On an August night in 2007, Luc Lavoie lounges in the shadows on the back patio behind a Montreal old boys’ club. The then-spokesperson for former prime minister Brian Mulroney cuts an ominous figure in the dark, his face half-illuminated by the glow of the club’s lights. He puffs on a cigarette in one hand and sips from a glass of wine in the other. Across from him sits Harvey Cashore, senior editor for CBC’s investigative program the fifth estate, and The Globe and Mail’s national reporter Greg McArthur. The two met while investigating the sprawling Airbus affair, in which German businessman Karlheinz Schreiber alleges that he gave Mulroney secret commissions stemming from Air Canada’s $1.8-billion purchase of thirty-four A320 Airbus Industrie passenger planes. Cashore is working on his sixth documentary about this story, which has become one of the most complex political scandals in Canadian history.
Cashore and Lavoie don’t get along—the journalist’s probing has irked many people with power, prestige and connections—so the mood alternates between tense and light-hearted. “Where is the money?” he and McArthur ask. “What did Mulroney do with it? Why did he take cash payments from Schreiber?”
“Canadians have a right to know why Mulroney took the money,” Cashore says.
“What makes you think you have a right to anything?”
They continue pushing for answers. But Lavoie, a tempestuous, outspoken charmer, skirts the hard questions, answers the easy ones tongue-in-cheek and rambles off-topic. He takes a drag on his cigarette and locks his eyes on Cashore. Returning the stare, Cashore again asks, “What happened with the money?”
“Ah, Aar-vey,” he drawls nonchalantly, “I wish this was another time, another place, back before the rule of law, and we would settle things in the alley.”
The complicated relationship between Cashore and Lavoie doesn’t bother the reporter, who has endured criticism, lawsuits and personal turmoil to get to the bottom of a story he’d never have guessed would go this deep.
Schreiber’s job was to sweeten international business deals on behalf of German companies—essentially acting as a high-priced middleman. Bavarian manufacturers such as Airbus, MBB and Thyssen Industries employed Schreiber to ensure they landed international contracts. Stationed in Canada, he circulated within the Progressive Conservative Party, befriending some Tories who would later end up in power. He first curried favour with the future prime minister in 1983 after paying to fly delegates into Winnipeg for a convention that would lead to Mulroney’s party leadership. In the following years, Schreiber made fast friends with other high-profile Tories, including Mulroney cabinet minister Elmer MacKay and Newfoundland premier Frank Moores. At the time of the purchase in 1988, German law permitted the use of schmiergelder (grease money) to lubricate bureaucratic cogs. But bribery is illegal in Canada and government contracts—including those involving then–crown corporation Air Canada—forbid the use of kickbacks. Still, Schreiber alleges that he gave Mulroney $300,000 in cash after he left office in 1993. The former prime minister says the cash totaled $225,000 and was for international lobbying, not Airbus.
The fact that Cashore’s stayed on Airbus for 13 years is unusual in a profession always eager to move onto the next story. It’s also a testament to his reputation as one of the finest investigative journalists in the country.
Once commonplace, investigative units dedicated to this costly, time-intensive reporting are now dwindling. But the public’s appetite for deeply researched stories such as Airbus remains and is perhaps even more voracious in these complex times. Any news organization that believes the press is a pillar of democracy ought to agree—but putting this principle into practice isn’t so simple.
Though just 44, Cashore is an old-school journalist. He grew up in the Vancouver area, the son of a United Church minister turned provincial New Democratic Party cabinet minister with portfolios in Aboriginal affairs, labour and the environment. As a kid, Cashore absorbed politics and social justice issues at the dinner table and at peace marches, something he now passes on to his two children. In Grade 7, Cashore decided it was either law or investigative journalism for him, and founded the Cape Horn Flyer, a stet machine–produced school newspaper that cost five cents. In high school, he fought for, and won, mandatory breaks while working at the local Keg restaurant by bringing in labour ministry inspectors. For his first-year reporting class at Carleton University, he wanted to write about peace protesting, so he chained himself to Parliament Hill, and ended up arrested and on the evening news.
