Canada: Justice in Decay?

Written By: Robin Mathews
Date: 2008-02-15 12:46:37
<a href="/article/165326754-canada-justice-in-decay">Article Link</a>

On the surface, three B.C. Order-in-Council appointed cabinet aides are accused of (all added up) various acts of fraud and breach of trust as well as money laundering. Working, normally, in a dense political and administrative network, they are alleged to have acted without significant recourse to senior officers and independently of cabinet or ministerial or other political direction.

That is what British Columbians and other Canadians are led to believe. On the surface. The accused men have been placed in that isolated position by the people who undertook investigation and framed the charges against them, of course. Normally, they would be the RCMP investigators in consultation with the Special Crown Prosecutor. They would have sought out all alleged wrong-doers and would have charged them.

Except the surface may not reflect the reality of things. I am not the first or the only one to suggest that. On May 4, 2007 (Tyee), Bill Tieleman reported Defence lawyer Kevin McCullough “made sustained arguments … that the RCMP ‘tailored’ its investigation in order to steer it away from elected politicians and towards Basi and Virk”.

That is a profoundly serious allegation.

On April 24, 2007, CanWest News Service (Susan Lazaruk) reported McCullough asking (a) “why Premier Gordon Campbell wasn’t interviewed as part of the RCMP investigation into the B.C. Rail sale of 2003 that led to the [search warrant] raid on the B.C. legislature.” Lazaruk went on: (b) “McCullough suggested that calls intercepted by the RCMP … showed the RCMP was tailoring the case against the accused … and taking it away from elected officials….”

We know that as early as December, 2003, RCMP – very, very strangely – reported that no elected people were being investigated. It appears, however, that Gary Collins – then minister of finance – was, near that time, under investigation on matters closely related to the scandalous BC Rail selloff. But maybe that investigation ended just before the announcement by RCMP.

The allegation by Defence, as I say, is profoundly serious. For if cabinet and other highly placed B .C. government officers (not to mention, perhaps, even others) are being shielded in acts of Breach of Trust, then the present Gordon Campbell government, acting daily in matters of huge importance to British Columbians, is an illegitimate government.

On more than one occasion Gordon Campbell has signified that he wishes his government to cooperate in every way with the court in the Basi, Virk, and Basi case. Is it true, however, at the same time, that every person possibly connected to Gordon Campbell in the case is working to frustrate the course of justice?

On the surface, the BC Rail Scandal “trials” concern B.C. only. On the surface.

Looking deeper, problems of national significance emerge. They involve the legitimacy and the credibility of the higher courts in Canada. They involve the legitimacy and credibility of the Special Crown Prosecutor status (created in only some provinces). They involve the legitimacy and the credibility of the RCMP – repeatedly called into question in the BC Rail Scandal, throughout B.C. in other matters (the Ian Bush and Dziekanski deaths, etc.), across other provinces, and even in a matter of alleged interference with the last federal election.

Not without foundation, the recent federal Task Force on Governance and Culture Change in the RCMP (Dec. 2007) described the Force (despite many fine and upstanding members) as needing dramatic reconstruction, and it listed a series of ills within the RCMP of crippling seriousness.

That is a key organization in the BC Rail scandal.

In Ontario, “the largest police corruption case in Canadian history” – dragging its way through nearly eleven years of investigations and court actions – was recently stopped dead with a stay of proceedings entered to end the whole matter. The presiding judge strongly criticized the Special Crown Prosecutor for complacency, delay with disclosure, and with the handling of the huge number of pages of disclosure material.

Precisely that criticism has been levelled against the Special Crown Prosecutor in the BC Rail Scandal case, focussing attention on what may be a mistaken development in law and court operation in Canada – the creation of the Special Crown Prosecutorial systems. Created to distance Crown Prosecutors from police, judges, influential lawyers, and governments, the system may, in fact, place them all in a happy, polygamous marriage.

