sept. 30 after 29 years in government, he’ll open a local office for the prestigious Toronto firm of Lang, Michener, Cranston, Farquharson and Wright, which already boasts former justice minister Jean Chretien as company counsel.
Although the plans have not been finalized nor formally announced, Tasse will be joined here by longtime Chretien organizer Eddie Goldenberg.
Tasse and Chretien worked closely together in the drafting of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the patriation of the constitution in the early 1980s.”
By 1988, before the November election, some of the Tory lawyers in Ottawa were feeling pessimistic, but the law office of Chretien, Tasse and Goldenberg were doing extremely well, as Stevie Cameron noted (“PEOPLE WATCH Ottawa’s Tory pastures not lush enough for some big law firms”, by Stevie Cameron, March 17, 1988, The Globe and Mail):
“It will be a sad day tomorrow for Weir and Foulds. After nearly four years of trying to make a go of it, the big Toronto-based law firm is closing its Ottawa office.
Weir and Foulds is one of a dozen law firms with excellent Conservative connections that opened Ottawa offices after the Mulroney Government came to office in September, 1984. Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s close friend, Toronto lawyer Sam Wakim, joined Weir and Foulds with a handsome dowry: an estimated $200,000 worth of annual business from the Export Development Corp. Frisky with its good fortune, Weir and Foulds hired two lawyers from Gowling and Henderson, the Ottawa firm that had handled the EDC business, and set up shop in Ottawa.
The EDC business was not enough, however, and the firm did not grow the way it had hoped. It was not alone; Toronto firms Goodman and Carr and Lyons Arbus and Goodman (which had hired Maureen McTeer, the wife of External Affairs Minister Joe Clark) closed their Ottawa offices; so did Calgary’s Burnet Duckworth and Palmer. The Calgary firm also has a Clark connection; Mr. Clark’s brother Peter is a senior partner.
…
… To get an idea how lucrative Government work can be, just look at the money the Government spends helping native groups with their legal bills. In British Columbia, the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en bands have launched a land claims test case in the B.C. Supreme Court and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development has allocated $4.7-million over three years to help them pay for legal work and research. These bands are using B.C. lawyers, but many other bands have hired lawyers based in Ottawa. The best known is former Liberal justice minister Jean Chretien, a partner at Lang Michener Lash Johnston.
In fact, a mention of Mr. Chretien irks many of the ambitious newcomers to Ottawa because his firm is doing so well. Lang Michener’s Ottawa office opened in 1985 with three partners and has mushroomed to 25 with a broad base of tax, banking and regulatory work. Envious Tories generally consider Lang Michener a Liberal firm because of the presence of Mr. Chretien and his former executive assistant Edward Goldenberg, but they brought in Roger Tasse, former deputy minister of justice, who has never stated his political affiliations, and managing partner Kent Plumley is a well-known local Tory.”
The Ottawa law office of Chretien, Tasse and Goldenberg had grown to a size of 25 during the first term of the Mulroney government, with local Tory Kent Plumley as their managing partner – later in November 1995 as the Airbus Affair came Mulroney could be thinking of getting his payback by hiring Tasse to his legal team.
As a matter of fact, the Ottawa law office led by Chretien and Tasse did so well that it was dubbed a “Liberal government-in-waiting” in July 1988, with at least 10 of their lawyers recruited from the big law firm Gowling Henderson – even when their own firm Lang Michener Lash Johnson’s Toronto head office was engulfed in a scandal of fraudulent immigration schemes for Hong Kong clients (“T.O. Law reeling from body blows; Prestigious firm rocked by probes of lawyers”, by Lynda Hurst, July 21, 1988, Toronto Star):
“He wore silk suits and drove a Rolls Royce with a car phone. He frequently jetted back and forth to the United States and across the Pacific on business.
Pilzmaker, 37, specialized in immigration law and he created quite a stir in 1985 when he joined Lang Michener Lash Johnson, one of Toronto’s most prominent law firms, established back in 1926 by Roland Michener, later Canada’s Governor-General.
He brought two associates with him and within the first year, had earned the firm almost $1 million in Hong Kong-based business.
But Pilzmaker’s style and demeanor were at odds with the company’s low-key WASP image. Twenty months later, he was quietly dismissed.
Last month, his two associates, Gary Wiseman and Lloyd Ament, were also expelled.
Today, all three and a secretary are being investigated by the RCMP.
And the firm of Lang Michener Lash Johnson? It’s reeling from a series of body blows to its reputation that may take years to overcome:
* The RCMP is investigating allegations that Pilzmaker and cohorts fraudulently orchestrated immigration status for wealthy Hong Kong clients by faking Canadian residence and investment requirements.
* RCMP officers raided the firm's posh First Canadian Place offices June 8, seizing files on 149 Hong Kong clients and two numbered Ontario
companies.* The Law Society of Upper Canada is investigating 14 other partners who allegedly failed to report suspicions of impropriety on the part of Pilzmaker
as soon as they should have. They could face charges of professional misconduct.* After an internal inquiry into Pilzmaker’s conduct earlier this year, four other Lang Michener lawyers were found by the firm not to have declared
duty on jewlery and other items brought back from their trips to Hong Kong.…
Although the firm is said not to be as stereotypically Upper Canadian in style as Osler Hoskin or McCarthy & McCarthy, it has a long-established reputation for solid, ethical corporate-commercial legal work.
The Lang Michener side was jointly founded in 1926 by Roland Michener (at 88, he’s no longer an active partner) and the late Daniel Lang (father of the current Daniel Lang, who has been a Liberal senator since 1964).
In 1986, it merged with Lash Johnson to create one of Canada’s biggest corporate law firms. The merger was the largest in the country’s legal history.
It also set up an Ottawa office. Peopled by former justice minister Jean Chretien, his one-time deputy Roger Tasse and other politically connected lawyers, it’s been described as a “Liberal government-in-waiting.”
The Ottawa office is now among the three or four largest in that city, but its starting up left some bad blood at other law firms.
“They did major raiding jobs on other firms,” says one observer. “Close to 10 lawyers at Gowling Henderson were pirated. They wanted to become the biggest in Canada but now they’re trapped with this.””
“Liberal government-in-waiting”? John Turner was still the Liberal leader, later to contest the November 21 election against the Mulroney government as discussed in the context of the Richard Grise affair. Had RCMP C/Supt. Brian McConnell not suppressed the Grise case before the election, Turner would have had a chance to win – McConnell’s decision was not only Mulroney’s gain but also a later gain for Turner’s leadership rival Jean Chretien.
But before the Grise situation arose, in October 1988 Roger Tasse joined the corporate world to become Bell Canada’s executive vice-president of legal affairs (“Registering of lobbyists signals tougher climate as lawyers flock to field”, by Michael Crawford, November 3, 1988, Financial Post).
Had Tasse foreseen a Turner loss, or that a Turner win wouldn’t be the same as a Chretien win for him?
Perhaps not exactly either.
Since 1987 Roger Tasse had also become a legal adviser for Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who was keen at citing the talent and record of someone so distinguished in constitutional law to help him pass the 1987 Meech Lake constitutional accord mentioned in Part 7 (“The Lost Clause: PMO tries to shift blame”, by Paul Gessell, June 10, 1990, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Tasse wrote much of the 1982 Constitution when Pierre Trudeau was prime minister and Jean Chretien the justice minister.
Tasse later became Chretien’s law partner.
But that did not stop Mulroney from turning to him in his hour of need.
That hour occurred June 2, 1987 when Mulroney locked up the premiers for the night in the Langevin Block on Wellington Street to finalize the details of the Meech Lake accord.
Participants at the historic gathering divulged -- years later -- that Tasse was instrumental in convincing some premiers, especially Ontario’s David Peterson, that the accord would not undermine the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Mulroney came to rely upon Tasse increasingly over the years, despite the fact that Tasse’s partner, Chretien, could soon become the prime minister’s chief political rival.
Tasse became a prominent champion of the Meech Lake accord and Mulroney began to quote his legal arguments to show that such a distinguished constitutional expert -- and an associate of Chretien -- was on side.
“Roger Tasse’s views satisfied prime minister Trudeau in 1982,” Mulroney told a Conservative caucus meeting May 4 in Mont-Tremblant, Que.
“His assurances satisfied Prime Minister Mulroney in 1987 and I hope they will assist in satisfying any doubts some premiers may still have in 1990.””
Mulroney showed his political smart using Roger Tasse’s constitutional-law statue to pressure the provincial premiers and his own Tory caucus to go along with his constitutional accord.