By the time he graduated in 1987, he was researching for John Sawatsky, his fourth-year investigative journalism professor, first on a book about government lobbying, then on Mulroney: The Politics of Ambition. The job didn’t pay much, but Cashore learned a lot. For the political biography, mentor and student created an index that cross- referenced facts with periods in Mulroney’s life. As the index grew in rows and columns, so did their source list. They noticed his previously undiscovered failed first year at Dalhousie University’s law school; his second chance at Laval University the next year, too. Reviewers praised the best-selling book for its even-handed portrayal. Mulroney called it “trivial.”
After finishing his work on Politics of Ambition, Cashore was unemployed for eight months, until the spring of 1991, when he received a letter from CBC’s The Journal, inviting him to apply for a summer internship. Though Cashore had worked on the show for two weeks as a researcher, he had no other television experience. Even so, Journal senior editor Sally Caudwell pushed for him. David Studer, then a senior editor for documentaries for the show and now executive producer for the fifth, remembers a talented and resourceful journalist who had something more important than technical expertise—good research and reporting skills. Cashore got the job.
After the internship, he joined the fifth as a researcher. Years later, in the summer of 2000, between the show’s seasons, he co-wrote a lurid tale of greed, bribes and international money laundering called The Last Amigo: Karlheinz Schreiber and the Anatomy of a Scandal with fellow investigative reporter Stevie Cameron. Except for sojourns at The National and Disclosure, a magazine-format show, in its last two seasons from 2001 to 2003, Cashore has been at the fifth ever since, rising through the ranks to senior editor by 2007.
All this has helped him build a luminous, if low-profile, career. “Harvey is calculated, but also has a strong sense of injustice—a very emotional gut reaction,” says McArthur. “He hates bullies, in power and in institutions.” The Airbus story has consumed Cashore—friends describe him as a “pitbull” that “keeps chewing and chewing and chewing.” Other colleagues go further. “He’s one of the unsung heroes of Canadian investigative journalism,” says Paul Palango, who ran a Globe investigative unit. Colin MacKenzie, the Globe’s managing news editor, says this “godfather of investigative journalism” may be unfamiliar to some, but his work is his legacy. Cashore regularly teaches investigative techniques and serves on the Canadian Association of Journalists’ (CAJ) board of directors. Accolades from his peers abound, with nominations and awards from the Michener Foundation, the CAJ, the Geminis and others.
But the corporations, organizations and individuals he puts in front of the camera loathe him. His 2006 piece, “Luck of the Draw,” about insider lottery wins in Ontario, led to internal and criminal investigations and sparked widespread changes in several provinces (the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission introduced mandatory signature verification and other security measures). For almost a month after the piece aired, OLG representatives refused a follow-up interview, before relenting. Their request: Cashore not do it. He did anyway.
Cashore’s tough reputation belies a man who’s far more genteel than his peers make him out to be. With his wild flock of black hair, a crooked perma-grin and a penchant for Shania Twain, he doesn’t resemble a pitbull. At CBC headquarters in Toronto, his office is in disarray. “It doesn’t usually look like this,” he apologizes, though even after he cleans up, it’s still a mess. The corkboard hanging over his desk is an ungainly, moulting bird: newspaper political cartoons, the cover from a 1998 issue of Saturday Night (under the coverline “Mr. Clean,” Mulroney resembles the cartoon king of cleanliness), photocopies of cheques worth tens of thousands (Schreiber had to pay the fifth’s legal fees after he dropped a 1999 libel suit), children’s crayon drawings and pictures of his adolescent sons. Around his chair is a fortress of Betacam tapes, notebooks and manila folders full of documents. Around the corner from his office is a large sign on the wall, a mantra for staff—“Stories Everywhere: the fifth estate.”
