OTTAWA - Opposition MPs on the Commons ethics committee say they want to put aside partisan haggling and churn out a final report on the Mulroney-Schreiber affair as soon as possible.
Liberal and NDP members had been arguing until now that the panel should make detailed recommendations on the scope of a follow-up public inquiry promised by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
But they started to back off that position Thursday, out of fear that it would only prolong proceedings.
"We don't want to give the government-side members any reasons to stall and delay,'' said New Democrat Pat Martin.
He said the emerging consensus on the committee is to deliver a bare-bones report, simply summarizing the testimony heard to date and making no effort to reach conclusions on which witnesses were most credible.
"The only honest appraisal is we didn't hear enough to draw hard and fast conclusions anyway,'' said Martin.
Liberal Robert Thibault, who quarterbacked his party's strategy through three months of hearings, said he fears continuing debate would only give Harper an excuse to further delay the full-fledged public inquiry.
"If we try to come up with recommendations through the committee, we get all that risk of filibuster and problems and we might never come out with a report,'' said Thibault.
Peter Van Loan, the Conservative House leader in the Commons, reiterated Thursday that the government won't call its own inquiry until a final report is received from the committee.
It will then be up to Harper's special adviser David Johnston, president of the University of Waterloo, to analyze the results and recommend formal terms of reference for the new probe.
In a preliminary report in January, Johnston suggested a relatively narrow investigation of the business dealings between former prime minister Brian Mulroney and arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber.
Mulroney has admitted taking $225,000 from Schreiber to lobby international leaders on behalf of a project to build German-designed light armoured vehicles in Canada for export.
Schreiber says the total was $300,000 and Mulroney was supposed to lobby the Canadian government after leaving office -- a move that could have put him in violation of federal ethics rules.
The Liberals and NDP have been arguing for a wider mandate that would cover an earlier deal in which Air Canada bought European-made Airbus jets while Mulroney was still in power.
They also want an investigation of whether Mulroney should repay a $2.1 million libel settlement reached with the former Liberal government of Jean Chretien.
But Martin and Thibault said they're now willing to end the committee wrangling and leave the decision in Harper's hands.
They got some moral support Thursday from retired judge John Gomery, who spent two years investigating the federal sponsorship scandal. He came down firmly on the side of the widest possible mandate for a Mulroney-Schreiber probe.
Gomery noted that when he was appointed to examine the sponsorship affair, he insisted on terms of reference that would let him probe anything he deemed appropriate.
"I would recommend that for any commissioner of any inquiry,'' said Gomery. "Especially where the inquiry is going to be politically charged -- and certainly that will be the case in the Mulroney-Schreiber case.''
The ethics committee won't meet for the next two weeks since Parliament will rise Friday for an extended Easter break.
That means even if there are no more procedural glitches the panel is unlikely to deliver a final report until a week or 10 days into April, after which the ball will be squarely in Harper's court.