But Mulroney didn’t give Tasse credit in public. Instead, to the media in 1990 the Prime Minister’s Office blamed Tasse for making a unilateral decision during negotiations to revise the Meech Lake accord, that almost killed it:
“Prime Minister Brian Mulroney offered no public thanks when a trusted adviser played a key role in convincing reluctant premiers to sign the Meech Lake accord in 1987.
But three years later, Mulroney’s office is trying to blame Roger Tasse for an “innocent mistake” Friday night that almost killed Meech Lake.
Tasse, a former deputy justice minister, has the job at the marathon constitutional talks of drafting the wording of agreements reached by Mulroney and the premiers.
Mulroney’s office is blaming Tasse for neglecting to tell Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells that a key clause he wanted included in an agreement to salvage Meech Lake had, in fact, been scrapped and would not appear in final legal documents.
…
Mulroney never mentioned Tasse by name, but one of his aides did.
Marcel Cote, Mulroney’s communications director, said Tasse realized the clause desired by Wells was “a dead duck” so he shelved it, did not include it in the final legal text and neglected to inform Wells of the change.
Wells was furious.
But how did Tasse ascertain the clause was “a dead duck?”
Cote was loathe to provide such an explanation. But some other provincial officials suspect they were duped -- that Tasse acted only after the prime minister’s office ordered the deletion.
The 59-year-old Tasse is considered one of Canada’s leading constitutional experts and a master in drafting legal language in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of first ministers’ conferences.
He is an experienced bureaucrat and it would be highly unusual for someone of his background to decide, without direction from his political masters, to scrap a clause from a federal-provincial agreement that could kill a deal as important as Meech Lake.”
A constitutional clause Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells had wanted was omitted from an accord revision by Tasse, and the change was unacceptable to Wells.
But others shouldn’t presume as cited above, that the experienced former bureaucrat Tasse must have had direction from “his political masters” but was then blamed. The fact that Tasse had been a former close associate of Chretien who had his own Liberal government ambition, left open the possibility that Tasse might not always toe Mulroney’s line – especially when he received no public credit, unlike in the Trudeau-Chretien era.
Roger Tasse’s loyalty to Brian Mulroney could not be taken for granted. As in Part 11 it happened again in November 1995, when acting as a lawyer and go-between for Mulroney to negotiate with the Justice Department, Tasse withheld some key info, not passing it to Mulroney – that might have cost Mulroney the opportunity to keep the RCMP criminal investigation of him from becoming public knowledge.
For Mulroney, the advantage of using Roger Tasse in the 1987-90 constitutional negotiations was political because Tasse gave his support to Mulroney’s constitutional endeavour when both Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien, especially Trudeau, opposed the Meech Lake accord (“Trudeau vowed to block Chretien unless he opposed Meech Lake, Copps claims”, March 21, 1990, The Gazette):
“Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau pledged last summer to derail Jean Chretien’s bid for the Liberal leadership unless he campaigned against the Meech Lake accord, leadership candidate Sheila Copps said yesterday.
“Mr. Trudeau told me last summer that if Jean Chretien didn’t take his view, that he would do everything in his power to defeat him,” Copps said during a campaign stop.
Trudeau made the comment during a private meeting last August, said Copps who supports the accord, as does leadership hopeful Paul Martin.
Chretien, who held several key cabinet posts in Trudeau governments, has said he consulted his former boss before taking a public stand against the accord Jan. 16 - a week before declaring his candidacy.
Copps told reporters she's “not sure” Chretien always shared Trudeau’s opposition to the accord.
“I had the courage to state my view where it differed from Mr. Trudeau, I only hope that Jean Chretien had the courage to do the same.””
Sheila Copps had a big mouth, didn’t she, outing Trudeau’s behind-the scenes maneuver against the Meech Lake accord?
Later as Chretien’s deputy prime minister, Copps was in the news on November 15, 1995, confirming the RCMP Airbus Affair criminal investigation as in Part 11. Coincidentally the next day, someone in her hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, uttered a death threat against her at her mother’s office (“Arrest follows Copps death threat”, by Dan Nolan, November 20, 1995, The Spectator):
“A Hamilton man charged with making a death threat against Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps was arrested hours before Ms Copps made a public appearance in Hamilton’s Santa Claus parade.
The suspect was arrested at his home at about 1 a.m. Saturday after Hamilton-Wentworth police received a complaint Friday afternoon from the office of Alderman Geraldine Copps, who is Ms Copps’ mother.
The Deputy PM, who is also environment minister and the member for Hamilton East, was in the second vehicle in the parade, which wound its way through downtown Hamilton Saturday morning.
The arrest comes two weeks after a man broke in to the prime minister’s residence in Ottawa carrying a knife and was confronted by Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s wife, Aline. The Montreal man, upset with the outcome of the Quebec referendum, was arrested and has been charged with attempted murder.
Inspector Brian Mullan said the man arrested in Hamilton is alleged to have made threats of “a general nature” and did not specifically target Ms Copps’ appearance in the parade. He said, however, police couldn’t rule it out.
…
Acting Inspector Mike Shea said the man was arrested in connection with an incident Thursday at city hall. The inspector said a man went to Alderman Copps’ office and asked for “personal information” about the deputy prime minister.
…
“When refused, he became irate and made statements which alarmed the secretary,” the inspector said. “The secretary expressed fear for Sheila Copps’ well-being.”
…
He said the man is known to Alderman Copps and her office staff and had been “bothering them for a long time.”
Charged with threatening death is Thomas Frederick Sedjevick, 44, of Charlton Avenue East. He is also known as Tommy Sedgwick, police say.”
By the time of the 1992 Charlottetown constitutional accord negotiated after the Meech Lake accord’s failure in 1990, Liberal leader Chretien endorsed it, and in a media interview Prime Minister Mulroney publicly cited the positive stands of both Chretien and Tasse to rebuff Trudeau’s continuing staunch opposition (“TRUDEAU BACKLASH Mulroney claims foe has aided ‘Yes’ side”, by Edison Stewart, October 2, 1992, Toronto Star):
“… the Prime Minister said, no concession to the provinces in this deal is as big as Trudeau’s agreement in 1981 to allow legislatures to override the Charter of Rights through the so-called notwithstanding clause.
Mulroney rejected Trudeau’s argument that the deal would create a hierarchy of six classes of rights, with Quebecers and aboriginals at the head of the list.
If there is any hierarchy of rights, it is within the existing Charter of Rights which Trudeau inserted in the Constitution, Mulroney said.
Trudeau’s interpretation has been rejected by two of his former constitutional advisers, Liberal Leader Jean Chretien and former deputy justice minister Roger Tasse, Mulroney added.”
Mulroney’s exact words about the “Notwithstanding Clause” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms were more hyperbolically critical of Trudeau (“Don’t risk gains, PM tells Quebec; Mulroney says Trudeau opposes deal because Bourassa obtained ‘too much’”, by Graham Fraser, October 3, 1992, The Globe and Mail):
“Asked by reporters about Mr. Trudeau’s argument that the federal government had made a series of concessions to the provinces without receiving anything in return, he replied: “Lookit. No concession has ever been made, I don’t think in Canadian history, by the government of Canada that will ever rival the notwithstanding clause.
“For a prime minister of Canada to give away to the provinces the right to override decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, I believe this is a concession on a scale probably unprecedented in a modern industrialized society.””
But in saying this, Mulroney ignored the fact that in 1981 under the Trudeau government it was Justice Minister Jean Chretien and two provincial justice officials, Ontario’s Roy McMurtry and Saskatchewan’s Roy Romanow, who introduced the “Notwithstanding Clause” on the basis of the “McMurtry formula”, to allow the federal or a provincial legislature to suspend the rights and freedoms, as I reviewed in a July 2009 blog post, “The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 7)”:
“In 1981 in reaching an agreement between the federal government and nine provinces (without Quebec) on the new Constitution, there was a “kitchen” episode involving a crucial compromise worked out among then justice minister Jean Chretien, Ontario attorney general Roy McMurtry, and Saskatchewan attorney general Roy Romanow, at Chretien’s Ottawa home and then in a fifth-floor kitchen of the Government Conference Centre in Ottawa, regarding what rights should be in the Constitution: at the time, Trudeau felt that minority-language educational rights (i.e., rights of French education for people of French heritage in an English region, and vice versa) were his bottom line and that the usual fundamental rights could be for a national referendum to decide, but he had difficulty getting agreement of the provinces and was thinking about the federal government going it alone; Quebec’s separatist Parti Quebecois premier Rene Levesque wanted both the minority-language rights and the fundamental rights to be decided by a referendum; then in late 1981 the “kitchen” players initiated a compromise whereby the federal government and the nine English-speaking provinces would accept the minority-language rights but would add a “notwithstanding clause” in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms so that the parliament or a provincial legislature would have the option to ‘suspend’ the “fundamental freedoms”, “legal rights” or “equality rights” in the Charter, i.e., to make a legislation exempt from the rights and freedoms; Trudeau agreed to this “McMurtry formula” on the ‘sunset’ condition that any ‘suspension’ would need to be re-enacted every 5 years.”