But the judge, himself, in the Ontario case is not above criticism in the “stay” of proceedings. Did he sit passively while delay, useless argument, complacency, and inefficiency prevailed? It seems so. In the BC Rail Scandal hearings, Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett has been equally inactive. How much of the delay in the case is directly attributable to her refusal to discipline actors in the court? Is something distinctly wrong with the role of Supreme Court judges, with the powers they have, with the powers they choose to exercise? Do they display conscious or unconscious bias, acting against the demands of justice?

In Alberta, Court of Queen’s Bench judges, I allege, have provided such questionable management that they may be responsible for grievous harm to innocent people. I have asked the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada - in her role as head of the Canadian Judicial Council – to investigate all the Alberta judges related to the Kelly Marie Richard case there. The Chief Justice and the Canadian Judicial Council, so far, (many weeks) will not even acknowledge my request. The Canadian Judicial Council – like the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP – is less than a paper tiger. It may be, I believe, a wolf in sheep-dog’s clothing. Who oversees the oversight body?

An RCMP investigation of itself has just ended. Initiated at my request on allegations of serious wrong-doing by police officers in Calgary concerning the Kelly Marie Richard case there, the investigation proved to be a complete farce. Many officers named were, apparently, not even interviewed, let alone seriously examined. Documents, apparently, were not asked for or produced. The “Report” issuing from the investigation contains verifiable falsehood. The RCMP investigating the RCMP – one more time – makes a joke – a very dangerous joke – of the Force that is intimately related to many major criminal investigations leading to Supreme Court actions like the present one in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.

Throughout the Basi, Virk, and Basi hearings, the RCMP has been accused of delaying disclosure – so much so that Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett brought herself to order “forthwith” RCMP disclosure. Can British Columbians be satisfied with the result of her order?

One of the most intriguing aspects of the Basi, Virk, and Basi hearings thus far – to an ordinary Canadian – is the presence in the court of George Copley, lawyer for the Executive Council (the Gordon Campbell cabinet). What is he doing there? Can’t the Special Crown Prosecutor ask cabinet for materials and have them delivered to the court?

On one occasion, as I remember it, Defence had Copley withdraw as being without standing in the court. Now, he has standing. What is his relation to the Special Crown Prosecutor?” I asked that question of a member of the Crown’s team. Is he acting under the Special Crown Prosecutor? Not exactly. Is he independent? Not exactly. It’s a complicated arrangement, I was told.

Perhaps it isn’t.

George Copley is representing the interests of the cabinet. That should be simple. The only interest of cabinet in any democratic country in the world should be to see justice done and to assist the pursuit of justice in every way.

Is it possible that George Copley is representing the Gordon Campbell cabinet as a special interest group which has personal and private interests in the Basi, Virk, and Basi matter which the Gordon Campbell group wants kept from the court – and, therefore, from the people of B.C. and Canada?

Is the presence of George Copley in the court a tacit admission of guilt by the Gordon Campbell cabinet?

George Copley – in my observation – delays. He messes up. He fumbles with solicitor/client privilege and with cabinet privilege.

Is the presence of George Copley in Courtroom 54 a tacit statement that this “trial” is really, basically, a “trial” of elected parliamentarians, of a cabinet up to its armpits in questionable actions in the corrupt sale of BC Rail? Is it a statement that the court is conducting a sham process, the real issues never being allowed to take their place in the trial? And if that is the case, who in the courtroom knows it? Does the presiding judge?

Is the impatience and frustration felt in courtroom 54 a simple manifestation of the fact that people who should be accused are not anywhere named in the charges? Questions. Questions.

The single, always-present, ineradicable ghost haunting the Basi, Virk, and Basi hearings is the ghost of the Gordon Campbell cabinet. In no way (on the surface) involved as a principal in the proceedings, nevertheless the ghost of the Gordon Campbell cabinet has a ghostly presence and even a ghostly lawyer to represent it. Strange.

Could a reasonable person say that the Basi, Virk, and Basi proceedings are a sign Canadian justice is in decay? That the proceedings are a sign of sickness in the whole legal system of the country? Could the Basi, Virk, and Basi proceedings be a sign that the RCMP has failed, the judges have failed, the court processes have failed, the Special Crown Prosecutor system has failed – and most dangerous of all – the parliament of the people of British Columbia and every member in that legislature – even today – have shamelessly failed the people of British Columbia and Canada?

