Angry in the Great White North

Karlheinz Schreiber has to appear before the ethics committee, thanks to a Speaker's Warrant:

Still hoping to have the German-Canadian businessman appear tomorrow at the Commons ethics committee, opposition MPs yesterday launched new measures intended to get Schreiber out of a Toronto jail and bring him to Ottawa.

Over objections from Conservative MPs, the ethics committee proposed that House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken issue a rarely used warrant to have Schreiber transferred from jail to appear as a witness before the committee.

It was the latest twist in a hurry-up effort by the committee to hear from Schreiber before his possible extradition on Saturday to face charges of fraud and tax evasion in Germany.

But who really believes Schreiber will spill all the beans? His goal is to avoid extradition. He is not interested in saying a single word to the committee, not if it frees him up to be extradited two days later. But he doesn't want the committee to ignore him either. He wants the committee to expend all this effort and keep his story in the news, so as to make it politically difficult to extradite him.

And so he makes it clear Schreiber won't be talking much:

Schreiber's lawer Edward Greenspan told CTV's National Affairs Correspondent Lisa LaFlamme that his client will appear before the committee, but only under certain conditions.

"(Greenspan) said if he doesn't have those conditions -- no handcuffs, a suit on, and access to his own documents, and he won't talk -- what are they going to do? Throw him in jail?" LaFlamme told CTV Newsnet's Mike Duffy Live, recalling her conversation with the lawyer.

Conditions? It's all part of a game. Schreiber manipulates the opposition members of the committee to get the Speaker's Warrant, but then puts up roadblocks to getting for compliance. He hopes to run out the extradition clock with the warrant still hanging over everyone. Maybe he'll tell the committee he needs at least a week, maybe two, reviewing his documents in order to testify accurately. Who would be foolish enough to believe that? How about Liberal Paul Szabo and NDP Pat Martin, who will happily lead the charge against Rob Nicholson, using the warrant as ammunition to in an attempt to force Nicholson to suspend the extradition. They want to give Karlheinz Schreiber anything his heart desires, in the hope that Schreiber will tell them what they want to hear.

Szabo and Martin don't care that if the extradition order is suspended, it won't be easy to attempt to extradite Schreiber again before the full inquiry is complete, which wouldn't be until next year at the earliest.

But then Schreiber is betting on that.

Maybe the opposition members of the committee think Schreiber is worth it. But he isn't. Schreiber won't tell them anything, but sit there dragging things out until he hears that he is well and truly safe from extradition. Once safe, he'll clam up completely waiting until the inquiry, since that is his insurance against any future extradition attempt.

With Schreiber saying little, truthful or otherwise, the ethics committee with have nothing else to do but to yell at each other:

The ethics committee seems obsessed with chasing every conceivable angle in this sad story, whether it has any bearing on parliamentary ethics or not. The NDP's Mr. Martin indicated he plans to question Mr. Schreiber on the career of Howard Pawley, a Manitoba premier who left office almost 20 years ago.

Before they're finished trying to plastering tar and feathers on each other's parties, fed up Canadians may well be begging for someone to hand the man a boarding pass out of Canada.

And that's why Rob Nicholson is doing them a favour by making it clear that unless the courts intervene, Karlheinz Schreiber can tell his story by telephone from a German jail cell. But of course there won't be an expressions of gratitude.

The opposition members of the ethics committee are hell bent on being made to look like fools. I guess there is only some much Rob Nicholson can do to help those who obviously don't want to help themselves.

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