Conrad Black Continued: Brian Mulroney

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

There is in this country a mistaken belief that the Liberals were the first to attempt to turn Canada into a Corpocracy.

And that notion has been ingrained into our psyche.

But it is wrong. In fact it was Brian Mulroney who first moved the corporate boardrooms into the Parliament Buildings, and gave Lobbyists more power than our elected officials. It was also Mulroney who created the infrastructure for the sponsorship scandal.

Another new development in that fall of 1984 was the emergence of powerful lobbyists. Until the Mulroney government came to office, lobbying
was a discreet profession in the city, practised by a few well-connected Ottawa hands ....

When Mulroney came to Ottawa, he was followed by a flock of cronies who were brazen in their determination to cash in on the friendship. They opened "consulting" or "government relations" offices, bragged openly about their access to the Boss, and devised billing systems based on retainers and — a new wrinkle — contingency fees, or percentages of the action should their efforts be successful. Some, the minnows in the Ottawa pond, opened modest one-man bucket shops in shabby office buildings; others, the barracudas, confident of raking in significant revenues, leased suites in the most expensive towers in Ottawa and filled them with teak tables, leather chairs, expensive art, and eager-beaver support staff. (1)

Mike Harris would adopt the same system with lobbyists like Guy Giorno, Tom Long and Leslie Noble. And of course, anything Mike Harris did, Stephen Harper does better.

Connie and Brian

Conrad Black and Brian Mulroney had been friends for a number of years. Mulroney was president of the Canadian Iron and Ore Company, when the Black family were major shareholders, and he was the one who first introduced Black to Power Corporation's Paul Desmarais. (2)

Mulroney once said of Black: "Conrad has a magnificent capacity for conceptualization. If I look out a window, I'll see a tree. He might see a paper mill. He can put together the pieces of any corporate puzzle." (3)

But when Mulroney was asked to mediate a deal with Hanna Mining, he warned Black that he was seen as a "paper purchaser, not a builder or job creator". (4)

Robert Anderson the president of Hanna Mining, who wanted to stop Black from taking over Hanna, was Mulroney's boss. Brian Mulroney was, by his own description, "the jam in the sandwich.' Mulroney's position was made even more delicate as the battle moved out of the boardrooms into the courts. (5)

Black rewarded Mulroney, by backing him during his failed 1976 leadership bid, and the Mulroneys remained members of Black's social circle. That circle also included Murray and Barbara Frum(6), parents of David Frum, who remains a Black supporter.

Peter White and Brian Mulroney

Peter White was a classmate of Brian Mulroney's at Laval (7), and in 1972, he was running a small newspaper in Quebec's Eastern Townships along with his partner, Conrad Black. White introduced Black to Mulroney soon after he began to get involved in politics. (8)

White worked on Mulroney's leadership campaign, drawing in an important element of support, the Tory Youth, especially a group of neoconservative youth from the University of Toronto, led by Anthony Panayi (Tony Clement):

The campus radicals were also instrumental in the defeat of federal Conservative leader Joe Clark by corporate lawyer Brian Mulroney. "In 1981 to '83 there was a guerrilla campaign against the leadership of Joe Clark orchestrated by Brian Mulroney and the people who backed Mulroney ... In Ontario, the PC campus and youth associations were all hotbeds of anti-Clark activity and we were all on the anti-Clark side." The success of the right young Tories in helping force a leadership convention and in electing Mulroney over Clark strengthened their confidence. (9)

And the Young Tories were smitten with Peter White:

Peter White had identified young Tories as strategically significant and concluded that Mulroney had to win them in order to succeed. While staying discreetly out of the campaign limelight, White started to forge relationships with youth leaders, who were impressed that someone of White's stature — a business associate of Conrad Black — was interested them. Clark, meanwhile, had nobody of comparable business lining up youth support. Nearly one-third of all delegates were youth, so the potential was enormous. (10)

White would leave Mulroney in disgust, and return to work with Conrad Black, and the relationship between Black and Mulroney would also turn sour. In 1982 when Black was under investigation in Cleveland for shady dealings, be blamed in part, his former friend:

