Mr. Chairman and members of this committee, as the committee members know, I'm appearing today at the request of the committee, and I'm not sure I can help you in your deliberations. Although you do have a copy of my curriculum vitae, it does not describe my work on the Schreiber-Mulroney Airbus case that is before you now. I think it would be helpful to offer you a brief summary of what I did on this story and why I did it.
I started covering federal politics in the mid-1980s when the Ottawa Citizen—I was there for six years—formed a small investigative unit, and the publisher at the time, Paddy Sherman, asked me to join it. That was because I had broken the story of the John Turner and Pierre Trudeau last-minute patronage appointments as Mr. Trudeau left office in 1984.
I covered the new Conservative government for the Citizen until 1986, when I moved to The Globe and Mail in Toronto as a columnist and a national reporter.
After living in Ottawa for several years I knew many people here in all walks of life, and Phyllis Bruce, an Ottawa native and then an editor of Key Porter Books in Toronto, asked me to write an insider's guide to political life in Ottawa. The result was Ottawa Inside Out in 1989, which, among other things, documents the rise of the lobbying firms in the city, especially that of Frank Moores, the firm called Government Consultants International, or GCI.
At that time—well, not in 1989, much earlier than that—I was beginning to hear many rumours that Moores, a member of the Air Canada board, was lobbying on behalf of Airbus for the new Air Canada passenger planes.
I also wrote a major piece about the firm for The Globe and Mail's Report on Business Magazine, but was unable, at that time, to confirm that Moores and his partners were working for Airbus. After the article was published I received an interesting letter saying that Moores was about to make a fortune on the contract. I still have no idea who sent it to me. That tip is reproduced on my website.
Over the next few years, as you will see on my CV, I worked for CBC's the fifth estate, The Globe and Mail, and Maclean's magazine. They all assigned me stories on politics and the Conservative government, although I worked on many other kinds of stories as well.
In 1992 I worked for publishers Macfarlane Walter and Ross on On the Take, and then I returned to Maclean's, where I was a contributing editor.
By 1994 I continued to hear stories that massive amounts of money and secret commissions had been paid by German businesses to obtain federal contracts in Canada. The rumours involved companies that included, of course, Thyssen, Airbus Industrie, and MBB, Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm. The name associated with the deals and the rumours was Karlheinz Schreiber. I decided to try to determine whether secret commissions existed, and if so, who received the money.
My publishers, Macfarlane Walter and Ross, were interested in a book on this subject, and I decided the answers to our questions could lie in Europe. My search led me to Giorgio Pelossi, and several other people in Germany and Switzerland in 1995. I was thinking about that 1995.... I'm sorry, I didn't check it before I came, but it might have been 1996.
It also led me to the story of Bruce Verchere, Brian Mulroney's tax lawyer and the man who managed his blind trust when Mr. Mulroney was in Parliament.
The result was a story of fraud, a marriage, and international celebrities. Macfarlane Walter and Ross published the book in 1998. It was called Blue Trust.
My publishers and I felt I was getting closer and closer to solving the Airbus mystery, and in 1999 we decided to go ahead with a book. After Karlheinz Schreiber was arrested in Toronto later that same year, I began work on the project full-time. I invited Harvey Cashore, a producer at the fifth estate, to share the project with me, because he was as interested in the story as I was. Several months after I started, he joined in as a formal partner in the book.
Macfarlane Walter and Ross were once again my publishers, and I worked on the book until 2001. It was published in the spring of that year. It was called The Last Amigo. Some of that research that we assembled for that book as well as an excellent timeline of events is available on the CBC website. My own website also has a small section on The Last Amigo.
Nothing in these books has ever been challenged in court.
In conclusion, I should add that I have had no new information since these books were published. I've been hard at work on two books on the Robert Pickton serial murder case in British Columbia. I'm tabling here all four of the books that I've mentioned today, as well as transcripts of interviews and handwritten notes that I did for On The Take with François Martin.
If you would allow me to add a personal note, I am very fond of François Martin. I think very highly of him, and I'm very uncomfortable putting in notes of our interviews. But I think you will all understand why I felt obliged to do this and why I felt obliged to give you the handwritten notes as well, so you can see where the transcript comes from.
Thank you.
