Most shameless PM in Canadian history gets speakers fee for sharing vision of Canada in 2020

Brian Mulroney made a few headlines across the land today when he addressed a conference put on by the think tank Canada2020.  That's an outfit that, while "non-partisan," is very much partial to the rampant exploitation of Canada in the interests of big capital.

In case you've forgotten Lyin' Brian's bona fides, he's the guy who drove the Progressive Conservative Party so deep into the ground that after he handed it off to Kim Campbell it lost all but two seats in the next election, an epic fail the likes of which have never been seen before or since in Canadian politics. That's what brought about the Reform Party's (Canada's Tea Party) rise to a place where they could take over the venerable Tory party.

That was far from his only accomplishment. The wily sleazebag also made a name for himself for the Karlheinz Schreiber scandal, wherein the bagman for the German Thiessen-Krupp conglomerate handed cash-stuffed envelopes to Prime Minister Mulroney, who was apparently having a moment of "poor judgement" at the time.

And who can forget Mr. Mulroney's principled stand against apartheid in South Africa?

Although he never expressed any reservations about the apartheid regime he presided over vis-a-vis Canadian aboriginals, Mr. Mulroney was deeply concerned about apartheid in South Africa, to such an extent that he is to this day considered in some quarters to have been one of the world leaders who headed up anti-apartheid sanctions against that country.

South Africa at the time had the dominant gold coin in circulation among those who need to hoard gold, the Krugerrand. Canada was on the threshold of introducing its own gold coin.

By the most fortuitous stroke of coincidence, after his retirement from politics Mulroney reaped many millions of dollars from a generous sinecure at Canada's biggest gold producer, Barrick.

But that's all in the past. What is Brian's vision for Canada in 2020?

Well, Canada's future hinges on the unhinged and unregulated exploitation of Canada's natural resources. Good leadership is leadership that overcomes the objections of natives and environmentalists and pinkos of all stripes as it secures Canada's future by turning it into a one-trick economy predicated on rampant resource exploitation.

Since the NAFTA deal he lobbied so tirelessly for has all but destroyed Canada's manufacturing sector, he could well be on to something. Like, what the hell else can we do?

Turn back the clock? Undo NAFTA? Make peace with our Indian population? Secure our natural resources for future generations to harvest in a responsible way? Put the interests of Canadians ahead of the interests of multi-national conglomerates? Favour Canadian workers over Filipinos and Mexicans? Favour the environment over pell-mell resource exploitation?...

Nope, not a chance. Our hands are tied... it's time to forget the pipe-dreams and forge ahead with the pipelines.

Jobs jobs jobs!!! Brian Mulroney and the NAFTA legacy

It was obvious from the beginning that Mulroney's campaign to push "free trade" down Canada's throat was going to be good for a few of his pals in the ownership classes, or the "one percent" as we refer to them now, and not so great for the rest of us.

But the sales job had an almost-believable appeal to the racism inherent in our society. Our brown-skinned brothers south of the Rio Grande would only get the shit jobs that we didn't want to do anyway.

We'd be doing all those new hi-tech jobs that were beyond the ability of our stupid brown-skinned brothers in Mexico.

Most of my union brothers in the United Steelworkers of America knew the truth right away; this was a fancy way of moving our jobs to Mexico.

But the Mulroney bullshit won the day.

Mulroney was in Toronto the other day to celebrate 25 years of NAFTA.

Mulroney was feted by U of T's Rotman School of Management, where they have no problem celebrating a shit-bag who weaseled his way out of serious bribery charges that followed the revelation that he had taken cash-stuffed envelopes from Karl-Heinz Schreiber, Krupp-Thiessen Ambassador at Large for schmier-geld back in the day.

So Rotman pays Lyin' Brian a speakers fee to come tell all about how great NAFTA has been. It has transformed the land!..

Indeed it has. A few days later The Globe and Mail finds room for this story. Seems twenty-five years after that glorious victory for "free trade"  half of all Toronto area employees are suffering from "precarious employment."

As in no benefits and no job security and if you don't like it, move to Mexico.

That's the real legacy of Mulroney's NAFTA achievement.

Whistleblowers blow whistle on themselves

Only in Canada would this kind of abject foolishness be applauded.

Not only did they get slapped with a ten million plus fine, they have to pay their own lawyer, whose take on the matter is yup, they did it, they blew the whistle on themselves.

Hope they're not overpaying her.

Obviously those mandatory ethics courses they've made part of MBA programs all over the place are paying off... in corporate executives turning themselves in for practices that have always been considered routine, and still are, in most of the world.

Certainly in Chad, which consistently makes the top twenty list in world corruption leadership.

Generally considered an erstwhile ally of the Nations of Virtue, I might add. Look for them picking up Hollande's baton in Mali.

The thumbnail version of the tale is that a couple of young eager beavers, the Tyab brothers, hooked up with Bay Street wheeler-dealer Brad Griffiths as their financial backer to try to land some oil exploration contracts in Chad.

In order to expedite said mission, they cast about for palms to grease in order to help smooth the process, and ended up paying a company owned by the wife of Chad's ambassador to the US two million dollars for consulting services.

The Germans have a handy word for that; schmiergeld.

Canadians should be acquainted with that word. It became a part of the Canadian lexicon when the Karl-Heinz Schreiber affair was in the news a few years back.

That was the little episode where Karl-Heinz, emissary at large for German conglomerate Thyssen-Krupp, was passing cash-stuffed envelopes to former Canadian PM Brian Mulroney.

Karl-Heinz was paying Mulroney for consulting services.

Ironically, in this Chad case, another former Canadian PM, Jean Chretien, played a pivotal role in shmoozing the contract along.

So greasing those palms, or hiring the right consultants, depending on how you look at it, obviously worked, because a couple of years later Griffiths Energy was planning a $300 million IPO.

And if those Canadian lads hadn't hired the right consultants, somebody else would have.

The trouble with Smiergeld

As Brian Mulroney, former Canadian PM and all-round unsavory character can readily attest, the trouble with Smiergeld is that its exchange can sometimes come back to bite you.

When lyin' Brian was PM he had a number of encounters with even less savory characters, encounters at which substantial sums of cash changed hands.

I am reminded of this today because of the flap over the $56 million supposedly missing from the coffers of SNC-Lavalin, one of Canada's premier construction conglomerates.

There were SNC-Lavalin shareholders at the annual shareholder meeting today making out like they never heard of such a thing.

Not bloody likely.

That $56 million missing from one side of the ledger turned into multiple billions on the other side.

SNC does business the world over, and had an especially tight connection with the Gadaffi clan over in Libya.

No harm in that. So did Sarko and phoney Tony.

At least untill they stabbed them in the back.

So the news coming out of the SNC meeting is that all these shareholders are just shocked, SHOCKED to learn that some of their company's juicy foreign contracts were facilitated by under the table payments?

Fat chance!