Unlike in America, Black personally knew those involved in the investigations in Toronto, and understood the regulators' frailties. `I'll talk to the Attorney General,' he announced. Just hours after the dinner he was sitting in the office of Roy McMurtry, Ontario's Attorney General. The politician met Black without any officials, even those directing the investigation. In his quiet, mellifluous manner, Black cast blame on a range of people, including even the future Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, at that time a rising politician in Ottawa and a director of Hanna. 'The powder trail from this trumped-up charade of an investigation leads straight to Brian's door,' Black told the Attorney General. 'He was far enough along in the chain that generated the Norcen investigation that his fingerprints wouldn't be on the knife. (11)

And Mulroney would say of Black: "Conrad's problem, is that he's never had his arse sucked by a woman." (12)

Mulroney always did have a way with words.



Sources:

1. On the Take: Crime, Corruption and Greed in the Mulroney Years, By Stevie Cameron, Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 1994, ISBN: 0-921912-73-0, Pg. 21-22

2. The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power, By Peter C. Newman, McClelland and Stewart, 1982, ISBN: 0-7710-6786-0, Pg. 224

3. Newman, 1982, Pg. 218

4. Newman, 1982, Pg. 250

5. Brian Mulroney: The Boy from Baie-Comeau, By Rae Murphy, Nick Auf der Maur, Robert Chodos, Goodread Biography, 1985, ISBN: 13-978-0887-801372, Pg. 129

6. Newman, 1982, Pg. 267

7. Cameron, 1994, Pg. 18

8. Mulroney: The Making of a Prime Minister, By L. Lan MacDonald, McClelland and Stewart, 1985, ISBN: 0-7710-5469, Pg. 82

9. Promised Land: Inside the Mike Harris Revolution, By John Ibbitson, 1997, ISBN: 0136738648, Pg. 33

10. Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition, By John Sawatsky, McFarlane, Walter & Ross, 1991, ISBN: 0-921912-06-4, Pg. 472

11. Conrad & Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge, By Tom Bower, Harper Press, 2006, ISBN: 10-000-723234-9, Pg. 66

12. Bower, 2006, Pg. 387

Media Manipulation: Conrad Black and the POWER of the Press

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

Lawrence Martin has written several articles about the Canadian media's rightward migration. In a January 2003 column headlined 'It's not Canadians who've gone to the right, just their media', he quoted an unnamed European diplomat saying "You have a bit of a problem here. Your media are not representative of your people, your values." Too many political commentators are right of centre while the public is in the middle", the diplomat continued. "There is a disconnect."

Martin believes the disconnect began when Conrad Black converted the Financial Post into the National Post, hired a stable of conservative commentators like Mark Steyn, David Frum and George Jonas, bought the centrist Southam chain and turned the entire package into a vehicle to unite Canada's right and retool the country's values to U.S.-style conservatism. (1)

Conrad Black was definitely a media mogul, but his real claim to fame was as a power broker. A political power broker, who was instrumental in the success of the American style neoconservative movement that brought Stephen Harper to power.

Black was more effective as a conservative political advocate than a businessman. "Yet Conrad Black's business ambitions probably always ran second to his urge to be an intellectual force of conservatism. He did not want to simply own newspapers. He wanted to use them to help to reshape the political culture of his native Canada, and to influence that of the United States, Britain and Israel ..." (2)

From Brian Mulroney and Preston Manning, to Stockwell Day and Stephen Harper. Conrad Black was there.

Connie and Brian

Conrad Black and Brian Mulroney had been friends for a number of years. Mulroney was president of the Canadian Iron and Ore Company, when the Black family were major shareholders, and he was the one who first introduced Black to Power Corporation's Paul Desmarais. (3) Black backed Mulroney during his failed 1976 leadership bid, and the Mulroneys remained members of Black's social circle. That circle also included Murray and Barbara Frum(4), parents of David Frum, and while Mulroney and Black had a parting of the ways, Frum remains a Black supporter.

Connie and Preston

"I don't know about Preston [Manning], Preston went to a Bilderberg [summit] meeting. Rides in a limo with Conrad Black. [He's] hobnobbing with the New World Order." James Keegstra (5)

Ernest Manning had enjoyed corporate support when premier of Alberta, and while the Reform Party was supposed to be grassroots, it was very much a party of the corporate sector. So when the Reform Party decided to expand into Ontario, Manning went on a road trip and was introduced to the the king of the power brokers, Conrad Black.