He starts talking about “Ka-boom,” his piece for Disclosure on bodychecking injuries in kids’ hockey. He shuffles the piles on his desk, peering into one crevice and poking into another. He pulls the bottom folder out from a paper mountain, points to a mess of charts and says, “Here. That number doesn’t make any sense!”
One night, while watching Hockey Night in Canada, he heard Don Cherry spit out a statistic from a study that suggested some checking leagues were as safe as their non-checking counterparts. It just didn’t sit right with Cashore. As a kid, he’d quit hockey when his head started to hurt from all the checking. It’s not logical, he thought. It doesn’t make sense. How did this come to be? “You’d think that you only get hurt,” he says as he punches his fists together, “when you hit things. But if you don’t hit things,”—his hands swing together again—“you wouldn’t get hurt.”
Cashore obtained the study and sent the raw data to an independent statistician. When he confronted the researchers with his contradictory evidence, they recanted. He sent reporter Mark Kelley onto the ice to experience first-hand how much it hurt to slam into the boards or be cross-checked to the ice. That theatrical demonstration wasn’t all. To really pull on viewers’ heartstrings, the crew went to hundreds of hockey games to document boys copying their rough-and-tumble NHL heroes—and earning the injuries. The result was bleeding heart even by CBC standards, but it was also hard to turn away from the nine and 10-year-olds wailing on the ice, especially the kid who dragged himself and his injured leg back to the bench on his hands and knees. The story convinced some leagues, which had reinstituted checking based on the flawed study, to change their minds.
All this research material adds up. Cashore’s laptop, which he lugs around everywhere, is meticulously organized. It runs sluggishly because the hard drive is so full—the digital version of his hoarding problem. (When he went to CBC’s IT people for advice, they could only suggest, much to his dismay, that he delete some stuff). Every interview, study, news clipping, document, chart, fact or slightest inkling is carefully and systematically named, first by year-month-day, then with a description—and then the computer puts it all in chronological order. “Systematic” would also describe how Cashore researches his pieces. “Others can fly by the seat of their pants,” he says, but he “fell in love” with Sawatsky’s scientific approach to gathering all the hard facts before making a judgement.
Every document is then filed by story: Airbus, Lotteries, Bodychecking. Subfolders further sort the material: News Items, Documents, Transcripts, Questions, Production, Chronologies, Correspondence, or ATIP (Access to Information and Privacy). Anything appended with an “XX” has been treated with Cashore’s four-point system.
First, he creates a master list outlining every event as it happens. “Chronology builds itself,” he says. “You’re not writing the story, the facts are writing the story.” Seeing events in relation to each other reveals information he might not see otherwise. Then, he makes a to-do list that he updates as he processes each document. Does a professor cite a survey and its statistic in the Toronto Star? Maybe interview him. Who researched the survey? Talk to them too. Free association rules, though he emphasizes the consideration of all facts over following a hunch; in the exploratory stages, it’s best to carefully follow leads. Third, he puts every name into a database and tracks how often they come up in his research. His final step is to assign each person a file of interview questions that change and grow with the mining of each new document. By doing this, Cashore synthesizes better information.
It’s an approach that allows him to make stories out of dull, impenetrable subjects. Even though many of the characters in the Airbus story refused to speak to him, the page count for the timeline runs into the thousands. The backdoor business of selling airplanes to a crown corporation doesn’t make the average Canadian quiver with excitement, but visual storytelling and logical arguments build a narrative backbone. “Facts can be characters in themselves,” says editor Gary Akenhead, “like following the money trail.”
Despite his careful methodology, Cashore sometimes finds his best information accidentally. The fifth discovered a copy of a search warrant for Eurocopter Canada Ltd. (formerly MBB, one of Schreiber’s lobbying clients). A source told him about the next round of hearings, and one morning in March 2000, Cashore strolled down to Toronto’s University Avenue courthouse. Scanning the dockets, he was perplexed to find no Eurocopter hearing. He paid another visit to his source, who slunk back to a file room, then re-emerged and, under his breath, whispered, “Room 2-7.”
