Schreiber stays for now

At almost the last possible minute, the Justice Department has decided not to fight Karlheinz Schreiber's extradition to Germany -- for now. Tomorrow, the businessman is going to testify before the House Ethics Committee under sub poena; rare in Canada since the last time such an instrument was used was back in 1913. (Normally, witnesses are invited and those called simply agree or decline to attend, not at all like the States where Congress has quasi-prosecutorial powers.)

I have no clue as to what Schreiber's going to say tomorrow. No one does, really. But the more we hear the more it becomes impossible to believe that he and Brian Mulroney were merely passing acquaintances. We know for a fact that Schreiber sent in a couple of planeloads of Mulroney supporters to that wild convention in Winnipeg that saw the beginning of the end of Joe Clark (remember Clark's assertion that 67% support wasn't enough?). We know the two guys were photographed together in 1991 and they appeared to be best of chums.

The real question many of us have is why did Schreiber wait so long? If top government officials took bribes, a claim made more than a decade ago, why did that man refuse to talk to investigative reporters about what he knew and when? Those documents, if they are accurate, would have been very useful to the Mounties back then.

So the first question I'd ask is not what he knows ... but why he obstructed justice so long. He's not a completely innocent figure either.

One can also only wonder about Clark. He could have easily beaten Turner, too -- and I think Canada would be a much saner country than the one that evolved during the Mulroney era.

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