Legality of Work Being Probed : Deaver Won’t Ask Canada to Renew Lobbying Pact

Lobbyist Michael K. Deaver, who is the subject of two federal investigations into the legality of his work on the Canadian acid rain problem, has decided not to seek renewal of a contract with the Canadian government, a $105,000-a-year client, it was disclosed Friday.

The Canadian Embassy released a June 6 letter from Deaver, President Reagan’s former close aide and confidant, saying that no renewal will be sought when his first-year consulting contract expires on June 30.

“I wish to spare the prime minister (Brian Mulroney) and his government any further involvement in this controversy,” Deaver wrote, adding that he would not even “engage in any conversations” about a new contract.

‘Spontaneous Act’

Embassy spokesman John Fieldhouse said that Deaver’s letter to Ambassador Allan Gotlieb was “a totally spontaneous act” on Deaver’s part. Fieldhouse said the Canadians had made no decision on renewing the contract.

However, late last month after former federal prosecutor Whitney North Seymour Jr. was appointed by a three-judge court to investigate Deaver’s activities, the Deaver affair became a matter of controversy in the Canadian Parliament. At that time, Canadian government sources said they doubted that Deaver’s contract would be renewed.

In his letter to Gotlieb, Deaver said that “the suggestions in various news reports and allegations that there was ever anything improper about our work on behalf of Canada has been a source of great disappointment and regret to me.”

He insisted that “at all times I have endeavored to provide an ethical and high-quality service to you and to all my clients. I am confident that the independent counsel (Seymour) will conclude the same.”

Inquiry by Panel

Besides Seymour’s inquiry, an investigation is under way by the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations, headed by Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.).

Both investigations are focusing heavily on what the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, has charged was an apparent violation by Deaver of federal conflict-of-interest statutes: that Deaver, only five months after he resigned from his White House post last year, held discussions with presidential envoy Drew Lewis, whom President Reagan had named to help resolve the problem of acid-rain pollution in Canada caused by heavy industries in the United States. Deaver was representing Canada, his first foreign client.

Prohibition Cited

The GAO said that Deaver had aided in the appointment of Lewis and that Deaver was prohibited by law for a one-year period from approaching anyone who worked at his former government agency, the White House.

Last January, a joint report by Lewis and his Canadian counterpart recommended a five-year demonstration program costing $5 billion to alleviate the pollution problem across national boundaries. Reagan, who once had minimized the problem, endorsed the report’s conclusions.