When Cashore arrived in the courtroom, Justice Edward Then and lawyers representing the crown, Eurocopter and other parties turned to observe this unwelcome stranger. The judge asked him to explain himself and Cashore responded that he was covering Airbus. “I think Then was kind of impressed,” he recalls, “but I threw a wrench into their plans. I mean, God forbid they have to deal with the media.”
RCMP Inspector Al Mathews later asked how he knew about the hearing. Cashore glibly replied that he’d just happened upon it on his way to work.
After Woodward and Bernstein brought down Nixon in 1974, every news organization wanted its own moment of glory. The incentive was clear: with big stories came cachet and readers, and that meant higher profits. The same holds true today. “It generates a sense of confidence in the newspaper for readers,” says Rob Tripp, staff writer with the Kingston Whig-Standard. “It heightens the value of the editorial product.” But lately, newspapers have squandered the tradition because they failed to support newsroom staff or allocate the necessary resources— business just gets in the way.
When Henry Aubin co-founded the Centre for Investigative Journalism (now the CAJ) in 1978, he hoped to combat the fluffy “disco journalism” that was prevalent at the time and is making a return today. “The public is hungry for what I call ‘protein news,’ stuff that contains real meat,” says Aubin, who’s now a columnist for The Gazette in Montreal. “You want to find out what’s going on and who’s responsible.”
That’s where the fifth excels. Created in 1975 with a clear mandate for investigative reporting, from the beginning the show pursued stories—wrongful murder convictions, political patronage and unsolved mysteries—familiar to viewers today. It was, and still is, a privilege to work there. But in recent years, CBC has cut the budget for current affairs programs due to reduced federal funding, declining viewership and increased “infotainment” programming.
Witnessing the demise of programs such as Undercurrents and Disclosure makes it particularly hard for observers to stomach recent changes at the fifth. “That program should be given whatever it needs,” says Paul McLaughlin, a friend of Cashore’s and a freelance writer and broadcaster. “It’s such a powerful part of CBC. It’s popular, it affects public policy and for it to be scrounging for money is disgraceful.”
The show purchased equipment before the 2006–2007 season on the promise that it would be reimbursed, but the money never materialized, and the fifth limped to the end of its season on reruns and story updates. In the most recent season, new documentaries played every other week, interspersed with more reruns and updates. “Times are tight,” Studer says. “Things changed during the summer and the fall, and some realities came home at CBC. The money just wasn’t there.” Staff at the fifth have made the best of the situation, though. Documentaries such as Cashore’s “Luck of the Draw” attracted maximum viewers with minimal resources, and still managed to win awards.
Investigative reporters must go through a long exploratory stage before getting to the heart of a story, so at the fifth “kill factors” are included in the budget—even after much money has been invested in production and research, some stories reach dead-ends or aren’t worth a one-hour documentary. Airbus, Cashore contends, wouldn’t have emerged at all if the fifth hadn’t allowed it to trickle out. While the show often aired half-hour or 20-minute documentaries, most now stick to the one-hour formula. Now-defunct current affairs shows such as Disclosure allowed shorter yet equally important stories to be heard, but no one’s expecting a replacement for it any time soon. “The whole current affairs department used to be part of the empire of CBC,” says Kelley, who’s now a correspondent for The National, “and right now it’s more like an island, and a small island at that, with a few castaways left on it.”
Traditionally a watchdog monitoring big business, government and bureaucracy, investigative journalism tends to make few friends among potential advertisers. Under pressure from owners or stockholders, news organizations cut the costliest items: foreign bureaus and investigative units (or I-units, for short). “The newsroom is no longer the core purpose of media,” according to The New York Times media columnist David Carr. “It’s just overhead.”
