Monday, August 31, 2009
Basi Virk: A day in Courtroom 44
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The Day in Courtroom 44, August 31, 2009
By Robin Mathews
Courtroom 44 attracted a larger than usual gallery (12 people) today. That was probably because the fate of the Defence application to have Patrick Kinsella appear, by subpoena, was decided. Defence wants to ask Kinsella about his relation to CN Rail and to the corrupt sale of BC Rail to CN. Was he employed by CN Rail during the period of negotiation and sale?
In the face of the most important public criminal trial in B.C. history, CN, apparently, will not confirm or deny that it employed Patrick Kinsella.
The court maintained its impassive demeanour in the face of a staggering accumulation of fact, increasingly pointing to a planned and carefully executed intra-agency manipulation to off-load BC Rail to CNR based upon a spurious and jigged set of facts.
Kinsella himself has turned aside all questions about his role. He is the very public person who managed two Gordon Campbell elections, is known to be close to Campbell, is known to have engaged in communications among CN, BC Rail, and, apparently, the office of the premier during "sale"negotiations. He is confirmed to have been paid a large sum (of your and my money) for "advising" BC Rail during critical years.
This very public man, touching very dubious events, claims unmitigated rights of privacy in the matter - as a "third party".
Defence was refused the right by Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett to have Patrick Kinsella called to court to face cross-examination on the critical matter. It is critical, Defence believes, to an understanding of how much and at what high levels decisions were made that would show the three men accused of fraud, breach of trust, and money laundering in relation to the BC Rail Scandal were - in fact - mere aides and adjuncts to policy formed carefully by policy-making superiors.
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett continued - as I see it - to blossom in her "culture of complacency". That is a phrase used by a commission in Ontario looking into a demonstrably failing higher court system there. The phrase fits the B.C. Supreme Court well, and Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett - like a glove.
An insane situation exists. The criminal charges shaped in the BC Rail Scandal seem to come nowhere near touching - apparently - many real breach of trust crimes committed. For that reason officials of BC Rail who may be agents in the spurious sale and preparation for sale are defined - legally - as "third party". That is - because they are far enough away from the actions alleged to have been engaged in by Basi, Virk, and Basi, the BC Rail officials are protected in many ways by the law.
The same may be said for Patrick Kinsella.
In fact, the case may be that RCMP and the Special Crown Prosecutor - by ignorance or design - framed charges in the BC Rail Scandal that relegated to third party status people who may be seen by some as people who should be considered seriously in any criminal actions pursued in the matter of the corrupt sale of BC Rail.
It is here, I suggest, Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett dwells in a culture of complacency.
Today in court counsel for Patrick Kinsella conducted a somewhat learned argument. That argument suggested that "third parties", "witnesses" and such like are under no compulsion "to assist the Defence". The inviolable rights of Mr. Kinsella, a legally defined private person (as the case has been constructed) cannot be arraigned before the court, counsel argued. The application of the Defence, therefore, possesses no shred of legitimacy.
(It may be said here that many Canadians - as well as many professionals at law - hold there is a great difference between the privacy owing to ordinary people (your dentist, roofer, real estate agent) and people who take public office, high profile publicly-involved service jobs, lobbyist positions and so on.)
Defence, I take it, made the application believing it had merit. Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett curtly dismissed the application (after a lunch break of deliberation). When Defence counsel Kevin McCullough rose, seemed anxious to speak, quickly reconsidered, and said something like:"I take it you don't want to hear from me," Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett replied simply: "No".
And well she might have done to stop further submissions or argument. For she was interpreting legal precedent (which she might, on the face of it, have interpreted differently - as Defence counsel did).
But there is, I believe, much more she could have done. She was, as I say, interpreting - in one way - legal precedent. But she had, I also believe, power given her to appeal to justice and equity. To put it another way, she could have paid the highest regard to the written and precedent law. At the same time, she had power to appeal to equity. "The public interest" and "equity" are not far apart. When the issues at stake in a criminal trial (especially one with huge public implications) are hedged in, are - in fact - framed in such a way as to defeat the pursuit of justice, then a judge may rule that "equity", fairness, and duty to produce a just conclusion require a different decision.
In this case she might say the highly active Liberal, the clearly involved cabinet policy associate, the person employed to advise B.C. Rail, the twice election campaign manager for the Gordon Campbell forces cannot be deemed a private citizen in ordinary terms. To name him that would be an absurdity that no reasonable Canadian could accept.
For that reason, she could have decided, Mr. Kinsella must answer questions agreed upon by the court or he must appear for cross-examination. The questions would find if he worked for CNR, what his position was if he did, what his relation was to Gordon Campbell cabinet policy on BC Rail, etcetera.
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett could, I believe, have answered the Defence application affirmatively within its own terms. But she could also have taken the position on justice and equity that I have suggested. As I see it, she chose to remain in her culture of complacency. She chose to confine herself to matters of printed precedent - and to interpret those matters narrowly.
At the very best, I would say she chose law before justice.
In doing so, it is my belief, she underscored the determination of the court to avoid the most serious issues that have burst open as disclosure materials have given more and more evidence of high-level, organized manipulation to achieve what I allege are corrupt ends.
To me she appears to be saying: "these three men have been accused of the 14 crimes. Don't tell me about anything else. Don't ask if wrong-doing suggests accusations should be spread more widely. For though defence of the three men must be based in part on the relation of their actions to other agents and, especially, to agents in superior positions, I won't be dragged in that direction, even if it is the direction most likely to assure that justice will be done."
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett will disclose the reasons for her decision to deny the application by the Defence on Wednesday, September 2.
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The Day in Courtroom 44, August 31, 2009
By Robin Mathews
Courtroom 44 attracted a larger than usual gallery (12 people) today. That was probably because the fate of the Defence application to have Patrick Kinsella appear, by subpoena, was decided. Defence wants to ask Kinsella about his relation to CN Rail and to the corrupt sale of BC Rail to CN. Was he employed by CN Rail during the period of negotiation and sale?
In the face of the most important public criminal trial in B.C. history, CN, apparently, will not confirm or deny that it employed Patrick Kinsella.
The court maintained its impassive demeanour in the face of a staggering accumulation of fact, increasingly pointing to a planned and carefully executed intra-agency manipulation to off-load BC Rail to CNR based upon a spurious and jigged set of facts.
Kinsella himself has turned aside all questions about his role. He is the very public person who managed two Gordon Campbell elections, is known to be close to Campbell, is known to have engaged in communications among CN, BC Rail, and, apparently, the office of the premier during "sale"negotiations. He is confirmed to have been paid a large sum (of your and my money) for "advising" BC Rail during critical years.
This very public man, touching very dubious events, claims unmitigated rights of privacy in the matter - as a "third party".
Defence was refused the right by Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett to have Patrick Kinsella called to court to face cross-examination on the critical matter. It is critical, Defence believes, to an understanding of how much and at what high levels decisions were made that would show the three men accused of fraud, breach of trust, and money laundering in relation to the BC Rail Scandal were - in fact - mere aides and adjuncts to policy formed carefully by policy-making superiors.
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett continued - as I see it - to blossom in her "culture of complacency". That is a phrase used by a commission in Ontario looking into a demonstrably failing higher court system there. The phrase fits the B.C. Supreme Court well, and Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett - like a glove.
An insane situation exists. The criminal charges shaped in the BC Rail Scandal seem to come nowhere near touching - apparently - many real breach of trust crimes committed. For that reason officials of BC Rail who may be agents in the spurious sale and preparation for sale are defined - legally - as "third party". That is - because they are far enough away from the actions alleged to have been engaged in by Basi, Virk, and Basi, the BC Rail officials are protected in many ways by the law.
The same may be said for Patrick Kinsella.
In fact, the case may be that RCMP and the Special Crown Prosecutor - by ignorance or design - framed charges in the BC Rail Scandal that relegated to third party status people who may be seen by some as people who should be considered seriously in any criminal actions pursued in the matter of the corrupt sale of BC Rail.
It is here, I suggest, Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett dwells in a culture of complacency.
Today in court counsel for Patrick Kinsella conducted a somewhat learned argument. That argument suggested that "third parties", "witnesses" and such like are under no compulsion "to assist the Defence". The inviolable rights of Mr. Kinsella, a legally defined private person (as the case has been constructed) cannot be arraigned before the court, counsel argued. The application of the Defence, therefore, possesses no shred of legitimacy.
(It may be said here that many Canadians - as well as many professionals at law - hold there is a great difference between the privacy owing to ordinary people (your dentist, roofer, real estate agent) and people who take public office, high profile publicly-involved service jobs, lobbyist positions and so on.)
Defence, I take it, made the application believing it had merit. Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett curtly dismissed the application (after a lunch break of deliberation). When Defence counsel Kevin McCullough rose, seemed anxious to speak, quickly reconsidered, and said something like:"I take it you don't want to hear from me," Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett replied simply: "No".
And well she might have done to stop further submissions or argument. For she was interpreting legal precedent (which she might, on the face of it, have interpreted differently - as Defence counsel did).
But there is, I believe, much more she could have done. She was, as I say, interpreting - in one way - legal precedent. But she had, I also believe, power given her to appeal to justice and equity. To put it another way, she could have paid the highest regard to the written and precedent law. At the same time, she had power to appeal to equity. "The public interest" and "equity" are not far apart. When the issues at stake in a criminal trial (especially one with huge public implications) are hedged in, are - in fact - framed in such a way as to defeat the pursuit of justice, then a judge may rule that "equity", fairness, and duty to produce a just conclusion require a different decision.
In this case she might say the highly active Liberal, the clearly involved cabinet policy associate, the person employed to advise B.C. Rail, the twice election campaign manager for the Gordon Campbell forces cannot be deemed a private citizen in ordinary terms. To name him that would be an absurdity that no reasonable Canadian could accept.
For that reason, she could have decided, Mr. Kinsella must answer questions agreed upon by the court or he must appear for cross-examination. The questions would find if he worked for CNR, what his position was if he did, what his relation was to Gordon Campbell cabinet policy on BC Rail, etcetera.
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett could, I believe, have answered the Defence application affirmatively within its own terms. But she could also have taken the position on justice and equity that I have suggested. As I see it, she chose to remain in her culture of complacency. She chose to confine herself to matters of printed precedent - and to interpret those matters narrowly.
At the very best, I would say she chose law before justice.
In doing so, it is my belief, she underscored the determination of the court to avoid the most serious issues that have burst open as disclosure materials have given more and more evidence of high-level, organized manipulation to achieve what I allege are corrupt ends.
To me she appears to be saying: "these three men have been accused of the 14 crimes. Don't tell me about anything else. Don't ask if wrong-doing suggests accusations should be spread more widely. For though defence of the three men must be based in part on the relation of their actions to other agents and, especially, to agents in superior positions, I won't be dragged in that direction, even if it is the direction most likely to assure that justice will be done."
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett will disclose the reasons for her decision to deny the application by the Defence on Wednesday, September 2.
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Basi Virk: Kinsella won't be cross-examined. And "I call Bull Sh!T" says G.A.B.
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Kinsella won't be cross examined
I call Bull Sh!T
From a comment today by Great Aunty Bertha. I have to agree with this statement. My concern is that Madam Justice Bennett may be stepping down from the most important trial ever held in British Columbia ... because ... because it already appears to be hopelessly tainted and corrupted. I think she doesn't want her name to be associated with what's coming. God help us, I don't want this to be true. - BC Mary.
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Judge decides Kinsella should not be cross-examined by defence lawyers
Kinsella won't be cross examined
I call Bull Sh!T
From a comment today by Great Aunty Bertha. I have to agree with this statement. My concern is that Madam Justice Bennett may be stepping down from the most important trial ever held in British Columbia ... because ... because it already appears to be hopelessly tainted and corrupted. I think she doesn't want her name to be associated with what's coming. God help us, I don't want this to be true. - BC Mary.
__________________________________________________________________
Judge decides Kinsella should not be cross-examined by defence lawyers
VANCOUVER - The judge hearing pre-trial motions in the Basi-Virk political corruption case ruled Monday that Liberal insider Patrick Kinsella should not be cross-examined by defence lawyers at this point.
Justice Elizabeth Bennett dismissed the defence application to subpoena Kinsella to testify at a pre-trial hearing about what records he held that might be relevant to the defence.
The judge said she would try to provide written reasons for her ruling by Wednesday, when the case resumes with more legal argument about why Kinsella should provide any e-mails or other records to the defence.
Defence lawyer Michael Bolton called the judge's ruling "disappointing" but added the defence application may be renewed at a later date.
Earlier in the day, Kinsella's lawyer argued that there was no evidence that Kinsella played a major role in the controversial sale of BC Rail in 2003, Kinsella's lawyer argued Monday in court.
Jim Sullivan told the judge the defence failed to establish evidence to prove Kinsella played a major role in the sale of BC Rail, so he could be called to be cross-examined at a pre-trial hearing.
The lawyer said the defence was simply on a "fishing expedition using the long rod of cross-examination."
The defence can call Kinsella as a trial witness and question him then, the lawyer said.
To cross-examine Kinsella now would be an "unwarranted and unreasonable invasion of privacy," Sullivan said.
The Crown also urged the judge to dismiss the defence application.
The defence contends Kinsella played a key role in the $1-billion privatization sale of BC Rail to CN Rail in 2004.
Seeking e-mails and other records held by Kinsella, the defence cited two already disclosed e-mails that suggest Kinsella played a key role in the sale of BC Rail:
- May 19, 2004. E-mail sent by Kevin Mahoney, then vice-president of BC Rail, to Chris Trumpy, the "government's point man" on BC Rail, saying Kinsella got a call from David McLean, chairman of CN, who said the BC Rail deal was "at risk and anything they could do would be appreciated."
- Nov. 9, 2004. E-mail sent from Cheryl Yaremko, BC Rail's chief financial officer, to Mahoney, asking: "Do you know who Progressive Holdings is?" She had been reviewing payments before an audit. Mahoney sent a reply e-mail: "Progressive Holdings is Patrick Kinsella ... a lobbyist and Liberal backroom guy. He provided a great deal of backroom support."
Kinsella is a political advisor to the premier and a Vancouver consultant who received almost $300,000 from BC Rail between 2002 and 2005.
{Snip} ...
Earlier this morning, the judge received an update on the disclosure of e-mails related to a number of members of the legislature.
Read more HERE.
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Basi-Virk defence 'fishing' by calling Kinsella as witness: lawyer
Keith Fraser
The Province - August 31, 2009
Click HERE for the column.
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Judge in Basi Virk Case denies application to cross-examine Patrick Kinsella
Keith Fraser
The Province - August 31, 2009
Click HERE for the full column.
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Ian Mulgrew said, a week ago:
... If Kinsella is shown to have been working for both railways at the same time, the landscape of this politically charged trial will change completely.
That accusation is the lynchpin of the defence ...
If Kinsella did play a dual role in the deal, it would buttress the claim that Basi and Virk were only following the orders of their political masters, that the railway auction was rigged in CN's favour and that everyone knew it.
The defence argument holds that the Liberals wanted to sell the provincial freight operation to CN Rail and the troubled bidding process was designed only to legitimize the privatization; Basi and Virk were told to keep OmniTrax publicly in the running so it would appear the process was competitive ...
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Defence in corruption trial loses bid to grill Kinsella
Mark Hume
The Globe and Mail - August 31, 2009
Click HERE for the full column.
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Basi Virk hearing today, confirmed
10:00 AM. Monday, August 31.
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Just thinking ...
Former Israeli PM indicted for corruption
Ehud Olmert could face prison term
Matti Friedman
The Globe and Mail
The Associated Press - Aug. 30, 2009
Israeli authorities indicted former prime minister Ehud Olmert on corruption charges Sunday, the first criminal indictment ever filed against a current or past Israeli prime minister.
Mr. Olmert, who stepped down earlier this year over the corruption issue, is accused of illegally accepting funds from an American backer, double-billing for trips abroad and concealing funds from a government watchdog.
He faces charges that include fraud and breach of trust.
The charges filed in a Jerusalem court on Sunday first surfaced when Mr. Olmert was still prime minister, although he allegedly committed the offences while serving as mayor of Jerusalem and later as a Cabinet minister, before being elected prime minister in 2006.
Mr. Olmert, who denies any wrongdoing, issued a statement through a spokesman saying he was confident his name would be cleared. “Olmert is convinced that in court he will be able to prove his innocence once and for all,” the statement said.
The Justice Ministry refused to detail the length of a potential sentence, but Moshe Negbi, an Israeli legal expert, said the maximum sentence on the fraud charge alone was five years.
Any political comeback by Mr. Olmert would be highly unlikely unless he is cleared. “In the immediate future it doesn't seem possible, but it all depends on the court,” Mr. Negbi said.
Two former Cabinet ministers recently sentenced in separate corruption cases have received multiple-year prison sentences. Avraham Hirchson, a former finance minister and an Olmert confidant and appointee, was sentenced to five years for embezzlement in June, and another former Cabinet minister was sentenced to four years for taking bribes.
The case that did the most damage to Mr. Olmert when he was still in office involved funds he allegedly accepted from Moshe Talansky, an American businessman who allegedly funnelled large amounts of money to Mr. Olmert in cash-stuffed envelopes. Mr. Talansky's testimony last year helped turn public opinion against Mr. Olmert and played a large part in forcing him from office.
The indictment said Mr. Olmert used his connections to help Mr. Talansky's business, but did not charge Mr. Olmert with accepting bribes.
In another case, Mr. Olmert was charged with double-billing non-profit organizations and the government for trips he took abroad and then using the extra money to pay for private trips for his family.
