Suddenly, He's Not So Eager to Talk

But the opposition is awfully eager to hear him

In the newly-revived and ongoing Mulroney-Schreiber affair, things took a turn for the even more acrimonious recently when Schreiber stated he wouldn't cooperate with the inquiry were he extradited to Germany.

Following a statement issued by German Justice officials stating they would allow Schreiber to be interrogated by Canadian investigators while in German custody, Schreiber has promised "not a fucking word would I speak".

In other words, Karlheinz Schreiber, the would-be victim of a conspiracy theory, a man more maligned than Maher Arar and disappointed in the Harper government's efforts to clean up Ottawa, has now resorted to attempting to blackmail the government of Canada.

And the opposition, desperate to score whatever political points thay can from the affair, are all too eager to cave in to him.

At some point, the writing on the wall simply becomes all too obvious. Karlheinz Schreiber is desperately trying to delay his extradition to Germany, and he's willing to say absolutely anything to do it.

Meanwhile, the opposition parties and the media, recognizing Brian Mulroney as a slam-dunk case in the court of public opinion, has jumped all over this story, Karlheinz Schreiber, and his most recent non-revelations.

Among those non-revelations, Schreiber states, "The whole thing is much broader than only Airbus and it starts already at the beginning, in the early '80s, when the situation was that Brian Mulroney intended to become the prime minister and needed help."

More humorously, "There are other revelations I intend to make in front of an inquiry which really made me very nervous when I heard about them," Schreiber notes (emphasis added). "You will understand that I want to leave quite a few important things for the inquiry."

What most people understand about the Mulroney-Schreiber affair is that it deals primarily with Mulroney's dealings with Schreiber. So why is Schreiber only hearing such details about his own dealings with Mulroney now? Unless he wants to implicate other people in this tale, in which case the proof would certainly be in the pudding.

Schreiber is desperately trying to write a new lease on his life in Canada, and he's desperate enough to regurgitate old news, rumours, innuendos, and very likely outright lies (let's not forget who we're dealing with here) in order to do it.

That the opposition wants Canada to deny German officials the opportunity to deliver Schreiber to justice there on this basis is actually quite shameful. Moreover, it could imperil future Canadian attempts to extradite criminals from Germany. On this note, it's double-shameful.

If Schreiber doesn't want to talk if extradited to Germany, so be it. If he were really so concerned about justice as he would like us to believe, he would speak regardless.

It will be a truly dark day when the government of Canada bends over backward just to hear the words of a known fraud.