To participate more fully in the Charlottetown constitutional reform process, Roger Tasse quit his Bell Canada executive job at some point and continued as a registered lobbyist for Bell. After the Charlottetown accord was reached he returned to law practice, not at Lang Michener where he and Chretien had been but joining the firm Fraser Beatty (“Tasse's appointment clue to Spicer’s future”, April 8, “Group working on Constitution plays down federal links”, April 12, “Hats off to customs’ carpet bagger”, September 24, and, “Tasse stays busy lobbying”, November 4, by Frank Howard, 1991, The Ottawa Citizen; “Fraser & Beatty”, September 15, 1992, The Globe and Mail; and, “Consultant fees topped $1.7 million”, October 2, 1992, Toronto Star).
After Mulroney’s retirement in June 1993 and Chretien’s October 1993 electoral triumph over Mulroney’s successor Kim Campbell, discussed in Parts 7 & 8, rather surprisingly Roger Tasse, the former inner-circle brain of Chretien’s “Liberal government-in-waiting”at the Ottawa office of Lang Michener, did not return to government.
Instead, in June 1995 – I note that Paul Palango had published an article on June 1 denouncing the inaction of the Chretien government and the RCMP on the Airbus commissions issue – Tasse was recruited to the law firm Gowling, Strathy and Henderson, as quoted earlier a big law firm Tasse and Chretien had “pirated” 10 lawyers from to their “Liberal government-in-waiting” (“National Notebook”, June 24, 1995, The Globe and Mail):
“Tory watching . . . It’s always interesting to watch the rare gatherings of Tories in Ottawa these days. Ever since the Progressive Conservatives were dumped from office in 1993, the sight of several hundred of them meeting in one room can elicit nostalgia, curiosity and sometimes even sympathy. But the gawkers at a big Conservative debate in Ottawa - between Hugh Segal and David Frum - got a special sight this week when a Mulroney graced the hall. No, it wasn’t the former prime minister, Brian Mulroney, who has not been seen in Tory circles in Ottawa since the June, 1993, leadership convention. It was his daughter, Caroline Mulroney, who appeared at the National Press Club on Wednesday night to watch the debate. More interesting than the sight of Ms. Mulroney, though, was the sight of all the knots of onlookers, whose conversations abruptly ceased as they acknowledged the celebrity in their midst. ’Tis an ill wind . . . Former deputy justice minister Roger Tasse has a knack for remaining at the centre of things. A legal architect of the 1982 Constitution, who also had a hand in creating the subsequent, doomed constitutional accords of the 1990s, Mr. Tasse resurfaced recently as one of the three “wise guys” who formed a special policy panel advising the government on how to handle the new generation of direct-to-home satellite TV services. That latest role did not go unnoticed in the boardrooms of the big Ottawa law firms. Last week, the biggest of them, Gowling, Strathy and Henderson, announced Mr. Tasse would be joining the firm. Gowling hopes that Mr. Tasse will help them break into the lucrative communications/entertainment legal business, currently dominated by Gowling’s competitors.”
It was something to have Caroline Mulroney and Roger Tasse in the same news column.
A few months later Tasse became Mulroney’s political and legal insider lobbyist with the Chretien government after RCMP announcement of the Airbus Affair criminal investigation – when Mulroney needed prominent lawyers for his libel lawsuit and public-relations campaign Chretien’s former confidante was outside of the Chretien government and available to Mulroney.
As in Part 11, in November 1995 Chretien said he was unaware of the RCMP investigation; as in a news report quoted earlier, Chretien also said in a CTV interview to air on December 26, that he knew nothing about allegations of Airbus kickbacks, while Tasse’s latest law partner James Kelleher expressed puzzlement about it – without directly referring to Tasse’s old friendship with Chretien.
As reviewed and discussed, the Canadian media knew of Roger Tasse’s history inside and out but kept silent during the Airbus Affair, identifying him only as a former deputy justice minister under Chretien, and otherwise a law partner of former Mulroney government solicitor general James Kelleher – not noting that it was barely 6 months at Gowling, Strathy and Henderson (“Annual Report”, July 1, 2004 – June 30, 2005, Cayman Islands Monetary Authority).
Gowling Henderson was not only a big Canadian law firm but a corporate group that include Gowlings Consulting Limited (“Gowlings, privacy”, Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP), where Norman Inkster, Mulroney’s RCMP Commissioner and now Stephen Harper’s Chair of Advisory Council on National Security, was a recent partner as in Part 11.
I can imagine the media countering my criticisms about its selective reporting along official lines, by pointing out that the media’s first role was to report what others said, that most of the political and legal elites knew of Tasse’s backgrounds and yet they, especially the opposition parties in Parliament, did not sound any alarm in November 1995.
Indeed, elected politicians who were critical of Mulroney and in opposition to the Chretien Liberal government had not only the duty but the political incentive to pounce on this matter and stir a major public controversy.
In fact, a year earlier in November 1994 the opposition Reform party did raise a Roger Tasse issue publicly, smelling a kind of “private family affair” in the appointments of Roger Tasse and 2 others to a “special policy panel” mentioned in the earlier quote, also dubbed the “‘Death Star’ panel” (“Ottawa names ‘Death Star’ panel; But group hit at outset with complaint of bias”, by Robert Brehl, November 30, 1994, Toronto Star):
“The federal government has named a three-person panel to draw up battle plans for a fight with U.S. “death stars.”
But the opposition charges the panel is hardly objective.
"Two of the three members of the government’s so-called non-partisan committee have strong links to Power Corp., strong links to the Prime Minister and his associates, or both,” Reform MP Jan Brown said in the House of Commons yesterday.
Montreal-based Power Corp. owns 80 per cent of Power DirecTV, a company hoping to use U.S. satellites to provide a U.S.-Canada hybrid for direct-to-home services, which have been dubbed death stars by cable operators.
Without a change in rules, Power DirecTV will not operate, officials said.
Brown, along with some in the industry, fear Power DirecTV will get preferential treatment from this panel.
Power Corp. president Andre Desmarais is married to Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s daughter.
The direct-to-home satellite policy panel will be headed by former Canadian trade negotiator Gordon Ritchie.
Brown takes exception to the appointments of Roger Tasse, a former deputy minister to Chretien in the justice department, and Robert Rabinovitch, former deputy minister of communications and current executive with investment firm Claridge Inc., part of the Bronfman empire.
“The review process has not even begun and the fix is in,” Brown said.
Industry Minister John Manley denied any of the three on the panel have a conflict of interest.
“I suggest to her that it is improper to impugn the integrity of people who are operating on the basis of a request from the government of Canada,” Manley said.”
“The review process has not even begun and the fix is in”, Reform MP Jan Brown was onto something: Montreal-based Power Corp. owned 80% of Power DirectTV, Power Corp. president Andre Desmarais was Jean Chretien’s son-in-law, and the Chretien government appointed Tasse, someone of a close link to Chretien, to the 3-person policy panel on direct-to-home satellite TV service.
Either Jan Brown didn’t say or the media report omitted it, that Tasse was also Chretien’s former private law partner.
The appointment of Robert Rabinovitch, former deputy communications minister and executive in Bronfman family company Claridge Inc., was a lesser “family affair” in comparison.
A year later the RCMP Airbus Affair criminal investigation had just begun and, again, ‘the fix was in’ with Tasse acting as a lawyer for Mulroney. How could the RCMP and Justice Department move the criminal investigation forward without being preferential to Tasse, and thus to Mulroney?
But it was an even closer “private family affair”when it came to Mulroney, Tasse, Chretien and his Desmarais in-laws. In May 1995 amid the Power DirectTV controversy, the media aired some of it, including that Mulroney was a legal counsel for the Desmarais family’s Power Corp., and that when Chretien was justice minister his future son-in-law worked for him (“Desmarais never far from PM’s office”, by Paul Gessell, May 2, 1995, The Ottawa Citizen):
“One of the few constants in Canadian politics is that regardless of who is prime minister, Paul Desmarais is never far away.
The Liberal government’s involvement in a controversy between competing satellite television companies has provoked considerable comment in the Commons and the news media about the personal links between Desmarais’ Power Corp. and Jean Chretien’s administration.