Hey, remember the recent blood scandal case ruling? <a href="http://www.thestar.com/article/295533">Tainted-blood case dropped by Crown</a> and this... Drug Maker Turned Aside Alert on AIDS <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEFD8163AF935A35753C1A963958260&n=Top%2fNews%2fHealth%2fDiseases%2c%20Conditions%2c%20and%20Health%20Topics%2fAIDS">Full story here...</a> Published: October 6, 1995 An American drug manufacturer that has been sued by more than 300 H.I.V.-infected hemophiliacs or their survivors continued marketing its blood-clotting product for two years after being told in 1985 that the heating process with which the product was treated would not kill the AIDS virus, which later tainted some of it, according to documents issued yesterday by a Canadian commission of inquiry. ------------ The rule of law is just for us common folk. For those at the top, they have a free ticket to do whatever they please. And these characters at the top are responsible for all the worst crimes in history. Sometimes no justice.

I find it interesting how everything Mathews writes automatically becomes the "featured article" and remains so for several days. The exception to this of course is when he writes a post to report a factual error in one of his articles, which ends up in the equivalent of a newpaper's "back page". 
 
Vive is starting to look less like an egalitarian discussion forum and more like Robin Mathews' blog. 
 
Maybe Vive should just change its name to "Robin Mathews & Friends" and be done with it. 
 
<a href="http://www.robinmathewsandfriends.ca">www.robinmathewsandfriends.ca</a> 
 
I believe the domain's available.

When Rev Blair, Mel Hurtig, David Orchard or Flick Harrison write articles, they are also featured for a few days in their own sections.

If you don't like our editorial policies, a full refund of your membership dues is available.

---
The preceding comment deals with mature subject matter, however immaturely presented. Viewer discretion is advised.

I think what indie really is complaining about is not Mathews, but the contents challenging the the wealth creating actions of the Reform Party.

BC Rail has been sold off by Campbell,who's now operating under the BCLib guise, but nobody knows the details of the sale. When somebody requests the details under freedom of information, all they get back are thick bundles of empty sheets, to "protect the interests" of CN.

Just like the federal Minister refuses to disclose the results of the safety audit of this "wealth creating foreign investor".

It used to be when trustees sold off the properties of others, the owners had to be informed on what was sold, for how much, etc. or the trustees were charged and punished, even for small sums. I knew one lawyer who was jailed for $5,000, which was then about a year's wage for a worker.

Now, the Reform governments all over Canada are selling off parts of the country, are engaged in secret negotiations for the sale of the rest and the public is welcomed to go to hell, the governments' rights to secrecy being protected by the police and courts.

But this is what we call "competitive wealth creation", with
governments in competition over how many directorships they can collect after politics.

Will Gordie become a CN director ? We'll see.

Ed Deak.

In an article about the decay of justice you attack the writer, the placement and duration of that placement? How typical of you.
The fact that justice can no longer be expected gets not a whiff of concern, nope! Not when there is the opportunity to do what we here have come to recognize of you: your incessant ad hominem style.

---
"When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do."

William Blake

Dio,

When communism was in vogue here in the West by some misguided people, we were getting the same cookie cutter cliche replies when anybody dared to question the "cause".
Also, usually and obviously from the same writers.

There was a time, must have been in the 60s or early 70s, when one couldn't put a letter questioning communism, or its violence and enslavement of humanity, into the Vancouver Sun. Some of us tried it repeatedly, to see whether it was true, and it was. Turned out that the Letters to the Editor page was allegedly edited by a certain couple with certain ideological warp.

In many ways it is far worse now, with the whole media controlled by ideologically warped special interests.

E.g. The expression "conspiracy theory" is a carefully developed and used buzz to discredit anybody who uncovers obvious conspiracies to defraud the public and set up corporate rule.

The world has always been ruled by slogans and, if anything, it has never been worse than now, because the opportunities are much wider and easier to corrupt

Like people advocating dictatorial collectivization calling themselves plum names denying their intentions to enslave others in the name of "individualism" and "freedom".

