Schreiber Should Stay

To paraphrase one of the press gallery pundits on Don Newman’s show, “Karlheinz Schreiber is a shady character.”

I mean, here’s a guy who was involved in cash transactions with a former Prime-Minister while working as a lobbyist, who claims to have kept ten thousand pages of registers in Ottawa, Toronto and Switzerland, and who somehow knew while in jail that Prime Minister Harper had met Brian Mulroney at Harrington Lake.

So how much credibility does he carry? Very little. The man has contradicted himself on many occasions while speaking about important matters. And to add to this, it’s clearly in his own interest to create a judicial circus in which his participation is required, thereby halting his extradition to Germany to face criminal charges.

Bearing this in mind, it’s easy to understand why Justice Minister Rob Nicholson is still refusing to block the extradition to Karheinz Schreiber to Germany. If he can testify from Germany anyway, does it even matter in which country he resides?

But unfortunately, things aren’t that easy. A public inquiry has now been called and Schreiber’s presence will do doubt be necessary. Actually, without him, it would be a mere farce. There’s also a parliamentary committee which is investigating and which summoned M. Schreiber as a witness today.

By virtue of their own hard work, the MPs have played in to Karlheinz Schreiber’s plan to stay in Canada. They have a started a process likely to last over a year that will unfortunately require Schreiber’s full participation. But now that this has been decided, its final and we should swallow the pill.

It was a bad idea to stage an inquiry into the business dealings between Mulroney and Schreiber. But it is an ever worse idea to stage that inquiry without the presence of its main witness.