More lessons on governance in new book

Page 21

The Last Amigo

By Stevie Cameron and Harvey Cashore

Macfarlane Walter and Ross

336 pages

$36.99 (hc)

At a time when First Nations are being told that Canadian authorities can provide all the answers related to openness, transparency and accountability in government, a new investigative book detailing how Canadian authorities manage only to apply those principles when it's convenient has been released.

The Last Amigo arrived in bookstores in early April. It's a follow-up to the successful book On the Take, about corruption in the Mulroney era.

Reporters in Canada who know how hard it is to pursue a successful investigative story dealing with powerful, influential people are generally big fans of Stevie Cameron.

On the Take is seen as either one of the finest investigative works ever produced in this country or, if you believe the right wing, pro-Mulroney press, as a hoax perpetrated by a reporter with an axe to grind.

Cameron, currently a member of the Globe and Mail's investigative team and a contributing editor for Maclean's magazine, believes honest reporters know the former is true. But Cameron said many Canadians have been left with the impression it's the latter because of a skillful public relations campaign mounted to deflect attention from the allegations made in the book. The campaign, started by Luc Lavoie, a Mulroney ally, and aided by the former prime minister's friends working in high places in Canada's two national newspapers, has created a chill in Canada's media, especially after Mulroney sued the RCMP and settled out of court for millions, said Cameron.

"It wasn't just a very right wing, pro-Mulroney press. What was worse than that was, basically, journalists got afraid to talk about it. And Luc Lavoie conducted one of the most skillful spin campaigns I've ever seen. And he did it in five ways. He arranged a program that would attack the journalists-the lawsuit that (Mulroney supporter Karlheinz) Schreiber launched against the CBC. Attack me. They tried to discredit me. They tried to discredit the RCMP, especially (RCMP Staff Sgt. Fraser Fiegenwald, the Mountie who it was alleged libelled the former prime minister in a letter to Swiss authorities requesting information related to an investigation). They worked with friendly journalists. They sued the government. But the spin was just unbelievable. Luc Lavoie got paid $600,000 to spin that libel trial. You and I paid for that," Cameron told Windspeaker during an interview in Edmonton. "You know what? Under Lavoie's spin, most Canadians believe the whole story's a hoax. They believe I had . . . I don't know if they believe it, but the Post tried to make them believe that I had this dark obsession, a vendetta going. And you know, it almost worked with me. When I started thinking of doing [The Last Amigo] everyone, including my husband said, 'Oh God, don't do it.'"

Cameron and Harvey Cashore, a producer with CBC-TV's the fifth estate, have broken through that chill with The Last Amigo. This top-selling book examines the actions of Schreiber, who's facing extradition to his native Germany to explain his role in a scandal involving kickbacks and bribes.

Cameron and Cashore (son of John Cashore, the former British Columbia NDP minister of Aboriginal Affairs who completed the negotiation of the Nisga'a Final Agreement) have put together a detailed description of Schreiber's activities in Canada and abroad during the Mulroney years. The reader is left with little doubt that Canadian politicians and bureaucrats participated in illegal activities. But Cameron admits there's no smoking gun evidence that Mulroney received illegal money.

"We say very clearly that we have no proof that Schreiber gave [Mulroney] a dime. But I do think we have some very interesting facts," she said. "One of them is that Schreiber underwrote the 'dump Joe' [Clark] campaign and that Mulroney owed him big time. Once Mulroney was in office, Schreiber was welcome everywher in Ottawa. The doors were always open for him and he met Mulroney and he brags about that."

Schreiber himself confirmed that many Canadians benefitted from schmiergelder, a German term that means "grease money." It's common practice in Germany and other parts of the world to gain government contracts by offering what amount to bribes, but it's illegal in Canada.

"Schreiber also tells us, unequivocally, that he donated money to the Mulroney leadership and to the PC party. Fine, lots of people did. But there were very few Canadians who found their name in his diaries on almost every page. But there were very few Canadians who had access to deputy ministers at the highest level, including the clerk of the Privy Council, Paul Tellier. And Paul Tellier hated having to deal with him. I mean, we printed one letter in which Tellier calls him a liar. But we also printed all of Schreiber's letters saying, 'Mulroney wants us to have this meeting. He wants this to happen. I had a good meeting with Mr. Mulroney yesterday and he said you'll see me tomorrow.' He was always name- dropping," Cameron said.

Although Cameron admitted she is frustrated that Canadians haven't seized on the information in On the Take and demanded answers from Mulroney, she said she and Cashore were careful not to target the former prime minister as they started their research for The Last Amigo.

"We weren't setting out to get Mulroney. I think there's a great hunger among the Canadian people for us to do that. But that wasn't our job," she said. "We were lucky enough to get all of the evidence on Airbus and on the other deals to explain this enormous crisis in Germany and this great scandal in Canada. Our book is being published in Germany and Mulroney is just another player. This will be the fifth book published on this subject in Germany although we were the first to get a contract."

Many people suspect the Mulroney government pressured the Air Canada board to purchase passenger aircraft from a erman manufacturer that employed Schreiber as a middleman. In the book, Cameron and Cashore make a strong case that a number of prominent Progressive Conservatives had a role to play in forcing that decision and were, in turn, compensated by Schreiber.

Most of those people deny involvement but Cameron said they aren't telling the truth.

"We can prove everybody lied in this affair. 'I didn't know him. He wasn't my friend. I didn't take any money. I didn't own that company. I never lobbied for Airbus. I never received anything.' They're all lying," she said.

Schreiber's diaries show he meticulously kept track of who received what money. He constructed code-names for the people he dealt with. In each case, the code-name in the diary is very close to the actual name of a prominent Tory.

"When it comes to Mulroney himself . . . the German prosecutors have identified everybody in those code names. There's one person they haven't identified and that's Britany. But if you follow the pattern of Schreiber's code-names, you can see very clearly that that code-name was built the same way he did the others. He changed the first name, Britany, and when you see that he's talking about Britany all the time, it's probably Brian. And here's another interesting thing. Mulroney himself has acknowledged that he may have set up the account for him and that he might have put money in it. But his defense is . . . that doesn't mean I used any of the money," she said.

Schreiber himself has stated rather bluntly that he could easily incriminate several Canadians.

"Schreiber has told people that he bribed Canadian politicians," Cameron said. "We also have his lawyers in Germany mounting as their defence of him [that] he didn't keep the money, he paid it to Canadian decision-makers. We have Schreiber admitting he paid Canadian politicians. He had dinner with Harvey the other night and they were sitting there and he put his arm around Harvey-it was very late and they were eating oysters ad drinking wine-and he said, 'If certain politicians could see us together right now there would be heart attacks across the country.' He told Mathias Blumencron in Der Spiegel, 'I could create the most horrible Watergate in Canada right now. I'm saving my bullets.' He's going to make a deal and the RCMP only got his banking records a year ago. I think those are all very legitimate issues that should be addressed."