These connections include the marriage of Desmarais’ son and right-hand man, Andre, to Chretien’s daughter France. Andre, when still courting France, even worked as press secretary in the early 1980s to then justice minister Jean Chretien.
…
Ian MacDonald, a Mulroney friend and biographer, described Desmarais as “Mulroney’s mentor in the business world.” Desmarais’ biographer, Dave Greber, calls Mulroney “an old Desmarais protege.”
Mulroney and Desmarais go back at least as far as 1972, when Desmarais, as the proprietor of the Montreal newspaper La Presse, hired Mulroney, in his capacity as a labor lawyer, to negotiate an end to a union dispute.
…
Mulroney, now in political retirement, is a hired gun, lobbyist, legal counsel and trophy director for several big corporations, including Power Corp.”
Deputy justice minister Roger Tasse was there, in Andre Desmarais’s courtship of France Chretien by working as press secretary for Justice Minister Jean Chretien.
So “the fix” was even more in, more of a “private family affair”: in November 1995 Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s in-law Paul Desmarais’s old friend and protege, Desmarais family company legal counsel, namely former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, was being investigated by RCMP for possible corruption; and Roger Tasse, an old Justice Department friend of both Chretien and his son-in-law Andre Desmarais, and old mentor and partner of Chretien in law, was made available as a lawyer for Mulroney to deal with RCMP and the Chretien government.
But what happened in November 1995 to the “considerable comment in the Commons and the news media about the personal links between Desmarais’ Power Corp. and Jean Chretien’s administration” just a few months earlier, now turned into silence when it concerned a criminal investigation of Brian Mulroney and his legal and PR counter-offensives?
On the politicians’ part, MP Jan Brown of the Reform party, which had taken most of the Tory votes in Western Canada in the 1993 election as mentioned in my June 2009 blog post, “The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada (Part 6)”, had objected to Tasse’s appointment to the “Death Star panel”. Now with the Airbus Affair, Reform leader Preston Manning coyly skirted it by throwing circumventing punches at both Chretien and Mulroney (“Charest suggests Reform in turmoil”, by Norm Ovenden, December 19, 1995, Calgary Herald):
“Last week, Reform Leader Preston Manning suggested Prime Minister Jean Chretien should be impeached for his “irrational” efforts to repair national unity.
St. Albert Reform MP John Williams and B.C.’s Keith Martin criticized the personal attacks on Chretien as grandstanding.
…
Manning isn’t too worried about [Tory leader Jean] Charest or the Tories. He said they were shellacked for good reason in the 1993 election by Canadians who still remember the failures on ethics, unity and public finances. The ghost of unpopular former prime minister Brian Mulroney still walks through the memory halls of many voters, Manning said.”
Clearly, some Reform MPs openly disagreed with attacking Chretien personally.
On the media’s part, The Globe and Mail, with its editor-in-chief William Thorsell a special Mulroney friend, did try to bring up the issue by quoting from a Winnipeg Free Press editorial on November 24, and then publishing a William Thorsell editorial on the 25th.
Without naming Tasse, the Winnipeg Free Press editorial quote lambasted Mulroney (“Western Voices Memo to Brian Mulroney: The RCMP is just doing its job REACTIONS / Commentators reflect on the former prime minister’s lawsuit, Ralph Klein’s tactics and the Reform Party’s aching desire to form the Official Opposition”, by Scott Feschuk, November 24, 1995, The Globe and Mail):
“Mr. Mulroney would have been well advised to wait for the RCMP to complete its investigation. Instead, Mr. Mulroney hired a team of lawyers with the stated intention of trying to head off the police investigation with a phone call to Justice Minister Allan Rock. This pathetic attempt to intimidate the federal government and the RCMP only serves to convince Canadians that, at best, Mr. Mulroney believes the RCMP should not treat him like any other suspect, or, at worst, he is a man with a lot to hide.”
The next-day’s Thorsell editorial, titled “What is fuelling the conspiracy culture surrounding Brian Mulroney?”, has been quoted in some details earlier, with its intimidating words and phrases like “the equivalent of Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald”, “inventory of “scandals” during Pierre Trudeau’s or Lester Pearson’s time”, “congenital intolerance of compromise”, “double-dealing”, “outsider from the lower classes”, “the nouveaux riche”, etc., and a comparison to Jean Chretien:
“He is enormously competitive and partisan in politics, but so are people such as Ed Broadbent and Jean Chretien. Was Mr. Mulroney’s crime that he let it show?”
With Mulroney unhesitant to throw mud or worse at anyone, the omnipresence of Paul Desmarais’s political patronages would be good enough for most politicians to keep mum (“Desmarais never far from PM’s office”, by Paul Gessell, May 2, 1995, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Why do prime ministers embrace Desmarais more than any other business leader? Just how different would our country be if prime ministers were as chummy with union leaders, symphony conductors or Nobel Prize physicists?
Back in 1981, Jim Coutts was Pierre Trudeau’s principal secretary and chief confidant. Coutts made headlines in April that year by accompanying Desmarais on a Power Corp. jet to Washington for a “social” weekend.
The socializing included a round of golf, a theatrical performance at the Kennedy Centre, guest bedrooms at the home of Canada’s ambassador to the United States, Peter Towe, and an embassy dinner party with a guest list including George Bush, vice-president at the time, and several other Washington high rollers.
…
Desmarais pays attention to leadership campaigns. One of his top executives, John Rae, played a key role in both of Chretien’s campaigns to become Liberal leader. John Rae, by the way, is the brother of Ontario’s New Democratic Party premier, Bob Rae.
When Chretien retires and a leadership convention is held to replace him, chances are Desmarais will be on hand. Finance Minister Paul Martin could quite possibly be Chretien’s successor. And who taught Martin how to succeed in business? None other than his former employer, Paul Desmarais.”
In short, it seemed that Chretien’s in-law Paul Desmarais had all establishment politicians of power potential, regardless of political stripe, in his Power Corp. back pocket.
Further entangling the complex web was Mulroney’s propensity to insert his credit wherever he could, such as in a July 2009 Bloomberg news’ report for introducing Desmarais to U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George Bush (“Buffett Loses to Desmarais as Power Exceeds Return”, by Lisa Kassenaar, July 30, 2009, Bloomberg.com):
““They keep a very low profile,” says Brian Mulroney, who met Desmarais in 1965 and, as Canada’s prime minister from 1984 to 1993, introduced him to President Ronald Reagan and Bush. “That’s the way they like it.””
But Desmarais had in April 1981 officially partied with Bush – Reagan was recuperating from injuries of an assassination – in Washington, D.C., courtesy of the Trudeau government.
Mulroney’s nasty message in November 1995 had likely been privately circulating among the elite circles, as his former aide Ian MacDonald shared, after the lawsuit settlement, some of Mulroney’s private words and thoughts (“Mulroney’s fight for honor: ‘This is about my place in history,’ former PM tells law partner”, by L. Ian MacDonald, January 11, 1997, The Gazette):
“… Brian Mulroney was finishing a long lunch on Thursday afternoon in the company of Gerald Tremblay , lead counsel in his libel action against the federal government.
…
The former prime minister took a sip of tea, and leaned back in his chair. “Life is good again,” he said. “Life is good.”
…
On a cold night in early November 1995, Mulroney went for a walk near his home in Westmount, and shared with an old friend and financial adviser the accusations that were in the wind.
“What are you going to do?” the friend asked.
“Well, I can do one of two things,” Mulroney replied. “I can let it sit there, in the hope that, maybe, well, it will go away. That wouldn’t cost me a nickel. But knowing these people, this will leak and I’ll die the death of a thousand cuts. My life will become unbearable. The alternative is to get my lawyers together so that if and when this leaks, I’ll file the most massive pre-emptive lawsuit in Canadian history.”
Mulroney understood that unless he struck back swiftly and decisively … historians would conclude that he was a crook.
Instead of noting that he was the only Conservative leader to win consecutive majority governments since Macdonald, their only historical comparison with Sir John A. would be the scandals.
And even then, Mulroney knew it would be a long and expensive battle. He knew a trial, if it came to that, would be a street fight on both sides. But then he is a streetfighter.
In two national campaigns, he had always done what it takes to win. John Turner could have told Jean Chretien that.
Or as Mulroney said at the end of his lunch on Thursday: “You can say what you want about me, I don’t care about that. But attack my family or my name and you’ll be in for the fight of your life.””
It’s unclear if the “old friend and financial adviser” Mulroney confided in was related to the Desmarais family, and if that person then “told Jean Chretien” what was in Mulroney’s mind – an ego the size of a Siberian mammoth expressed like a mafia boss would, that the public would also get a taste of from William Thorsell’s parroting, or paraphrasing.
