This Shouldn't Take Long

When I first heard that Prime Minister Brian Mulrooney would be called before a parliamentary ethics committee for allegations from Karlheinz Schreiber, I thought this would lead to a chain of events that would stretch on for months or years. It's already been a controversy for long enough, but given Mulrooney's testimony today, I just can't see it lasting.

Mulrooney submitted two contradictary affadavits from Mr. Schreiber to the Commons Committee:

"You don't have this one. Take a look at it, it's interesting," Mulroney said, holding up the two affidavits. "Which one is perjury? … They can't both be true."

Mulroney quoted from Schreiber's past court filings and media interviews throughout his testimony, using them to support his allegations that Schreiber had lied and to support his own statements.

MPs asked Mulroney how they were supposed to know which ones to believe.

"If you can figure that out, you're going to heaven," said Mulroney, drawing laughs from the packed room.

Mulrooney summed up Schreiber's claims against him simply:

"All of the allegations in the affidavit are completely false. He will say anything, sign anything and do anything to avoid extradition."

That's about it. Mr. Scrhreiber is a liar and a wanted criminal in Germany. He has zero credibility. It won't take long for the committee to conclude that there's better ways to spend their time.

Dump John Tory Now

Finally there’s looks like an organized effort to dump John Tory. Convention usually holds that when the leader of a major political party gets humiliated in a general election they have the good sense to resign gracefully.

John Tory hasn’t shown that good sense, which is just another example of his weak leadership. Many pundits point to Tory’s ill-fated promise to expand funding to religious schools. I think that’s simplistic.

John Tory lost because he had no credibility. His quick retreat during the campaign from the religious school funding promise was probably more of a problem than making the promise in the first place. Conservatives would never have been able to trust him to defend Conservative principles. For that matter Ontario voters couldn’t trust him to keep his promises, in part because he never made any. John Tory ran an exclusively negative campaign without ever defining what he would do differently. Ontario voters made the right choice to reject his leadership in the election, it’s time for Conservative party members to follow suit.

John Tory doesn’t deserve another chance. Ontario voters deserve a real choice when the next provincial election roles around in 4 years. I will renew my expired provincial PC membership and work to Dump John Tory now.