The Legislature Raids

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By Robin Mathews
Oct. 24, 2010


Let’s begin with the slop dished up by the Mainstream Press and Media.

I wrote that the guilt or innocence of the major actors in the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to CNR is the Elephant in the room - the one thing avoided by the Mainstream Press and Media.  Major actors have not been charged – I allege very simply – because [the Elephant in the room] they haven’t been fairly and formally investigated.  Any of them.  And Gary Bass, B.C. RCMP Deputy Commissioner, (more on him below) has refused to undertake such an investigation.  The press is mute on all that.

The press is mute on the wrongful appointment of William Berardino as Special Prosecutor.

Word has it – dropped on the net, dropped in papers – that the Gordon Campbell Police want to get ALL the documents they can lay their hands on (involved in the trial) … and … well … yes … destroy them.  Understand that “the Gordon Campbell side” must already have copies of all documents.   Anyway, they aren’t, and won’t be, asking for copies just so they can have a complete set!

All the hogwash written by the Mainstream Press and Media is (I suggest)  more or less, in greater or lesser degree “cover-up”.  The headline in the Globe and Mail (Oct. 22): “Province can’t grab Virk, Basi assets”, for instance.  Pardon? It should read “Province decides to leave Virk, Basi assets untouched.”  And so it goes….

Gary Mason continues the make-believe in his “Aneal Basi Interview” (Globe and Mail. Oct. 22, A1, A22)).  “If there is a victim…” Mason writes in his human interest story, “ it is Aneal Basi”.  That is a huge claim.

In fact, if all the accused have been subjected to calculated delay – as many people believe they have been, for years  – then all of them are victims.  Mr. Mason tells us  – as part of his guilty plea – that Dave Basi “insisted the charge against his cousin be dropped.”  Mason goes on: “It was the least he could do.”

Pardon?  Why was it the least he could do?  Did Dave Basi have the power to dictate the plea bargain terms?  And if he did have, was it because the Gordon Campbell forces were on the run and had to do almost anything to have the trial shut down? Mr. Mason doesn’t report that kind of thing … ever.

Then Mr. Mason spends a few paragraphs telling readers what the Crown lawyers thought.  Interesting.  “Whether he [Aneal Basi] knew, for instance,  what his cousin was up to is a matter of debate.” The Crown lawyers seem to have told Gary Mason much – much, much more than they would ever tell me (or you).

Aneal Basi, moreover, Gary Mason tells us, “is furious with the justice system he feels failed him”.  And with the Crown “for dragging me through this for as long as they did”.

If Aneal Basi is a “victim” of the legal system, if he is furious  with the justice system he feels failed him”, “for dragging [him] through this for as long as they did”, shouldn’t he respond?

Shouldn’t Mr. Mason have asked: “Does that mean you’ll sue the Crown for stealing six years of your life? Have you talked with your lawyers about hitting the Crown and Gordon Campbell for everything you can get?”  Surely if Aneal Basi is an injured victim of a botched legal system, that system should provide a remedy.

I suggest that wasn’t the point of the story.  The story was just a playful, fun, human interest piece with no real meaning.  Aneal Basi (for some reason) was conned into “telling his story”.  And, in the process, Gary Mason helped cover up the real issues of The BC Rail Scandal.

Those real issues are coming out, more and more, because the hoax has been so massive it keeps thrusting its head through the cover-up. For instance, we know Mr. Berardino, Special Prosecutor, was wrongfully appointed; and we know that no Deputy Minister [in the world] makes major political decisions without consulting his minister.  Nevertheless, Robert Matas, (Globe and Mail, Oct. 22) prints the following paragraph.

“Special prosecutor Bill Berardino, who is independent of government, was in charge of the prosecution, Mr. de Jong said.  Issues relating to the cost of the defence were decided by the deputy ministers of the Attorney-General and of Finance.  ‘I [Attorney General de Jong] was not part of that exercise’, he said.”

Earlier – just a few days ago, I stood at Mr. Berardino’s elbow as he said the decision was his alone.  Strange.  Will we next learn that Gordon Campbell made the decision unilaterally, by himself?  Probably.

The hoax in British Columbia is horrendous.

The Elephant in the room has huge implications. The major actors in the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to CNR have not been fully and fairly investigated.  That has to be so because the RCMP has failed to investigate them.  That has to be so because the top RCMP officer in B.C., Gary Bass,  won’t give the order.  He has been asked to do so, and has refused.  Serious stuff.

Add that the renewed contract for RCMP policing of B.C. is coming up for signing fairly soon – and the people to sign it are major actors in the BC Rail Scandal and its aftermath.  Add that the highly dubious Commissioner of the RCMP in Ottawa, William Elliott – a civilian appointee by Stephen Harper who backed the killers of Robert Dziekanski and who has recently been in an internal RCMP purge attempt to have him removed – has just finished a shake-up of RCMP management.

In that shake-up he is giving (alleged “favourite” of Guiliano Zaccardelli forced to resign as disgraced Commissioner) Gary Bass, B.C. Deputy Commissioner, a much larger territory to administer!  In fact a territory called “West” – all the Western provinces up to Ontario!

Consider that.  It appears to be a Stephen Harper takeover of policing in Canada.  Welcome the Police State.  Each province has negotiated its contract with the RCMP up until now.  How will it do so with a Deputy Commissioner administering (and integrating) several provinces.  In the flurry and noise of the BC Rail Scandal corruption, Harper appears to be moving swiftly to take over policing in Canada with a highly dubious team including Gary Bass in B.C.

William Elliott has, in the process, just dumped his most serious internal critic Raf Souccar from position as Deputy Commissioner of Ontario, National Capital Region, and Quebec.

Bit by bit, anyone critical of the rotting RCMP, inside the force, has been or is being driven out.  Welcome the Police State.

Strange, strange as it may seem, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Gary Bass is receiving a huge promotion.  And we can only ask if it is coming to him because of his ‘usefulness’ in the long years of the BC Rail Scandal.