OTTAWA - The Conservative government did not read briefing material prepared by the Justice Department on the Airbus affair and cash payments to Brian Mulroney, documents suggest.
Government papers obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act reveal the secrecy and sensitivity with which the Conservatives are handling the matter.
The Tories are under pressure to investigate Mulroney's financial dealings following new details about $300,000 he received from businessman Karlheinz Schreiber, who was tied to Airbus.
Mulroney says the cash was unrelated to the Airbus affair, which involved allegations of a bribery scheme in the government's purchase of 34 planes.
Notes drafted for the Conservatives by bureaucrats point out that briefing material on Airbus and Mulroney was prepared in 2006 and 2007, but that it never made it to the desk of the current or former justice minister.
The opposition says the bureaucrats appear to have gone out of their way to produce a paper trail that implies they tried to raise Airbus with the Conservatives -- but had no success.
The statement that there was no briefing is written several times, and phrased in different ways, in notes produced by the department for Justice Minister Rob Nicholson.
"Some briefing material was prepared by the Department of Justice on this issue on a pro-active basis,'' says a note from January 2007.
"It was not distributed further than the senior officials within the department.''
The same note offers Nicholson a possible response to any questions about Airbus: "Neither I nor my predecessor, the Honourable Vic Toews, received any briefing material related to this issue.''
Internal e-mails, also obtained under the Access to Information Act, suggest that even those seemingly innocuous messages may never have made it to Nicholson's desk.
Bureaucrats at justice were informed: "A decision has been made to the effect that this note will not be distributed to the minister's office.''
Correspondence records show that one bureaucrat suggested to his political bosses that they remain silent to avoid adding "fuel'' to the scandal.
Conservative government officials offered no immediate response to whether Nicholson subsequently request a briefing and if not, why not?
Mulroney met three times in hotel rooms with Schreiber, accepted the $300,000 in cash, and reportedly did not immediately declare the revenue on his taxes.
The opposition now wants to know why the government killed an internal investigation into whether Ottawa should try to retrieve $2 million paid to Mulroney in an out-of-court settlement.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has refused to reopen the case.
Mulroney successfully sued the former Liberal government for libelling him in connection with the Airbus affair, and he received the settlement in 1997 to cover his legal fees.
A senior official in Jean Chretien's government has now said the Liberals might never have paid Mulroney had they known at the time the extent of his dealings with Schreiber.
Reports surfaced on January 24, 2007, that the Justice Department was re-examining the settlement deal with Mulroney.
The note to Nicholson was produced the next day -- on Jan. 25 -- and it points out several times that the minister never received the information prepared for him.
To Liberal MP Robert Thibault, the documents look like a voluntary paper trail.
Thibault was a minister in the Liberal government and says his experience dealing with bureaucrats suggests that Justice officials were rebuffed in an effort to raise the issue with their political bosses.
"My experience with high-level bureaucrats is that they're professionals,'' Thibault said.
"If they're not going to brief (Nicholson), they would probably want to leave a paper trail to show that they had taken the necessary actions. Now that paper trail would exist that shows the minister does not want to be briefed.
"If we could follow this paper trail all the way, it would lead to a phone call, or a memo, or a note, or an e-mail, suggesting that this shouldn't pursue.''
Thibault said that somebody must have instructed the bureaucrats not to brief the minister on the matter. A briefing might have proven politically inconvenient for the Tory minister, he said.
"(It) would compel him to take some actions that the government would not like to take -- like an inquiry, like an investigation, like reopening the matter, like trying to recover the $2.1 million,'' he said.
"These e-mails and memos offer cover to the bureaucrats -- who might be worried about taking the blame themselves for not having informed the minister on an issue as sensitive as this one.''