It’s also unclear why a criminal investigation of Mulroney was akin to an attack on his family. But the Chretien government understood Mulroney’s “in for the fight of your life” mentality, and the legal settlement in January 1997 included an “unprecedented” government apology to his family – something his lawyers Gerald Tremblay and Jacques Jeansonne eagerly took credit for, as Ian MacDonald described:
“In the end, in what could be called the [Mulroney wife] Mila clause, the government “fully” apologized to Mulroney “and his family.”
To Tremblay’s knowledge, it is unprecedented in Canadian jurisprudence for a family to be included in an admission of error by the government.
Harvey Strosberg, the prominent Ontario libel lawyer who was brought in by Rock to bolster the government’s legal team, agrees that it was unprecedented to include Mulroney’s family in the apology.
Jeansonne, who filled out Mulroney’s table at lunch on Thursday, suggested Mulroney did better by settling than he would have by winning in court,
in that Superior Court Judge Andre Rochon could have ordered costs and damages in a judgment, but could not have compelled the government to
apologize.”
One possible explanation that the government apology had to cover his family, is that to Mulroney the criminal investigation of him was ‘discriminative’, not because of his skin color but because of his social roots.
As in Part 11, during court testimony in April 1996 Mulroney decried the RCMP allegations of him in a September 29, 1995 letter to the Swiss police, as “poisonous and really fraught with fascism”.
His choice of lawyer Harvey Yarosky to help McCarthy Tetrault lawyers Tremblay and Jeansonne with his libel lawsuit reflected that “civil rights” thinking.
Harvey Yarosky had achieved prominence in 1991-92 as the special coroner in an inquest into the death of Marcellus Francois, a 24-year-old black father of two, killed by Montreal police Sergeant Michel Tremblay on July 3, 1991, allegedly due to a mistaken identity, an act that left Francois’s wife Sylvia Clark a widow with 5 children. Yarosky’s report condemned the police mentality as “racist” (“Police racism endangers lives, coroner says”, by Eric Siblin, May 8, 1992, The Ottawa Citizen):
“Marcellus Francois, 24, was killed last July when a police SWAT team officer, mistaking him for an attempted murder suspect, fired a single shot into his head at close range.
The stinging report released Thursday by special coroner Harvey Yarosky says the shot fired from the M-16 rifle of Sgt. Michel Tremblay resulted from “misinformation. misperception and misjudgment.”
Yarosky says the question of whether racism played a part in the shooting – which touched off angry demonstrations in the black community last summer – can only be speculation.
“However, the evidence at the inquest disclosed in some members of the Montreal police department the existence of a racist attitude that is totally unacceptable,” he says in the 90-page report.
“If uncorrected, it could lead to further situations endangering life.”
…
Francois, the third black man to be shot dead by Montreal police in as many years, had been sitting in the passenger seat of a car that had been swarmed by police in the city’s financial district.
Tremblay testified during the inquest that he thought Francois was reaching for a gun in the car. But no weapon was found.
The entire chain of police actions leading to the shooting were linked by a “shocking absence of continuity, co-ordination, communication and supervision,” Yarosky writes.
Members of the police surveillance team who mistook Francois, a father of two, for the attempted murder suspect were working with inadequate fax copies of a color photograph of the suspect, the report notes.
…
Yarosky, a well-known criminal lawyer, pointed to racial slurs such as “nigger” and “blackies” used by police in radio communications while trailing the car in which Francois was riding.
…
Sylvia Clark, Francois’s widow and the mother of five children, applauded Yarosky’s comments and said “justice has finally been served in some way.”
Her lawyer, Jean-Paul Braun said he is preparing a civil suit for “millions of dollars” against the Montreal police.”
But the mistaken-identity explanation accepted by Yarosky didn’t quite square with the facts.
Neither the physical build nor the look of Marcellus Francois came anywhere close to those of the murder suspect Kit (Kirt) Haywood police were seeking, and some of the police officers knew Haywood quite well as an informer for the drug squad. Here is one media version of the mix-up (“Suspect’s identity was uncertain, inquest told”, by Patricia Poirier, October 4, 1991, The Globe and Mail):
““We’ll jump them and we’ll figure it out later,” Sergeant Pierre Sasseville is heard telling members of his team in a taped radio conversation taken from
the records of the Montreal Urban Community police telecommunications centre.He made the comment after an undercover officer admitted he was only “75 per cent” sure that he was following an attempted-murder suspect, believed to be dangerous.
…
Kit Haywood, the murder suspect police were seeking, had long dreadlocks, was almost six feet tall and weighed 160 pounds, while Mr. Francois was shorter, lighter-skinned and had closely cropped hair.
The officer who shot Mr. Francois knew the actual suspect police were seeking, because Mr. Haywood had been a police informer when the officer was assigned to the drug squad.
Mr. Haywood turned himself in to police three days after Mr. Francois was shot, and was released on bail. He was found shot to death on Sept. 2 in what police say was a settling of accounts between drug dealers.”
There is no question that Montreal police Sgt. Michel Tremblay was trigger happier than RCMP Insp. Bryan McConnell and Insp. Claude Savoie – and the real suspect Kirt Haywood was also dead in the end.
Here is a different, more detailed version of the mix-up (“How and why Marcellus Francois died remains a mystery”, by James Mennie, December 7, 1991, The Gazette):
“Forty-six witnesses testified and more than 100 exhibits were entered into evidence before coroner Harvey Yarosky.
…
But the fundamental question of how and why Francois was shot - appears to remain unanswered.
…
All 12 police officers who testified to being at the scene when the shot was fired said they were too busy moving into position or taking cover to see it happen.
…
Testimony from police involved in the operation also showed that even after the fatal shot had been fired, no one thought a blunder had been made.
As Francois lay bleeding in the front of the seat of the Pontiac, an argument occurred between Pablo Palacios, a police lieutenant who had dealt with Haywood in the past and took charge of the shooting scene in the seconds after the incident, and the surveillance sergeant over the identity of the person who had just been shot.
The presence of Palacios at the scene so quickly after the shot was examined by the inquest. Indeed, testimony given concerning his relationship with Haywood made headlines on its own.
A former undercover agent in the narcotics section, Palacios detailed to Yarosky how he had used Haywood as an informer and how he tried to find Haywood after he was identified July 2 as an attempted-murder suspect.
During two days of testimony, Palacios said he became aware of the SWAT operation only after two squad cars in his precinct - District 24 - were put on standby as Tremblay’s team closed in on the car carrying Francois.
Palacios testified that as other calls began to pile up for his squad cars, he drove off to find the surveillance operation and was passed by the car carrying Francois.
Williams, a passenger in the car who testified she heard no warning before the shot was fired at Francois, identified herself as the mother of Haywood’s three children.
Williams said she didn’t like Palacios and that the lieutenant was always trying to discover Haywood’s whereabouts. She testified that she had heard that Palacios was “paying 10 rocks” to find out their new address.
Asked what she meant by “rocks,” Williams replied free-base cocaine, but she was not questioned on where she got her information.”
Marcellus Francois might or might not be clean given Haywood’s spouse in the car with him, but he certainly didn’t deserve death, not to mention that the drug squad trick of awarding cocaine – “10 rocks” in the instance quoted – for info tips helped breed the youths’ disregard for the law.
Coroner Yarosky’s report was made public right after the 1992 Los Angeles riot triggered by the acquittal of white police officers who had on March 3, 1991 – exactly 4 months before Francois’s death in Montreal – viciously beaten black man Rodney King. A lot of black riots had occurred in North America but the problems remained, journalist Jack Todd noted (“Dead right; Report on police ‘fiasco’ doesn’t pull punches”, by Jack Todd, May 8, 1992, The Gazette):
“If the operation had not led to the shooting of Francois, a man who did not remotely fit the description of the drug dealer police were seeking, it would have been hilarious. Instead it was tragic.
Tragic - and inexplicable. Unless you want to succumb to the darkest theories of police conspiracy, it is still difficult to understand how an experienced
SWAT-team sergeant with an outstanding career record could have fired the shot that killed Marcelus Francois.…
Yarosky’s report comes on the heels of the Los Angeles riots, and the disturbances in Toronto touched off by yet another police shooting of yet another black man.
It is, at least in outline, an outstanding report, direct and courageous. I wish I could feel more hopeful about what will follow.
But it is nearly 30 years since the riot in Watts, 24 years since I covered my first “riot,” in Omaha after racist presidential candidate George Wallace visited the city in ’68.
