Internal memos obtained by CBC News: the fifth estate show that an Ottawa lobbying firm was deeply involved in the efforts by Airbus Industrie to sell airplanes to Air Canada in 1988.
“For years, executives at GCI (Government Consultants International), set up by former Newfoundland premier Frank Moores, denied involvement.
Most recently former GCI VP Greg Alford under oath last February before the House of Commons ethics committee testified that “GCI had no involvement” with Airbus.
“Maybe I missed what you said,” Alford was asked a second time by MP Charles Hubbard, “but you seemed to indicate, or at least what I heard, is that GCI was not involved with the Airbus deal. Did I hear correctly?”
“That’s correct,” Alford replied.
But a GCI memo written by Alford himself in 1987 to Schreiber with the subject heading ‘Airbus’ seems to suggest that GCI was involved in the Airbus deal.
“If Air Canada commits to purchase these aircraft before the end of September, Airbus Industrie will commit to putting this work into Canada,” Alford wrote to Schreiber.
Alford's memo to Schreiber re: Airbus [PDF 41kb]
The memo also refers to conversations Alford had with then Minister of Transport John Crosbie’s staff about how to best lobby the Minister and his team at the upcoming Paris Air Show. Alford told Schreiber how Crosbie’s Air Policy Advisor, Karen Mosher, was an admirer of Airbus chairman Franz Joseph Strauss.
“I have asked her to look for you and have told her of your association with FJS, whom she admires,” Alford wrote.
When the fifth estate first contacted Mosher in 1995, she admitted to having met Schreiber a couple of times, but said she didn’t know anything about Airbus.
“I don't remember having any direct contact with anybody at Airbus, or anybody representing them,” Mosher told the fifth estate in ‘95.
When contacted recently by the fifth estate for this story, Mosher, who is now Director General of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, refused all comment. She did not want to discuss the matter nor even be provided with the document in which her name had been mentioned.
When the fifth estate spoke to Alford about the memos he repeatedly maintained what he had told the Ethics Committee earlier this year.
“I wasn’t involved in an Airbus file,” Alford said. But he did allow that Schreiber often talked about Airbus.
In December of 1987, another GCI employee James MacEachern wrote a detailed memo with the subject heading “Airbus” to Schreiber and the entire executive of GCI: Frank Moores, Gerry Doucet, Gary Ouellet and Greg Alford. The memo was a report on GCI’s lobbying efforts to convince Air Canada to purchase airplanes from Airbus. He described a meeting in November between lawyer and lobbyist Marc Lalonde and then Air Canada president Pierre Jeanniot to see where Airbus stood in fierce bidding for the airplane deal.
MacEachern to Schreiber, Doucet, Alford, Ouellett, Moore [PDF 124kb]
Lalonde did not share this information with the Ethics Committee earlier this year when he appeared on February 12, 2008.
“Did you work on the Airbus or MBB files as part of your professional relationship?” MP Robert Thibault asked Lalonde about Schreiber.
“Neither Mr. Schreiber nor any of his businesses hired me to represent them regarding the Airbus affair. Nor GCI.” Lalonde replied.
“He was representing Airbus on that occasion.” Pierre Jeanniot, now a private businessman, recently told the fifth estate about his meeting with Lalonde on November 26, 1987. “I think that what basically he was interested in is to see how Airbus was being considered, probably trying to find out what chances they had to be selected.”
When asked if Mr. Lalonde had told him he was representing GCI, Jeanniot recalled, “He said at the time that he had been hired by Airbus to help promote – to see about opportunities for manufacturing pieces for Airbus in Canada in order to enhance their chances of being selected.”
According to the GCI memo written by MacEachern, Lalonde briefed him about his meeting with Jeanniot later that same day.
James MacEachern declined the fifth estate’s request to comment on this story.
When contacted by the fifth estate, Lalonde maintained that he had been hired directly by Airbus and was not hired by Schreiber or GCI to work on the Airbus file. He told CBC News: the fifth estate that Schreiber called him out of the blue one day in the spring of 1987 to see if he would help him lobby Air Canada to purchase airplanes. Lalonde says he then met with Schreiber, Airbus President Jean Pierson, and the VP of marketing, Stuart Iddles in Paris and, after that meeting, arranged to work for Airbus Industrie.
Lalonde said he briefed GCI on his meeting with Jeanniot. He also said he met with Frank Moores, the head of GCI, at their Ottawa offices to discuss the lobby project.
Until his death in 2005, Frank Moores maintained he and his lobby firm GCI had nothing to do with Airbus and its sale of $1.8 billion worth of airplanes to Air Canada.
NDP MP Pat Martin was a member of the Ethics Committee that looked into the Mulroney Airbus Settlement.
“If these people were trying to cover something up or lying to us,” Martin told the fifth estate, “I for one would call for any witnesses that lied to us to be called back to face consequences and I would hope serious consequences.”
Former chair of the Ethics Committee, Paul Szabo, agrees that if it’s found that witnesses mislead the Committee there could be serious consequences including fines or imprisonment.
“A person who is going to be recommended by a committee to be found in contempt would be brought into the chamber and stand at the brass rail at the head the opposite end from the speaker and be subject to questions by members of parliament as to why they should not be found in contempt of parliament,” Szabo told the fifth estate.
Earlier this year Dr. David Johnston, appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to set the terms of reference for a public inquiry, recommended that Airbus not be one of them.
“I would not recommend terms of reference that charge a Commissioner today with the task of holding an inquiry to go over this well-tilled ground,” Johnston wrote to Harper last January.
“My view would be different if there existed significant evidence that had only now come to light,” he added in his report.
The public inquiry into the Mulroney Schreiber affair is scheduled to begin February 9th. But following the recommendation of Johnston, the mandate of the Oliphant Commission will not include Airbus.