[He spoke during a reception] at Toronto's prestigious Toronto Club hosted by Conrad Black and Hal Jackman. Afterwards, Black not only gave a favourable review of Manning's economic policies, but also contributed $5000 through one of his companies, Sterling Newspapers .

[Cliff] Fryers announced in June 1991 that the party would soon be embarking on a major corporate drive for funding. 'Corporations are part of our constituency,' said Fryers, a remark echoed several months later by Gordon Wusyk, Reform's chief executive in Edmonton: 'What we have to offer corporate Canada is significant." Based in part on the anticipated success of the campaign, the party raised upwards of $20 million ... Manning kicked off the campaign for corporate funds the following month with another trip to Bay Street. While there, he gave a talk to 450 members of the Financial Services Institute, an organization described by journalist Norm Ovenden as 'an elite organization made up of bank, trust company and insurance executives, top corporate lawyers, accountants, stock brokers and pension-fund managers.' (6)

Connie and Stockwell

After the merger of the Reform and Alliance parties, the leadership was up for grabs. And while both Stephen Harper and Conrad Black originally supported Mike Harris operative Tom Long's bid, Black did use a lot of his money and influence to help Stockwell Day, in his run for prime minister, in 2000.

He traipsed him around to $1,000.00 a plate fundraisers and allowed Ezra Levant to host additional fundraising parties at his house.

But after losing the election, and control of his caucus, Black looked to another hopeful. The president of the National Citizens Coalition, an extension of the corporate world.

Connie and Stephen

The decidedly conservative Conrad Black had taken over the liberal Southam chain of newspapers in May of 1996, and soon replaced soft liberal editors with editors of a more conservative cast at several of his publications, such as the Gazette and the Ottawa Citizen. He now controlled 58 of Canada's 105 daily news papers, and he soon made good on his statement to the Globe and Mail "We're going to try and recruit the very best people we can and produce the best papers we can, and publish them to the highest standards we can. And that means separating news from comment, assuring a reasonable variety of comment, and not just the overwhelming avalanche soft, left, bland, envious pap, which has poured like sludge through centre pages of most of the Southam papers for some time." Black folllowed that up by founding the National Post in the fall of 1998, and the Post would provide [Stephen] Harper with an always available platform for airing his views. The Sun Media Newspapers were also receptive, especially Calgary Sun, founded in 1980. (7)

Conrad Black was also heavily invested in the Fraser Institute, a pseudo-think tank, that gave us Jason Kenney and Rob Anders, and has contributed to the neoconservative success story.

When Harper decided to run for the leadership of the merged Alliance-PC party, it is rumoured that it was Black who paid off Peter MacKay's half million dollars worth of loans, if he agreed not to challenge him. (Harper claims to know who put up the money and that it was all above board, and yet still refuses to name the source. (8))

And not long after winning the Alliance leadership in 2003, Black took Harper to Bildeberg, a treat he once bestowed on Manning.

It's a dangerous thing when a powerful media outlet influences elections, whether they be leadership bids or a run for office. It further threatens our democracy, because they represent only the elite of society, and their goal is to destroy our social safety net.

And Stephen Harper has rewarded Black's world in spades, while promising to destroy the rest of us in the name of austerity.

We need to start fighting back, and we can do that by promoting the few independent news sources still available. it will be a long hard climb, but if we don't take that important first step, we are going to be in serious trouble.

Black's empire may be crumbling, but Rupert Murdoch is waiting in the wings, threatening to put the final nail in our coffin.

Previous:

Media Manipulation: Setting Agendas and Shielding Your Bum

Media Manipulation: Journalists or Playwrights?

Sources:

1. Right-wing media covering up political scandal, By Frances Russell, Winnipeg Free Press December 12, 2007

2. "The Guardian profile: Barbara Amiel", The Guardian, September 3, 2004.

