Canadian Budget row widens

Press, 1 June 1989, Page 11

Canadian Budget row widens

NZPA-Reuter Ottawa A furore over a media leak of the Canadian Budget widened yesterday as journalists and Opposition parties expressed outrage that a reporter was charged in the affair.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police formally charged a television reporter, Doug Small, with possession of stolen Budget documents. Mr Small, who said he obtained the documents from a source after a clandestine meeting at an Ottawa petrol station, last month broadcast details of the Budget across the country on the evening before it was to be presented to Parliament. Four others were also charged in the affair, including two for stealing the documents.

The developing scandal over the original Budget leak, and a second one that has only recently come to light, has put Brian Mulroney’s Conservative Government on the defensive for the last several weeks.

Opposition parties, as well as several newspapers across the country, have demanded the resignation of the Government’s veteran Finance Minister, Michael Wilson. Mr Wilson was forced to release his Budget on April 26 at a news conference called after Small’s broadcast. He officially presented the document to Parliament the next day.

It has since been learnt that before he presented the budget to Parliament, Mr Wilson knew that several employees of a big financial company also knew contents of the Bud-

get several days in advance.

Senior Ministers have made it clear that they intend to stand behind Mr Wilson, who has delivered all five of the Government’s Budgets since it came to power in 1984. The business community is also a strong supporter of Mr Wilson and the country’s currency has come under pressure because of concern that the Minister might resign. The Opposition has been relentless in its attack on the former brokerage-house executive. They say Mr Wilson, who is in Europe on Government business, should step down for keeping the House of Commons in the dark over the second leak.