…
After those riots there were an endless series of reports, and commissions, and studies. After Watts in 1965, the Johnson administration in the U.S. even attempted to do the right thing, pouring billions into inner-city projects that were supposed to make it all better.
It didn’t work, but at least someone was trying. Under Reagan and Bush, the U.S. just gave up. Until the burning of Los Angeles, the attitude was that private enterprise would eventually see to it that some wealth trickled down to blacks.
Problems still manageable
In practice, “trickle-down economics” meant something like this: “Here’s a quarter boy, now shine my shoes.”
The result, three decades after the Watts riot, is that relations between blacks and whites all over North America have rarely been worse.
Police officers, asked to act like a kind of occupying army in black neighborhoods, are routinely despised. When they swing into action, the results are too often disastrous. Rodney King is beaten, Marcelus Francois shot to death.”
But Jack Todd missed a point of comparison here. In contrast to the mistaken identity on Marcellus Francois, Rodney King, one year older at 25, had led police onto a dangerous high-speed chase, hoping not to be caught with drunk driving while on parole from a robbery conviction (“The Rodney King Beating Trials”, by Douglas Linder, December 2001, Jurist Legal News & Research; “Rodney King dead at 47”, June 18, 2012, CNN; and, “Rodney King Riots In Los Angeles Began On This Day In 1992”, by D. L. Chandler, April 29, 2013, News One For Black America).
Surely Mr. Mulroney would have understood the difference, that the civil-rights case on which lawyer Harvey Yarosky had achieved fame as a specially appointed inquest coroner, not only was more tragic by itself but involved a legally innocent victim.
With Roger Tasse providing inside lobbying service and Harvey Yarosky presenting outside civil-rights image, it was for the two McCarthy Tetrault lawyers on Mulroney’s “Dream Team”, Gerald Tremblay and Jacques Jeansonne, to get what he wanted in the litigation and settlement.
As earlier, the Mulroney team had included Yarosky’s partner, former Quebec Court of Appeal Justice Fred Kaufman, but then Kaufman ceased to be a part with no public explanation – imagine the spectacle of supporting Mulroney’s courtroom flaunting and self-aggrandizing with Justice Kaufman’s prior journalistic experience writing for Time and Life magazines and The New York Times, or earlier life experience escaping Nazi German-occupied Austria (“The Honourable Fred Kaufman, C.M., Q.C.”, ADR Chambers International; and, Fred Kaufman, Searching for Justice: An Autobiography, 2005, University of Toronto Press).
Tremblay and Jeansonne couldn’t disappoint Mulroney, for they had been with Clarkson Tetrault, a Montreal law firm that in the Mulroney era had shown off one of its own, the Tories’ national president William Jarvis, like Mulroney’s friend Frank Moores, as above others in Ottawa’s lobbying world (“Capital pursuits: Ottawa’s ‘consultants’ reject the lobbyist label”, by Hugh Winsor, December 19, 1987, The Globe and Mail):
“Existing government-relations firms scrambled to find Conservative names to put on their stationery, while people like former Newfoundland premier Frank Moores, a Mulroney pal and one of the important string-pullers in the campaign to vault Mr. Mulroney into the Conservative leadership, and Paul Curley, a former national director of the party, set up shop in Ottawa making no secret of their connections.
Joining the scramble were contingents from many of the big Montreal and Toronto law firms that decided to open Ottawa offices. One firm, Clarkson Tetrault of Montreal, leased offices overlooking the Supreme Court Building and installed William Jarvis, president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada and a former cabinet minister, as its principal liaison man.”
With his own lawyer background mostly in Montreal, it took Mulroney a little longer to get comfortable with the Toronto-based law firm McCarthy & McCarthy, more Liberal in background and “Upper Canadian in style” as described in an earlier-quoted news story by Lynda Hurst.
In 1982, then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had appointed Donald MacDonald, a McCarthy & McCarthy law partner, former Liberal cabinet minister in the portfolios of defence, energy and finance and a possible leadership successor, to co-chair a new royal commission studying the Canadian economy (“Macdonald, Stewart reported heading commission PM to set up inquiry on economy”, by James Rusk, November 5, 1982, The Globe and Mail).
Soon after the Mulroney Tories’ triumph over Trudeau’s successor John Turner in a September 1984 election, as the head of that commission MacDonald publicly expressed support for free trade with the United States (“Macdonald report already under fire”, by Linda Diebel, September 5, 1985, The Gazette):
“There have been 400 royal commissions since Confederation, but few have generated the grassroots emotional response this one has.
Criticism has centred on the usefulness of yet another royal commission, on the $800-a-day stipend allotted commission chairman Donald Macdonald, and on his statement in favor of free trade only part-way through his mandate.
…
According to Macdonald, the commission - formally, the Royal Commission on Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada - is supposed to “structure political debate in this country for at least another three decades.”
But critics already dismiss it as a report tailored to the needs of corporate Canada and attacked its authors for their spending habits and style.
…
Others criticize Macdonald a former Liberal finance minister and partner in the Toronto law firm of McCarthy and McCarthy for publicly supporting a free-trade treaty with the United States.
Macdonald first urged Canadians to move quickly and “take a leap of faith” on the free-trade issue in November 1984 two years into his mandate with the commission.”
MacDonald then co-chaired the Canadian Alliance for Trade and Job Opportunities, a free-trade lobby group, and his contributions so pleased Mulroney that in August 1988 he was appointed Canada’s top diplomat, the Canadian High Commissioner, in Britain, replacing Roy McMurtry – the former Ontario cabinet minister known for the “McMurtry formula” leading to the “Notwithstanding Clause” in the 1982 Constitution. (“Macdonald named top U.K. envoy”, by Stephen Bindman, August 6, 1988, The Ottawa Citizen)
In comparison, as in an earlier-quoted news story by Tu Thanh Ha and Edward Greenspon, Mulroney’s old pal Pat MacAdam had been appointed to the Canadian High Commission in Britain only as a press counsellor.
Adding to Donald MacDonald’s free trade profile was that of Thomas d’Aquino, the long-time president and CEO of the Business Council on National Issues – now known as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives – and a leading lobbyist for Canada-U.S. free trade, who was a special counsel at McCarthy & McCarthy from 1987 to 1990 (“HIGH PROFILE series Top business lobbyist enjoys clout in Ottawa”, by Shawn McCarthy, June 30, 1991, Toronto Star; “Suicide or Renaissance? Canada at the Crossroads”, by Thomas d’Aquino, Canadian Council of Chief Executives; March 31, 1992; and, “THOMAS D’AQUINO, B.A., J.D., LL.M., LL.D., Biographical Notes, Historical Background”, thomasdaquino.ca).
These high-profile roles signified McCarthy & McCarthy’s position as a leading pro-business, pro-free-trade law firm.
Thus the 1990 merger of Clarkson Tetrault and McCarthy & McCarthy created not only Canada’s largest law firm but vast lawyer resources available to the Mulroney government. As in Parts 5 & 6, in 1992 several controversial matters of political interest involved lawyers or former lawyers of McCarthy Tetrault: in Montreal, Concordia University counsel Richard Beaulieu’s handling of engineering professor Valery Fabrikant might have stimulated the latter’s murder urge, and Gerald Tremblay tried to ban Quebec media publicity on the Diane Wilhelmy affair during the Charlottetown constitutional campaign; and in Vancouver, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Pamela Kirkpatrick collaborated with RCMP to psychiatrically suppress my political activism.
The January 1997 legal settlement in favor of his libel lawsuit cemented McCarthy Tetrault’s special relationship with Brian Mulroney.
Two Montreal landmark former hotel buildings, the historic grand Le Windsor closed in 1981, in danger of demolition, and the less old Mont-Royal closed in 1984, went through extensive renovations during the Mulroney era and reopened in 1987; noted new corporate tenants in the former Windsor hotel building, “a private sparkling jewel”, included Charles Bronfman’s private holding company – Claridge Inc. mentioned earlier – law firm Clarkson Tetrault and accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand (“Elegance regained.; Restoring a landmark is a costly gamble. At the Windsor and Mont-Royal, they feel it’s worth it”, by Robert Winters, October 3, 1987, The Gazette):
“A feeling of discouragement hit architect Ken London when he walked into the dark, boarded-up Windsor Hotel in February 1985. The first thing he saw, in the glare of his flashlight, was a 20-inch-thick layer of ice in the once-elegant ground-floor reception rooms.
Today, as he shows off Le Windsor’s soaring atrium and its glittering entrance-hallway, it is hard to imagine how severe the deterioration was after the hotel closed in 1981. London estimates the landmark would have had to be demolished if left vacant another five years.