Meanwhile, the newsroom is too preoccupied with pumping out daily news to focus on big projects, and investigative journalists must juggle daily and long-term assignments. “As long as publishers and CEOs of the conglomerates insist on double-digit profits, I don’t think you’re ever going to get back to the kind of journalism and newsroom atmospheres that used to exist,” says Gerry McAuliffe, who was an investigative reporter at The Hamilton Spectator in the 1960s and later part of the first Globe and Mail I-unit. He suggests single-digit profits would be more realistic and sustainable, but at some papers owners demand profits as high as 30 per cent. Fundamentally, says political columnist Chantal Hébert, corporate news suffers from a specific malaise. “The word ‘industry’ does not rhyme with journalism so much as it rhymes with profit.”
With breaking news now the preserve of the web and television, newspapers must reassess how they operate. In a 2006 round table held by the U.S.-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, one guest suggested, “Investigative journalism and other unique content are key to long-term survival.” After Bell Globemedia swallowed CHUM Ltd. in 2005, Loyalist College journalism professor Robert Washburn wrote a letter to the Toronto Star highlighting the perils of treating the media as a business rather than a function of democracy. To sustain good reporting, “Canada needs a major foundation to fund excellent reporting and innovative projects.” (The Atkinson and Michener Foundations are among the few that offer fellowships and research grants.) Without them, Washburn asserts, “medium and small operations are often unable to undertake any substantial projects or investigative journalism due to a lack of staff and money.” The federal government isn’t helping much either. It has made concerted efforts to investigate otherwise unchecked conglomerates, takeovers and buyouts among media companies on just a few occasions, including 1970’s Davey Committee, 1981’s Kent Report and a 2006 Senate study. None of these has led to any new legislation.
Not everyone’s so negative about the changing face of journalism. In a 2006 article, “If You Don’t Buy This Newspaper... We’ll Shoot Your Democracy,” slate.com media critic Jack Shafer slams the simplistic fear-mongering that tends to follow budget cuts. “They equate the loss of warm bodies in the newsroom with the end of civilization,” he writes, arguing that newsrooms today are more efficient—technology allows journalists to research and produce more in less time—and staff numbers at U.S. media organizations are up compared to 1971. He’s also skeptical of the hand-wringing over the death of enterprise reporting. “When speaking for their investigative units, newspapermen lower their voices in respect, the way Catholics might when discussing the College of Cardinals,” but in fact, a glut of non-profit organizations supply stories to newsrooms (though as Washburn points out, American groups like the Center for Public Integrity and Center for Investigative Reporting are sorely lacking in Canada). All this means downsizing is no big deal, according to Shafer. Take out all the lifestyle fluff and filler, he writes, and “relatively little of the democracy-enhancing, life-sustaining reportage they boast about actually gets printed.”
That hasn’t stopped some papers from trying to rebuild. The Globe is adding investigative journalists to its roster and almost lured Cashore away from CBC. The paper has pounced on the latest developments in the Airbus story: daily photos and above-the-fold front-page coverage are the norm, with more content and updates available on the website. And McArthur and veteran reporter Peter Cheney pitched an I-unit to editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon. They hope to include more in-depth, long-term pieces such as the 2006 National Newspaper Award–winning investigation into suburban terrorist culture and to return to an investigative-dedicated Globe that has had at least three I-units since the ’60s. The pair argued that a formal investigative unit would mean more readers, more awards and a revived newsroom culture. Though their request hasn’t been formally answered, they’ve been promised more resources and time and have hired another investigative reporter, Jessica Leeder. “An enterprise team,” they wrote, “will promote the Globe’s brand in the same way that the fifth estate promotes the CBC’s.”
While every major newspaper now covers the Airbus proceedings—some more vigorously than others —in 1995, reporting on this story was as complicated as the story itself. After Cashore’s “Sealed in Silence” aired that year, the press split into those convinced a story was yet to be uncovered, and those who thought the RCMP investigation was just a witch hunt. Many news organizations turned against CBC, the National Post, the Globe and others that saw a burgeoning scandal. Some called it a vendetta, others accused Cashore of supplying the RCMP with information. A 1996 Saturday Night article by Susan Gittins entitled “Vicious Circle” even suggested the fifth was part of “a pack running in circles after a scandal of its own making.” For someone mentored by Sawatsky (someone who won’t even vote, to avoid partisanship), it was a low blow. “Harvey is a journalist from high church, ultra orthodox,” says Studer. “If he has a point of view about a story, I’ve never known it. He plays it straight, lets facts speak for themselves. That’s our hymn book—that’s our belief.”