Ed Deak.

Ed Deak.

Thanks for the replies and insights 
Here's an old I remember 
 
<a href="http://www.scenarioproductions.com/cbc/STAGE_SERIES/1.htm">http://www.scenarioproductions.com/cbc/STAGE_SERIES/1.htm</a> 
HEART OF DARKNESS 
by Joseph Conrad 
 
Listen to it ! 
real player | mp3 player 
 
In the first of Stage Series we present "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad. This riveting psychological drama tracks Mr. Marlow's perilous journey into the African Congo in search of Mr. Kurtz, who is missing in the interior and is believed to have gone mad. Originally broadcast 1951. 
Starring: Lorne Greene, John Colicos, Jane Mallett 
 
 
The second radio play included is 
"The Investigator" by: Reuben Ship. Listen to it ! 
real player | mp3 player 
Reuben Ship wrote the play after his deportation from the United States. He was living in California, where he wrote for radio, and was summoned to appear before the Un-American Activities Committee because of his one-time membership of the Communist Party. 
He refused to name names and was deported. In this entertaining parody of the 1950s McCarthy Hearings, The Investigator wakes up in a fog after a plane crash and learns that none of the passengers survived, including himself. 
He finds himself at the Pearly Gates and seeks entry, but first he must be investigated and accepted by a board of admissions, consisting of historical figures. The Investigator declares the chairman unfit and turns the tables on the board of admissions and the chairman. 
 
 
 
In its day "The Investigator" was such a controversial radio play that it caused a stir in both the Canadian Parliament and the U.S. Senate, due to the nature of the play's subject. Reuben Ship wrote the play after his deportation from the United States. He was living in California, where he wrote for radio, and was summoned to appear before the Un-American Activities Committee because of his one-time membership of the Communist Party. He refused to name names and was deported. 
 
 
--- "When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do." 
 
William Blake

Well, I suppose I get substantive and call Mathews on his habits of mixing conclusions and facts, force-fitting patterns over unrelated bits of information and oscillating rapidly between reporting and editorializing. He seems to relish playing muckraking journalist, but isn't willing to live by the constraints of the journalistic craft.

He is a prisoner of his own biases, and of the polarized nature of BC politics, which divides the electoral world into angels and devils, with the haloes and horns between distributed according to one's own personal ideology. Mathews (and it would seem many here) start from the assumption that all privatization of state enterprises is bad, and that more state ownership is perferable to less.

Likewise, I can make no claims to objectivity, as I belive the opposite. I believe strongly that state-owned enterprises are inefficient, complacent and have no incentives to provide value or good service to their clients. I think of the sale of MTS in Manitoba as an example of a privatization that worked, a moribund state telephone monopoly reborn as a strong, competitive telecom player with national *(and even international) reach.

So when I hear Robin go on about how corrupt the BC Rail privatization was, I find it hard to overcome my own skepticism about his motives and biases, including his obvious vendettas against Gordon Campbell, the RCMP and CanWest Global.

And before you accuse me of being a close-minded ideologue, imagine how openly you would approach a paper written by the Fraser Institute. Do you really think you'd give such a document a fairer shake than I give Mathews' ersatz gonzo journalism? Or would you too be summarily dismissive of FI research based solely on its source?

Under what contortion of the English language can the privatization of a state enterprise be called "collectivizaton"?

Your point is taken. But we haven't heard too much from Mel Hurtig or David Orchard lately.

Orchard's been busy getting screwed over by a second political party that has welcomed his cult of personality while successfully resisting his attempts to hijack it to serve his single-issue agenda. Maybe he needs to try to take over the NDP now to make it an inverse hat trick.

And I guess Hurtig's too busy writing books where, like Linda McQuaig, he can actually get paid for spewing his anti-Americanism.

A very good example of privatization = collectivization: 
<a href="http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=3612">http://www.bilaterals.org/article.php3?id_article=3612</a> 
In this instance, the word "collectivization" may be substituted by the equally heinous word "monopoly". 
 
