OTTAWA - The Commons ethics committee is poised to deliver a final report summarizing its hearings on the Mulroney-Schreiber affair and calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to get on with a full-fledged public inquiry as soon as possible.
Sources say all parties on the parliamentary panel are agreed on the need for a follow-up inquiry, and that view will be reflected in the report to be tabled in the full Commons on Wednesday.
But there were differences of opinion on fine points during a closed-door committee session Tuesday, and it appeared minority reports could also be presented on some issues.
Insiders said some Conservatives appeared to balk at proposed wording that called on Harper to set as wide a mandate as possible for the new inquiry.
The Bloc Quebecois wanted to include comment on the credibility of certain witnesses who appeared at the hearings. And the NDP was considering the possibility of a "supplementary'' report that would agree with the main findings but tack on some additional observations.
At issue are the business dealings between former Tory prime minister Brian Mulroney and German-Canadian arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber.
Mulroney has acknowledged accepting $225,000 from Schreiber to act as a lobbyist, after he left office, for a proposal to build German-designed light armoured vehicles in Canada for export.
The lobbying was to be aimed at foreign leaders whose countries might buy the vehicles, according to Mulroney.
Schreiber says the total payments were $300,000 and Mulroney was supposed to lobby the Canadian government _ a move that could have put him in violation of federal ethics rules.
There has also been disagreement about Mulroney's attitude toward the armoured vehicle project while he was in power.
He has said he ordered his then-chief of staff, Norman Spector, to cancel an early version of the deal because it would cost the federal treasury too much.
But Fred Doucet, another one-time Mulroney aide who later signed on as a lobbyist for Schreiber, said nobody told him the deal was off and he continued to meet with senior politicians and bureaucrats about it.
The committee report is expected to set out the contradictory testimony but make no effort to resolve the conflicts or come to a conclusion about which witnesses were telling the truth.
Nor will there be any specific recommendations on the issues that ought to be included in the mandate of the public inquiry to come.
Sources say it would have taken too long to hammer out agreement on those points, and MPs decided instead to get the issue into Harper's hands as soon as possible.
The prime minister's special adviser, University of Waterloo president David Johnston, delivered a preliminary report in January suggesting a relatively narrow probe, concentrating on the dealings between Mulroney and Schreiber over the armoured vehicle project.
Opposition MPs have argued for a broader investigation that would include an earlier deal that saw Air Canada buy European-made Airbus jets while Mulroney was still in office.
They also want a review of a $2.1-million libel settlement Mulroney reached with the Liberal government of Jean Chretien in 1998. Mulroney didn't disclose the full extent of his dealings with Schreiber at the time, and there have been calls for Ottawa to reopen the matter and try to force him to repay the money.
The Liberals want the issue to be examined as part of the public inquiry's work, while New Democrat MP Pat Martin has been pressing for the Justice Department to take immediate action.
Harper has already said he wants Johnston to deliver a second report with his own recommendations on terms of reference for the public inquiry by this Friday.
The prime minister has repeatedly promised to take action as soon as the ethics committee formally concludes its work and tables its final report.