Cashore says Mulroney’s camp launched its “spin machine” to denounce the fifth and to paint Cashore and his team as liars. As public opinion turned against CBC, he became increasingly frustrated that his stories were being ignored. “We failed, failed, failed,” he says now. “And I hate failing.”
That winter, he received a Christmas card from Lavoie. “Dear Harvey,” it read, “all the best in 1996. Your pal, Luc.”
“This was Luc rubbing salt in the wounds,” remembers Cashore. He tacked the card dead centre on the bulletin board over his computer. Every time he sat down to work, he saw his inspiration to keep digging.
Over the next four years, the fifth produced three more Airbus stories. As the first news organization in the world to obtain Schreiber’s bank documents, the show highlighted details about a secret Swiss account code-named Britan in a documentary called, “The Mysterious Dealmaker.”
That November 1999 doc contained another piece of inflammatory information. The month prior, Cashore had secretly taped Lavoie denying any transactions between Mulroney and Schreiber had taken place. He also maintained that the two men were never close, and off the record, Lavoie said that if Schreiber intended to connect Mulroney to Britan, “Karlheinz Schreiber is the biggest fucking liar the world has ever seen. That’s what we believe.”
Lavoie’s comment would stay a secret until the Post’s Philip Mathias broke details about the bank account the morning the episode was to air. Mathias also reported that both Schreiber and Mulroney denied any business dealings. In an editorial, the Post claimed the fifth had “gone fishing” on “preposterous” allegations. Cashore decided to test the Mulroney camp. If it was true that they had never exchanged money, he reasoned, Lavoie would have been thrilled to see his vehement denial on the show. He put the “fucking liar” quote on the air. That decision was “the first time in my life I took off my boy scout uniform,” Cashore says. Though he normally wouldn’t publish off-the-record conversations, fifth staff had an ethical debate on whether to air it. Cashore says he believes Lavoie broke the agreement first by leaking details about the documentary, which would have allowed the fifth to publish the quote. Lavoie maintains that Cashore, falsely assuming Lavoie had broken the deal, went ahead and published the clip without his consent. When the story went to air, all hell broke loose. In the following months, Schreiber sued CBC and Lavoie for libel. Lavoie called it the worst day of his life. Because of the quote, says Cashore, “the rift began between Schreiber and Mulroney. And if there was no rift, Schreiber would’ve gone to his grave with that secret.”
When Christmas rolled around, a triumphant Cashore knew what he had to do. He went down to the gift shop on the ground floor of the CBC building in Toronto and purchased the most expensive, ornate card he could find. Looking at his inspiration on his corkboard, Cashore wrote: “Dear Luc, all the best in 2000. Your pal, Harvey.”
He made his point, but insists he’s never been out for blood. He sees through the Mulroney team’s “hatred” for him. “You need to say that as part of your spin, and you need Harvey to be on a vendetta,” Cashore says. “But amongst ourselves, we know it’s not true. So, let’s sit down and meet. Which I think could still happen—why not?”
This cheerful equanimity stands at odds with Cashore’s drive, which borders on obsession. Quick to point out that he’s done only six Airbus segments in 13 years, he has nevertheless developed a reputation among colleagues as one of Canada’s most authoritative observers of the scandal. He’s also clashed with politicians, co-workers and family members who did not, or still don’t, understand his Airbus fixation. His perspective, he admits, was sometimes imperfect when personal and professional conflicts came up. On the eve of a Hawaiian family vacation in 2001, he had to book a later flight so he could finish production on an Airbus documentary. And while working on an unrelated story, the reporter told Cashore that they were “not going to do the kind of journalism you did on the Airbus story.” When he asked her what he got wrong, she admitted she hadn’t actually seen the documentary. “He’s intense, and sometimes intense people rub other people the wrong way,” says Gillian Findlay, another fifth reporter who calls herself intense. “That’s part of the package, too. But at the end of the day, he’s bloody good at what he does.”