:
Madame Lavallée, I have thought about it. I lived this for many years. I'm very happy to be working on a serial killer.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Ms. Stevie Cameron: I'd tell you if I knew, if I had absolute knowledge, but I'm a journalist and I deal with the facts. As I told you in my introduction, my work hasn't been challenged, so it's important for me to tell you that I do not have more than I have. I have what I have. I haven't worked on this since 2001.
The CBC team has done a brilliant job of giving you more information. I think that's all I can say. In terms of the money that I saw Mr. Schreiber...what we now understand was given to Mr. Mulroney, I saw those withdrawals coming out of those accounts. I saw the set-up for meeting with Mr. Doucet. I saw many meetings with Mr. Doucet over the years--many. I have a lot of information on that, but in terms of what you really want to know, which is the money, what I have is what I have.
:
Thank you, Ms. Cameron, for being here.
Let me begin by saying thank you for the contribution you have made to the body of work we're dealing with today. I know we've all read your books, and we've all thought them very useful, at least as a base level of information, as a good starting point.
I also know it's been a great strain on you over the years. There's a website now being run by the PR firm that Brian Mulroney has hired. Virtually as we ask questions, it puts up its own sheets to try to discredit you and attack you in various ways. I understand that must be stressful.
Brian Mulroney said very clearly that he had absolutely nothing to do with the Airbus purchase, or the choice of Air Canada to purchase the Airbus product. Notwithstanding having the smoking gun, the silver bullet with you, do you believe in your own heart that there was political interference in the choice to purchase the Airbus product over the other airplanes that were being pitched to Air Canada at the time?
:
You've never heard that name or of money being funnelled down there.
With the witnesses we've had before this committee, we have been surprised to hear their presentations. I think in terms of your investigation, you found some of them very evasive about money. There's the name Sam Wakim, for example. He's somebody who has been involved, been questioned as an associate of Mulroney, and he seemed to deny a lot of things about where money was going and whether there were special funds set up. Others, apparently, were also very evasive. But more and more we're learning about money here, money there.
Of the evidence you have seen in this committee so far, have you had difficulty in seeing it as truthful, as honest, in terms of the investigations you have made?
:
You have a treat ahead of you.
I believe I said—probably in this one—that the letter was leaked, I understand, by Mr. Mulroney's team to Philip Mathias.
I had hoped to get a copy of the letter. I had hoped to break the story for Maclean's. I worked very, very hard. I have vivid memories of meetings in the Maclean's boardroom with the lawyers, and the editor, Bob Lewis, and the other people there saying, “Go phone Mr. Fiegenwald again and ask him if he'll confirm.”
The story had already broken. You know that the story had broken in Berne, Switzerland, already. A Swiss reporter had the story. But the Canadians were all terrified to print it unless we could get it proved here.
That Mr. Mulroney was under investigation was the story. There was nothing more.
:
That is our opinion as well, Mr. Chairman.
She explained to us earlier that she had worked with Rod Macdonell, a journalist I had the pleasure to meet who, like Ms. Cameron, is considered an outstanding investigative reporter. I was surprised to learn—because I didn't know it before coming here today—that the notes she filed with the committee—which will no doubt be translated before they're distributed—contain not only her own notes of her conversations with François Martin, but also Mr. Macdonell's notes and description. That reassures me a great deal because, contrary to what our witness might think, some individuals attacked her work very recently following Mr. Martin's appearance before this committee exactly one week ago.
In closing, Mr. Chairman, I want to say that Ms. Cameron is showing rare courage and exemplary honesty. The few journalists whom I've heard express at times vehement criticisms of her work were people who didn't do the essential part of what we've been trying to do from the outset, that is to say to hear both sides and to come to the best possible decision based on the evidence we have.
That is what she has tried to do as a journalist, and I think it is important to thank her for what she has done. All we can try to do as a group is to be the first line of defence of our parliamentary institutions.
Thank you, Ms. Cameron.
:
We could pursue this, but I think it would take much more time than we have.
I want to thank you on behalf of the committee. I know, just since we've started, I have some 10,000 pages of documents that have been provided to me. I'm sure you have boxes and boxes of documents.
It's a complicated issue. It's multi-dimensional. It makes it hard to sleep, too, I'm sure, because it sure does for me.
I want to thank you for appearing and thank you for giving us the foundation on which we are trying to do our work and trying to provide the best information possible within the resources and the tools that we have, so that the next stage, whatever that might be, will be the final chapter of this book.