SYNOPSIS: When Brian Mulroney's Tories left office in 1993, Canadians breathed a collective sigh of relief. There had been boondoggles, cover-ups, and scandals aplenty - and the strong suspicion that among those in power many had looked after themselves and their cronies at the expense of the citizens who had elected them. Canadians knew they didn't like the Tory regime, but they didn't know half the story. Veteran investigative reporter Stevie Cameron does know, and the tale she tells confirms the worst charges of the Tories' critics. Her spellbinding account of nine years of political corruption uncovers a cast of shrewd opportunists, freelance rogues, and thieves in high places whose connections stretched from the office of the prime minister to the dens of organized crime. On the Take chronicles flagrant kick-back schemes, bid-rigging on government contracts, misappropriation of parliamentary budgets, favours to corporate supporters of the party, and an unprecedented orgy of patronage appointments that didn't end until the day Mulroney left office. It details the most effective political fundraising apparatus ever assembled in Canada - at its height raking in $25 million in a single year - that was built on a well-crafted system of rewards, from gala dinners at 24 Sussex to lucrative government contracts. And it unmasks the coterie of loyalists - some more powerful than any cabinet minister - who surrounded Mulroney and who came to Ottawa determined to use their influence to line their own pockets. Presiding over all of this was a prime minister who was incapable of ridding his government of corruption, who enjoyed an imperial lifestyle while in office, and who left government with a personal wealth that has never been fully revealed. After almost a decade of the Mulroney Tories, Canadians lost faith in their government and came to despise a once proud party. What the Conservatives did to deserve their reputation for sleaze - and...