After allegations became public in 2003 that Cameron, his Last Amigo co-author, was an RCMP informant, Cashore felt betrayal, among other emotions. The ethically rigid journalist says he’s reluctant to testify before Parliament’s ethics committee for fear of “functioning as an arm of the committee,” and he found it eye-opening to learn Cameron, someone he trusted and shared information with, would only acknowledge being an informant if Mulroney was criminally charged. “Okay, maybe this person has a different understanding or idea of having a relationship with the RCMP, or maybe I’m too judgemental, or I’ve got my rules but they’re mine, and there’s room for different opinions. But the idea that you wouldn’t want to be revealed…” He trails off. “I don’t feel comfortable putting Stevie through that again. I feel like it’s in the past and she’s moved on and I’ve moved on.” He leaves the subject by saying it was challenging to work with her; Cameron declined to comment on the matter. But in July 2007, after a Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that she was not an informant—but also that the RCMP had acted in “good faith” by giving her that status—Cameron wrote on her blog: “What I told [the RCMP] was already on the public record,” and that her contact with the police was normal for what “an investigative reporter would have in trying to report on a story of this size and importance.”
As Cashore prepared for 2006’s “Money, Truth and Spin,” Mulroney’s camp allegedly sent a letter to CBC that accused him of lying. After the show aired the segment—which offered more evidence that Mulroney accepted the cash—Cashore says a riled-up Lavoie threatened to investigate his past (Lavoie did not comment on this incident), and intimated to him that pursuing the story might jeopardize the Corporation’s funding. “The beauty of the CBC is that we are separate from our political masters,” he says. “We take pride in the fact that we’re independent. We’re hopefully doing things to make our democracy healthier. So for him to say that—it’s the opposite of what the CBC should be thinking.”
Though Studer and former news editor-in-chief Tony Burman say they did all they could to help the beleaguered journalist, Cashore felt overwhelmed by the criticism and almost quit the story in 2005. He approached Studer and said, “If I’m going to get all these attacks and not get the support I need, I don’t know if I want to do this.” Studer advised him to go home and think about it over the weekend. At home, Cashore realized quitting would be ridiculous. How can I tell my boys I stopped the story because of this letter? he thought. Monday morning, he told Studer exactly that. His response: “I knew you’d say that.” Those higher up, including Burman, say CBC has allocated as much airtime and resources to the Airbus story as it could under the circumstances—but like all stories, its value had to be scrutinized at some point. “There were other stories in the world. Canadians expect the CBC to deal with these stories. That isn’t necessarily what the particular producers dedicated to certain stories always easily understand.”
Cashore is ecstatic that Mulroney and Schreiber have finally appeared before a parliamentary committee. But as some political pundits and news organizations take sides, he’s glad other reporters want to share Airbus information collegially—a welcome change from the scene in 1996, when the media attacked its own. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if no one tried to have a point of view? What if people just tried to get the facts out?” he asks. The government has the power to demand answers; if the committee properly executes its questioning, in time the details will emerge. “Where is Mulroney’s safety deposit box? When did he put the money in? All these questions we could get the answers to. Then have your opinions once we know what the facts are,” says Cashore. “I thought the media was supposed to do that.”
An inquiry now seems likely after contradicting testimony from Mulroney and Schreiber, but there is still plenty of vociferous criticism of journalists pursuing the story. Lysiane Gagnon, a columnist with La Presse and the Globe, urged Harper to drop the inquiry, and without mentioning any names, took a stab at “the Canadian reporters who gullibly scribbled down everything Mr. Schreiber told them from his prison cell.” Schreiber, who faces criminal charges in his native Germany, has avoided deportation for nine years, and often hints at tantalizing nuggets of information he’s withholding. Once, when Cashore pressed for more details, Schreiber cryptically responded, “My father was a potato farmer. You don’t harvest the potatoes in the spring.”