3. The Establishment Man: A Portrait of Power, By Peter C. Newman, McClelland and Stewart, 1982, ISBN: 0-7710-6786-0, Pg. 224

4. Newman, 1982, Pg. 267

5. Bentley, Alberta: Hellfire, Neo-Nazis and Stockwell Day: A two-part look inside the little town that nurtured a would-be prime minister - and some of the most notorious hate-mongers in Canada, By Gordon Laird, NOW Magazine, 2000

6. Of Passionate Intensity: Right-Wing Populism and the Reform Party of Canada, By Trevor Harrison, University of Toronto Press, 1995, ISBN: 0-8020-7204-6 3, Pg. 195

7. Stephen Harper and the Future of Canada, by William Johnson, McClelland & Stewart, 2005, ISBN 0-7710 4350-3, Pg. 262

8. MacKay's financial secret safe with Harper: No conflict, party leader says, by Stephen Maher, The Halifax Herald Limited , Thursday, May 13, 2004

The Fraser Institute's Role

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

"The Fraser Institute is another formerly obscure group whose rise to prominence coincided nicely with the advent of Canada's neo-conservative politicians, and it has been front and centre of the far right's fight to rethink Canadians' political values and beliefs.... the Institute was set up in the same fashion as several other right-wing groups in the United States, employing a core group of researchers and also engaging like-minded neo-conservative academics from other countries to conduct specific studies.

"To further heighten the international and academic cachet of its work, a second board was set up and given prominence in institute literature, deliberately overshadowing the real power and corporate funds behind the organization. While the Board of Trustees represents a Who's Who of the business elite in Canada, it is almost never referred to; instead, the board of advisers has successfully been established as the academic window dressing. (1)

Friedrich Von Hayek, who is thought to be the pioneer of the libertarian movement, originated the idea of setting up fake scholarly organizations to supply authoritative studies demonstrating the superiority of markets over governments in solving all our problems. Why fake, asks Don Gutenstein. "Because a genuine academic organization would not start with a conclusion and then look for arguments and evidence to support it." (2)

The Fraser Institute was founded in 1974 by Michael Walker, an economist from the University of Western Ontario and businessman T. Patrick Boyle, then a Vice President of MacMillan Bloedel. Most of the original financing came from the forestry giant MacMillan-Bloedel, who commissioned Walker to attack the NDP government of British Columbia, under then Premier Dave Barrett.

The Fraser has since worked continuously to forge greater ties with the United States, and began;

"... setting up a Centre for Canadian-American Relations to promote greater economic integration of the two countries. Harper has often voiced his support for deeper integration. It's another strategy for reducing the role of government."

"The Fraser has churned out books hyping hemispheric integration for 15 years. These studies make the point that Canadian prosperity is a result of trade with the U.S. and the free-trade agreements. If we want more prosperity, we need more integration. A 1996 publication, Money and Markets in the Americas: New Challenges, for instance, advocated a monetary union. Michael Wilson--Bay Street broker, Brian Mulroney's minister of finance, and Harper's ambassador to the U.S.--contributed a chapter." (2)

When Stephen Harper was helping Preston Manning to create the Reform Party, he visited the Fraser Institute to make sure they were still on board with creating a neoconservative alternative to the current conservative government, and they did not disappoint. In fact many of Harper's MPs were plucked from the Fraser, including Jason Kenney and Rob Anders.

The Fraser also had strong ties with Conrad Black, the man who helped to finance and create Canada's sharp right turn.

Former members of the board of trustees include David Asper, whose family owns CanWest Global, Canada's largest media corporation; Barbara Amiel, wife of Conrad Black; and David Radler, Black's former business partner. (3)

In 2004, Stephen Harper attended the Fraser Institutes 30th anniversary, and payed tribute to the organization that had played such an integral role in the success of the neoconservative movement:

The scene was the glitzy Imperial Ballroom of Calgary's Hyatt Regency, where 1,200 adoring libertarians, conservatives, and reactionaries paid $300 each to hear four prominent conservative politicians--Ralph Klein, Mike Harris, Preston Manning, and Harper--pay tribute to the Fraser's success in pushing political thought in Canada to the right, helping make their careers possible. (2)

Next: Conrad Black's Role - Media Manipulation

Sources:

1. Hard Right Turn: The New Face of Neo-Conservatism in Canada, Brooke Jeffrey, Harper-Collins, 1999, ISBN: 0-00 255762-2, Pg 420-421

2. Harperstein, By Donald Gutstein, Straight Goods, July 6, 2006

3. Wikipedia