OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper has named Associate Chief Justice Jeffrey Oliphant of Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench to lead a public inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber affair.
Thursday's announcement comes seven months after Harper first promised to launch an investigation into former prime minister Brian Mulroney's controversial financial dealings with arms lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber.
Before naming Oliphant to head the one-year inquiry, Harper sought advice from University of Waterloo president David Johnston on the scope of the inquiry.
Johnston recommended that the mandate be narrowly focused on the lobbying work Mulroney agreed to do for Schreiber after leaving office in 1993.
Opposition parties want a broader mandate that would include probing allegations of kickbacks involving Air Canada's purchase of Airbus jets while Mulroney was in office.
They also want to review the $2.1-million libel settlement Mulroney got from Jean Chretien's Liberal government because, at the time of the settlement, no one knew that Mulroney had received secret payments from Schreiber.
