Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney didn't tell his trusted spokesman and long-time adviser about cash payments he had received from arms lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber until more than six years after the fact, Luc Lavoie says.
Mr. Lavoie told the House of Commons ethics committee Thursday that he first learned in 2000 - through Mr. Mulroney's lawyer - about three cash payments his client had received in 1993 and 1994 as a "retainer" from Mr. Schreiber. Mr. Lavoie said he was told the payments were worth "tens of thousands," but did not know the total amount and did not ask.
He said he didn't learn the payments were in $1,000 bills and kept by Mr. Mulroney in a safe or safety deposit box until Mr. Mulroney's testimony before the committee in December.
Mr. Lavoie insisted, however, that he knew of nothing untoward in Mr. Mulroney's dealings with Mr. Schreiber.
Skeptical MPs quizzed Mr. Lavoie on how he could act as the former prime minister's chief spokesman on the very issue and not know more about how much his client received and for what.
"I never discussed the specific amounts with Mr. Mulroney. At no time did I do that," he said.
Bloc Québécois MP Serge Ménard asked Mr. Lavoie why he didn't urge his client to publicly come clean about the payments after he learned about them in 2000, especially if they were legitimate, as Mr. Mulroney maintains.
"I've had many, many conversations with him. I wouldn't say that I never advised him of that," Mr. Lavoie replied. "That hypothesis was considered."
Mr. Lavoie said they agreed late last year that Mr. Mulroney would wait until his committee appearance to correct the record about how much he had received from Mr. Schreiber: $225,000, not $300,000, as Mr. Schreiber alleges and a figure to which Mr. Lavoie had referred in several media interviews.
Until he stepped down as spokesmen at the end of November, Mr. Lavoie, who served as Mr. Mulroney's deputy chief of staff from 1988-1991 and later as communications director, had spoken on behalf of the former prime minister since the latter retired from politics.
"As this affair kept developing, it became very clear that I just could not dedicate the time to serve him well as I did in the 1990s," Mr. Lavoie said in a recent interview. "As this became more and more demanding, I don't think he was well served."
Mr. Lavoie often found himself at the centre of the controversy over Mr. Mulroney's relationship with Mr. Schreiber.
In a series of phone calls in October, 1999, CBC producer Harvey Cashore tried to persuade Mr. Lavoie to grant an interview with the former prime minister. Mr. Cashore had obtained Mr. Schreiber's bank records and noticed an account titled "Britan." Between 1993 and 1994, cash withdrawals totalling $300,000 had been made from the Britan account. Mr. Cashore wondered if "Britan" referred to Mr. Mulroney.
It has since been revealed that money did change hands in the form of cash-stuffed envelopes Mr. Schreiber handed Mr. Mulroney during three separate hotel room meetings in 1993 and 1994. Mr. Schreiber claims he paid the former prime minister $300,000 from the account to lobby the Canadian government to build a light-armoured vehicle plant in Montreal after Mr. Mulroney left office. Mr. Mulroney said he was paid $225,000 to lobby foreign governments.
But in 1999, Mr. Lavoie insisted that Mr. Mulroney, who was still under RCMP investigation at the time, would not speak on the subject. "He is going nuts," Mr. Lavoie told Mr. Cashore, before repeatedly denying that Mr. Mulroney had accepted money from Mr. Schreiber.
"I mean the bottom line is that he never received any money from anybody," Mr. Lavoie said later.
Another denial came again: "Because there never was any money. And to think otherwise is really to not know Mulroney. He is too smart to do something like that. It is just too dummy. It is too damn stupid. He wouldn't do that."
Mr. Lavoie also attempted to distance Mr. Mulroney from Mr. Schreiber, stressing that they were never close and were never friends. "Karlheinz Schreiber is the biggest fucking liar the world has ever seen. That is what we believe," Mr. Lavoie said at one point in the interview.
Mr. Lavoie has long insisted that his remarks at the time were with respect to the sale of Airbus planes to Air Canada, an explanation he reiterated Thursday.
"I was talking about Airbus," he told The Globe and Mail in December. "No money changed hands. No money went to Brian Mulroney when it has to do with Airbus. I said that in 1999 and if I was still a spokesperson I would say the same thing. Now what happened after he left office is something else."
Mr. Lavoie is currently an executive vice-president of Quebecor Inc.
Mr. Mulroney's former chef, François Martin, also appeared before the committee and denied claims attributed to him in the 1994 book On the Take by Stevie Cameron that he was regularly asked to carry envelopes of cash from the PMO to Mila Mulroney at 24 Sussex.
Mr. Martin said he only made one deposit of $10,000 on Mila Mulroney's behalf at an Ottawa bank during his four-year tenure at 24 Sussex. He said published claims of multiple cash payments in and out of the prime minister's official residence were incorrect, although he said he did nothing to correct the record.
"She certainly changed my story," he said of Ms. Cameron.
In Ms. Cameron's book, he man responsible for Progressive Conservative party funds, David Angus, said the cash payments were legal advances for party-related expenses incurred by the Mulroneys. Ms. Cameron also reported the Tory party's PC Canada Fund was tapped to pay some of Mr. Mulroney's personal expenses.
With reports from Brian Laghi and Greg MacArthur