Mr. Olmert was replaced as prime minister in March by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu. He left politics and is currently a private citizen.
The charges against Mr. Olmert were part of a slew of allegations that drove down Israeli confidence in the political system during his time in office.
In addition to the charges against Mr. Olmert's finance minister, another cabinet minister was convicted of sexual misconduct and the country's former ceremonial president, Moshe Katzav, was charged by several women with rape and sexual harassment and is currently on trial.
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Just thinking ... that the Basi Virk Basi / BC Rail trial could produce evidence of criminality ... and that criminal charges would be the quickest possible form of Recall.
Today, in Madam Justice Bennett's court, we may hear what happened to the missing e.mail evidence and whether charges will be laid for obstruction of justice. - BC Mary.
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Just thinking ...
Former Israeli PM indicted for corruption
Ehud Olmert could face prison term
Matti Friedman
The Globe and Mail
The Associated Press - Aug. 30, 2009
Israeli authorities indicted former prime minister Ehud Olmert on corruption charges Sunday, the first criminal indictment ever filed against a current or past Israeli prime minister.
Mr. Olmert, who stepped down earlier this year over the corruption issue, is accused of illegally accepting funds from an American backer, double-billing for trips abroad and concealing funds from a government watchdog.
He faces charges that include fraud and breach of trust.
The charges filed in a Jerusalem court on Sunday first surfaced when Mr. Olmert was still prime minister, although he allegedly committed the offences while serving as mayor of Jerusalem and later as a Cabinet minister, before being elected prime minister in 2006.
Mr. Olmert, who denies any wrongdoing, issued a statement through a spokesman saying he was confident his name would be cleared. “Olmert is convinced that in court he will be able to prove his innocence once and for all,” the statement said.
The Justice Ministry refused to detail the length of a potential sentence, but Moshe Negbi, an Israeli legal expert, said the maximum sentence on the fraud charge alone was five years.
Any political comeback by Mr. Olmert would be highly unlikely unless he is cleared. “In the immediate future it doesn't seem possible, but it all depends on the court,” Mr. Negbi said.
Two former Cabinet ministers recently sentenced in separate corruption cases have received multiple-year prison sentences. Avraham Hirchson, a former finance minister and an Olmert confidant and appointee, was sentenced to five years for embezzlement in June, and another former Cabinet minister was sentenced to four years for taking bribes.
The case that did the most damage to Mr. Olmert when he was still in office involved funds he allegedly accepted from Moshe Talansky, an American businessman who allegedly funnelled large amounts of money to Mr. Olmert in cash-stuffed envelopes. Mr. Talansky's testimony last year helped turn public opinion against Mr. Olmert and played a large part in forcing him from office.
The indictment said Mr. Olmert used his connections to help Mr. Talansky's business, but did not charge Mr. Olmert with accepting bribes.
In another case, Mr. Olmert was charged with double-billing non-profit organizations and the government for trips he took abroad and then using the extra money to pay for private trips for his family.
Mr. Olmert was replaced as prime minister in March by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu. He left politics and is currently a private citizen.
The charges against Mr. Olmert were part of a slew of allegations that drove down Israeli confidence in the political system during his time in office.
In addition to the charges against Mr. Olmert's finance minister, another cabinet minister was convicted of sexual misconduct and the country's former ceremonial president, Moshe Katzav, was charged by several women with rape and sexual harassment and is currently on trial.
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Just thinking ... that the Basi Virk Basi / BC Rail trial could produce evidence of criminality ... and that criminal charges would be the quickest possible form of Recall.
Today, in Madam Justice Bennett's court, we may hear what happened to the missing e.mail evidence and whether charges will be laid for obstruction of justice. - BC Mary.
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Saturday, August 29, 2009
Robin Mathews on BC Rail: Crime in High Places, Part II
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British Columbia: The BC Rail Scandal. Crime in High Places. Part Two: BC Rail in the pattern of Gordon Campbell government breach of trust.
By Robin Mathews
Breach of trust is total; falsehood a trademark. Illegitimate secrecy is a consistent pattern. Collaboration of press and media is unbroken. The RCMP is incompetent or bought. The higher courts – incompetent or bought. Political opposition (the NDP) does almost nothing in the face of growing social breakdown … in fact … collaborates. The unions … are nowhere.
Why? Why?
The Gordon Campbell government’s active, open, naked breaches of trust can be itemized easily. Press and media failure can be traced daily. The B.C. throne speech is delivered, for instance. Next day (Aug 26 09 A1 A10) The Vancouver Sun trumpets budgetary panic, fiscal breakdown, and an empty public treasury. The Sun provides no honest analysis or reasons.
It leads with the cry of coming “public sector freezes and possible layoffs [and on] to significant reviews of health authorities, boards of education and Crown corporations”. No honest explanation.
The sun warmly greets “the welcome announcement of a freeze on public sector wages”, a “shorter leash” coming “for Crown corporations, school boards and health authorities and other independent agencies”. [“Independent agencies” like the B.C. Utilities Commission which just found the Campbell government, in fact, in ugly, manipulative, falsification of B.C. energy facts?]
The Globe and Mail, the next day, (Aug 27) editorializes in precisely the same way as The Vancouver Sun : collaboration in repressing key facts?
Why? Why do media, RCMP, the court, NDP (opposition) – even union hierarchy – cooperate with the planned, fraudulently produced destitution of British Columbians and the destruction of their reasonably fair and just social order?
Why, when the wealth is “in the ground”, the population well-educated, and a balanced structure assuring reasonable profit, reasonable return to public coffers, and the potential for increased manufacture in the province – why do the “managing” forces of the province all give themselves to the on-going destruction and falsehood?
Not without intention. Not without intention does the Gordon Campbell throne speech point to “a new economic framework”. New it may be for B.C., but it is a very old one in the hemisphere. It’s the framework of a Banana Republic – a framework purposefully constructed to strip the population of their shared wealth, to strip them of social protections, and to deliver all wealth making power into private hands…elsewhere. That program – so far – has all the people on board who should be in bitter opposition.
Why here? Why now?
The answer is at least partly global.
To the middle 1970s the post Second World War social “advances” provided moderate public security, real profit to corporations, and moderate public ownership in the “democratic” West. (Those social achievements are now propaganda-branded by the Right as “socialist theft”.)
The reactionary Right grew more confident, more greedy, more organized, more determined and more lawless - and it was let loose. At the same time the formerly “backward” huge nations (China, India) began to move, independently. South American countries (the U.S. “back yard”) began to wrest real independence for the first time in a hundred years, led by Cuba. The Middle East became permanently unstable. Iran threw off the U.S. yoke to become – the Iran of today.
Afghanistan – passed from a failing Russia to the U.S.A. – sitting on a major energy, geo-political, military cross-road – refuses to be re-colonized. The West, therefore, engages in permanent war in order “to educate young girls and free them from the Burkha in Afghanistan”.
Since a 1952 Senate Report at least, the U.S. has anchored many of its major raw material and energy needs in … Canada. Since 1952 Canada has fallen more and more into U.S. hands (NORAD, the re-write of NATO, Free Trade Agreements, Security “partnerships”, etc.) Apparent harmony with China only masks U.S. determination to secure its Western-controlled wealth and “partnerships” that assure its paramount power.
In Canada, however, “integration” with the U.S. wars daily with the need of the USA to maintain its global domination and wealth by impoverishing whole populations, using them to gather low-cost raw materials and using their countries as the source of cheap, off-shore manufactured goods. Making, in short, what we call Banana Republics.
Venezuela and Iran are major “demons” in U.S. policy. Both (whatever else) have slipped from U.S. control, repatriated oil ownership, and both have used much of the “new” wealth to provide health and security to formerly impoverished parts of their populations. The recent (U.S. involved) coup in Honduras will keep that country out of the South American free trade group and will guarantee that North American “slave economy” industries will continue to operate “in peace” there. Still very sharp, Fidel Castro just wrote, wittily, that Hiliary Clinton should get the Nobel Prize for appearing to disapprove of the illegal coup while making sure it succeeded.
Iraq is a time-bomb, ready to explode again. But its oil is being divided among Western powers through their “global” oil companies.
Pressure to maintain U.S. domination of land-connected suppliers grows. They provide special security. Overseas and South American oil is always at risk. Canada’s oil is, apparently, not. And Canadian (British Columbia’s) water-powered energy reserves are invaluable to the U.S.A., worth, as time passes, trillions of dollars.
Enter Gordon Campbell and his group intent upon destroying B.C. wealth by repeated actions of breach of trust, by handing all to “private” corporations – in fact, to U.S. “private” ownership and control. (How much is this a plan hatched on one of his many, many (Opposition-ignored) trips to New York?)
British Columbia had a golden guarantee of energy, and of transportation, to be used for the maintenance of standards of living for the population while providing secure energy resources and fair transport costs to industrial activity in the province – far, far into the future.
B.C. Gas, B.C. Hydro, B.C. Rail assured hauling and passenger service cut to B.C. needs – at the same time contributing richly to ‘general revenues’ (for healthcare, housing, senior-care, police, courts, families, etc) “forever”.
B.C. Hydro assured careful water-driven power development into perpetuity – with the same social rewards amassing to the whole B.C. community.
B.C. Gas, seen, perhaps, as smaller but filling B.C. needs adequately served B.C. and now should be the prime controller/developer of the huge, newly discovered natural gas reserves being tabbed in Northern B.C. All, instead, are being flogged for peanuts to private corporations (that are owned by or supply the U.S.) by the Gordon Campbell group.
In a spate of misinformation and deception (and probably criminal breach of trust) the Gordon Campbell group has destroyed BC Rail. The only (visible) profit and advantage from the off-load has gone to (Texas head-quartered) CN Rail. (It is recently charged with telling employees not to call it “Canadian National” but “CN Rail”!)
The BC Rail Scandal drags through a myopic and delusionary B.C. Supreme Court in which is daily exposed the reality of Gordon Campbell government breach of trust employed to fake almost all aspects of the BC Rail “sale”.
Promising to preserve B.C. Hydro, Gordon Campbell – in dramatic actions of breach of trust – has split Hydro into three pieces, in effect privatizing two parts – placing all control of future energy development in U.S. hands. One part has been passed to Accenture (of Enron Disaster fame), the deal still wrapped in secret agreements kept from the “owners” of B.C. Hydro – the people of British Columbia.
The one-third piece of B.C. Hydro that, apparently, remains in the hands of British Columbians has been, in fact, destroyed by the Gordon Campbell forces. B.C. Hydro is forbidden (A) to generate another watt of electricity. It is forced (B) to buy from Campbell-created “private corporate” suppliers at prices it cannot break-even on when selling it to British Columbians!! It MUST, by legislation, lose money. It must, too, keep pushing up costs of energy to B.C. users, public and private.
That psychopathic torture-death is forced upon B.C. Hydro by Gordon Campbell. The whole mad-house structure is created to place all B.C. water-energy wealth in U.S. hands. The B.C. Utilities Commission has just caught the Gordon Campbell forces in fact lying about B.C. energy resources in a developing private corporate system clothed in secrecy. The major press yawns and says Campbell will have to discipline “independent” agencies.
B.C. Gas is less talked about. That is because it was earlier set apart from B.C. Hydro. Then B.C. Gas was permitted to be privately-owned and headquartered in the province. The Gordon Campbell group flushed it out of B.C. and into U.S. ownership.
As it originally existed, it had every ability to move into growing natural gas development for the good of the province and its population – and to provide richly to “general revenues” for government expenditures
The chief anchors of public wealth in British Columbia, efficiently operated and returning importantly to the province’s ‘general revenues’, have been purposefully and by gigantic breaches of public trust taken from the people of the province and handed, almost free, to (largely foreign) private ownership and control.
And while that happens the forests are tragically neglected (becoming fire-bombs) and “private enterprise” (privately-owned and therefore sacred) fish farms decimate natural fish stocks.
Editors of the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail apparently refuse to report why B.C. is in budgetary panic, fiscal breakdown, and facing an empty public treasury. The Gordon Campbell group has stripped the province of wealth, given it to private corporations, freed them of serious tax burden, and is in the process of loading the province’s major tax load onto ordinary British Columbians.
At the same time, the Campbell group is pauperizing British Columbians and hammering them into a Banana Republic structure that will assure the destruction of present social insurances and levels of the security of persons.
But more….
Canada has long been a sitting duck, a quiet Banana Republic, its apparently endless resource wealth sucked out on U.S. terms. But the times they are a-changin’. The greedy looters want more. They are increasingly threatened by new imperial blocs, and so they want the security of guaranteed, land-connected energy resources.
All over the world reactionary, (disguised) totalitarian and anti-democratic argument is trumpeted from almost every gilt-edged, corporate-based, private capitalist platform in order to assure that the world’s wealth will reside in the hands of a very few who are, in fact, the faces of present Western imperial domination.
Police forces tend to be “obedient” to Rightest power – and want a share of it. So they support. The military supports. Look at the soldier-eating, innocent-victim eating machines called Iraq and Afghanistan. The courts which usually support repressive regimes…support them now. (Look closely at the B.C. Supreme and Appeal courts.) Press and media owners are not called “barons” for nothing. They support the lurch to anti-democratic structures – pretending they don’t understand. (The Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun actively, today, misrepresent the B.C. financial condition.)
The political opposition around the world is repressed, coerced, bribed, wooed, seduced, married. Wanting desperately to belong to the Top Dog Club, opposition forces join it as Associate Members or – like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of England’s “New Labour”, they plunge into the “rape, kill, and loot” Club, rapturous to be accepted.
Gordon Campbell is, I think, too gross, too power and greed driven to fit into anything like a club of (however evil) sophisticated people. Cunning, devious – fully willing to live by outrageous breaches of trust – he seems to fit the characteristics of a nakedly grasping psychopath. For such a one – if that is his condition – nothing has meaning but lust and power, betrayal and domination.
The great pity for British Columbians is that Gordon Campbell finds all his satisfaction in flattering, fawning upon, and delivering British Columbia’s wealth to foreign, private interests – and in the sell-out and betrayal of his own people. That is the hallmark of leadership in a Banana Republic. His mania fits perfectly with U.S. imperial designs.
Did Gordon Campbell’s life as the child of an alcoholic father make him determined to wreak vengeance on all British Columbians forever? Whatever, the sickness of Gordon Campbell (and his highly cooperative friends) is rendering the Lotus Land of British Columbia into a diseased and destitute garden.
Only the strongest replacement government can hope to re-claim the losses. Or, perhaps, history will reveal once again that debased and determined evil can only be displaced by armed insurrection. Time alone will tell.
The BC Rail Scandal has been stripped of its propaganda and now stands as a major operation in betrayal and breach of trust. But it is only one part of a carefully planned program of breach of trust by the Gordon Campbell forces. When will British Columbians wake up? When they discover the huge breaches of trust they have been subjected to, what will they do?
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British Columbia: The BC Rail Scandal. Crime in High Places. Part Two: BC Rail in the pattern of Gordon Campbell government breach of trust.
By Robin Mathews
Breach of trust is total; falsehood a trademark. Illegitimate secrecy is a consistent pattern. Collaboration of press and media is unbroken. The RCMP is incompetent or bought. The higher courts – incompetent or bought. Political opposition (the NDP) does almost nothing in the face of growing social breakdown … in fact … collaborates. The unions … are nowhere.
Why? Why?
The Gordon Campbell government’s active, open, naked breaches of trust can be itemized easily. Press and media failure can be traced daily. The B.C. throne speech is delivered, for instance. Next day (Aug 26 09 A1 A10) The Vancouver Sun trumpets budgetary panic, fiscal breakdown, and an empty public treasury. The Sun provides no honest analysis or reasons.
It leads with the cry of coming “public sector freezes and possible layoffs [and on] to significant reviews of health authorities, boards of education and Crown corporations”. No honest explanation.
The sun warmly greets “the welcome announcement of a freeze on public sector wages”, a “shorter leash” coming “for Crown corporations, school boards and health authorities and other independent agencies”. [“Independent agencies” like the B.C. Utilities Commission which just found the Campbell government, in fact, in ugly, manipulative, falsification of B.C. energy facts?]
The Globe and Mail, the next day, (Aug 27) editorializes in precisely the same way as The Vancouver Sun : collaboration in repressing key facts?
Why? Why do media, RCMP, the court, NDP (opposition) – even union hierarchy – cooperate with the planned, fraudulently produced destitution of British Columbians and the destruction of their reasonably fair and just social order?
Why, when the wealth is “in the ground”, the population well-educated, and a balanced structure assuring reasonable profit, reasonable return to public coffers, and the potential for increased manufacture in the province – why do the “managing” forces of the province all give themselves to the on-going destruction and falsehood?
Not without intention. Not without intention does the Gordon Campbell throne speech point to “a new economic framework”. New it may be for B.C., but it is a very old one in the hemisphere. It’s the framework of a Banana Republic – a framework purposefully constructed to strip the population of their shared wealth, to strip them of social protections, and to deliver all wealth making power into private hands…elsewhere. That program – so far – has all the people on board who should be in bitter opposition.
Why here? Why now?
The answer is at least partly global.
To the middle 1970s the post Second World War social “advances” provided moderate public security, real profit to corporations, and moderate public ownership in the “democratic” West. (Those social achievements are now propaganda-branded by the Right as “socialist theft”.)
The reactionary Right grew more confident, more greedy, more organized, more determined and more lawless - and it was let loose. At the same time the formerly “backward” huge nations (China, India) began to move, independently. South American countries (the U.S. “back yard”) began to wrest real independence for the first time in a hundred years, led by Cuba. The Middle East became permanently unstable. Iran threw off the U.S. yoke to become – the Iran of today.