ANY MONOPOLY is a form of collectivization, because there is no competition to allow choice among providers. 
 
Cable companies in this country are good examples of collectivist practices, as are cel providers (which in Canada collectively offer the least service for the greatest price among the world's cel phone companies) 
 
So there ya have it, "individualist". 
--- "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." 
-Max Planck

I would give the same attention to anything coming from the FI as I would to any advertising flier we receive, read it for anything of interest and then chuck it.

Over the years the FI advocated the sale of all publicly owned assets, including lakes and rivers and when the author, Arnold Block, was interviewed, he suggested that he'd also sell off all the seas and oceans as an "environmental protection measure".

A US economics professor wrote a "study" for them, advocating the privatization of Canada Post. But he was only talking about the cities and when he was asked on TV what would happen to rural people, he replied with a big laugh: "Well, they'll just have to move to the cities ha ha ha..."

When Mulroney closed 1,200 rural post offices to "save" $100. million, and with the green boxes in new areas, he transferred costs reaching into the billions on the public in extra traveling costs and times. Where are the calculations of transferred costs, by our "prestigious conservative economic think tanks" otherwise known as PR hacks.

The depopulation of the country has been the ongoing plan of neoclassical economists for 50 years. Jam everybody into cities where they have to pay for everything to survive, depopulating the rural areas killing the family farm system and all forms of real private enterprise. Which is going on as we speak.

The garbage published by the CD Howe is no better. I have some of their junk, including by their former chief economist Swanen. Full of leaps of faith, partial and fraudulent accounting to "prove" their ideological warp. Worthless junk , paid for by some of the corporate mafia.

The sale of something is not collectivization, but when there are only 5 companies left in control of the lumber industry, when 20-30 years ago there were hundreds, it is nothing more than the return of the Soviets under a different flag.

In the food industry, companies like Cargill, Monsanto, Tyson, the royal Windsor family, now control the world's food supply, killing off farmers and raising prices to the public.

We have a worldwide, growing beef shortage, but ranchers are getting half the price of 10 years ago, through the control of the feedlots, to put them out of business and establish huge agribiz kolkhozes with imported Mexican labour under the SPP.

Some of these companies operate under hundreds of names. My favourite is Nestle with 800, or Green Giant with 600, to pretend they're "free enterprise".

So, what are the Bilderbergers and the Trilaterals are about in the secret meetings? How to "compete" against each other, or how to enslave more?

And "efficiency" happens to be my favourite subject, as I happen to own the 1991 copyright of the only scientifically correct definition of it.

There ain't no such thing as "monetary efficiency". It is a fraud perpetrated by brainwashed economists and bought politicians, because monetary values are not realities but often violence induced, infinitely variable, temporary perceptions.

By the way, what did we get out of the sale of BC Rail? CN,
with an atrocious accident record everywhere they go, demanding payments from people who have lived on the other side of the track forever, killing cattle all over because they refuse to maintain the fences and forbidding their staff to use the name of "Canadian".

Some outfit to protect, or the politicians who gave it to them for a song and hoped for directorships.

When I was in business in Vancouver from 1957 to 79, the place was buzzing with a great variety of industries that could make and provide just about anything. It is all gone now and all one can see are office towers counting goodies our "wealth creating foreign investors" take out of the country.

Ed Deak.

You and tail gunner joe are cut from the same bolt of cloth you're both obsessed with anti americanism

---
"When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do."

William Blake

"... like Linda McQuaig, he can actually get paid for spewing his anti-Americanism."

Terms like 'anti-bully', 'anti-unfairness', 'anti-warmonger', 'anti-pathological lier', 'anti-hypocrite', 'anti-murderer', 'anti-torturer', 'anti-psychopath', 'anti-dishonesty', (etc) have real meaning that most people can identify with, but the term 'anti-Americanism' has no fixed meaning and is often used by propagandists in an effort to cloud and confuse serious and legitimate issues concerning the extremely offensive behaviours effected by the US government towards not only the American people, but towards other nationals and governments around the world.

So how about you define 'anti-Americanism' for me as I'd love to know what you think it means?