Karlheinz Schreiber is finally out of Canada.  Better yet, he is in Germany, but frankly, that's just a bonus as far as I'm concerned.

He utterances as he went to face the music just further undermined his credibility, and must make any reasonable person wonder just why anyone thought he had much of value to say on any topic.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 10:08 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Will all due respect to Justice Jeffrey Oliphaunt, the inquiry he is leading into the financial dealings between Karlheinz Schreiber and former prime minister Brian Mulroney is just a big waste of time.

Didn't Karlheinz Schreiber just admit that he can't vouch for the accuracy of the affidavit that is justifying this inquiry?

Posted by: Steve Janke at 02:43 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Dr David Johnston has recommended that any inquiry into the business relationship between Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber be limited in scope and out of the public eye.

This has generated an entirely predictable response from the Liberal Party.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 11:09 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Now that the CBC has admitted that one of its reporters, Krista Erickson, had indeed colluded with two Liberal MPs to direct the questioning of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, who was appearing in front of the Commons ethics committee investigating allegations made by Karlheinz Schreiber, the question remains.

Can this committee carry on?

Now that the committee is requesting access to Brian Mulroney tax returns, the answer has to be a limited "No".  Would you want your tax returns handed over to CBC reporters?

Posted by: Steve Janke at 11:49 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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This is pure supposition, of course, but I've been thinking about the collusion between CBC reporter Krista Erickson and Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to use a Commons ethics committee hearing as a proxy for a CBC interview studio.

The Conservatives and others demanded that the CBC make the details of their investigation public.  The CBC has done that, to a point, revealing the name of the reporter who colluded with the Liberals, and detailing her punishment.  Krista Erickson has been reassigned to Toronto from Ottawa.

Some think the Conservative government put the screws on the CBC.  Nonsense.  If you think about it, the CBC had every reason to come clean and make it all public.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 01:06 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Krista Erickson's career as a CBC reporter has taking a blow.  She has been taken off the Ottawa beat as punishment for having worked with Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez in an attempt to make the Commons ethics committee into a means for the CBC to compel answers posed by its reporters.

Pablo Rodriguez, for his part, denies everything, and moreover, insists that actions taken by the CBC against Krista Erickson cannot be of interest to him.

Jason Cherniak, Liberal blogger and apologist for all things Liberal, has taken a different approach, and is agitating in support of Erickson.

Got that.  The Liberal MP at the centre of this controversy says CBC actions are of no interest, because he is not involved.  Jason Cherniak disagrees, and thinks the CBC actions need to be challenged.

Jason Cherniak disagrees!

Who woulda thunk it?

Posted by: Steve Janke at 03:42 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Now that the CBC has identified the reporter who wrote the questions for Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to ask at Commons ethics committee hearing into the business dealings between Karlheinz Schreiber and Brian Mulroney as Krista Erickson, it is curious to hear what Pablo Rodriguez has to say.

Remember, the CBC has already declared that Krista Erickson broke the rules, and the CBC has already punished her.  She has been reassigned to Toronto from Ottawa.  For the CBC there is no question, therefore, that Krista Erickson did exactly what had been alleged, and that is write questions for Pablo Rodriguez to repeat like a trained seal at the hearing.

Krista Erickson has been taken to the woodshed over this.  So what does Pablo Rodriguez do?  He denies everything.

He's hiding behind her skirts, as they would have said long ago, a time when being a gentleman meant something.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 07:36 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The CBC has responded to the Conservative Party on the question of collusion between a CBC reporter and the Liberal Party.

The CBC has named the reporter.  It is Krista Erickson.

The CBC has issued a punishment.  She has been pulled from covering Ottawa and has been reassigned to Toronto.

The CBC agrees that the reporter acted unethically.  And the Liberal Party...?

What we don't know is if the Liberal Party is sticking to the line that there was no collusion.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 03:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The absurdity to which we've been subjected to -- namely watching Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez humiliate himself and his party by being exposed as a CBC reporter wannabe when it was revealed that his job at the Commons ethics committee was to read as clearly as possible the words written down on paper by CBC reporters -- is even worse when you realize that the goal of this silliness, that is, to embarrass Stephen Harper, is a fool's errand.

I guess that's the Liberals are perfect for the job.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 11:19 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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In following the story of how an unnamed CBC reporter wrote questions for Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to deliver at the Commons ethics committee hearing question Brian Mulroney in the Karlheinz Schreiber affair, the question of whether any such collusion took place has been pretty much settled.

The CBC has said it is planning disciplinary action, so the story is credible.

Does that mean the Liberal Party is planning to backtrack on the public statement that the entire issue was a "fabrication"?  Or is the Liberal Party satisfied to let the CBC report to take the fall for this?

Forcing the reporter to bear all the consequences is a plan that could work, as long the CBC keeps the identity of the reporter a secret.  But whatever happens, hopefully the media in general will come to appreciate that getting too close to politicians is a dangerous thing.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 02:24 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The issue of collusion between the CBC and the Liberal Party in questioning Brian Mulroney continues to smolder.  A CBC spokesperson has said that action, if any, will be taken in private.