Afghanistan – passed from a failing Russia to the U.S.A. – sitting on a major energy, geo-political, military cross-road – refuses to be re-colonized. The West, therefore, engages in permanent war in order “to educate young girls and free them from the Burkha in Afghanistan”.
Since a 1952 Senate Report at least, the U.S. has anchored many of its major raw material and energy needs in … Canada. Since 1952 Canada has fallen more and more into U.S. hands (NORAD, the re-write of NATO, Free Trade Agreements, Security “partnerships”, etc.) Apparent harmony with China only masks U.S. determination to secure its Western-controlled wealth and “partnerships” that assure its paramount power.
In Canada, however, “integration” with the U.S. wars daily with the need of the USA to maintain its global domination and wealth by impoverishing whole populations, using them to gather low-cost raw materials and using their countries as the source of cheap, off-shore manufactured goods. Making, in short, what we call Banana Republics.
Venezuela and Iran are major “demons” in U.S. policy. Both (whatever else) have slipped from U.S. control, repatriated oil ownership, and both have used much of the “new” wealth to provide health and security to formerly impoverished parts of their populations. The recent (U.S. involved) coup in Honduras will keep that country out of the South American free trade group and will guarantee that North American “slave economy” industries will continue to operate “in peace” there. Still very sharp, Fidel Castro just wrote, wittily, that Hiliary Clinton should get the Nobel Prize for appearing to disapprove of the illegal coup while making sure it succeeded.
Iraq is a time-bomb, ready to explode again. But its oil is being divided among Western powers through their “global” oil companies.
Pressure to maintain U.S. domination of land-connected suppliers grows. They provide special security. Overseas and South American oil is always at risk. Canada’s oil is, apparently, not. And Canadian (British Columbia’s) water-powered energy reserves are invaluable to the U.S.A., worth, as time passes, trillions of dollars.
Enter Gordon Campbell and his group intent upon destroying B.C. wealth by repeated actions of breach of trust, by handing all to “private” corporations – in fact, to U.S. “private” ownership and control. (How much is this a plan hatched on one of his many, many (Opposition-ignored) trips to New York?)
British Columbia had a golden guarantee of energy, and of transportation, to be used for the maintenance of standards of living for the population while providing secure energy resources and fair transport costs to industrial activity in the province – far, far into the future.
B.C. Gas, B.C. Hydro, B.C. Rail assured hauling and passenger service cut to B.C. needs – at the same time contributing richly to ‘general revenues’ (for healthcare, housing, senior-care, police, courts, families, etc) “forever”.
B.C. Hydro assured careful water-driven power development into perpetuity – with the same social rewards amassing to the whole B.C. community.
B.C. Gas, seen, perhaps, as smaller but filling B.C. needs adequately served B.C. and now should be the prime controller/developer of the huge, newly discovered natural gas reserves being tabbed in Northern B.C. All, instead, are being flogged for peanuts to private corporations (that are owned by or supply the U.S.) by the Gordon Campbell group.
In a spate of misinformation and deception (and probably criminal breach of trust) the Gordon Campbell group has destroyed BC Rail. The only (visible) profit and advantage from the off-load has gone to (Texas head-quartered) CN Rail. (It is recently charged with telling employees not to call it “Canadian National” but “CN Rail”!)
The BC Rail Scandal drags through a myopic and delusionary B.C. Supreme Court in which is daily exposed the reality of Gordon Campbell government breach of trust employed to fake almost all aspects of the BC Rail “sale”.
Promising to preserve B.C. Hydro, Gordon Campbell – in dramatic actions of breach of trust – has split Hydro into three pieces, in effect privatizing two parts – placing all control of future energy development in U.S. hands. One part has been passed to Accenture (of Enron Disaster fame), the deal still wrapped in secret agreements kept from the “owners” of B.C. Hydro – the people of British Columbia.
The one-third piece of B.C. Hydro that, apparently, remains in the hands of British Columbians has been, in fact, destroyed by the Gordon Campbell forces. B.C. Hydro is forbidden (A) to generate another watt of electricity. It is forced (B) to buy from Campbell-created “private corporate” suppliers at prices it cannot break-even on when selling it to British Columbians!! It MUST, by legislation, lose money. It must, too, keep pushing up costs of energy to B.C. users, public and private.
That psychopathic torture-death is forced upon B.C. Hydro by Gordon Campbell. The whole mad-house structure is created to place all B.C. water-energy wealth in U.S. hands. The B.C. Utilities Commission has just caught the Gordon Campbell forces in fact lying about B.C. energy resources in a developing private corporate system clothed in secrecy. The major press yawns and says Campbell will have to discipline “independent” agencies.
B.C. Gas is less talked about. That is because it was earlier set apart from B.C. Hydro. Then B.C. Gas was permitted to be privately-owned and headquartered in the province. The Gordon Campbell group flushed it out of B.C. and into U.S. ownership.
As it originally existed, it had every ability to move into growing natural gas development for the good of the province and its population – and to provide richly to “general revenues” for government expenditures
The chief anchors of public wealth in British Columbia, efficiently operated and returning importantly to the province’s ‘general revenues’, have been purposefully and by gigantic breaches of public trust taken from the people of the province and handed, almost free, to (largely foreign) private ownership and control.
And while that happens the forests are tragically neglected (becoming fire-bombs) and “private enterprise” (privately-owned and therefore sacred) fish farms decimate natural fish stocks.
Editors of the Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail apparently refuse to report why B.C. is in budgetary panic, fiscal breakdown, and facing an empty public treasury. The Gordon Campbell group has stripped the province of wealth, given it to private corporations, freed them of serious tax burden, and is in the process of loading the province’s major tax load onto ordinary British Columbians.
At the same time, the Campbell group is pauperizing British Columbians and hammering them into a Banana Republic structure that will assure the destruction of present social insurances and levels of the security of persons.
But more….
Canada has long been a sitting duck, a quiet Banana Republic, its apparently endless resource wealth sucked out on U.S. terms. But the times they are a-changin’. The greedy looters want more. They are increasingly threatened by new imperial blocs, and so they want the security of guaranteed, land-connected energy resources.
All over the world reactionary, (disguised) totalitarian and anti-democratic argument is trumpeted from almost every gilt-edged, corporate-based, private capitalist platform in order to assure that the world’s wealth will reside in the hands of a very few who are, in fact, the faces of present Western imperial domination.
Police forces tend to be “obedient” to Rightest power – and want a share of it. So they support. The military supports. Look at the soldier-eating, innocent-victim eating machines called Iraq and Afghanistan. The courts which usually support repressive regimes…support them now. (Look closely at the B.C. Supreme and Appeal courts.) Press and media owners are not called “barons” for nothing. They support the lurch to anti-democratic structures – pretending they don’t understand. (The Globe and Mail and the Vancouver Sun actively, today, misrepresent the B.C. financial condition.)
The political opposition around the world is repressed, coerced, bribed, wooed, seduced, married. Wanting desperately to belong to the Top Dog Club, opposition forces join it as Associate Members or – like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown of England’s “New Labour”, they plunge into the “rape, kill, and loot” Club, rapturous to be accepted.
Gordon Campbell is, I think, too gross, too power and greed driven to fit into anything like a club of (however evil) sophisticated people. Cunning, devious – fully willing to live by outrageous breaches of trust – he seems to fit the characteristics of a nakedly grasping psychopath. For such a one – if that is his condition – nothing has meaning but lust and power, betrayal and domination.
The great pity for British Columbians is that Gordon Campbell finds all his satisfaction in flattering, fawning upon, and delivering British Columbia’s wealth to foreign, private interests – and in the sell-out and betrayal of his own people. That is the hallmark of leadership in a Banana Republic. His mania fits perfectly with U.S. imperial designs.
Did Gordon Campbell’s life as the child of an alcoholic father make him determined to wreak vengeance on all British Columbians forever? Whatever, the sickness of Gordon Campbell (and his highly cooperative friends) is rendering the Lotus Land of British Columbia into a diseased and destitute garden.
Only the strongest replacement government can hope to re-claim the losses. Or, perhaps, history will reveal once again that debased and determined evil can only be displaced by armed insurrection. Time alone will tell.
The BC Rail Scandal has been stripped of its propaganda and now stands as a major operation in betrayal and breach of trust. But it is only one part of a carefully planned program of breach of trust by the Gordon Campbell forces. When will British Columbians wake up? When they discover the huge breaches of trust they have been subjected to, what will they do?
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Tuesday, August 25, 2009
"I practiced criminal law for 15 years before moving to the bench 10 years ago." A good reason why Justice Bennett should NOT leave the BC Rail Case.
.
November 2005 ... April 2006 ... June 6, 2006 ... September 2006 ... October 2006 ... December 2006 ... February 2007 ... April 2007 ...
All but the last date are cancellations of the BC Rail trial. But April 30, 2007 was different: the day when the first witness was sworn in and the Basi Virk Basi Trial began ... an event which has suddenly taken on a massive significance.
That first witness was John Preissell (or Preissl) who had been President of the Auto-Glass Survival Coalition. It's not as if the RCMP or the Crown Prosecution had invited much less subpoenaed John Preissell. No, no, no, nothing like that. John Preissell was an outraged citizen who phoned the RCMP himself but, he said, they didn't seem very interested. So later, on a Sunday, he telephoned Kevin McCullough, lawyer for Bobby Virk, one of the accused.
That brings us to BC Supreme Court on April 30, 2007 when ... drum-roll please ... John Preissell walked in, was sworn in, took the witness stand and gave evidence on File #23299 - HMTQ v. Udhe Singh (Dave) Basi, Bobby Singh Virk, and Aneal Singh Basi.
The BC Rail Trial had left the station. Or did it?
If you ask me, I think we're expected to believe that it didn't leave the station ... that nothing happened, as in "Just keep movin' along, folks, ain't nuthin' to see here ..." But the following two news stories from that time, say otherwise. The Basi Virk Basi Trial did start on April 30, 2007 and here's the thing: because it started and is on record as having started, Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett is obliged to continue as presiding judge. Obliged to continue. Check the Criminal Code of Canada, Section 669.2 where it is very specific: only if a judge dies is she freed from her duty to complete a trial in progress. [See Madam Justice Bennett had another option for staying on the BC Rail case, posted on this blog August 19, 2009.]
The thing is, I do believe that somebody wants her gone. In the nicest possible way, of course. They're not quite issuing bulletins saying so, but on the other hand, they can send Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm into Madam Bennett's courtroom to "show leadership" as they say, by suggesting that he holds the power, not Bennett, the presiding judge. But that's not really true. The thing is: he signalled that she'd be gone.
Still and all, if you ask me, I don't think that Madam Justice Bennett, after a career of presiding over 300 criminal trials, is easily bullied. I think she's steady on her feet. Actually, I believe she hurled a neat little mortar of her own when she said that she'd resign from the BC Court of Appeal if she thought that necessary ... "if the trial's fairness would be affected by her decision," she said, if she "thought for a moment that it would be affected, she would resign from the court of appeal." Ha. Take that, Dohm-boy. She tossed another bomblet when she herself mentioned the testimony of John Pressell.
The chosen replacement is a judge who has presided over only 168 trials, few of them criminal trials. This echoes the mis-matched appointment of the Special Prosecutor on this very important criminal trial ... a Special Crown Prosecutor who in his long legal career has had very little experience in criminal trials. Bill Berardino, in my opinion, has done a poor job on the Basi Virk Basi trial.
Add all this up, and what have you got? Well, for one thing: remember that the Defence wanted Justice Bennett to stay on the BC Rail trial ... appealed for her stay stay on ... but the Crown Prosecutor (on our behalf) wanted her gone, and gone immediately.
Remember that there appears to be a very strong pattern of delay, delay, delay ... of forgetfulness, oops! and "the dog ate my e.mails". The fumbling could easily lead to a Charter Challenge and dismissal of the entire trial -- the worst possible result. Because if Basi, Virk and Basi are innocent, they would never have it proven under oath. The people of B.C. would never know why or how we lost a railway in the biggest privatization deal Canada has ever seen. Taxpayers would be stuck with everybody's legal costs for participating in a trial that eroded the public trust and made the judiciary look like dupes. Finally, the real perps would continue to prosper, as before.
I think that Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett is our best hope of changing that result into a positive outcome by getting the BC Rail Trial moving. - BC Mary.
___________________________________________________________________
I hope that John Preissell feels a sense of satisfaction that he came forward with his story when it wasn't easy to do so. Congratulations to him for that. The Vancouver Sun story is HERE, about the successful conclusion of the efforts of the Auto Glass Survival Coalition against Speedy Auto Glass Cited for 'kickbacks', at least 5 officials conspired to defraud I.C.B.C., Vancouver Sun - Feb. 26, 2004. Preisell's testimony, given April 30, 2007, has taken on a whole new significance in the matter of the BC Rail trial, so I will post segments from two lengthy, informative reports from that time ...
Lobbyist protective of ex-minister, trial hears
TIMES COLONIST - MAY 1, 2007
Click HERE for the full column.
VANCOUVER -- The trial of two former provincial government aides accused of corruption heard its first witness testimony yesterday.
Defence lawyer Kevin McCullough told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Bennett that he had a phone call Sunday from a man who said he received a threatening phone call four years ago from a lobbyist involved in the B.C. Rail sale.
The lawyer then called to the witness stand John Preissell, who testified he received a call in May or June 2003 from former lobbyist Brian Kieran, who "threatened me three or four times" as a warning against embarrassing Gary Collins, then B.C. finance minister.
At the time, he recalled, he was representing a group called the Auto Glass Survival Coalition, which was upset over how one glass repair company was handling Insurance Corp. of B.C. claims.
He said the coalition planned to expose the chain's unfair tactics, which eventually made front-page news.
Preissell said Kieran "told me I could go to the media ... and embarrass ICBC, but not embarrass the finance minister."
At the time, Collins's portfolio included ICBC.
After the raid on the legislature on Dec. 28, 2003, Preissell said, he saw Kieran's name connected to that of Collins's former ministerial aide, Dave Basi, and contacted police to complain about the threats Kieran had made.
He recalled speaking to an RCMP sergeant named Lawson.
"I said he [Kieran] repeatedly threatened me to stay away from Collins," he testified.
But the officer didn't seem too interested and passed him along to another officer named Bud Bishop, who also did not seem interested, he added.
Kieran and Collins are expected to be key Crown witnesses at the trial.
Collins's lawyer, Clark Roberts, who is monitoring the proceedings, said yesterday he talked to Collins, who has no recollection of ever meeting Preissell.
Appearance of the surprise witness at the trial caught the prosecution off-guard.
Janet Winteringham, a lawyer with the prosecution team, had the judge stand the witness down until he returns later this week to be cross-examined.
Basi and Bob Virk are accused of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes from Kieran and his lobbyist partner, Erik Bornmann, in exchange for leaking confidential information about the B.C. Rail bidding process.
Basi's cousin, Aneal Basi, is accused of money laundering for allegedly accepting cheques from Bornmann and transferring money to Dave Basi.
At the time, Kieran and Bornmann were partners in the lobby firm Pilothouse, whose client was U.S.-based OmniTRAX, one of the three bidders for B.C. Rail.
______________________________________________________
Wire tap said to tie Collins
Bill Tieleman
The Tyee - 4 May 2007
... But nothing [Defence lawyer, Kevin KcCullough] did could have helped his case more than an unexpected phone call he received on Sunday, April 29, from a man named John Preissell.
Preissell, it turns out, had contacted RCMP in January 2005 to offer information he had about the role of provincial lobbyist Brian Kieran in the case. And after speaking to McCullough, Preissell made a surprise appearance in the courtroom Monday to give evidence.
Preissell told the court in sworn testimony as the case's unscheduled and first witness that the RCMP "didn't seem too interested" when he contacted them about Kieran, who is one of the Crown's key witnesses against the defendants.
McCullough found that amazing because first of all, special prosecutor Bill Berardino had never disclosed the Preissell tip to the defence.
And second, because Preissell testified under oath that Kieran had threatened him over a planned public campaign against Gary Collins about Insurance Corporation of B.C. issues. Collins was minister responsible then and Preissell at that time was owner of an auto body and glass repair shop having "red tape" trouble with ICBC.
"The bottom line was he [Kieran] threatened me repeatedly and said if we didn't back off of Mr. Collins we wouldn't get what we wanted," Preissell alleged. "I was actually afraid, I was very afraid."
Preissell said that at the time of the threat in the spring of 2003 he was a member of a group of the Auto Glass Survival Coalition and that another industry group he had been involved with had hired Kieran as a lobbyist.
"Kieran offered to work for the Coalition for free to embarrass ICBC but not to embarrass the minister of finance," Preissell testified.
When I [Tieleman] contacted Kieran and read him Preissell's statement he declined comment. "As per the past three years, I've been advised by my attorney that I should wait until I'm in court to say my piece," said Kieran, a longtime Victoria political columnist for The Province newspaper before becoming a lobbyist.
Railroading and the RCMP
Preissell's surprise appearance was followed by another surprise appearance the next day. The Crown discovered extensive notes of the tip received by veteran RCMP Sergeant Bud Bishop. And Bishop himself showed up in court.
However by the time McCullough had read Bishop's notes, he was barely able to control his anger.
"You've been hearing me repeatedly talk about the failure of the Crown and the RCMP to disclose," he told Justice Bennett. "These are comprehensive notes about BC Rail. They're not just about Mr. Preissell. Sergeant Bishop's notes were never disclosed in any way, period."
"But for Mr. Preissell phoning us, we would never have pursued this at all," McCullough said heatedly. "The special prosecutor has not met his disclosure obligations whatsoever."
It then turned out that Bishop's notes were indeed a treasure trove of information that included references to other public tips and mention of current B.C. Liberal Forests Minister Rich Coleman and former B.C. Liberal Deputy Premier Christy Clark.
"These notes contain details of conversations Sergeant Bishop had with a Terry Fergusson," about BC Rail issues, McCullough continued. Fergusson, he said, "complained about a flawed process, that he complained to Christy Clark about, that he was talking to Mr. Virk about the very flawed processes that were going on."
"Four MLAs wrote Christy Clark [or] saw Coleman," McCullough read from Bishop's notes. "He left out that Mr. Fergusson was having dealings with Christy Clark and seeing Minister Coleman. That begins to tell you, milady, how the B.C. Liberal government is operating."
Christy Clark did not respond to a request to comment on statements attributed to Fergusson. It later turned out that Fergusson is executive director of the National Historical Railway Society, a group that sued BC Rail in 1998 over money it claimed was owed to it.
The missing notes didn't anger just McCullough. Justice Bennett had sharp words for the special prosecutor as well.
"You see the problem with this?" Bennett asked Janet Winteringham, assistant to special prosecutor Bill Berardino, who is absent from the hearing.
"Yes," Winteringham answered.
"As you probably know, I practiced criminal law for 15 years before moving to the bench 10 years ago. What you're telling me is troubling, that these disclosures are coming at this stage," Bennett concluded ... [there's more]
Click HERE for the full column.
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November 2005 ... April 2006 ... June 6, 2006 ... September 2006 ... October 2006 ... December 2006 ... February 2007 ... April 2007 ...
All but the last date are cancellations of the BC Rail trial. But April 30, 2007 was different: the day when the first witness was sworn in and the Basi Virk Basi Trial began ... an event which has suddenly taken on a massive significance.
That first witness was John Preissell (or Preissl) who had been President of the Auto-Glass Survival Coalition. It's not as if the RCMP or the Crown Prosecution had invited much less subpoenaed John Preissell. No, no, no, nothing like that. John Preissell was an outraged citizen who phoned the RCMP himself but, he said, they didn't seem very interested. So later, on a Sunday, he telephoned Kevin McCullough, lawyer for Bobby Virk, one of the accused.
That brings us to BC Supreme Court on April 30, 2007 when ... drum-roll please ... John Preissell walked in, was sworn in, took the witness stand and gave evidence on File #23299 - HMTQ v. Udhe Singh (Dave) Basi, Bobby Singh Virk, and Aneal Singh Basi.
The BC Rail Trial had left the station. Or did it?
If you ask me, I think we're expected to believe that it didn't leave the station ... that nothing happened, as in "Just keep movin' along, folks, ain't nuthin' to see here ..." But the following two news stories from that time, say otherwise. The Basi Virk Basi Trial did start on April 30, 2007 and here's the thing: because it started and is on record as having started, Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett is obliged to continue as presiding judge. Obliged to continue. Check the Criminal Code of Canada, Section 669.2 where it is very specific: only if a judge dies is she freed from her duty to complete a trial in progress. [See Madam Justice Bennett had another option for staying on the BC Rail case, posted on this blog August 19, 2009.]
The thing is, I do believe that somebody wants her gone. In the nicest possible way, of course. They're not quite issuing bulletins saying so, but on the other hand, they can send Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm into Madam Bennett's courtroom to "show leadership" as they say, by suggesting that he holds the power, not Bennett, the presiding judge. But that's not really true. The thing is: he signalled that she'd be gone.
Still and all, if you ask me, I don't think that Madam Justice Bennett, after a career of presiding over 300 criminal trials, is easily bullied. I think she's steady on her feet. Actually, I believe she hurled a neat little mortar of her own when she said that she'd resign from the BC Court of Appeal if she thought that necessary ... "if the trial's fairness would be affected by her decision," she said, if she "thought for a moment that it would be affected, she would resign from the court of appeal." Ha. Take that, Dohm-boy. She tossed another bomblet when she herself mentioned the testimony of John Pressell.
The chosen replacement is a judge who has presided over only 168 trials, few of them criminal trials. This echoes the mis-matched appointment of the Special Prosecutor on this very important criminal trial ... a Special Crown Prosecutor who in his long legal career has had very little experience in criminal trials. Bill Berardino, in my opinion, has done a poor job on the Basi Virk Basi trial.
Add all this up, and what have you got? Well, for one thing: remember that the Defence wanted Justice Bennett to stay on the BC Rail trial ... appealed for her stay stay on ... but the Crown Prosecutor (on our behalf) wanted her gone, and gone immediately.
Remember that there appears to be a very strong pattern of delay, delay, delay ... of forgetfulness, oops! and "the dog ate my e.mails". The fumbling could easily lead to a Charter Challenge and dismissal of the entire trial -- the worst possible result. Because if Basi, Virk and Basi are innocent, they would never have it proven under oath. The people of B.C. would never know why or how we lost a railway in the biggest privatization deal Canada has ever seen. Taxpayers would be stuck with everybody's legal costs for participating in a trial that eroded the public trust and made the judiciary look like dupes. Finally, the real perps would continue to prosper, as before.
I think that Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett is our best hope of changing that result into a positive outcome by getting the BC Rail Trial moving. - BC Mary.
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I hope that John Preissell feels a sense of satisfaction that he came forward with his story when it wasn't easy to do so. Congratulations to him for that. The Vancouver Sun story is HERE, about the successful conclusion of the efforts of the Auto Glass Survival Coalition against Speedy Auto Glass Cited for 'kickbacks', at least 5 officials conspired to defraud I.C.B.C., Vancouver Sun - Feb. 26, 2004. Preisell's testimony, given April 30, 2007, has taken on a whole new significance in the matter of the BC Rail trial, so I will post segments from two lengthy, informative reports from that time ...
Lobbyist protective of ex-minister, trial hears
TIMES COLONIST - MAY 1, 2007
Click HERE for the full column.
VANCOUVER -- The trial of two former provincial government aides accused of corruption heard its first witness testimony yesterday.
Defence lawyer Kevin McCullough told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Bennett that he had a phone call Sunday from a man who said he received a threatening phone call four years ago from a lobbyist involved in the B.C. Rail sale.
The lawyer then called to the witness stand John Preissell, who testified he received a call in May or June 2003 from former lobbyist Brian Kieran, who "threatened me three or four times" as a warning against embarrassing Gary Collins, then B.C. finance minister.
At the time, he recalled, he was representing a group called the Auto Glass Survival Coalition, which was upset over how one glass repair company was handling Insurance Corp. of B.C. claims.
He said the coalition planned to expose the chain's unfair tactics, which eventually made front-page news.
Preissell said Kieran "told me I could go to the media ... and embarrass ICBC, but not embarrass the finance minister."
At the time, Collins's portfolio included ICBC.
After the raid on the legislature on Dec. 28, 2003, Preissell said, he saw Kieran's name connected to that of Collins's former ministerial aide, Dave Basi, and contacted police to complain about the threats Kieran had made.
He recalled speaking to an RCMP sergeant named Lawson.
"I said he [Kieran] repeatedly threatened me to stay away from Collins," he testified.
But the officer didn't seem too interested and passed him along to another officer named Bud Bishop, who also did not seem interested, he added.
Kieran and Collins are expected to be key Crown witnesses at the trial.
Collins's lawyer, Clark Roberts, who is monitoring the proceedings, said yesterday he talked to Collins, who has no recollection of ever meeting Preissell.
Appearance of the surprise witness at the trial caught the prosecution off-guard.
Janet Winteringham, a lawyer with the prosecution team, had the judge stand the witness down until he returns later this week to be cross-examined.
Basi and Bob Virk are accused of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes from Kieran and his lobbyist partner, Erik Bornmann, in exchange for leaking confidential information about the B.C. Rail bidding process.
Basi's cousin, Aneal Basi, is accused of money laundering for allegedly accepting cheques from Bornmann and transferring money to Dave Basi.
At the time, Kieran and Bornmann were partners in the lobby firm Pilothouse, whose client was U.S.-based OmniTRAX, one of the three bidders for B.C. Rail.
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Wire tap said to tie Collins
Bill Tieleman
The Tyee - 4 May 2007
... But nothing [Defence lawyer, Kevin KcCullough] did could have helped his case more than an unexpected phone call he received on Sunday, April 29, from a man named John Preissell.
Preissell, it turns out, had contacted RCMP in January 2005 to offer information he had about the role of provincial lobbyist Brian Kieran in the case. And after speaking to McCullough, Preissell made a surprise appearance in the courtroom Monday to give evidence.
Preissell told the court in sworn testimony as the case's unscheduled and first witness that the RCMP "didn't seem too interested" when he contacted them about Kieran, who is one of the Crown's key witnesses against the defendants.
McCullough found that amazing because first of all, special prosecutor Bill Berardino had never disclosed the Preissell tip to the defence.
And second, because Preissell testified under oath that Kieran had threatened him over a planned public campaign against Gary Collins about Insurance Corporation of B.C. issues. Collins was minister responsible then and Preissell at that time was owner of an auto body and glass repair shop having "red tape" trouble with ICBC.
"The bottom line was he [Kieran] threatened me repeatedly and said if we didn't back off of Mr. Collins we wouldn't get what we wanted," Preissell alleged. "I was actually afraid, I was very afraid."
Preissell said that at the time of the threat in the spring of 2003 he was a member of a group of the Auto Glass Survival Coalition and that another industry group he had been involved with had hired Kieran as a lobbyist.
"Kieran offered to work for the Coalition for free to embarrass ICBC but not to embarrass the minister of finance," Preissell testified.
When I [Tieleman] contacted Kieran and read him Preissell's statement he declined comment. "As per the past three years, I've been advised by my attorney that I should wait until I'm in court to say my piece," said Kieran, a longtime Victoria political columnist for The Province newspaper before becoming a lobbyist.
Railroading and the RCMP
Preissell's surprise appearance was followed by another surprise appearance the next day. The Crown discovered extensive notes of the tip received by veteran RCMP Sergeant Bud Bishop. And Bishop himself showed up in court.
However by the time McCullough had read Bishop's notes, he was barely able to control his anger.
"You've been hearing me repeatedly talk about the failure of the Crown and the RCMP to disclose," he told Justice Bennett. "These are comprehensive notes about BC Rail. They're not just about Mr. Preissell. Sergeant Bishop's notes were never disclosed in any way, period."
"But for Mr. Preissell phoning us, we would never have pursued this at all," McCullough said heatedly. "The special prosecutor has not met his disclosure obligations whatsoever."
It then turned out that Bishop's notes were indeed a treasure trove of information that included references to other public tips and mention of current B.C. Liberal Forests Minister Rich Coleman and former B.C. Liberal Deputy Premier Christy Clark.
"These notes contain details of conversations Sergeant Bishop had with a Terry Fergusson," about BC Rail issues, McCullough continued. Fergusson, he said, "complained about a flawed process, that he complained to Christy Clark about, that he was talking to Mr. Virk about the very flawed processes that were going on."
"Four MLAs wrote Christy Clark [or] saw Coleman," McCullough read from Bishop's notes. "He left out that Mr. Fergusson was having dealings with Christy Clark and seeing Minister Coleman. That begins to tell you, milady, how the B.C. Liberal government is operating."
Christy Clark did not respond to a request to comment on statements attributed to Fergusson. It later turned out that Fergusson is executive director of the National Historical Railway Society, a group that sued BC Rail in 1998 over money it claimed was owed to it.
The missing notes didn't anger just McCullough. Justice Bennett had sharp words for the special prosecutor as well.
"You see the problem with this?" Bennett asked Janet Winteringham, assistant to special prosecutor Bill Berardino, who is absent from the hearing.
"Yes," Winteringham answered.
"As you probably know, I practiced criminal law for 15 years before moving to the bench 10 years ago. What you're telling me is troubling, that these disclosures are coming at this stage," Bennett concluded ... [there's more]
Click HERE for the full column.
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Monday, August 24, 2009
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett
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Reprinted from The Legislature Raids - May 31, 2007
As I came across the following personal description of Judge Bennett, I thought others might also be interested in knowing a little bit more about the person who is so important to us in the matter of HMTQ vs Basi Virk Basi. So first, some of her basic credentials:
August 28, 1997 -- The Honourable Anne McLellan, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, today announced the following appointment:
Elizabeth A. Bennett, Q.C., of North Vancouver, is appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Madam Justice Bennett graduated in law from the University of British Columbia in 1981, and was called to the Bar of British Columbia in 1982.
Madam Justice Bennett practised law as trial counsel for the Attorney General of B.C. until 1987 and then as Appellate Counsel until 1994. She then joined the firm of Peck, Tammen and Bennett, where she mainly practised criminal law and constitutional law. Since 1996, Madam Justice Bennett has been acting as Appellate Counsel for the Attorney General of B.C. Madam Justice Bennett is the author of numerous publications on criminal law matters.
And now, here's Judi Tyabji Wilson's assessment of Judge Bennett in court on June 28, 2002, when listening to final arguments at the end of the 8-month trial of former premier Glen Clark (who was acquitted, btw):
The judge looked less tired than previously. Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett appeared to be in her late 30s. She was attractive, with an almost shoulder-length cut of thick dark hair. And she had a dimple when she smiled, which was rare. Her dark eyes followed everything in the trial, and her forehead often creased in a thoughtful frown as she processed the information presented to her. Her patience had been obvious in many instances and her written presentations on rulings throughout the trial were thorough, intellectual, and full of legal references ...
Judge Bennett had to be looking forward to the end of the trial, but she gave no indication of her feelings, remaining as stern as ever. She was very careful and very good at her job. She looked like she could clean up in a poker match. At one point, [David] Gibbons [leading defence lawyer] made a joke and everyone laughed, including Bennett. She looked so much younger when she smiled, and very playful. It was as if a mask had slipped, but it had slipped briefly, and she resumed her professional air. Sometimes there was a hint that she had a good sense of humour but clearly she liked to have a controlled, professional atmosphere in the courtroom. Too much humour, or too much posturing, was discouraged by the occasional comment from the judge's seat. Otherwise, she rarely interrupted.
[Daggers Unsheathed, the political assassination of Glen Clark, by Judi Tyabji Wilson, excerpted from pages 265-266.]
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We're still trying to find information which will serve to introduce Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie. - BC Mary.
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Reprinted from The Legislature Raids - May 31, 2007
As I came across the following personal description of Judge Bennett, I thought others might also be interested in knowing a little bit more about the person who is so important to us in the matter of HMTQ vs Basi Virk Basi. So first, some of her basic credentials:
August 28, 1997 -- The Honourable Anne McLellan, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, today announced the following appointment:
Elizabeth A. Bennett, Q.C., of North Vancouver, is appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Madam Justice Bennett graduated in law from the University of British Columbia in 1981, and was called to the Bar of British Columbia in 1982.
Madam Justice Bennett practised law as trial counsel for the Attorney General of B.C. until 1987 and then as Appellate Counsel until 1994. She then joined the firm of Peck, Tammen and Bennett, where she mainly practised criminal law and constitutional law. Since 1996, Madam Justice Bennett has been acting as Appellate Counsel for the Attorney General of B.C. Madam Justice Bennett is the author of numerous publications on criminal law matters.
And now, here's Judi Tyabji Wilson's assessment of Judge Bennett in court on June 28, 2002, when listening to final arguments at the end of the 8-month trial of former premier Glen Clark (who was acquitted, btw):
The judge looked less tired than previously. Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett appeared to be in her late 30s. She was attractive, with an almost shoulder-length cut of thick dark hair. And she had a dimple when she smiled, which was rare. Her dark eyes followed everything in the trial, and her forehead often creased in a thoughtful frown as she processed the information presented to her. Her patience had been obvious in many instances and her written presentations on rulings throughout the trial were thorough, intellectual, and full of legal references ...
Judge Bennett had to be looking forward to the end of the trial, but she gave no indication of her feelings, remaining as stern as ever. She was very careful and very good at her job. She looked like she could clean up in a poker match. At one point, [David] Gibbons [leading defence lawyer] made a joke and everyone laughed, including Bennett. She looked so much younger when she smiled, and very playful. It was as if a mask had slipped, but it had slipped briefly, and she resumed her professional air. Sometimes there was a hint that she had a good sense of humour but clearly she liked to have a controlled, professional atmosphere in the courtroom. Too much humour, or too much posturing, was discouraged by the occasional comment from the judge's seat. Otherwise, she rarely interrupted.
[Daggers Unsheathed, the political assassination of Glen Clark, by Judi Tyabji Wilson, excerpted from pages 265-266.]
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We're still trying to find information which will serve to introduce Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie. - BC Mary.
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Sunday, August 23, 2009
BC Rail: There is no question in my mind that she should not be leaving. It is insane, unnecessary, a disgrace, says Robin Mathews
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British Columbia: The BC Rail Scandal. Crime in high places. An on-going, semi-public rape of democratic institutions. Part One.
Robin Mathews
August 23, 2009
The B.C. RCMP, the Crown, and the cabinet of Gordon Campbell believe there has been crime in high places concerning the “sale” of BC Rail. Fourteen criminal charges of fraud, breach of trust, and money laundering rest against two top cabinet aides and a government communications officer – the now internationally famous three. Dave Basi, Bobby Virk, and Aneal Basi.
They are accused of leaking information about the sale of BC Rail to Pilothouse Communications, lobbyist for alleged competitor of CN Rail, Omnitrax. The men’s actions allegedly involved gifts, bribery, money laundering, in the years between 2001 and 2004, years of the preparation for and final dumping of BC Rail, and the completed RCMP investigations into “wrong-doing”.
Very early huge cracks in the case yawned as Defence counsel set to preparing its case. The sale of BC Rail seemed a faked operation, to start. CPR, an early bidder, publicly claimed a soiled process, and withdrew. Others, too, detected the omnipresence of and special treatment accorded CN Rail.
Large numbers of people, it is alleged, constructed a false case for the sale of BC Rail. Some, it is claimed, manipulated the books to declare BC Rail a money loser. Controlling power in cabinet, evidence suggests, picked CN as winner long before the bidding/sale process had even begun, suggesting the whole bidding process was a manipulated sham. The “sale”, it is said, was misrepresented as a “partnership”. Cabinet offices apparently engaged in a wholesale public boondoggle as part of a large, concerted process architected to pass the provincially-owned BC Rail to the (now Texas headquartered) CN Rail for something less than a song.
Almost immediately after the now-famous search warrant “raids” (Dec. 28, 2003) on offices located in the legislature from which stores of files, hard drives, and other material were taken (and before they could be examined) police announced that no elected officials were or would be under investigation (?).
All wrong-doing in the matter, the public was assured, was located in the three accused: Basi, Virk, and Basi.
In more than three years of pre-trial hearings (still proceeding) the large social ills named at the beginning of this piece were first hinted at, and now they scream from the courtroom walls. A hardening question grows in the minds of many serious observers. “Are top names in B.C. criminally guilty?” “Can they block and cover in court forever?” So far unlimited pools of public money spent on the case seem to make “block and cover” possible.
Two vitally related matters are involved. They reveal much: (1) the selection of a new “trial judge” for the Basi, Virk, and Basi case. (2) The relation of the BC Rail Scandal to the normal (corrupt) policies of the Gordon Campbell group - its wholesale betrayal of British Columbians. We deal with (1), Part One here.
The replacing of the Honourable Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett by another judge (whoever) in the matter of the accusations against Basi, Virk, and Basi is – to many reasonable people – unnecessary, insane, and a disgrace.
The process by which the change has come about is not only unnecessary and insane. It is also darkly suspicious. The insanity of the move suggests the staggering insensitivity to public wishes increasingly characteristic of B.C. Higher Court operations. It suggests, moreover, forces at work almost wholly uninterested in justice being done – and being seen to be done. It suggests more – none of it good.
The BC Rail Scandal and the criminal accusations arising out of it join an expanding circle of suspicion falling upon some of the most highly placed people in political life in B.C. The result of the combination is the most important political scandal and public criminal trial in British Columbia history. It is the most important, first, because it openly and publicly concerns accusations against top working aides to major cabinet ministers.
It is most important, in addition, because it locates those accusations within a scandalous and probably fraudulent sell-off of a major British Columbia asset – BC Rail – owned by the people of British Columbia. That allegedly fraudulent sale (parts of it still secret five years after the “sale”) fits a pattern of alleged breaches of trust by the Gordon Campbell government that is of gigantic proportions.
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett has presided over the pre-trial hearings for more than three years - hearing Defence applications, listening to Crown arguments and explanations for delay, living the real, unfolding investigation into wrong-doing She has pored over endless documents and has become familiar with almost all aspects of the case. Not at all outstanding in her role, in my estimation, she is, however, now best able to proceed to trial – and she should do so.
To my mind – with respect – she has not been outstanding for clear and visible reasons. (1) She has permitted delay – and even seeming obstruction – by an RCMP increasingly under suspicion of political bias and procedural incompetence in B.C.
She has (2) suffered (and supported) a system far, far short of what may be termed a reasonably “open court” process. In fact, she has done almost nothing to assure availability of material on public record to members of the public.
The enormity of the probable malefactions in the case and their possible location at the highest levels of government made it absolutely essential that she do everything in her power to assure a constant flow of information from the court to the people of B.C. She has done, as I see the matter, almost nothing.
Her own utterances in court, in addition, (3) are often not clearly spoken, nor are the utterances of many others who appear before her. Despite complaints made to her directly, she has done nothing in more than three years to improve the simple matter of clear utterance by providing an effective speaker system in the court. Her reaction on this matter alone has been puzzling, almost as if she has almost open contempt for the public – which, ultimately, she serves.
In a case carrying the huge importance of this one, every day of hearing [public occasions in “open” court], should be available in printed transcript by the next morning, at the very least. Instead, ANY request to Justice Bennett for information on public record has usually led into a tangle and a labyrinth which constitute a disgrace to the legal system in Canada. Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett has supported that punitive and repressive system without let-up.
She has, too, in my judgement, (4) “catered” to the wishes of the Special Crown Prosecutor, failing, consistently, to react to delay, to his withholding of essential materials, even to - what appear to me to be – manipulations on his part.
William Berardino is alleged to have been, at one time, in some kind of business relation with Geoff Plant, the Attorney General at the time of Berardino’s appointment as Special Crown Prosecutor. That category (SCP) was created to assure the complete objectivity and impartiality of Crown prosecutors in cases connecting to government officials.
If Mr. Berardino did have the connection alleged, he cannot – without suspicion – fill the role he occupies. I wrote to Madam Justice Bennett asking what review process exists generally of such appointments and what review the presiding judge conducts of Special Crown Prosecutorial appointments. She would not even acknowledge – or have acknowledged – my letter to her.
Her apparent arrogance in that matter describes, I think, the reason she must be described as something less than outstanding in her role as presiding judge. Overall, as I have observed her years presiding at the most important criminal trial in B.C. history – involving the very legitimacy of the government of the province - I cannot say she has, in my judgement, risen to the demands made upon her by the facts of the case.
At this moment she has just refused a second Defence request to subpoena government employees who are attempting to recover computer records, apparently (and alarmingly) erased at the behest of the Campbell cabinet. When the dramatic announcement was first made of the destruction of probably key e-mail records, she should have acted at once to have ALL those involved immediately cross-examined, I believe. For the most obvious of reasons….
Experts across the country, apparently, were astonished at the erasure of records. In the light of conditions in B.C. especially, speedy cross-examination was highly desirable. Her attitude appears to be and to have been that the situation is unfortunate but in no way remarkable. And so no special action is required.
On the second occasion when Defence asked to examine people involved in the apparent recovery attempt, Madam Justice Bennett (August 21) said that the civil servants have been extremely thorough and were working hard to comply with court orders. To cross-examine them, she said, would be “a complete waste of time”.
With the greatest respect, I beg to differ.
At this stage in the more than three year game of “block and cover” with the Gordon Campbell forces, her ingenuousness is very difficult to take seriously.
Her replacement by a new “trial judge” is freighted with suspicion. How is it possible, observers ask, that the court system could pluck – in the midst of the most important public criminal trial in B.C. history – the judge from the case on the pretext that she has been appointed to and is needed in the Appeal Court division in the same building? How is it possible that – if deserving promotion – she could be appointed to the Appeal Court without the clear statement that she must first complete the case involving Basi, Virk, and Basi?
Does anyone in British Columbia fool himself or herself enough to believe that Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett must go, without much delay, to the Appeal Court?
Her removal is clouded by Defence lawyer Michael Bolton’s statement – more than once – that a decision to move from the case rested wholly with Justice Bennett. Is is clouded by sections in the code (669.2, 669.3) which suggest AN OBLIGATION (as I read them) to complete a trial. It is clouded, further, by Madam Justice Bennett’s action in taking testimony from witness John Preissel during pre-trial hearings, suggesting she has engaged in “trial activity” already.
Public reports are that she has “recused herself” (a bastard use of the word “recuse”) – has, herself, stepped down. She has not, in the correct use of the word “recuse”, left the case because “unqualified” to act. She has apparently stepped aside for her own pleasure, feeling no responsibility in the matter to law, to justice, or to the people of British Columbia.
Even that reading, however, is clouded. For we semi-permanent sitters in her court remember perfectly the strange, uncomfortable appearance of Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm to “entertain” a motion from Special Crown Prosecutor William Berardino to have Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett removed from the case before trial. (There was, apparently, a motion by Defence counsel that she stay.)
The appearance of Mr. Dohm was – as I judged it – embarrassing buffoonery. If Madam Justice Bennett was free to choose whether to stay or go, what was Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm doing in the court, swaggering and affecting power?
Asked by Mr. Dohm about his motion to have Madam Justice Bennett removed, Mr. Berardino gave two reasons of embarrassing irrelevance. When he said that Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett couldn’t be in two places at once, Mr. Dohm fell upon that vapid statement as if it were a major and relevant insight. Mr. Dohm was quieter when Mr. Berardino seemed to suggest, secondly, that the whole pre-trial hearings process had been (to his dismay) inadequate. An astonishing claim.
That was a statement of such bold effrontery that Defence could not remain silent. Kevin McCullough was on his feet to describe the quality, as he saw it, of pre-trial inadequacy (almost all on the shoulders of William Berardino).
Seeing (it seemed to me) that a hurricane list of Berardino inadequacies was about to fall into the record, Mr. Dohm stopped all discourse. He had accidentally, it seemed to me, opened the floodgates. But he closed them as fast as he could. Not, however, before observers in the gallery were witness to what seemed to me to be a transparent piece of chicanery.
Mr. Dohm announced that he would be back – to report the newly appointed judge and apparently to tuck Madam Justice Bennett into a steamer trunk for delivery to the Appeal Court.
Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm has never returned….
The little piece of amateur theatre we were subjected to on that day a few months ago opens yawning canyons of uncertainty. Is Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm working, out of bias, for a party in the BC Rail Scandal? Did he and Mr. Berardino work to put pressure on Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett to leave the Basi, Virk, and Basi matter? Why did the Special Crown Prosecutor (who is concerned above all with a fair trial) want Madam Justice Bennett removed? Why did Mr. Dohm choose to posture and parade in that courtroom? Why did he say he would be back? Did he not know the law, or did he believe he was above it?
Has Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett felt extreme pressure to leave the Basi, Virk, and Basi matter? Was the appearance of Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm in her courtroom the tip of the iceberg of pressure upon her to leave? His words in the courtroom led most there to understand, I believe, that he was announcing she would leave the case, as a decision made beyond her own powers.
There is no question in my mind that she should not be leaving. There is no question in my mind that her decision to go – I say this with the greatest respect – reveals the height of judicial irresponsibility.
Her leaving not only scrambles the continuity of the most important public criminal trial in BC history. It also adds hugely to the cost. Casually, apparently, Madam Justice Bennett instructed Crown and Defence counsel “to prepare summaries of what has taken place and their positions for the incoming judge to help him or her get up to speed”. (Ian Mulgrew, Vanc Sun, Aug 18 09 A4)
“… get up to speed”.
At taxpayers’ expense Crown and Defence counsel must write impossible “summaries” over what must be days and days of high-cost (unnecessary) work. And more will be demanded of them, for the replacement - Madam Justice Anne Mackenzie - may not soon, or ever, “get up to speed”.
That, too, may be part of a plan in a province rife with corruption where the Higher Courts are, I suggest, in coma.
In the highly charged atmosphere surrounding the Basi, Virk, and Basi case the presiding judge, I say – alone richly familiar with the highly complex matter – cannot leave without commanding reason. And there is no commanding reason. Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett affects to be making a change of no special significance. If she really believes that, then she is signalling – at best – the triviality of her understanding of law and the courts. Or she is masking a piece of manipulation over which she has, in fact, no power.
If that last is the case, the replacing of Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett is all of a piece with the ever-burgeoning breakdown of law, order, and democratic institutions in British Columbia.
[Part Two to come: The BC Rail Scandal in the pattern of Campbell government sell-out of BC wealth.]
For: Vive le Canada.
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British Columbia: The BC Rail Scandal. Crime in high places. An on-going, semi-public rape of democratic institutions. Part One.
Robin Mathews
August 23, 2009
The B.C. RCMP, the Crown, and the cabinet of Gordon Campbell believe there has been crime in high places concerning the “sale” of BC Rail. Fourteen criminal charges of fraud, breach of trust, and money laundering rest against two top cabinet aides and a government communications officer – the now internationally famous three. Dave Basi, Bobby Virk, and Aneal Basi.
They are accused of leaking information about the sale of BC Rail to Pilothouse Communications, lobbyist for alleged competitor of CN Rail, Omnitrax. The men’s actions allegedly involved gifts, bribery, money laundering, in the years between 2001 and 2004, years of the preparation for and final dumping of BC Rail, and the completed RCMP investigations into “wrong-doing”.
Very early huge cracks in the case yawned as Defence counsel set to preparing its case. The sale of BC Rail seemed a faked operation, to start. CPR, an early bidder, publicly claimed a soiled process, and withdrew. Others, too, detected the omnipresence of and special treatment accorded CN Rail.
Large numbers of people, it is alleged, constructed a false case for the sale of BC Rail. Some, it is claimed, manipulated the books to declare BC Rail a money loser. Controlling power in cabinet, evidence suggests, picked CN as winner long before the bidding/sale process had even begun, suggesting the whole bidding process was a manipulated sham. The “sale”, it is said, was misrepresented as a “partnership”. Cabinet offices apparently engaged in a wholesale public boondoggle as part of a large, concerted process architected to pass the provincially-owned BC Rail to the (now Texas headquartered) CN Rail for something less than a song.
Almost immediately after the now-famous search warrant “raids” (Dec. 28, 2003) on offices located in the legislature from which stores of files, hard drives, and other material were taken (and before they could be examined) police announced that no elected officials were or would be under investigation (?).
All wrong-doing in the matter, the public was assured, was located in the three accused: Basi, Virk, and Basi.
In more than three years of pre-trial hearings (still proceeding) the large social ills named at the beginning of this piece were first hinted at, and now they scream from the courtroom walls. A hardening question grows in the minds of many serious observers. “Are top names in B.C. criminally guilty?” “Can they block and cover in court forever?” So far unlimited pools of public money spent on the case seem to make “block and cover” possible.
Two vitally related matters are involved. They reveal much: (1) the selection of a new “trial judge” for the Basi, Virk, and Basi case. (2) The relation of the BC Rail Scandal to the normal (corrupt) policies of the Gordon Campbell group - its wholesale betrayal of British Columbians. We deal with (1), Part One here.
The replacing of the Honourable Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett by another judge (whoever) in the matter of the accusations against Basi, Virk, and Basi is – to many reasonable people – unnecessary, insane, and a disgrace.
The process by which the change has come about is not only unnecessary and insane. It is also darkly suspicious. The insanity of the move suggests the staggering insensitivity to public wishes increasingly characteristic of B.C. Higher Court operations. It suggests, moreover, forces at work almost wholly uninterested in justice being done – and being seen to be done. It suggests more – none of it good.
The BC Rail Scandal and the criminal accusations arising out of it join an expanding circle of suspicion falling upon some of the most highly placed people in political life in B.C. The result of the combination is the most important political scandal and public criminal trial in British Columbia history. It is the most important, first, because it openly and publicly concerns accusations against top working aides to major cabinet ministers.
It is most important, in addition, because it locates those accusations within a scandalous and probably fraudulent sell-off of a major British Columbia asset – BC Rail – owned by the people of British Columbia. That allegedly fraudulent sale (parts of it still secret five years after the “sale”) fits a pattern of alleged breaches of trust by the Gordon Campbell government that is of gigantic proportions.
Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett has presided over the pre-trial hearings for more than three years - hearing Defence applications, listening to Crown arguments and explanations for delay, living the real, unfolding investigation into wrong-doing She has pored over endless documents and has become familiar with almost all aspects of the case. Not at all outstanding in her role, in my estimation, she is, however, now best able to proceed to trial – and she should do so.
To my mind – with respect – she has not been outstanding for clear and visible reasons. (1) She has permitted delay – and even seeming obstruction – by an RCMP increasingly under suspicion of political bias and procedural incompetence in B.C.
She has (2) suffered (and supported) a system far, far short of what may be termed a reasonably “open court” process. In fact, she has done almost nothing to assure availability of material on public record to members of the public.
The enormity of the probable malefactions in the case and their possible location at the highest levels of government made it absolutely essential that she do everything in her power to assure a constant flow of information from the court to the people of B.C. She has done, as I see the matter, almost nothing.
Her own utterances in court, in addition, (3) are often not clearly spoken, nor are the utterances of many others who appear before her. Despite complaints made to her directly, she has done nothing in more than three years to improve the simple matter of clear utterance by providing an effective speaker system in the court. Her reaction on this matter alone has been puzzling, almost as if she has almost open contempt for the public – which, ultimately, she serves.
In a case carrying the huge importance of this one, every day of hearing [public occasions in “open” court], should be available in printed transcript by the next morning, at the very least. Instead, ANY request to Justice Bennett for information on public record has usually led into a tangle and a labyrinth which constitute a disgrace to the legal system in Canada. Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett has supported that punitive and repressive system without let-up.
She has, too, in my judgement, (4) “catered” to the wishes of the Special Crown Prosecutor, failing, consistently, to react to delay, to his withholding of essential materials, even to - what appear to me to be – manipulations on his part.
William Berardino is alleged to have been, at one time, in some kind of business relation with Geoff Plant, the Attorney General at the time of Berardino’s appointment as Special Crown Prosecutor. That category (SCP) was created to assure the complete objectivity and impartiality of Crown prosecutors in cases connecting to government officials.
If Mr. Berardino did have the connection alleged, he cannot – without suspicion – fill the role he occupies. I wrote to Madam Justice Bennett asking what review process exists generally of such appointments and what review the presiding judge conducts of Special Crown Prosecutorial appointments. She would not even acknowledge – or have acknowledged – my letter to her.
Her apparent arrogance in that matter describes, I think, the reason she must be described as something less than outstanding in her role as presiding judge. Overall, as I have observed her years presiding at the most important criminal trial in B.C. history – involving the very legitimacy of the government of the province - I cannot say she has, in my judgement, risen to the demands made upon her by the facts of the case.
At this moment she has just refused a second Defence request to subpoena government employees who are attempting to recover computer records, apparently (and alarmingly) erased at the behest of the Campbell cabinet. When the dramatic announcement was first made of the destruction of probably key e-mail records, she should have acted at once to have ALL those involved immediately cross-examined, I believe. For the most obvious of reasons….
Experts across the country, apparently, were astonished at the erasure of records. In the light of conditions in B.C. especially, speedy cross-examination was highly desirable. Her attitude appears to be and to have been that the situation is unfortunate but in no way remarkable. And so no special action is required.
On the second occasion when Defence asked to examine people involved in the apparent recovery attempt, Madam Justice Bennett (August 21) said that the civil servants have been extremely thorough and were working hard to comply with court orders. To cross-examine them, she said, would be “a complete waste of time”.
With the greatest respect, I beg to differ.
At this stage in the more than three year game of “block and cover” with the Gordon Campbell forces, her ingenuousness is very difficult to take seriously.
Her replacement by a new “trial judge” is freighted with suspicion. How is it possible, observers ask, that the court system could pluck – in the midst of the most important public criminal trial in B.C. history – the judge from the case on the pretext that she has been appointed to and is needed in the Appeal Court division in the same building? How is it possible that – if deserving promotion – she could be appointed to the Appeal Court without the clear statement that she must first complete the case involving Basi, Virk, and Basi?
Does anyone in British Columbia fool himself or herself enough to believe that Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett must go, without much delay, to the Appeal Court?
Her removal is clouded by Defence lawyer Michael Bolton’s statement – more than once – that a decision to move from the case rested wholly with Justice Bennett. Is is clouded by sections in the code (669.2, 669.3) which suggest AN OBLIGATION (as I read them) to complete a trial. It is clouded, further, by Madam Justice Bennett’s action in taking testimony from witness John Preissel during pre-trial hearings, suggesting she has engaged in “trial activity” already.
Public reports are that she has “recused herself” (a bastard use of the word “recuse”) – has, herself, stepped down. She has not, in the correct use of the word “recuse”, left the case because “unqualified” to act. She has apparently stepped aside for her own pleasure, feeling no responsibility in the matter to law, to justice, or to the people of British Columbia.
Even that reading, however, is clouded. For we semi-permanent sitters in her court remember perfectly the strange, uncomfortable appearance of Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm to “entertain” a motion from Special Crown Prosecutor William Berardino to have Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett removed from the case before trial. (There was, apparently, a motion by Defence counsel that she stay.)
The appearance of Mr. Dohm was – as I judged it – embarrassing buffoonery. If Madam Justice Bennett was free to choose whether to stay or go, what was Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm doing in the court, swaggering and affecting power?
Asked by Mr. Dohm about his motion to have Madam Justice Bennett removed, Mr. Berardino gave two reasons of embarrassing irrelevance. When he said that Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett couldn’t be in two places at once, Mr. Dohm fell upon that vapid statement as if it were a major and relevant insight. Mr. Dohm was quieter when Mr. Berardino seemed to suggest, secondly, that the whole pre-trial hearings process had been (to his dismay) inadequate. An astonishing claim.
That was a statement of such bold effrontery that Defence could not remain silent. Kevin McCullough was on his feet to describe the quality, as he saw it, of pre-trial inadequacy (almost all on the shoulders of William Berardino).
Seeing (it seemed to me) that a hurricane list of Berardino inadequacies was about to fall into the record, Mr. Dohm stopped all discourse. He had accidentally, it seemed to me, opened the floodgates. But he closed them as fast as he could. Not, however, before observers in the gallery were witness to what seemed to me to be a transparent piece of chicanery.
Mr. Dohm announced that he would be back – to report the newly appointed judge and apparently to tuck Madam Justice Bennett into a steamer trunk for delivery to the Appeal Court.
Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm has never returned….
The little piece of amateur theatre we were subjected to on that day a few months ago opens yawning canyons of uncertainty. Is Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm working, out of bias, for a party in the BC Rail Scandal? Did he and Mr. Berardino work to put pressure on Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett to leave the Basi, Virk, and Basi matter? Why did the Special Crown Prosecutor (who is concerned above all with a fair trial) want Madam Justice Bennett removed? Why did Mr. Dohm choose to posture and parade in that courtroom? Why did he say he would be back? Did he not know the law, or did he believe he was above it?
Has Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett felt extreme pressure to leave the Basi, Virk, and Basi matter? Was the appearance of Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm in her courtroom the tip of the iceberg of pressure upon her to leave? His words in the courtroom led most there to understand, I believe, that he was announcing she would leave the case, as a decision made beyond her own powers.
There is no question in my mind that she should not be leaving. There is no question in my mind that her decision to go – I say this with the greatest respect – reveals the height of judicial irresponsibility.
Her leaving not only scrambles the continuity of the most important public criminal trial in BC history. It also adds hugely to the cost. Casually, apparently, Madam Justice Bennett instructed Crown and Defence counsel “to prepare summaries of what has taken place and their positions for the incoming judge to help him or her get up to speed”. (Ian Mulgrew, Vanc Sun, Aug 18 09 A4)
“… get up to speed”.
At taxpayers’ expense Crown and Defence counsel must write impossible “summaries” over what must be days and days of high-cost (unnecessary) work. And more will be demanded of them, for the replacement - Madam Justice Anne Mackenzie - may not soon, or ever, “get up to speed”.
That, too, may be part of a plan in a province rife with corruption where the Higher Courts are, I suggest, in coma.
In the highly charged atmosphere surrounding the Basi, Virk, and Basi case the presiding judge, I say – alone richly familiar with the highly complex matter – cannot leave without commanding reason. And there is no commanding reason. Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett affects to be making a change of no special significance. If she really believes that, then she is signalling – at best – the triviality of her understanding of law and the courts. Or she is masking a piece of manipulation over which she has, in fact, no power.
If that last is the case, the replacing of Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett is all of a piece with the ever-burgeoning breakdown of law, order, and democratic institutions in British Columbia.
[Part Two to come: The BC Rail Scandal in the pattern of Campbell government sell-out of BC wealth.]
For: Vive le Canada.
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Saturday, August 22, 2009
Back in the BC Rail days ... there were 4, 5, even 6 trains a day as well as a passenger line
.
Posted 2009/08/17 in comments following a CBC Story
Judge in BC Rail Trial steps down
CaribooRose wrote:
Something I find endlessly fascinating (not!) is the lack of trains ... I live right close to it ... back in the BC Rail days, there were 4, 5 or even 6 trains a day ... as well, there was a passenger line going north 3 days a week, going south 3 days a week, then no passenger train at all on Tuesdays.
Further, if ever I noticed sparks coming off a wheel, I'd call a 1-800 number which BC Rail suggested I use, and was sincerely thanked each time I called.
The first (and only) time I attempted to report wheel-sparks to CN, I had to make four or five attempts to finally reach the correct number (not toll free) ... the employee said, "And what am I supposed to do about that?" Well? Fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, then FIX IT!
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That was BC Rail ... our railway. And that's Cariboo Rose. Yes sir.
There are other strong, pro-BC Rail comments on this CBC report -- well worth a visit -- click HERE to see a province beginning to boil. Also in the top right corner of the CBC page is the link to a 4-min. video of Dave Basi's lawyer, Michael Bolton, answering journalists' questions about those vanishing e.mails. Recommended. - BC Mary.
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Posted 2009/08/17 in comments following a CBC Story
Judge in BC Rail Trial steps down
CaribooRose wrote:
Something I find endlessly fascinating (not!) is the lack of trains ... I live right close to it ... back in the BC Rail days, there were 4, 5 or even 6 trains a day ... as well, there was a passenger line going north 3 days a week, going south 3 days a week, then no passenger train at all on Tuesdays.
Further, if ever I noticed sparks coming off a wheel, I'd call a 1-800 number which BC Rail suggested I use, and was sincerely thanked each time I called.
The first (and only) time I attempted to report wheel-sparks to CN, I had to make four or five attempts to finally reach the correct number (not toll free) ... the employee said, "And what am I supposed to do about that?" Well? Fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, then FIX IT!
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That was BC Rail ... our railway. And that's Cariboo Rose. Yes sir.
There are other strong, pro-BC Rail comments on this CBC report -- well worth a visit -- click HERE to see a province beginning to boil. Also in the top right corner of the CBC page is the link to a 4-min. video of Dave Basi's lawyer, Michael Bolton, answering journalists' questions about those vanishing e.mails. Recommended. - BC Mary.
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Friday, August 21, 2009
Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie
New Supreme Court Justice on Basi Virk Basi / BC Rail trial.
I thought it would be easy to find a simple biography of Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie but like so much else, such is not the case. So far, I've only found that Mary Anne MacKenzie was born in Vancouver in 1983 to parents who were lawyers (her mother was Madam Justice Anne Winter). Is this the correct Anne MacKenzie? I don't think so. Or maybe the 1983 is a clerical error ... or maybe it's Anne W. MacKenzie ...
The most interesting info. came in the form of a book review. Canadian Criminal Jury Instructions (CRIMJI) 4th ed., ISBN 1-55258-456-9, published Sept. 1, 2008 @ $350. a copy with CD updates is "the source of jury instructions and law that the bench and bar have turned to." Where Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett was one of the 3 authors, Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie was one of the 8 members of the editorial board.
There's more detail if you click HERE. [But this link has gone dead, since yesterday. This is beginning to feel weird. - BC Mary.]
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I thought it would be easy to find a simple biography of Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie but like so much else, such is not the case. So far, I've only found that Mary Anne MacKenzie was born in Vancouver in 1983 to parents who were lawyers (her mother was Madam Justice Anne Winter). Is this the correct Anne MacKenzie? I don't think so. Or maybe the 1983 is a clerical error ... or maybe it's Anne W. MacKenzie ...
The most interesting info. came in the form of a book review. Canadian Criminal Jury Instructions (CRIMJI) 4th ed., ISBN 1-55258-456-9, published Sept. 1, 2008 @ $350. a copy with CD updates is "the source of jury instructions and law that the bench and bar have turned to." Where Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett was one of the 3 authors, Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie was one of the 8 members of the editorial board.
There's more detail if you click HERE. [But this link has gone dead, since yesterday. This is beginning to feel weird. - BC Mary.]
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August 22 press clippings from BC Rail hearings
.
Kinsella a crucial figure in Basi-Virk trial
Defence wants answers to simple 'what did you know' question from top BC Liberal operative
By Ian Mulgrew
Vancouver Sun - August 22, 2009
Patrick Kinsella -- confidante of premier and prime ministers -- should be subpoenaed in the prosecution of three former provincial Liberal ministerial aides because he was pivotal in the $1-billion BC Rail privatization, defence lawyers say.
They want the vaunted Vancouver consultant -- who received almost $300,000 from the Crown corporation for his savvy between 2002 and 2005 -- to explain his role in the divestiture and why he appeared to be working simultaneously for successful bidder CN Rail.
Notes from two key Crown witnesses, along with wiretaps and e-mails among corporate and political insiders, according to the lawyers, support their contentions and make it imperative the B.C. Supreme Court order Kinsella to answer questions since he has refused to provide information voluntarily.
His lawyer, James Sullivan, said in a previous letter presented to the court that Kinsella would not agree to "such an unwarranted invasion of his privacy" and that the defence team was engaged in a "fishing expedition."
Defence lawyer Michael Bolton disagreed, saying the evidence already indicated a very cosy relationship between CN and the Liberal eminence grise.
"He has a very political role, he operates at a very high level," Bolton explained, reading through documents obtained from the special prosecutor. "At the material time, he was in some sort of relationship with CN Rail."
Another defence lawyer, Kevin McCullough, agreed, adding that the defence has a right to know the extent and the nature of Kinsella's relationship with the railway companies: "They're pretty simple questions -- did you work for CN; if so, when?"
The defence wants Kinsella also to produce an inventory of records and documents under his control that are connected to the privatization process.
"We take issue with much of the material put before you," his lawyer, Sullivan, briefly retorted during Friday's submissions before Justice Elizabeth Bennett.
However, he won't officially reply until the hearing resumes Aug. 31.
If Kinsella is shown to have been working for both railways at the same time, the landscape of this politically charged trial will change completely.
That accusation is the lynchpin of the defence.
{Snip} ...
If Kinsella did play a dual role in the deal, it would buttress the claim that Basi and Virk were only following the orders of their political masters, that the railway auction was rigged in CN's favour and that everyone knew it.
The defence argument holds that the Liberals wanted to sell the provincial freight operation to CN Rail and the troubled bidding process was designed only to legitimize the privatization; Basi and Virk were told to keep OmniTrax publicly in the running so it would appear the process was competitive rather than a fait accompli.
In return for playing along, the American firm was allegedly promised a "consolation prize" of remaining BC Rail assets.
Bennett, who is wrapping up a series of pre-trial motions because she has been elevated to the B.C. Court of Appeal, refused a second defence request Friday to subpoena government employees recovering computer records.
Although some of the electronic documents have been destroyed for reasons that remain unclear, Bennett said the civil servants had been "extremely thorough" and were doing everything possible to comply with the court orders.
"It would be a complete waste of court time" to cross-examine them, she added.
A new judge in the four-year-old proceedings will be appointed this fall, but the trial is not expected to begin until much later next year because of a matter before the Supreme Court of Canada and outstanding constitutional questions.
imulgrew@vancouversun.com
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Kinsella trumpeted insider status to BC Rail, court hears
Defence seeks to have him called to testify
Rod Mickleburgh
The Globe and Mail - August 22, 2009
Fewer than six months after he co-chaired the B.C. Liberals' stunningly successful election campaign in 2001, Patrick Kinsella trumpeted his insider's perspective on the new government to prospective client BC Rail, the Crown corporation now at the heart of a long-running political corruption trial over sale of its operating rights to CN Rail.
Mr. Kinsella, a close confidante of Premier Gordon Campbell, also co-chaired the Liberals' repeat election victory in 2005.
In a letter dated Oct. 30, 2001, to BC Rail vice-president Kevin Mahoney, Mr. Kinsella refers to his company as communication consultants “with a value-added component. That value could be interpreted as political savvy and to some extent providing commentary and advice to our clients vis-à-vis the current B.C. Liberal government.”
Defence lawyer Michael Bolton read the passage in B.C. Supreme Court Friday to bolster an application to have Mr. Kinsella summoned to testify and provide further documentation about his role in the privatization of BC Rail.
Based on previously disclosed e-mails and notes, defence lawyers have suggested in court that Mr. Kinsella had ties, not only to BC Rail, but to the government and CN Rail, while the $1-billion sale was going through.
Five days after his Oct. 30 letter, Mr. Kinsella signed a contract to provide services to BC Rail from 2001 to 2004, for which he was paid “roughly $200,000,” according to Mr. Bolton.
“The Liberal government owns BC Rail and yet he [Mr. Kinsella] is going to provide political savvy re: the government,” Mr. Bolton told Madame Justice Elizabeth Bennett. “This says a great deal about the role of Mr. Kinsella. He has a very political role and he's offering it at a very high level.”
Former Liberal political aides David Basi, Bob Virk and Aneal Basi are facing trial on corruption-related charges connected to the BC Rail deal, including fraud, breach of trust and exchanging information in return for a benefit.
The bulk of the railway's assets were sold to CN Rail in 2003, with the deal closing in 2004. Mr. Bolton, who represents Mr. Basi, pointed out that Mr. Kinsella was working “to provide this political savvy” to BC Rail for the entire “critical” period of the transaction.
The defence lawyer also reminded Judge Bennett of several e-mails, released earlier this year to the court, indicating Mr. Kinsella had dealings with top executives of both BC Rail and CN Rail. At one point, CN Rail chair David McLean conveyed information to Mr. Kinsella that the deal appeared to be falling apart rather than dealing directly with BC Rail. Mr. Kinsella then conveyed CN's concerns to BC Rail, Mr. Bolton said. “[Mr. Kinsella] may not be working for CN, but there's clearly a relationship.”
Defence lawyers have said their clients were acting under orders from their political masters in matters related to the BC Rail sale.
Mr. Bolton said it was essential to the defence's position to have Mr. Kinsella appear in court to shed light on his relationship with CN Rail in the BC Rail purchase.
Defence lawyer Kevin McCullough, who represents Mr. Virk, said that Mr. Kinsella has, so far, refused to answer some “very simple questions” posed to him through his lawyer, James Sullivan. “Did you work for CN? If yes, when? What was the nature of that work?”
Mr. McCullough said the extent of Mr. Kinsella's relationship with CN is “significant to the issues at stake in this case … Where else are we going to get that evidence [than from Mr. Kinsella]?”
Judge Bennett will hear further argument Aug. 31 on the defence bid for a subpoena to be issued to Mr. Kinsella.
Meanwhile, veteran Supreme Court justice Anne MacKenzie has been appointed to take over the complex case from Judge Bennett, who has recused herself from the trial because of her recent elevation to the Court of Appeal.
The formal trial has not yet started, nearly six years after RCMP raided the legislative offices of Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk. Proceedings have bogged down in wrangling over disclosure of tens of thousands of documents.
Judge Bennett has agreed to decide several outstanding issues, including whether Mr. Kinsella should be summoned for questioning, before standing down.
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Defence in BC Rail corruption case assails role of Liberal insider
Lawyer in BC Rail corruption case says Liberal insider worked both sides
Camille Bains The Canadian Press - Aug 21, 2009
VANCOUVER, B.C. - Emails to and from a political insider show he had a strong relationship with CN Rail, suggesting the company was pegged to win the bid to buy Crown-owned BC Rail, says a defence lawyer.
Michael Bolton told a B.C. Supreme Court hearing Friday he wants to cross-examine Patrick Kinsella about his connection to CN Rail while he was also a consultant for BC Rail.
Bolton read a string of emails from between April and May 2004 showing Kinsella was the conduit between top-level executives for both BC Rail and CN Rail and a senior B.C. civil servant when the sale seemed to be in jeopardy.
"The way in which (BC Rail) gets answers to CN Rail is to go to Kinsella rather than directly to CN," Bolton said in a hearing related to fraud and breach of trust charges against three former government employees.
Bolton, who is defending one of the accused men, said the trio were tasked by their political masters to keep a third company in the bidding process to make it appear that the sale of BC Rail to CN Rail wasn't rigged by the Liberals.
Bolton also said lobbyists at a Victoria firm called Pilothouse, which was representing Denver-based OmniTrax, a third company bidding for BC Rail, had also known about Kinsella's involvement with CN Rail while he was working for BC Rail.
"Kinsella working for CN," said an Aug. 19, 2002 handwritten note in a journal kept by Pilothouse lobbyist Brian Kieran, defence lawyer Kevin McCullough told the court.
McCullough said Kieran also wrote another note to himself about the BC Rail sale on Sept. 2, 2002, a year before the actual sale: "CN has an understanding it's a go."
His client Bobby Virk and Bolton's client Dave Basi are accused of funnelling information to OmniTrax in exchange for money and gifts in a case that involved police raids on the men's legislature offices in December 2003, when they worked as ministerial aides.
Former government communications officer Aneal Basi, Dave Basi's cousin, is charged with money laundering.
A fourth company, CP Rail, dropped out of the bidding after sending the government a terse letter about its belief that the sale of BC Rail to CN Rail was a done deal.
Kinsella's role with both the seller and the buyer of the Crown-owned rail line, which eventually sold for $1 billion, was also questioned in the legislature in 2003 by then-New Democrat MLA Joy MacPhail.
Kinsella, who was the Liberal party's campaign manager in both the 2001 and 2005 provincial elections, has refused to answer any questions about his connection to CN Rail, which has also not provided any information about Kinsella's role.
The issue surfaced during the May provincial election, when the Opposition NDP alleged he was involved in a conflict of interest.
In April, NDP attorney general Leonard Krog sent a letter to the RCMP calling for an investigation into allegations that Kinsella was working both sides at the time of the controversial sale of BC Rail.
The New Democrats released government documents before the election campaign showing Kinsella was paid almost $300,000 by BC Rail between 2002 and 2005.
Bolton said an Oct. 30, 2001 letter Kinsella wrote to BC Rail executive Kevin Mahoney shows he sold his company, the Progressive Group, as having "political savvy."
"We are essentially communications consultants with what I would call a value-added component. That 'value added' interpreted as political savvy, and to some extent public opinion expertise, allows us to provide commentary and advice to our clients vis-a-vis the current Liberal government."
Judge Elizabeth Bennett has already ruled she's not satisfied that Kinsella was working for CN Rail, but Bolton said the strong relationship Kinsella had with CN Rail is relevant to the case.
In her July ruling, Bennett said that in order for her to infer a connection between Kinsella and CN Rail, she needs more evidence than the emails and a phone conversation the man had with CN executive David McLean.
"If there was evidence connecting Mr. Kinsella to CN Rail at the material time of the core review and sale of BC Rail, then that would change the landscape entirely," she said in a written decision.
Legal arguments in the case have dragged on for over five years and a trial may not be held for another year.
Same article in Metro News, Calgary - August 21, 2009
Same article in the Brandon, Manitoba Sun.
Let's just say this story has finally got legs and is running all over the place.
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Kinsella trumpeted insider status to BC Rail, court hears
Defence seeks to have him called to testify
Rod Mickleburgh
Globe and Mail - Friday, Aug. 21, 2009
Fewer than six months after he co-chaired the B.C. Liberals' stunningly successful election campaign in 2001, Patrick Kinsella trumpeted his insider's perspective on the new government to prospective client BC Rail, the Crown corporation now at the heart of a long-running political corruption trial over sale of its operating rights to CN Rail.
Mr. Kinsella, a close confidante of Premier Gordon Campbell, also co-chaired the Liberals' repeat election victory in 2005.
In a letter dated Oct. 30, 2001, to BC Rail vice-president Kevin Mahoney, Mr. Kinsella refers to his company as communication consultants “with a value-added component. That value could be interpreted as political savvy and to some extent providing commentary and advice to our clients vis-à-vis the current B.C. Liberal government.”
Defence lawyer Michael Bolton read the passage in B.C. Supreme Court Friday to bolster an application to have Mr. Kinsella summoned to testify and provide further documentation about his role in the privatization of BC Rail.
Based on previously disclosed e-mails and notes, defence lawyers have suggested in court that Mr. Kinsella had ties, not only to BC Rail, but to the government and CN Rail, while the $1-billion sale was going through.
Five days after his Oct. 30 letter, Mr. Kinsella signed a contract to provide services to BC Rail from 2001 to 2004, for which he was paid “roughly $200,000,” according to Mr. Bolton.
“The Liberal government owns BC Rail and yet he [Mr. Kinsella] is going to provide political savvy re: the government,” Mr. Bolton told Madame Justice Elizabeth Bennett. “This says a great deal about the role of Mr. Kinsella. He has a very political role and he's offering it at a very high level.”
Former Liberal political aides David Basi, Bob Virk and Aneal Basi are facing trial on corruption-related charges connected to the BC Rail deal, including fraud, breach of trust and exchanging information in return for a benefit.
The bulk of the railway's assets were sold to CN Rail in 2003, with the deal closing in 2004. Mr. Bolton, who represents Mr. Basi, pointed out that Mr. Kinsella was working “to provide this political savvy” to BC Rail for the entire “critical” period of the transaction.
The defence lawyer also reminded Judge Bennett of several e-mails, released earlier this year to the court, indicating Mr. Kinsella had dealings with top executives of both BC Rail and CN Rail. At one point, CN Rail chair David McLean conveyed information to Mr. Kinsella that the deal appeared to be falling apart rather than dealing directly with BC Rail. Mr. Kinsella then conveyed CN's concerns to BC Rail, Mr. Bolton said. “[Mr. Kinsella] may not be working for CN, but there's clearly a relationship.”
Defence lawyers have said their clients were acting under orders from their political masters in matters related to the BC Rail sale.
Mr. Bolton said it was essential to the defence's position to have Mr. Kinsella appear in court to shed light on his relationship with CN Rail in the BC Rail purchase.
Defence lawyer Kevin McCullough, who represents Mr. Virk, said that Mr. Kinsella has, so far, refused to answer some “very simple questions” posed to him through his lawyer, James Sullivan. “Did you work for CN? If yes, when? What was the nature of that work?”
Mr. McCullough said the extent of Mr. Kinsella's relationship with CN is “significant to the issues at stake in this case … Where else are we going to get that evidence [than from Mr. Kinsella]?”
Judge Bennett will hear further argument Aug. 31 on the defence bid for a subpoena to be issued to Mr. Kinsella.
Meanwhile, veteran Supreme Court justice Anne MacKenzie has been appointed to take over the complex case from Judge Bennett, who has recused herself from the trial because of her recent elevation to the Court of Appeal.
The formal trial has not yet started, nearly six years after RCMP raided the legislative offices of Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk. Proceedings have bogged down in wrangling over disclosure of tens of thousands of documents.
Judge Bennett has agreed to decide several outstanding issues, including whether Mr. Kinsella should be summoned for questioning, before standing down.
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Kinsella a crucial figure in Basi-Virk trial
Defence wants answers to simple 'what did you know' question from top BC Liberal operative
By Ian Mulgrew
Vancouver Sun - August 22, 2009
Patrick Kinsella -- confidante of premier and prime ministers -- should be subpoenaed in the prosecution of three former provincial Liberal ministerial aides because he was pivotal in the $1-billion BC Rail privatization, defence lawyers say.
They want the vaunted Vancouver consultant -- who received almost $300,000 from the Crown corporation for his savvy between 2002 and 2005 -- to explain his role in the divestiture and why he appeared to be working simultaneously for successful bidder CN Rail.
Notes from two key Crown witnesses, along with wiretaps and e-mails among corporate and political insiders, according to the lawyers, support their contentions and make it imperative the B.C. Supreme Court order Kinsella to answer questions since he has refused to provide information voluntarily.
His lawyer, James Sullivan, said in a previous letter presented to the court that Kinsella would not agree to "such an unwarranted invasion of his privacy" and that the defence team was engaged in a "fishing expedition."
Defence lawyer Michael Bolton disagreed, saying the evidence already indicated a very cosy relationship between CN and the Liberal eminence grise.
"He has a very political role, he operates at a very high level," Bolton explained, reading through documents obtained from the special prosecutor. "At the material time, he was in some sort of relationship with CN Rail."
Another defence lawyer, Kevin McCullough, agreed, adding that the defence has a right to know the extent and the nature of Kinsella's relationship with the railway companies: "They're pretty simple questions -- did you work for CN; if so, when?"
The defence wants Kinsella also to produce an inventory of records and documents under his control that are connected to the privatization process.
"We take issue with much of the material put before you," his lawyer, Sullivan, briefly retorted during Friday's submissions before Justice Elizabeth Bennett.
However, he won't officially reply until the hearing resumes Aug. 31.
If Kinsella is shown to have been working for both railways at the same time, the landscape of this politically charged trial will change completely.
That accusation is the lynchpin of the defence.
{Snip} ...
If Kinsella did play a dual role in the deal, it would buttress the claim that Basi and Virk were only following the orders of their political masters, that the railway auction was rigged in CN's favour and that everyone knew it.
The defence argument holds that the Liberals wanted to sell the provincial freight operation to CN Rail and the troubled bidding process was designed only to legitimize the privatization; Basi and Virk were told to keep OmniTrax publicly in the running so it would appear the process was competitive rather than a fait accompli.
In return for playing along, the American firm was allegedly promised a "consolation prize" of remaining BC Rail assets.
Bennett, who is wrapping up a series of pre-trial motions because she has been elevated to the B.C. Court of Appeal, refused a second defence request Friday to subpoena government employees recovering computer records.
Although some of the electronic documents have been destroyed for reasons that remain unclear, Bennett said the civil servants had been "extremely thorough" and were doing everything possible to comply with the court orders.
"It would be a complete waste of court time" to cross-examine them, she added.
A new judge in the four-year-old proceedings will be appointed this fall, but the trial is not expected to begin until much later next year because of a matter before the Supreme Court of Canada and outstanding constitutional questions.
imulgrew@vancouversun.com
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Kinsella trumpeted insider status to BC Rail, court hears
Defence seeks to have him called to testify
Rod Mickleburgh
The Globe and Mail - August 22, 2009
Fewer than six months after he co-chaired the B.C. Liberals' stunningly successful election campaign in 2001, Patrick Kinsella trumpeted his insider's perspective on the new government to prospective client BC Rail, the Crown corporation now at the heart of a long-running political corruption trial over sale of its operating rights to CN Rail.
Mr. Kinsella, a close confidante of Premier Gordon Campbell, also co-chaired the Liberals' repeat election victory in 2005.
In a letter dated Oct. 30, 2001, to BC Rail vice-president Kevin Mahoney, Mr. Kinsella refers to his company as communication consultants “with a value-added component. That value could be interpreted as political savvy and to some extent providing commentary and advice to our clients vis-à-vis the current B.C. Liberal government.”
Defence lawyer Michael Bolton read the passage in B.C. Supreme Court Friday to bolster an application to have Mr. Kinsella summoned to testify and provide further documentation about his role in the privatization of BC Rail.
Based on previously disclosed e-mails and notes, defence lawyers have suggested in court that Mr. Kinsella had ties, not only to BC Rail, but to the government and CN Rail, while the $1-billion sale was going through.
Five days after his Oct. 30 letter, Mr. Kinsella signed a contract to provide services to BC Rail from 2001 to 2004, for which he was paid “roughly $200,000,” according to Mr. Bolton.
“The Liberal government owns BC Rail and yet he [Mr. Kinsella] is going to provide political savvy re: the government,” Mr. Bolton told Madame Justice Elizabeth Bennett. “This says a great deal about the role of Mr. Kinsella. He has a very political role and he's offering it at a very high level.”
Former Liberal political aides David Basi, Bob Virk and Aneal Basi are facing trial on corruption-related charges connected to the BC Rail deal, including fraud, breach of trust and exchanging information in return for a benefit.
The bulk of the railway's assets were sold to CN Rail in 2003, with the deal closing in 2004. Mr. Bolton, who represents Mr. Basi, pointed out that Mr. Kinsella was working “to provide this political savvy” to BC Rail for the entire “critical” period of the transaction.
The defence lawyer also reminded Judge Bennett of several e-mails, released earlier this year to the court, indicating Mr. Kinsella had dealings with top executives of both BC Rail and CN Rail. At one point, CN Rail chair David McLean conveyed information to Mr. Kinsella that the deal appeared to be falling apart rather than dealing directly with BC Rail. Mr. Kinsella then conveyed CN's concerns to BC Rail, Mr. Bolton said. “[Mr. Kinsella] may not be working for CN, but there's clearly a relationship.”
Defence lawyers have said their clients were acting under orders from their political masters in matters related to the BC Rail sale.
Mr. Bolton said it was essential to the defence's position to have Mr. Kinsella appear in court to shed light on his relationship with CN Rail in the BC Rail purchase.
Defence lawyer Kevin McCullough, who represents Mr. Virk, said that Mr. Kinsella has, so far, refused to answer some “very simple questions” posed to him through his lawyer, James Sullivan. “Did you work for CN? If yes, when? What was the nature of that work?”
Mr. McCullough said the extent of Mr. Kinsella's relationship with CN is “significant to the issues at stake in this case … Where else are we going to get that evidence [than from Mr. Kinsella]?”
Judge Bennett will hear further argument Aug. 31 on the defence bid for a subpoena to be issued to Mr. Kinsella.
Meanwhile, veteran Supreme Court justice Anne MacKenzie has been appointed to take over the complex case from Judge Bennett, who has recused herself from the trial because of her recent elevation to the Court of Appeal.
The formal trial has not yet started, nearly six years after RCMP raided the legislative offices of Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk. Proceedings have bogged down in wrangling over disclosure of tens of thousands of documents.
Judge Bennett has agreed to decide several outstanding issues, including whether Mr. Kinsella should be summoned for questioning, before standing down.
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Defence in BC Rail corruption case assails role of Liberal insider
Lawyer in BC Rail corruption case says Liberal insider worked both sides
Camille Bains The Canadian Press - Aug 21, 2009
VANCOUVER, B.C. - Emails to and from a political insider show he had a strong relationship with CN Rail, suggesting the company was pegged to win the bid to buy Crown-owned BC Rail, says a defence lawyer.
Michael Bolton told a B.C. Supreme Court hearing Friday he wants to cross-examine Patrick Kinsella about his connection to CN Rail while he was also a consultant for BC Rail.
Bolton read a string of emails from between April and May 2004 showing Kinsella was the conduit between top-level executives for both BC Rail and CN Rail and a senior B.C. civil servant when the sale seemed to be in jeopardy.
"The way in which (BC Rail) gets answers to CN Rail is to go to Kinsella rather than directly to CN," Bolton said in a hearing related to fraud and breach of trust charges against three former government employees.
Bolton, who is defending one of the accused men, said the trio were tasked by their political masters to keep a third company in the bidding process to make it appear that the sale of BC Rail to CN Rail wasn't rigged by the Liberals.
Bolton also said lobbyists at a Victoria firm called Pilothouse, which was representing Denver-based OmniTrax, a third company bidding for BC Rail, had also known about Kinsella's involvement with CN Rail while he was working for BC Rail.
"Kinsella working for CN," said an Aug. 19, 2002 handwritten note in a journal kept by Pilothouse lobbyist Brian Kieran, defence lawyer Kevin McCullough told the court.
McCullough said Kieran also wrote another note to himself about the BC Rail sale on Sept. 2, 2002, a year before the actual sale: "CN has an understanding it's a go."
His client Bobby Virk and Bolton's client Dave Basi are accused of funnelling information to OmniTrax in exchange for money and gifts in a case that involved police raids on the men's legislature offices in December 2003, when they worked as ministerial aides.
Former government communications officer Aneal Basi, Dave Basi's cousin, is charged with money laundering.
A fourth company, CP Rail, dropped out of the bidding after sending the government a terse letter about its belief that the sale of BC Rail to CN Rail was a done deal.
Kinsella's role with both the seller and the buyer of the Crown-owned rail line, which eventually sold for $1 billion, was also questioned in the legislature in 2003 by then-New Democrat MLA Joy MacPhail.
Kinsella, who was the Liberal party's campaign manager in both the 2001 and 2005 provincial elections, has refused to answer any questions about his connection to CN Rail, which has also not provided any information about Kinsella's role.
The issue surfaced during the May provincial election, when the Opposition NDP alleged he was involved in a conflict of interest.
In April, NDP attorney general Leonard Krog sent a letter to the RCMP calling for an investigation into allegations that Kinsella was working both sides at the time of the controversial sale of BC Rail.
The New Democrats released government documents before the election campaign showing Kinsella was paid almost $300,000 by BC Rail between 2002 and 2005.
Bolton said an Oct. 30, 2001 letter Kinsella wrote to BC Rail executive Kevin Mahoney shows he sold his company, the Progressive Group, as having "political savvy."
"We are essentially communications consultants with what I would call a value-added component. That 'value added' interpreted as political savvy, and to some extent public opinion expertise, allows us to provide commentary and advice to our clients vis-a-vis the current Liberal government."
Judge Elizabeth Bennett has already ruled she's not satisfied that Kinsella was working for CN Rail, but Bolton said the strong relationship Kinsella had with CN Rail is relevant to the case.
In her July ruling, Bennett said that in order for her to infer a connection between Kinsella and CN Rail, she needs more evidence than the emails and a phone conversation the man had with CN executive David McLean.
"If there was evidence connecting Mr. Kinsella to CN Rail at the material time of the core review and sale of BC Rail, then that would change the landscape entirely," she said in a written decision.
Legal arguments in the case have dragged on for over five years and a trial may not be held for another year.
Same article in Metro News, Calgary - August 21, 2009
Same article in the Brandon, Manitoba Sun.
Let's just say this story has finally got legs and is running all over the place.
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Kinsella trumpeted insider status to BC Rail, court hears
Defence seeks to have him called to testify
Rod Mickleburgh
Globe and Mail - Friday, Aug. 21, 2009
Fewer than six months after he co-chaired the B.C. Liberals' stunningly successful election campaign in 2001, Patrick Kinsella trumpeted his insider's perspective on the new government to prospective client BC Rail, the Crown corporation now at the heart of a long-running political corruption trial over sale of its operating rights to CN Rail.
Mr. Kinsella, a close confidante of Premier Gordon Campbell, also co-chaired the Liberals' repeat election victory in 2005.
In a letter dated Oct. 30, 2001, to BC Rail vice-president Kevin Mahoney, Mr. Kinsella refers to his company as communication consultants “with a value-added component. That value could be interpreted as political savvy and to some extent providing commentary and advice to our clients vis-à-vis the current B.C. Liberal government.”
Defence lawyer Michael Bolton read the passage in B.C. Supreme Court Friday to bolster an application to have Mr. Kinsella summoned to testify and provide further documentation about his role in the privatization of BC Rail.
Based on previously disclosed e-mails and notes, defence lawyers have suggested in court that Mr. Kinsella had ties, not only to BC Rail, but to the government and CN Rail, while the $1-billion sale was going through.
Five days after his Oct. 30 letter, Mr. Kinsella signed a contract to provide services to BC Rail from 2001 to 2004, for which he was paid “roughly $200,000,” according to Mr. Bolton.
“The Liberal government owns BC Rail and yet he [Mr. Kinsella] is going to provide political savvy re: the government,” Mr. Bolton told Madame Justice Elizabeth Bennett. “This says a great deal about the role of Mr. Kinsella. He has a very political role and he's offering it at a very high level.”
Former Liberal political aides David Basi, Bob Virk and Aneal Basi are facing trial on corruption-related charges connected to the BC Rail deal, including fraud, breach of trust and exchanging information in return for a benefit.
The bulk of the railway's assets were sold to CN Rail in 2003, with the deal closing in 2004. Mr. Bolton, who represents Mr. Basi, pointed out that Mr. Kinsella was working “to provide this political savvy” to BC Rail for the entire “critical” period of the transaction.
The defence lawyer also reminded Judge Bennett of several e-mails, released earlier this year to the court, indicating Mr. Kinsella had dealings with top executives of both BC Rail and CN Rail. At one point, CN Rail chair David McLean conveyed information to Mr. Kinsella that the deal appeared to be falling apart rather than dealing directly with BC Rail. Mr. Kinsella then conveyed CN's concerns to BC Rail, Mr. Bolton said. “[Mr. Kinsella] may not be working for CN, but there's clearly a relationship.”
Defence lawyers have said their clients were acting under orders from their political masters in matters related to the BC Rail sale.
Mr. Bolton said it was essential to the defence's position to have Mr. Kinsella appear in court to shed light on his relationship with CN Rail in the BC Rail purchase.
Defence lawyer Kevin McCullough, who represents Mr. Virk, said that Mr. Kinsella has, so far, refused to answer some “very simple questions” posed to him through his lawyer, James Sullivan. “Did you work for CN? If yes, when? What was the nature of that work?”
Mr. McCullough said the extent of Mr. Kinsella's relationship with CN is “significant to the issues at stake in this case … Where else are we going to get that evidence [than from Mr. Kinsella]?”
Judge Bennett will hear further argument Aug. 31 on the defence bid for a subpoena to be issued to Mr. Kinsella.
Meanwhile, veteran Supreme Court justice Anne MacKenzie has been appointed to take over the complex case from Judge Bennett, who has recused herself from the trial because of her recent elevation to the Court of Appeal.
The formal trial has not yet started, nearly six years after RCMP raided the legislative offices of Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk. Proceedings have bogged down in wrangling over disclosure of tens of thousands of documents.
Judge Bennett has agreed to decide several outstanding issues, including whether Mr. Kinsella should be summoned for questioning, before standing down.
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Confirmed: Basi Virk pre-trial hearing today, 21 August 2009, start-time 9:30 AM, BC Supreme Court, 800 Smyth St., Vancouver.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Pressl
.
30 April, 1 May
30 April, 1 May
There is nothing in today's Vancouver Sun -- British Columbia's largest daily newspaper -- about developments in Vancouver Supreme Court yesterday in the case of Her Majesty the Queen (that would be us) vs. the three former B.C. government employees (Basi, Virk, Basi). Nothing. Not a word.
And yet, one of the most dramatic incidents erupted in that courtroom when a citizen walked in and demanded to give testimony. Instead of applause and cheering, we understand that last Friday, Crown Counsel requested a publication ban. Hello? The prosecution wants silence? And the defence wants the public to know?
Following is what little we eventually were able to find ...
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CORRUPTION PROBE
Collins demands Crown release surveillance material
The Globe and Mail - May 1, 2007
MARK HUME
VANCOUVER -- {Snip} ...
Mr. McCullough said another gap in disclosure was revealed to him on Sunday when John Preissell, former president of the United Auto and Collision Association, called to advise him about a 2003 phone call concerning Mr. Collins.
Mr. Preissell, who became the first witness in the corruption trial when Mr. McCullough suddenly called him to the stand, testified that in 2003, his association was in conflict with ICBC, the Crown-owned Insurance Corporation of B.C.
He said his association had been using the services of Pilothouse Public Affairs Group, a lobbying firm in Victoria that also worked for OmniTRAX at that time.
Mr. Preissell said Brian Kieran, a Pilothouse director, called to warn him not to launch a media campaign against Mr. Collins.
"The bottom line was he threatened me repeatedly for me not to go to the media and embarrass the Finance Minister," Mr. Preissell said. "I was actually afraid."
Mr. Preissell said he subsequently complained to the police about the call.
Mr. McCullough said that complaint should have generated police reports, but only a few "cryptic" notes were provided through disclosure.
"We would like to know where this material is," Mr. McCullough said.
Outside court, Mr. [Clark] Roberts [bigtime Liberal with close ties to Gary Collins] said Mr. Collins "has no recollection of Mr. Preissell ... and if Mr. Kieran contacted Mr. Preissell, it was at Mr. Kieran's initiation and not at the behest of Mr. Collins."
Pretrial applications are expected to continue for several weeks in the case, which is set to run through the summer and into the fall.
Full story is HERE.
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DEFENCE RAPS ACCESS TO EVIDENCE
Canadian Press (Vancouver Province)
Published: Tuesday, May 01, 2007
It's like "pulling teeth" to get access to evidence from a special prosecutor probing the criminal case stemming from a raid on the B.C. legislature, a defence lawyer complained yesterday.
Kevin McCollough told the judge hearing the case that the defence discovered on its own both an alleged threat with a connection to a government minister and that RCMP had made video and audio surveillance tapes of a key restaurant meeting involving former finance minister Gary Collins.
"It isn't an obligation for us to provide all the needles in the haystack," McCullough told Justice Elizabeth Bennett as he laid out a long list of material that wasn't disclosed to defence lawyers by the special prosecutor's office.
"The reasonable inference is the special prosecutor didn't appreciate the relevance of the documents," he said.
"Or the RCMP are simply telling him not to [disclose evidence.]" McCollough also alleged that the RCMP were working closely with the provincial Liberal government because police Insp. Kevin Debruyckere was briefing his own brother-in-law, Kelly Reichert, on the case.
Reichert is the B.C. Liberal Party's executive director.
"That reeks of the RCMP and the Liberal government having some sort of quid pro quo, some sort of relationship," he alleged. {Snip} ...
Full story HERE.
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.
SHOULD THE JUDGE THROW OUT THE BASI-VIRK CASE AND REPRIMAND RCMP FOR APPARENT BUNGLING AND RACISM?
By RATTAN MALL
Voice OnLine - 30 April 2007
What a SHAMEFUL picture is emerging of the RCMP investigation in the notorious December 28, 2003 Raid on the Legislature case ... this week more shocking revelations emerged - and they exposed the DIRTY TACTICS USED BY CAMPBELL AND HIS TEAM.
The defence lawyers revealed how Campbell and his team used Dave Basi to make phony calls to radio talk shows and use disruptive tactics against opposition politicians, as McCullough put it: "The use of these political operatives was from the top down." He said it was clear that Campbell WAS AWARE of this.
McCullough said that Campbell actually mentioned in caucus that one of Basi's callers was good according to the wiretap evidence. He said that this call demonstrated that not only was the premier aware that it was a phony call, "but the premier was PLEASED. That call was not something that Mr. Basi dreamed up on his own, but rather was DIRECTED TO DO." (Emphasis mine).
According to the defence lawyers, Basi was directed "to get the posse together" to deal with NDP Leader Carole James interview on the Bill Good Show on Radio CKNW. He was also instructed to give a "rough ride" to former Social Credit premier Bill Vander Zalm on a talk show.
He was also asked to arrange for a fraud Safeway customer at a protest against salmon farming.
Basi was instructed by Mike McDonald, who reportedly managed media affairs for the Liberals, and Campbell's press secretary Mike Morton. [Mike McDonald's wife, Jessica McDonald, is Gordon Campbell's Deputy Premier. - BC Mary]
Also, last week the trial heard that Basi was paid for two $10,000 contracts by the Liberal Party for monitoring the media.
The defence lawyers now want all government documents regarding the B.C. Rail sale.
The implication here is quite obviously that many documents will be those that involve the premier himself - and we could be headed for some EXPLOSIVE REVELATIONS.
Full story HERE.
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And finally:
CORRUPTION TRIAL TOLD OF THREAT
Neal Hall,
Vancouver Sun - Monday, April 30, 2007
The trial involving two former provincial government aides accused of corruption heard today that a defence lawyer got a call over the weekend from a man who said he received a threatening call four years ago from a lobbyist.
Kevin McCullough, the lawyer for the accused Bob Virk, told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Bennett that the man claimed during the weekend call that he got a phone call in 2003 from Brian Kieran, who at the time ran a lobbying firm called Pilothouse Public Affairs. The man said Kieran threatened that if the man launched a media campaign against then-finance minister Gary Collins, it would have dire consequences for his organization.
The lawyer said the man who called over the weekend worked in the automobile repair industry. (Collins' lawyer, Clark Roberts, who is attending court to monitor the pre-trial proceedings, said he talked to Collins and he has no recollection of meeting that man who alleged he felt he was threatened by Kieran.)
{Snip} ...
Full story HERE.
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
And yet, one of the most dramatic incidents erupted in that courtroom when a citizen walked in and demanded to give testimony. Instead of applause and cheering, we understand that last Friday, Crown Counsel requested a publication ban. Hello? The prosecution wants silence? And the defence wants the public to know?
Following is what little we eventually were able to find ...
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
CORRUPTION PROBE
Collins demands Crown release surveillance material
The Globe and Mail - May 1, 2007
MARK HUME
VANCOUVER -- {Snip} ...
Mr. McCullough said another gap in disclosure was revealed to him on Sunday when John Preissell, former president of the United Auto and Collision Association, called to advise him about a 2003 phone call concerning Mr. Collins.
Mr. Preissell, who became the first witness in the corruption trial when Mr. McCullough suddenly called him to the stand, testified that in 2003, his association was in conflict with ICBC, the Crown-owned Insurance Corporation of B.C.
He said his association had been using the services of Pilothouse Public Affairs Group, a lobbying firm in Victoria that also worked for OmniTRAX at that time.
Mr. Preissell said Brian Kieran, a Pilothouse director, called to warn him not to launch a media campaign against Mr. Collins.
"The bottom line was he threatened me repeatedly for me not to go to the media and embarrass the Finance Minister," Mr. Preissell said. "I was actually afraid."
Mr. Preissell said he subsequently complained to the police about the call.
Mr. McCullough said that complaint should have generated police reports, but only a few "cryptic" notes were provided through disclosure.
"We would like to know where this material is," Mr. McCullough said.
Outside court, Mr. [Clark] Roberts [bigtime Liberal with close ties to Gary Collins] said Mr. Collins "has no recollection of Mr. Preissell ... and if Mr. Kieran contacted Mr. Preissell, it was at Mr. Kieran's initiation and not at the behest of Mr. Collins."
Pretrial applications are expected to continue for several weeks in the case, which is set to run through the summer and into the fall.
Full story is HERE.
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DEFENCE RAPS ACCESS TO EVIDENCE
Canadian Press (Vancouver Province)
Published: Tuesday, May 01, 2007
It's like "pulling teeth" to get access to evidence from a special prosecutor probing the criminal case stemming from a raid on the B.C. legislature, a defence lawyer complained yesterday.
Kevin McCollough told the judge hearing the case that the defence discovered on its own both an alleged threat with a connection to a government minister and that RCMP had made video and audio surveillance tapes of a key restaurant meeting involving former finance minister Gary Collins.
"It isn't an obligation for us to provide all the needles in the haystack," McCullough told Justice Elizabeth Bennett as he laid out a long list of material that wasn't disclosed to defence lawyers by the special prosecutor's office.
"The reasonable inference is the special prosecutor didn't appreciate the relevance of the documents," he said.
"Or the RCMP are simply telling him not to [disclose evidence.]" McCollough also alleged that the RCMP were working closely with the provincial Liberal government because police Insp. Kevin Debruyckere was briefing his own brother-in-law, Kelly Reichert, on the case.
Reichert is the B.C. Liberal Party's executive director.
"That reeks of the RCMP and the Liberal government having some sort of quid pro quo, some sort of relationship," he alleged. {Snip} ...
Full story HERE.
""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
.
SHOULD THE JUDGE THROW OUT THE BASI-VIRK CASE AND REPRIMAND RCMP FOR APPARENT BUNGLING AND RACISM?
By RATTAN MALL
Voice OnLine - 30 April 2007
What a SHAMEFUL picture is emerging of the RCMP investigation in the notorious December 28, 2003 Raid on the Legislature case ... this week more shocking revelations emerged - and they exposed the DIRTY TACTICS USED BY CAMPBELL AND HIS TEAM.
The defence lawyers revealed how Campbell and his team used Dave Basi to make phony calls to radio talk shows and use disruptive tactics against opposition politicians, as McCullough put it: "The use of these political operatives was from the top down." He said it was clear that Campbell WAS AWARE of this.
McCullough said that Campbell actually mentioned in caucus that one of Basi's callers was good according to the wiretap evidence. He said that this call demonstrated that not only was the premier aware that it was a phony call, "but the premier was PLEASED. That call was not something that Mr. Basi dreamed up on his own, but rather was DIRECTED TO DO." (Emphasis mine).
According to the defence lawyers, Basi was directed "to get the posse together" to deal with NDP Leader Carole James interview on the Bill Good Show on Radio CKNW. He was also instructed to give a "rough ride" to former Social Credit premier Bill Vander Zalm on a talk show.
He was also asked to arrange for a fraud Safeway customer at a protest against salmon farming.
Basi was instructed by Mike McDonald, who reportedly managed media affairs for the Liberals, and Campbell's press secretary Mike Morton. [Mike McDonald's wife, Jessica McDonald, is Gordon Campbell's Deputy Premier. - BC Mary]
Also, last week the trial heard that Basi was paid for two $10,000 contracts by the Liberal Party for monitoring the media.
The defence lawyers now want all government documents regarding the B.C. Rail sale.
The implication here is quite obviously that many documents will be those that involve the premier himself - and we could be headed for some EXPLOSIVE REVELATIONS.
Full story HERE.
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
And finally:
CORRUPTION TRIAL TOLD OF THREAT
Neal Hall,
Vancouver Sun - Monday, April 30, 2007
The trial involving two former provincial government aides accused of corruption heard today that a defence lawyer got a call over the weekend from a man who said he received a threatening call four years ago from a lobbyist.
Kevin McCullough, the lawyer for the accused Bob Virk, told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Bennett that the man claimed during the weekend call that he got a phone call in 2003 from Brian Kieran, who at the time ran a lobbying firm called Pilothouse Public Affairs. The man said Kieran threatened that if the man launched a media campaign against then-finance minister Gary Collins, it would have dire consequences for his organization.
The lawyer said the man who called over the weekend worked in the automobile repair industry. (Collins' lawyer, Clark Roberts, who is attending court to monitor the pre-trial proceedings, said he talked to Collins and he has no recollection of meeting that man who alleged he felt he was threatened by Kieran.)
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Full story HERE.
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