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It was the first week of 1987 when Karlheinz Schreiber and two lobbyists walked into Canada's embassy in Paris to speak with ambassador Lucien Bouchard about Airbus Industrie's efforts to sell airplanes to Canadian airlines.

One of those lobbyists was Greg Alford, a young Tory supporter with a fast-track career at the firm Government Consultants International.

But more than 20 years later, when Mr. Alford was called to testify before the House of Commons ethics committee about his firm's role in the 1988 Airbus sale to Air Canada, he didn't mention that trip. His firm had no role whatsoever, he testified at the hearing in February.

Liberal MP Sukh Dhaliwal asked Mr. Alford: “What can you tell us about the involvement of GCI in the Airbus purchased by Air Canada?”

Mr. Alford replied: “GCI had no involvement. Airbus was not a client.”

His sworn denial is now being questioned by some of the committee's former members, and his version of events has joined a growing list of testimony that appears to be contradicted by a trove of documents recently supplied by Mr. Schreiber to The Globe and Mail and CBC's the fifth estate.

Mr. Alford did not return requests for comment. His meeting with Mr. Bouchard, however, was scrawled in Mr. Schreiber's 1987 agenda book, and confirmed in interviews with The Globe and Mail by two participants in the meeting. The young GCI lobbyist also drafted a detailed memorandum about Airbus a few months after that embassy meeting, a document that advised Mr. Schreiber on how to approach then-transport minister John Crosbie at the 1987 Paris Air Show. In the memo, Mr. Alford wrote: “If you meet the Minister, keep in mind that he is quite shy and so it would be best not to come on too strong.” Mr. Alford also offered a detailed description of Mr. Crosbie's staff, right down to their height, age and hair colour.

On Tuesday, The Globe and CBC revealed that a series of letters written by Fred Doucet, a long-time aide to former prime minister Brian Mulroney, contradicted his sworn testimony that he knew nothing about the $1.8-billion sale of Airbus airplanes to Air Canada in 1988. Former members of the committee, which has yet to convene since the October election, have said they will consult with other parties and parliamentary lawyers about how to respond to the contradiction. The former chair, Liberal MP Paul Szabo, has said the testimony raises questions of contempt of Parliament.

“I'm absolutely horrified and livid after examining this hard evidence,” New Democrat MP Pat Martin, another former committee member, said after reviewing Mr. Alford's memorandum. “I'm insulted, and the Canadian people should be insulted, and there should be serious consequences stemming from that.”

If parliamentarians decide that they were misled, they have a number of options. Almost everything that is said at a parliamentary committee is protected by absolute privilege, which means witnesses' words can't be used against them in a lawsuit. However, a provision in the Parliament of Canada Act allows witnesses to be charged with perjury, said Thomas Hall, a retired parliamentary procedural and committee clerk. Such a measure is extremely rare, Mr. Hall said.

The more common approach is for the committee members to complain to the House of Commons, which can result in an investigation or immediate determination of contempt of Parliament, Mr. Hall said. One of the punishments is for the offender to appear at the bar of the House to be reprimanded by the Speaker, he said.

Mr. Martin, one of the former ethics committee members who last year led the probe into the hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash payments that Mr. Schreiber made to Mr. Mulroney between 1993 and 1994, also raised questions yesterday about the testimony of another witness: former Liberal finance minister Marc Lalonde.

However, in an interview, Mr. Lalonde dismissed the criticism and said his answers were completely accurate.

At a February hearing, former Liberal MP Robert Thibault asked Mr. Lalonde: “Did you work on the Airbus ... files as part of your professional relationship [with Mr. Schreiber]?”

Mr. Lalonde responded: “Neither Mr. Schreiber nor any of his businesses hired me to represent them regarding the Airbus affair or GCI.”

One of the memorandums recently released by Mr. Schreiber is a summary of a meeting that Mr. Lalonde had with a GCI lobbyist.

The memo bearing the initials of a GCI lobbyist to colleagues says Mr. Lalonde met with Air Canada CEO Pierre Jeanniot, who advised Mr. Lalonde that he had recently met with officials from an Airbus competitor, Boeing, and that the U.S. manufacturer was dropping its prices in an effort to land an Air Canada contract.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Lalonde acknowledged that he met with Mr. Jeanniot and that he worked on behalf of Airbus, but said that his statement to the committee didn't deny either of those facts.

He specifically told the committee that he was never hired by Mr. Schreiber, he said.

“I was not hired by Mr. Schreiber,” he said. “My firm was hired by Airbus and the bill was sent to Airbus ... I never worked for Mr. Schreiber on Airbus at any time.”

Opposition MPs such as Mr. Martin and Mr. Szabo also said Mr. Schreiber's new documents show that the coming public inquiry into Mr. Mulroney's cash payments needs a broader mandate.

The inquiry, which is being chaired by Associate Chief Justice Jeffrey Oliphant of Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench, is set to start public hearings in February.

A spokesman for the inquiry said yesterday that the 17 questions the judge has been instructed to answer are open-ended enough that it will allow the inquiry to explore Mr. Schreiber's previously unreleased material.