Gagnon and others have accused CBC of being Liberal sycophants and Schreiber’s mouthpiece, but Schreiber didn’t start talking to CBC on the record until 2005. The most crucial evidence linking Mulroney to the kickbacks originated from Schreiber’s daytimers and bank records, but he wasn’t the one who provided those documents. News organizations that oppose a public inquiry are the real sycophants—of Harper’s Conservative government, says Cashore. In keeping with his School of Sawatsky code, he argues the media should steer clear of Parliament’s partisan bickering and focus on the facts. “How can it be that any journalist would not want an inquiry? Aren’t we on the side of information, of knowing?” he asks. “There’s no argument it is in the public interest.”
To some, Mulroney’s admission that he did indeed receive $225,000—not from Airbus but to promote Thyssen projects to international businessmen and politicians, he still contends—vindicates Cashore after years of criticism, but he doesn’t look at it that way. Others might stew in bitterness or resentment after years of criticism, but not Cashore. He’s received apologetic calls from former skeptics, now recanting their criticism, but he hopes the quality of his journalism can stand on its own regardless of the outcome. “Either I was right or wrong in what I did in 1995. Nothing we learned in between should exonerate me,” he says. “Judge me on what we knew at the time and how we reported the story.”
After a week’s delay due to additional legal vetting, the fifth’s latest Airbus instalment finally airs on Halloween. A gleeful-but-exhausted crowd, mostly CBC and Globe staff, assembles around a TV projector at a quiet bar in Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood as the theme song starts up. The labyrinthine story will be laid to rest, at least for a while.
In this episode, titled “Brian Mulroney: The Unauthorized Chapter,” the fifth reveals new information about a 1999 meeting between Mulroney and Schreiber in Zurich to discuss a cover-up of the alleged commissions. Cashore’s attention to detail is evident: a dramatization shows the caviar, smoked salmon and pumpernickel they lunched on in a second-floor hotel room.
Guffaws drown out the audio when Mulroney squeezes out a few tears after winning his defamation suit against the federal government, relieved that “the nightmare is over” and when a rotund, jovial Schreiber leafs casually through a thick binder full of Airbus reference papers resting on his belly. Disapproving clucks rise up when former federal minister of justice Allan Rock apologizes and offers a $2.1-million settlement to Mulroney in 1997. In this chapter, tragedy and comedy is rolled into one 60-minute romp through the seedy side of Canadian politics.
Political columnist and Maclean’s national editor Andrew Coyne, sitting next to Cashore and taking notes, leans over and says, “So I guess this is the end, huh?”
“Well...” Cashore says, a mischievous look on his face.
Just three days later, Cashore sits on the patio of a Starbucks in east-end Toronto, and things are definitely not over. He checks his BlackBerry; he’s just received a new email from Lavoie with the subject line: “A sick individual working for a sick organization.” In the message, Lavoie charges, amongst other things, that the fifth intentionally left out evidence that countered the documentary’s thesis and that the RCMP investigation had been based on his show’s research. Cashore forwards the email to his bosses; “FYI,” he writes.
“Can you believe it?” Cashore says. “People are talking about it!” All his hard work is finally starting to make a difference. The Opposition called for Mulroney to reimburse Canadians the $2.1-million settlement; newspapers published unflattering editorial cartoons about Mulroney’s fizzling legacy; and Harper, who once called the former PM a political mentor and close friend, directed his entire government to avoid contact with Mulroney until the investigation is over. He also announced his intention to launch a full public inquiry.
Cashore says he’ll await the inquiry’s findings before making his personal judgment, but long after that he’ll still be digging—into Airbus or into the inner workings of something else. “You come out with a bit of information, you get a bit more, you get dialogue going,” he says later, “and eventually you arrive at the truth.”
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