…
Even when extra items such as interest, professional fees, site purchase and tenant leasing incentives are added, the total cost for the Windsor redevelopment was only $41.5 million, said Claude Normandeau, president of FIC Fund Inc., a Laurentian Group Corp. company.
Considering that the total “gross space” of Le Windsor is 290,000 square feet, Normandeau said the overall cost of the redevelopment was $143 a square foot. This compares favorably with the $150-to-$180-a-square-foot cost of building new, first-class downtown office space downtown, he said.
While renovation and restoration saved money at the Windsor, it added expense at the Mount Royal redevelopment just up Peel St. There, a $30-million cost overrun has pushed the total cost to $180 million for one million square feet, or about $180 a square foot.
Joanne McLaughlin, co-manager of the project, called Les Cours Mont-Royal, said it could have been more economic to demolish the structure and start over.
…
The renovation of the Windsor, which closed in 1981 after 103 years of serving such guests as Mark Twain, King George VI and Winston Churchill, marks a major change from the hotel’s dying days, when mega-decibel punk-rock concerts were held in its ballroom.
Now, the discreet-looking business people walking in the punk fans’ footsteps are clients or executives of some of Montreal’s top-drawer, blue-chip firms, including Charles Bronfman’s private holding company as well as the Clarkson, Tetrault legal office and the Coopers & Lybrand accounting firm.
Tawdry with time
Most Montrealers will never have a chance to tour Le Windsor, a private sparkling jewel whose centrepiece is a peaceful winter-garden courtyard with tropical plants and a giant, curving skylight.
But the public is invited to Les Cours Mont-Royal, where about 500 workers are rushing to put the finishing touches on the retail level in time for its opening in late October. In fact, Mont-Royal is counting on drawing a stream of 50,000 people a day through its Yuppie-targeted retail space, which includes high-fashion outlets such as Parachute, and the Cineplex chain’s new Canadian-flagship cinema complex featuring an Egyptian-tomb motif.
When it closed in 1984, the Mount Royal had given up its choice position as one of the city’s top luxury hotels, its once impressive interiors having grown tawdry with time and benign neglect. The constant flow of pedestrian traffic through the 62-year-old hotel from the Peel Metro station almost seemed to have tired its once proud spirit, and the once famous rooftop shows, featuring such acts as Frank Sinatra and Mary Pickford, had faded into the past.”
In September 2000 when Mulroney’s daughter Caroline was to wed in Montreal, on September 9 The Globe and Mail published a detailed article describing the glittering event in advance, especially the wedding party set for the Windsor ballrooms – with a mention that Mulroney’s Airbus Affair lawyer Gerald Tremblay’s firm McCarthy Tetrault was located in the same building (“Goin’ to the chapel”, by Leah McLaren, Gayle MacDonald and Susanne Craig, September 9, 2000, The Globe and Mail):
“Caroline Mulroney’s marriage next weekend in front of hundreds of dignitaries and high-society guests in Montreal is the biggest event yet in the coming-out of a new generation of Canadian political progeny.
A week from today, hundreds of guests will file into Montreal’s elaborately frescoed Saint Léon de Westmount church, a stone edifice set amid leafy, genteel lower Westmount. Taking their seats on rose-embellished pews, guests will be serenaded by the 45 voices of Les Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal, a Montreal boy’s choir. Minutes later, 26-year-old Caroline Mulroney will climb the short flight of steps.
Some 500 heads will turn to watch her father, the controversial former Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney, lead her down the aisle to her waiting groom, Andrew Lapham -- the 28-year-old son of left-leaning Harper’s magazine editor Lewis Lapham.
Billed as Canada’s society wedding of the year, the Mulroney-Lapham marriage has Montreal buzzing, despite the Mulroneys’ best efforts to keep the guest list under wraps. Confirmed invitees include George and Barbara Bush and Senator Ted Kennedy (he declined), and rumoured well-wishers include former British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Queen Noor of Jordan and TV personality Kathy Lee Gifford.
The bride is part of an emerging pack of political progeny -- with names like Trudeau, Clark, Chretien and Turner -- for whom this week marks a bittersweet historical moment. On the eve of Caroline Mulroney’s talked-about wedding, Pierre Trudeau’s sons, Alexandre (Sacha) and Justin, care for their ailing father in Montreal.
…
Caroline Mulroney’s wedding will certainly be an event worthy of an “equestrian-class” bride. The celebrations will be spread over an entire weekend in Montreal, unfolding in some of the city’s poshest spots.
After the vows, the wedding party decamps to the opulent surroundings of the Windsor ballrooms in downtown Montreal, with gilded, 20-foot-high ceilings and crystal chandeliers -- ballrooms that have been graced by the likes of Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, and the Queen when she was still Princess Elizabeth. One of the rooms will be decorated with an elaborate interior garden and fountains.
(The Windsor hotel building also happens to house the offices of the blue-chip law firm McCarthy Tetrault. One of its lawyers, Gerald Tremblay, defended Brian Mulroney during the Airbus affair.)”
It was the happiest of moments for the Mulroney family. “Life is good”, except for U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy’s decline of the wedding invitation, and in Montreal the gravely ill condition of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, cared for by his sons Alexandre (Sacha) and Justin.
Trudeau had been “deeply saddened” by the freak death of Michel, the youngest of his 3 boys, at the age of 23 in 1998, swept by an avalanche into British Columbia’s Kokanee Lake (“Pierre Trudeau’s Youngest Son Believed Killed in Avalanche”, by Anthony DePalma, November 16, 1998, The New York Times).
Various sorts of comparison were inevitable in September 2000:
“The Canadian public is intimately connected to these children. Two years ago the whole country mourned when the third Trudeau brother, Michel, died in a freak avalanche. “We knew them all as small children. We saw some of them born. We followed them for a while, then we lost track, and now they’re attracting more attention,” says Bonnie Brownlee, former executive assistant to the Mulroney family. “Like their parents or not, these kids are part of this country’s psyche.”
“The Trudeau children are special,” adds Ottawa author Charlotte Gray. “To lose a brother and then support two parents, who each in their different ways fell apart, make us see them as very impressive individuals. They’re not children any more. Caroline’s still a kid, really. Getting married, dressing up and being a princess for a day.”
Stanley Hartt, a former deputy minister of finance and chief of staff for Mulroney, adds that Canadians are justifiably proud of most of these kids, because like Caroline Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr., they seem to have their heads screwed on right.”
Days after Caroline Mulroney’s wedding, on September 28 Pierre Trudeau passed away, having suffered from dementia and prostate cancer (“Pierre Trudeau’s Dementia Led Him To Turn Down Cancer Treatment”, March 6, 2013, The Huffington Post Canada).
As in Part 1, in October 2001 Bernard Etzinger, the Canadian consul and trade commissioner in Silicon Valley, proudly told me while we were at a Canada-U.S. national women’s hockey exhibition game, that he had attended Caroline Mulroney’s wedding.
Not bad to be among 500 invited and attending, considering how studded it was with international royalties, celebrities and political and business leaders (“A modern fairy tale: With a romantic flourish, Mulroney wedding goes off without a high-society hitch”, by Rochelle Lash, September 20, 2000, The Gazette):
“Leaving the church, guests dodged flashbulbs and onlookers, clambered into their cars and drove - or were driven - over to the glittering reception at Le Windsor’s lustrous ballrooms, a fitting palace for an occasion that had taken on royal proportions.
Shimmering crystal chandeliers dripped like giant teardrop earrings from the 20-foot ceiling of the historic entrance hall, Peacock Alley, where the bedazzling mirrored walls seemed to aggrandize the powerful guests. Once the glorious Windsor Hotel, the place had a pedigreed guest register that listed the likes of Princess Elizabeth, Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy.
Mila sealed her reputation as Montreal's hostess-with-the-mostest as she greeted all the well-wishers. How did this affair get so big and high-profile?
Mulroney is now senior partner at a leading law firm, Ogilvy Renault, a director of several international corporations including the Chase Manhattan
Bank, and considered by many to be one of Canada’s most influential businessmen. Mila is the mother of four, a corporate board member, charity
spokesperson and sophisticated socialite in Palm Beach and beyond. Together, the globe-trotting couple is renowned for their easy-going charm and energetic youthfulness, and have been adopted by a coterie of powerful friends around the world.Like George and Barbara Bush, for instance, who chatted easily with the other guests. “I’m confident that my son will be the next president and he’ll be better than I was,” Bush told me.
…
Queen Noor of Jordan, whom I had met in March, told me that she has been close friends with the Mulroneys “since they were in power.” She was wearing a slim, sparkly black sheath. “We have to keep our wardrobes simple when we’re traveling or working ... you know that, too, Rochelle.” Yup, we’re just two career gals.