In a letter to the CBC ombudsman, the Conservative Party is challenging the CBC to come clean.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 12:56 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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So how does the CBC report on ethical lapses?

Not surprisingly, it depends on who has allegedly suffer a lapse in judgment.

But then it seems like the media establishment as a whole in this country is guilty of pulling its punches on the CBC-Liberal collusion story.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 12:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The allegation is that Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez colluded with the CBC, asking questions of Brian Mulroney written by a CBC reporter.  If you read blogs, you know all about it.  If you get your news from TV, radio, and newspapers, you might not.  That's not a surprise because professional courtesy makes news organizations loathe to accuse each other of wrongdoing.

It took less than 24 hours for bloggers to discover that Dan Rather and CBS had serious problems with the Killian Memo report in 2004, but it took a week before other networks in the United States dared to suggest that CBS had used faked documents to smear George W Bush.

In the same way, there is little reporting of the allegation of collusion between CBC news and the Liberal Party to embarrass or trap Brian Mulroney.

The National Post has broken that silence with a gutsy column by L. Ian Macdonald.  He makes the case that when Pablo Rodriguez asked his questions of Brian Mulroney during the Commons ethics committee hearing, it should have been immediately obvious that something was amiss.

Pablo Rodriguez rarely mutters a word in English, and yet there he was, asking  meticulously worded questions en Anglais.

I say gutsy because the column touches on two tricky issues.

The first is whether Pablo Rodriguez is even capable of functioning in English at that level.

The second follows from the first.  If you have doubts as to whether he can string that many English words together with that sophistication, then you have to conclude that Pablo Rodriguez was merely a sock puppet for the CBC.

But there is a third element not covered in Macdonald's column, and that is the conclusion that Pablo Rodriguez was looking out for Pablo Rodriguez, and the Liberal Party is now paying the price.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 01:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Aaron Wudrick has received an email from a VP at the CBC in which it appears that a decision has been reached concerning allegations that a CBC reporter was acting in collusion with the Liberal Party to frame questions to ask of Brian Mulroney at the Commons ethics committee hearings into the Karlheinz Schreiber affair.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 03:08 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The Conservatives are not satisfied with what has been said to date on the allegations of collusion between the Liberal Party and the CBC.  It seems that the CBC fed questions to Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez to ask of Brian Mulroney who was appearing in front of the Commons ethics committee to answer questions raised by Karlheinz Schreiber.  The questions asked by Rodriguez did not seem to have anything to do with Schreiber.

It's bad enough that the Liberals sometimes seem to be fishing, but to be fishing on behalf of the CBC, and doing it on the sly?

Posted by: Steve Janke at 11:39 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Canadian Press is reporting that the CBC plans to investigate allegations that a CBC reporter and a Liberal MP worked together to frame questions to ask Brian Mulroney during his appearance in front of the Commons ethics committee.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 10:40 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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There is no startling revelation. But there might have been one. If Brian Mulroney had given a different answer to the question posed by Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez, but actually written by the CBC, did the CBC have a headline and a story ready to go? Was all that was needed a "break"?

If the break was not forthcoming, was the CBC prepared to manufacture one by having Pablo Rodriguez act as a proxy reporter? And were the Liberals only too happy to help out?

Posted by: Steve Janke at 09:19 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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One of the strangest things to come out of the Karlheinz Schreiber hearings is the allegation that the CBC and the Liberals have cooperated on designing questions for Liberal MPs to pose during the hearings.

Is the CBC trying to manufacturer the news, and guide the direction of the events? There is a name for this sort of thing -- yellow journalism.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 10:19 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Stephane Dion must be very grateful for the Karlheinz Schreiber story.

Since the Schreiber thing exploded, the Tories continue to do well in the polls, while the Liberals have never polled so poorly.

So why would Stephane Dion be grateful? I have no doubt the polls would be telling us exactly the same thing had Karlheinz Schreiber never uttered a word and was quietly extradited to Germany. Schreiber has not hurt the Conservatives, nor is he helping the Liberals.

But it is keeping Liberal woes out of the limelight. The story has turned out to be a nice hole in which the Liberal Party can hide. Losing is still losing, but it's nice not to have to keep talking about it.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 01:12 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Karlheinz Schreiber has told the Commons ethics committee that there was nothing to his story. Brian Mulroney and Karlheinz Schreiber never discussed money while Mulroney was still in office. Mulroney certainly never took any money. And in any case, the money that later paid (after Mulroney returned to private life) had nothing to do with the Airbus Affair, which essentially means Brian Mulroney was correctly paid the $2.1 million in 1997 when he sued the Liberal government for libel.

Now thanks the inability of certain members of the Liberal Party to recognize when they were being played for fools, Karlheinz Schreiber might very well spend the rest of his life in Canada, and never face charges in Germany for fraud.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 02:22 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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