Others there were Lord Charles and Lady Carla Powell of London, Prince Alexander and Princess Katherine of Yugoslavia, Princess Alexandra Theodoracopoulous of Greece with her husband, Taki, of the London Daily Telegraph, Prince Phillip Radziwill, Lord Henry Hindlip of London, Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford, Alan Thicke, Leonard and Evelyn Lauder of New York, Princess Eugenie Radziwill of Greece, Charles and Andy Bronfman, Galen and Hilary Weston, in a long beige-gold coat dress, and Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel, who wore a long, black and gold fitted brocade suit and her favourite Manolo Blahnik shoes. She explained that her searing newspaper column is not appearing currently because she’s working on a book.
Other guests included Paul and Jackie Desmarais, who were seated with the Bushes, Derek and Joan Burney, Ted and Loretta Rogers, Gerry Schwartz and Heather Reisman, Laurent and Claire Beaudoin, Peter and Melanie Munk, chic in a delicate black dress, Mrs. Henry (Kate) Ford II of Detroit, who said that she drives a Lincoln Town Car, a Jaguar (owned by Ford) and “many Mustangs,” Tom and Cinda Hicks of Dallas, shipping magnate Dino Goulandris of London and Athens, and authors John Mortimer and Barbara Taylor Bradford.
…
After dinner there were speeches by George Bush, Caroline’s brother, Ben Mulroney, the groom’s father, Lewis Lapham, and Mila’s brother John
Pivnicki. In his toast to Caroline, Brian Mulroney joked about her marrying an American. He said, “I never thought free trade would mean this.””
My perception of this firsthand wedding party story by The Gazette’s Social Columnist Rochelle Lash is that Paul Desmarais was singled out, along with wife Jackie, as heading a table of mostly political and business leaders, including former U.S. President George Bush Sr. with wife Barbara.
So it may not have always been for his own business interests that Desmarais had all the leading Canadian establishment politicians under his patronage.
When Paul Desmarais passed away in Quebec on October 8, 2013 – the day happened to be the 3rd anniversary of the start of this blog post series – this view was reasserted by the words of Michael Pitfield, former Power Corp. vice chairman and former clerk of the Privy Council in the Trudeau era, that Desmarais was “engaged in the active governance” of Canada, not so much “to make him richer” but “using his power base to press for what he thinks are desirable policies” (“Behind the scenes, Paul Desmarais was a force in Canadian politics”, by Sandra Martin, October 9, 2013, The Globe and Mail):
“He never ran for public office, never accepted a seat in the Senate or an appointment as Governor General. Still, Paul Desmarais was a singular political force in Canada for more than five decades. The most powerful francophone in the country, he knew and influenced, in small ways or large, every Canadian prime minister and Quebec premier over the past five decades. He negotiated a business deal with Maurice Duplessis, argued against separation with Quebec premiers Daniel Johnson and Réne Lévesque, helped prime minister Pierre Trudeau open up relations with China by becoming a founding chairman of the Canada China Business Council in 1978 and kept in close touch with succeeding prime ministers, no matter their political affiliation, including Brian Mulroney, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.
…
A little more than six feet in height, handsome, with a commanding gaze, Mr. Desmarais liked playing cribbage and poker and admired innovative and powerful leaders. “I respect greatly men of strong personalities,” he told l’actualité magazine in 1974. “If I had to name some, I’d say Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Franklin Roosevelt, Mao Zedong.”
…
“The easy thing to think about Paul is that he has the politicians in his pocket, that he’s a sort of master of marionettes,” Michael Pitfield once said. Mr. Pitfield, clerk of the Privy Council during the Trudeau era (and later a senator) became vice-chairman of Power Corp. in 1984. “But he’s not. He’s a player. He never disengages; he never withdraws from the arena. He made an enormous fortune by age 35 and has ever since been engaged in the active governance of this country. Most people automatically assume that Paul’s policy involvements are designed to make him richer, that he tries to control people and events to get some desired, selfish result. In fact, he’s an active participant, using his power base to press for what he thinks are desirable policies. It’s very important to understand that distinction.””
The late Paul Desmarais greatly respected “men of strong personalities” such as Winston Churchill and Mao Zedong, and so he strongly preferred Pierre Trudeau, afterwards Brian Mulroney, and then Jean Chretien for whom that respect had led to the union of his son Andre with Chretien’s daughter France.
In such “active governance” in favor of strong men, someone like Kim Campbell, the Vancouver politician, Mulroney government’s Justice Minister in November 1992 when I first became active on Canadian political issues, and later Mulroney’s successor and the first female Canadian Prime Minister, likely wouldn’t have been to Mr. Desmarais’s preference – besides her being from British Columbia outside of the Desmarais family’s power sphere and her opponent Jean Chretien being part of the extended Desmarais family.
Over 2 weeks to go before the October 25, 1993 Canadian election, around October 7 a number of newspapers, including The Ottawa Citizen, The Vancouver Sun and Edmonton Journal, published a news report by Southam News reporter Dave Todd disclosing, or more like announcing, that Brian Mulroney was now the chief counsel of Power Corporation of Canada, and that at Paul Desmarais’s personal request Mulroney was accompanying him on a visit to China’s capital Beijing for the Asia Power Group joint venture by Ontario Hydro, Hydro Quebec and Power Corp., for energy development in China and other regions of Asia (“Mulroney in China aiding Power Corp. in Asia venture; Series of power plants planned”, by Dave Todd, October 7, 1993, Edmonton Journal):
“Brian Mulroney has discovered life after politics. And it’s already proving richly rewarding.
The former prime minister is in China this week as a lawyer and lobbyist for Montreal-based Power Corporation of Canada, while it begins assembling plans to invest in Chinese energy projects and explore other business opportunities.
This was revealed in the Chinese capital Wednesday following news that Power Corp., and North America’s two largest public utilities - Ontario Hydro and Hydro Quebec - have joined forces to help China develop its energy potential.
Their joint venture, Asia Power Group Inc., will be owned equally by the three Canadian corporate giants involved, and will operate from Hong Kong.
Power Corp’s legal interests throughout the Asia Pacific region are expected to be overseen by a Hong Kong branch office of Ogilvy Renault, the Montreal law firm at which Mulroney is a senior partner.
A senior Power Corp. official was adamant that Mulroney has not been involved in putting together the Asia Power Group venture or negotiating for it with the Chinese government. But the former prime minister did go to Beijing at the express request of Power Corp. chairman Paul Desmarais, other sources confirmed.
“Mr. Desmarais asked for Mr. Mulroney to accompany him. I assume he needed his advice,” said Raymond Crevier, a partner of Mulroney’s at Ogilvy Renault.
Meanwhile, in Beijing, Ontario Hydro chairman Maurice Strong predicted Wednesday that Asia Power Group, which hopes to design, build and operate electrical generating stations in India, Malaysia, and the Philippines as well as China, eventually “will become a major player,” in power projects throughout Asia.
The consortium, launched as a $100-million joint venture, expects annual returns on investment of about 20 per cent, Strong said.
But within hours of the company’s unveiling, it was already headed for controversy.
Its initial intention, it says, is to win construction contracts for coal and other fossil-fuel burning plants in China’s southern coastal region.
That raises serious environmental questions, said economist Patricia Adams, executive director of Probe International, a development issues think tank in Toronto. “It’s a most remarkable situation,” Adams said referring both to Hydro Quebec and Ontario Hydro’s involvement as well as Mulroney’s links as Power Corp.’s chief counsel.
The two huge public utilities will be “investing taxpayers’ and ratepayers’ money in projects in a country where there is absolutely no disclosure and no scrutiny of the management of their operations,” Adams charged.”
I get a sense that Mr. Desmarais had to show off Mulroney as the Desmarais family company’s chief counsel at this time – as Mulroney’s law partner Raymond Crevier noted – while a heated election campaign was going on between Mulroney successor Kim Campbell and Desmarais in-law Jean Chretien, so that Canadians, especially those in politics in Capital Ottawa and those closer to Campbell in Western Canada, would know that the Power Corp.’s international business goals had already brought Mulroney – the mentor Campbell was loyal to – onboard and closer to Chretien.
Why not, when also onboard were “North America’s two largest public utilities” Hydro Quebec and Ontario Hydro and a corporate leader like Maurice Strong?
Meanwhile, Kim Campbell was on her “politics of inclusion” campaign along with the old associates Brian Mulroney had left with her, such as Patrick MacAdam, tainted by the Mulroney era’s corruption in the minds of the public.
“The fix” was already in while the election still had a distance to go.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment