Tuesday, November 30, 2010

 

There's something about Falcon. Vaughn Palmer tries to explain ...

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He demolished the Coquihalla toll booths
 now Falcon sets sights on rivals

By Vaughn Palmer
Vancouver Sun - November 30, 2010


The remarkable rise (with a bump or two along the way) of Kevin Falcon, would-be B.C. Liberal leader and premier:

Nov. 16, 1996. The Surrey Electors Team sweeps the civic vote in the province's second biggest city, electing Doug McCallum as mayor (ousting New Democrat Bob Bose) and solidifying control over council and school board. Winning campaign manager Kevin Falcon, 32, is already a veteran, this being his third successful outing.

Sept. 15, 1997
. The B.C. Liberals beat back a challenge from the provincial Reform party to win a key byelection in Surrey. Falcon, despite ties to the federal Reformers, worked as a paid organizer for the Liberals, and hits it off with party leader Gordon Campbell. Afterward, Campbell hires him as a communications consultant. "I gave him speech ideas," Falcon will say later. "He's not my bosom buddy or anything."

{Snip} ...

Jan. 27, 2004. Falcon is promoted to minister of transportation and is immediately embroiled in the scandal over the sale of the government-owned BC Rail. He cancels the sale of the BCR port subsidiary after police determine that the bidding process was compromised by the leak of confidential information. He continues to defend the sale of the railway itself as a good deal for the public.

May 19, 2006
. Stung by protests and delays over his ambitious transportation plans -- the Sea to Sky, Canada Line, Gateway, TransLink makeover and other projects -- Falcon draws a comparison to the way they handled these matters in (ahem) China. "It's not  like they have to do community consultations," he tells local government leaders. "They just say 'we're building a bridge,' and they move everyone out of there and get going within two weeks." Just kidding, of course.

Sept. 27, 2007. Falcon has one of the happiest days of his political life when New Democratic Party leader Carole James comes out against the proposed twinning of the Port Mann Bridge. She backpedals soon enough but not before Falcon exchanges high-fives with staffers and supporters.

Oct. 2, 2008. Another happy day on the transportation beat as Falcon and Campbell take the controls of a digger to demolish the toll booths on the Coquihalla. No wonder some Liberals say that if the premier has a favourite to succeed him, Falcon is probably the one.

{Snip} ...

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/demolished+Coquihalla+toll+booths/3903861/story.html#ixzz16m2Wjn97

or:  http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/demolished+Coquihalla+toll+booths/3903861/story.html

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BC Mary comment: Kevin Falcon is important to us because he knows ... knows ... all about BC Rail and the Deltaport cancellation. It's important to keep this politician at centre stage. We'd benefit, too, from more info from (or about) former Minister of Transportation at the time of the BC Rail sale: Judith Reid.

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Bill Tieleman weighs in with one of his best columns. Click HERE to see embedded links and provocative photo of Christy Clark:

Hard Questions for Christy Clark
If she runs for Lib leader, she'll face tough queries about Railgate and the HST.

By Bill Tieleman,

TheTyee - Nov. 30, 2010                         


Excerpts:

... as a talk radio host Clark may be adept at asking tough questions, answering them as a BC Liberal Party leadership candidate is much more difficult -- and perhaps politically fatal.

Clark claims she will "think very hard" about running for the nomination on her week off from radio station CKNW AM 980 duties as the afternoon talk show host.

{Snip} ...

Railgate and Bruce Clark

Start with questions about her role in the B.C. legislature raid case, involving the $1 billion privatization of BC Rail to CN Rail in 2003.

For example, Christy, what is your position on holding a full public inquiry into the strange circumstances that saw the political corruption trial of former BC Liberal ministerial aides David Basi and Bob Virk suddenly halted by a guilty plea bargain?

Were you going to be a witness in that trial? Do you agree with the government paying Basi and Virk's $6 million legal fees?

Oh wait, it doesn't matter, because as premier, Clark would have to excuse herself from any cabinet discussion about an inquiry.

Why? How long have you got?

At the same time police conducted the unprecedented raid of the B.C. legislature, they also executed a search warrant on the home of Bruce Clark, Christy's brother and a one-time fundraiser for her campaigns.

According to an agreed statement of facts from the Crown and defence at the surprise end of the trial, confidential government information obtained from Basi and Virk was found by police at Bruce Clark's home and office.

Clark was a lobbyist working for the Washington Marine Group, which was a bidder on a second part of the BC Rail privatization, the sale of its Roberts Bank Port Subdivision, a spur line worth up to $70 million.

The RCMP advised then transportation minister Falcon to cancel the sale because it was "tainted" by the leak of confidential documents. Bruce Clark was never charged with any offences.

The statement of facts reads: "With respect to Count 10 of the Indictment and in relation to the Port Subdivision bidding process, the RCMP seized a number of documents from Bruce Clark's office and residence, which Basi and Virk disclosed to Bruce Clark between Jan. 1, 2003 and Dec. 28, 2003."

{Snip} ...

"Two examples of the documents that Basi and Virk improperly disclosed to Clark are:

"a) The draft Request for Proposals for the Port Subdivision bidding process, which was received by Clark prior to the RFP being finalized by the Evaluation Committee; and

"b) A 'confidential presentation' made by TD Securities to the Evaluation Committee dated Oct. 14, 2003 containing a detailed economic analysis of what BC Rail considered to be the value of the Port Subdivision."

Would she have been a witness?

But that's just the tip of the Basi-Virk iceberg when it comes to Christy Clark's conundrum.

Clark was deputy premier to Premier Gordon Campbell throughout the BC Rail privatization and was a highly probable potential witness in the trial.

She and ex-husband Mark Marissen, a key federal organizer for ex-Liberal prime minister Paul Martin and former leader Stephane Dion, had a home visit from the police after the raid. The police were looking for information about Basi and Virk and Marissen has made clear he cooperated fully -- there was no search warrant.

{Snip} ...

Then there's the so-far unconfirmed rumour that Mike McDonald, the former BC Liberal caucus communications director, will be Clark's campaign manager. McDonald, now a consultant, appears regularly on Clark's show and is husband to Jessica McDonald, Campbell's former senior deputy minister.

But McDonald also has his own connections to the Basi-Virk case.

Again, according to unproven allegations made by defence lawyers in pre-trial hearings, McDonald was involved in supervising Basi's stacking of paid phony callers to radio talk shows, ironically including CKNW.

Virk's lawyer Kevin McCullough on April 23, 2007 read from what he told the court was a police transcript of a call between Basi and McDonald.

"'Dave's asking Mike if he wants to make some calls to CKNW after the MLA is on,'" McCullough alleged. 

Justice Bennett interjected: "Is this a Liberal MLA? "

McCullough: "Yes."

Bennett responded, to laughter in the court: "I should have known that."

At another point McCullough alleges that McDonald and Basi discussed how Basi would organize calls to attack former B.C. premier Bill Vander Zalm during a radio appearance.

"Dave says they are going to give Vander Zalm a rough ride. [Mike] tells Dave to be careful, they don't want the phone numbers showing up from [government lines in] Victoria. Dave replies, 'Star 67, man,'" McCullough read from what he said was a police wiretap summary. (Star 67 refers to a caller identification blocking option.)

And there's much, much more to the tangled web of the Basi-Virk case that no doubt Clark would prefer was left undisturbed.

But with the trial concluded, there is no restriction on the media or others asking questions.

She's a fan of the HST

Plus, there are more unexploded bombs in Clark's recent past -- such as her steadfast defence of the despised Harmonized Sales Tax and her support for the overwhelmingly rejected Single Transferable Vote in 2009.

So if Clark finally admits she wants to be premier, expect her opponents both in and out of the BC Liberal Party to turn her candidacy into a walk in the hurt locker.

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Monday, November 29, 2010

 

8 months later, Mark Hume of The Globe and Mail provides the first serious report from Big Media on the overthrow of a government

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BC's restructured [?] natural resources ministry causing shock waves
By Mark Hume
The Globe and Mail - Nov. 29, 201


Quote:

... The creation of the new department has triggered changes in many ministries, affecting thousands of government workers, causing some offices to disappear, while others break apart as staff are reassigned.

“It’s just been blown apart. We got some of the news last Tuesday. It was confirmed later in the week. The Research Branch of the BC Forest Service is being disbanded,” says one e-mail from an alarmed bureaucrat. He signed off with these words: “Still in shock.”

Read Mark's full article with two charts HERE.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/british-columbia/mark-hume/bcs-restructured-natural-resources-ministry-causing-shock-waves/article1816798/

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Skookum1 comment:

Quoting Mark Hume:  "The good news is that a new premier will soon be in charge, and the NRO could soon go the way of the HST."


Whatever is he talking about? Because of the deal signed with the feds, the HST isn't going anywhere, even if the NDP take over and even if the HST referendum succeeds; short of a revolt against Ottawa's powers, that is, which certainly the people of British Columbia have a right to do, if in number and at the ballot....but will Harper even care? Or Ignatieff?

As for having a new leader soon, does he mean that it's likely that the new leader will ditch this NRO? We'd certainly hope so, but that line about "shaped by business interests" not only displays Campbell's true allegiance, rather than to either his party or the public interest, but also suggests that the clout may be too much for any new premier, of either major party, to resist.

An inquiry into the power of foreign investors over the planning and decision-making faculties of the current Premier and his cronies seems long overdue. It's almost like we need a political-donations version of FIRA.....

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Post-partisan politics, an idea whose time has come in B.C.

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BC Mary comment:  Another topic I've mentioned again and again on this blog: post-partisan politics. I've promised not to  let this site turn into the "Me good, You bad" political squabble between people who, if they stop and think about it, all want the best for this province. [Exception: Gordon Campbell who, in my personal, independent opinion, deserves tar-and-feathers for leading the relentless sneak-attacks to cripple, give away, or sell off British Columbia.]

Well ... Peter Ewart has written a column explaining why our maddening voting system doesn't work properly. And most encouraging is his reference to an earlier time in British Columbia history which had legislated a more independent system of representation in the legislature. 


Quote:
Unravelling socks and BC Politics, Part 3

By Peter Ewart

Opinion 250 - Nov. 29, 2010

...  some voters put politicians, including both MPs and MLAs, in the category of least trustworthy of occupations. Not a few people accuse them of cowardice, timidity, dishonesty and blind obedience to their party leadership.

How has this situation come about? Why is what should be the most honourable profession considered to be a dishonourable one?

{Snip} ...

The political process seems like it should be straightforward. Voters elect their MLA; and, then, that MLA, presumably full of enthusiasm and fresh ideas, goes down to the Legislature in Victoria and represents the voters of her or his riding, and of the province as a whole.

But there is a fly in the ointment. Something gets in the way of what should be a "natural connection" between voter, MLA and the legislature. That is, of course, the party system which has been superimposed upon the political process.

Under the party system, it is not the voters of the riding who get to select candidates, it is the local members of the political party riding association (and even, sometimes, the party leader). These riding association members often represent less than 1% of the riding population.

To get the party nomination, the candidate must swear allegiance to the party platform and the party leader. And thus the humbling of the candidate begins, in a ritual that is reminiscent of a serf pledging loyalty to a feudal lord. Or to put it another way, it resembles the "breaking" of the spirit of a wild horse.

Then the election takes place and, if the candidate is elected, some more "humbling" and "breaking in" follows. The MLA now is under the authority, not just of the party brass, but also of the party legislative whip who is charged with making sure that the MLA votes in line with what the party leadership deems to be appropriate. Failure to adhere to strict "party line" voting in the legislature can lead to various punishments, ranging from being denied seats on legislative committees and other perks (some of them financial) to outright expulsion and "banishment" from the party, with an accompanying "shunning" by other MLAs and party members.

And, so it is that, instead of being a "tribune of the people" for her or his riding, the MLA becomes a robot of the party. Rather than taking the concerns of the people in the riding to the provincial legislature, often as not, the reverse happens. The MLA's main task is reduced to selling party policy to the voters.

Nowhere is this more evident than in an election campaign. Take the example of the BC NDP in the 2009 election. Candidates who ran in the Central Interior of the province had much political "fodder" to draw upon. Under a BC Liberal government, the region was undergoing the worst forest industry downturn ever. Dozens of mill closures. Thousands of layoffs. School closures. Service cuts. Mortgage foreclosures. The decimation of entire settlements such as Mackenzie, a proud town which, in the past, had pumped out huge revenues for the provincial government. And so on. The defeat of the Liberal MLAs should have been a slam-dunk.

However, instead of drawing upon this experience to develop made-in-the-north policy, candidates were given a policy binder developed by the party brass with all kinds of input from unelected party officials, "spin doctors", and pollsters, based in the Lower Mainland. If candidates deviated from the crushing mediocrity of the policy binder by even an inch, they were called to task. This resulted in some candidates literally "gluing" themselves to the policy binder to the point that frustrated journalists and constituents pleaded with them to set the binder aside and simply speak their mind on issues.

Candidates were also cautioned to stay away from talking too much about "economic issues" because, according to the party "spin doctors", this might remind voters of the NDP's mishandling of the economy while in office back in the 1990s. Instead of layoffs and mill closures being a main issue in the campaign in this region, such Vancouver-based issues as "affordable housing" became front and centre. And thus, despite the fact that the candidates were certainly dedicated and hardworking, they were soundly defeated.

Is it any wonder that an NDP MLA like Bob Simpson, who has a detailed knowledge of the forest industry and other economic issues in this region, might bridle or even rebel against such idiocy?

But it is not just NDP candidates who suffer from this flawed political process. Liberal Party candidates were defeated in the 1996 election in this region precisely because Gordon Campbell, leader of the party, had pledged to sell BC Rail. Opposition to this sale was deep and widespread amongst the voters of the Central Interior and North, and, as a result, Liberal candidates lost ridings that they should have been able to win easily.

Of course, by the time of the 2001 election, Gordon Campbell had reversed his pledge to sell the railway and apologized to the voters of the region. A year or so later, it must have been quite a bleak morning for the newly-elected Liberal MLAs in the Interior to wake up and find out that Premier Campbell, in still another stunning reversal, was going to auction off the publicly-owned railway after all.

With the exception of MLA Paul Nettleton, who was eventually expelled from the Liberal caucus, the Liberal MLAs of the region had the humiliating task of trying to justify this major flip-flop and outright treachery to angry constituents. This cost them both votes and even longstanding friendships.

It must also have been quite a morning to wake up to find out that Premier Campbell, just two months after the 2009 election, was planning to impose the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) on a unsuspecting voting public. This "gift" from the Premier, which just as well might have been "written on a napkin" the night before, probably means that the political careers of many Liberal MLAs are over for good. Nonetheless, all Liberal MLAs, as part of "party discipline", have been expected to get out on the stumps and "sell" this hated tax. Surely, some part of their soul must be deeply embarrassed and insulted by all of this.

Is it any wonder that Liberal MLA Blair Lekstrom resigned as cabinet minister? Is it any wonder that MLA Bill Bennett blew his top?

Political parties can be very useful mechanisms for the people of the province, especially in the area of developing ideas and policies,  and educating voters on issues. In that regard, there is nothing wrong with parties having their own kinds of discipline and rules of operation. Let them function as they so choose.

However, as the examples above demonstrate, a big problem arises when this political party "system" is imposed on the electoral process and directly interferes with the relationship between voter and MLA. 

Thus the "unravelling" that is taking place in either party is not over. Nor can it ever be over, until party-domination of the electoral and legislative process itself is ended. In the early years of the province, British Columbians put a non-party process in place, where MLAs, in effect, represented their ridings as independents. That system was eventually overturned by the establishment political parties and their bagmen, hailing from out East.

Perhaps it’s time to consider a modern-day version of what was the original impulse of British Columbians to have as their democratic  structure.  

This article is the last in the "Unravelling socks and BC politics" series. Read the full article HERE.


http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/18497/7/unravelling+socks+and+bc+politics-+part+three
 
Peter Ewart is a columnist and writer based in Prince George, British Columbia. He can be reached at: peter.ewart@shaw.ca

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Comment by Skookum1, cross-posted:


That is, of course, the party system which has been superimposed upon the political process.

Indeed in BC, it very much was. There were no parties in British Columbia, not at the provincial level, until they were formally introduced and made virtually mandatory in 1903 by the incoming McBride administration. The Tories especially wanted to create party discipline in the House because of the years of chaos that preceded their rise; namely the Dunsmuir-Turner-Semlin-Martin succession, in whatever order that worked; and Martin was a case of a guy who, once in possession of the Crown's power, made a point of not calling the House so he couldn't be deposed (sound familiar?). Before that a Premier had to work with MLAs individually to build policy, and alliances were always shifting, including during campaigns and right after elections...

Party discipline was "for stability" and "to encourage investment"....

Though official parties were not allowed in the House until 1903, there were individuals MLAs who self-declared for one party or another, notably early labour candidates, but before 1900 that was considered rude and ungentlemanly (as was breaking one's word to the electorate).

Another feature of those times that should be revived is, upon announcement of a cabinet, immediate resignations by those appointed, such that they have to win a second mandate to prove their riding's support for their new position. This included the first minister.....

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Skookum1 adds:
Just by way of correction, the succession was Turner-Semlin-Martin-Dunsmuir-Prior (1895-1903). Mounting, and migratory within the province, population meant not only fluctuating electoral politics but a slew of political carpetbaggers....especially Martin, whose career is one of the more amazingly extroverted in Canadian, or BC, politics. Dunsmuir was an establishment replacement after Martin was ousted, when a sitting of the House was finally inevitable and a vote of non-confidence held; the L-G - the most conflicted-interest viceroy I think in Canada's history - was replaced by Henri Joly de Lotbiniere (i.e. a transplanted Quebecker brought in to stabilize things). Dunsuir was a dud, Prior only a caretaker until the party system could be introduced (i.e. also a dud). There's more to it than that, and far more as to the strategics of why the Tories wanted the party system. Essentially the non-party system was being blamed for the province's political turmoil.....of course we know now that wasn't the solution at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_premiers_of_British_Columbia

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Sunday, November 28, 2010

 

A bit of good news: deBruyckere says trial documents won't be destroyed

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Bill Tieleman has the story:

RCMP officer denies force wanted Basi-Virk Materials destroyed. 

By Bill Tieleman
24 Hours - Nov. 29, 2010

Read the story HERE 

http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/News/local/2010/11/28/pf-16353216.html

BC Mary comment: I wonder, though, where those documents are? Are they securely protected?

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BC Mary finds warning, warning, warning ... when looking for details on the powerful new Ministry of Natural Resource Operations

.
Go to:

http://ilmbwww.gov.bc.ca/apps/searchEngine.php

and, if you can, have a look at this:

Ministry of Natural Resource Operations
 

Search engine

A long list begins with:

* Warning: explode ()  [function - explode]  Empty delimiter ...

and it goes on like that. For some reason, I began to copy it in longhand. Almost impossible, of course. Ridiculous thought. So I resolved to cut-and-paste the long list onto my blog. Ha.

First, however, I would take a copy of the URL for my draft. Did that.

Next: I returned to the site of the URL.  This is what I found:

... everything has vanished

except

Ministry of Natural Resource Operations

Search Engine




that's all.

I kept trying. No luck. Then I went looking for answers. But even University of Waterloo (centre of Geek Universe where Stephen Hawking is hanging out) identifies this important BC Government list as a problem. So how come I saw such a full list, on the first try?

What do you think?  Me, I think my clever readers will have better luck. I hope so. But even the list I saw isn't totally helpful ... it consisted of warning after warning after warning ... or?... maybe that's the whole point.

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BC Mary adds: To certain strange readers who believe that everyone operates on orders from nasty people who wish to control the world:  I may be wrong, I may be on a different wave length from you, but just so you know: I am not willing to take orders from anybody ... not them, and not you. 

The Legislature Raids is my own creation. I certainly couldn't have done it without lots of help, input and encouragement from others; but the fact remains: it's my concept, my work, my blog, so my editorial choices. 


You might be interested in the math. I've spent almost 5 years at a minimum (often more) of 10 hours a day reading, reading, communicating, and preparing posts before you ever see them.  My gift to a beloved home province is like this: 


10 hours a day x 365 days a year (the first,  worst assault came at Christmas 2006 - so I guarantee, it's been EVERY day) for 5 years = 18,250 days which, if charged out at a modest $25. a day = a gift of $456,250.00. 


That's not including the purchase of two new computers, the Internet fee, paper & stuff, or any research and travel costs.  OK? Them's my credentials in this matter. Yours?

There is more to running a blog than certain commenters realize. And I highly recommend that if it bothers you that you see the world differently than I do -- and you're sure that some very nasty people are in a big Air Traffic Control Headquarters somewhere on the planet giving Gordon Campbell his diabolical orders -- well, start a blog of your own. 

And when you do, I can report in advance that you'll receive messages which should be buried in the back yard with quick-lime: weird prescriptions, prostitution, pornography, and lots of messages (on a daily basis) in Chinese, Russian, and I forget what else. That's in addition to people who try to promote their own game-plans. On my blog, they are all deleted without apology. All. And don't get me started on the barbaric suggestion that I must publish all destructive rubbish in the name of "Free Speech" because,  for cryin' out loud, nobody is preventing you from setting up a blog of your own.

Think about that. 

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Friday, November 26, 2010

 

BC Rail and all else reduced to giveaway merchandise ... Gordon Campbell's ultimate insult to British Columbians

.
Update: See Laila Yuile's report "Of course BC is for sale" HERE.

http://lailayuile.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/of-course-b-c-is-for-sale-just-take-a-look-at-these-foreign-investor-ads-produced-by-the-bc-liberals/ 

____________________________


BC Mary comment: I told you, I told you, I told you ... over and over I told you ... that whatever had been allowed to happen to BC Rail is what would happen to all other publicly-owned assets in British Columbia under the control of Gordon Campbell as premier. That is why we had to stop him.  That's why I believed in the BC Rail Political Corruption Trial ... I knew it was (and still is) absolutely essential to hold that BC Rail trial to let it reveal - under oath - how to undo that damage and to avoid future damage to the province. 

But what is continuing to happen right under our noses is worse ... far, far worse than I could have imagined: The
Ministry of Natural Resource Operations. 

Island Tides -- a small, independent,  bi-monthly newspaper with brilliant reporters -- tells us precisely what has happened. Here's a quote:



... Mr Campbell's restructuring has been secretly under development for 8 months. It is supposed to be implemented without a fall legislative session, without enabling bills, without debate, and without public consultation.

"It encapsulates Mr Campbell's longterm agenda: giveaways of publicly-owned resources, deregulation without legislation, reduced corporate taxes, and off-the-books public subsidization.

"This ... is his ultimate insult to British Columbians. Does the cabinet have the intestinal fortitude to halt this destructive reorganization of government?"




This could be called a Citizens' Alert. The time has come for the general population  to move past political slurs and join forces to see what we can do about this catastrophic, emergency situation.

Here are the two full editorials written by Patrick Brown published on Pender Island in the bi-monthly newspaper, Island Tides:

Gordon Campbell's Last Hurrah

Editorial
Island Tides - Nov. 11, 2010

... A week before his press conference proposing a BC Liberal leadership review, Premier Gordon Campbell announced a
restructuring of government, apparently without consulting cabinet—and to some opposition among his ministers.

Given his current quasi-resignation, it was the last moment he could exercise the authority to make such a sweeping move.

The shuffle was far from a musical chairs exercise, although the names of a majority of ministries were not changed. In fact, the October 25 Order-in-Council effectively altered the regulatory authorities and procedures under several existing major pieces of legislation.

The centerpiece of the reorganization was the creation of a Ministry of Natural Resource Operations under the
Honourable Steve Thomson, elected for Kelowna-Mission in 2009 and formerly Minister of Agriculture
.

The creation of the new ministry marked a naked ideological shift from the stewardship of BC’s environment
to its exploitation, a shift that has been pursued by the BCLiberal government since it came into power in 2001.


It involved significant changes in the responsibilities of several ministries in order to create a ‘one-stop shop’ for
applications, permits, and licenses for anyone wishing to exploit the province’s natural resources, be it forestry, mining, oil, gas, energy production, agriculture, or any form of land use
.

While there is still a Ministry of the Environment, some of its functions appear to have been transferred to the new ministry. It is not clear what the
relationship of these two ministries will be.

Minister Thomson had been Chair of the BC Chamber of Commerce and had participated in several provincial
government panels and task forces, on red tape and regulation reduction, fiscal review, and the government’s business council. Despite this experience, his description of his new ministry reportedly leant heavily on the term ‘work in progress’.

Among many things, the new Ministry inherits responsibility for (take a deep breath) the First Nations Authorization Consultation Branch, and the forest
investment operations function, (from the Minister and Forests and Range and the Integrated Land Management Bureau); the Crown Land Administration Division.
(from Reprint from Volume 22 Number 21 Nov 11, 2010)


BC Ministry Changes

Order-in-Council OIC 652, October 25, 2010

*Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation
*Ministry of Agriculture and Lands becomes Ministry of Agriculture
*Ministry of Attorney General
*Ministry of Children and Family Development
*Ministry of Citizens’ Services
*Ministry of Community and Rural Development becomes Ministry of Community, Sport and Cultural
Development
*Ministry of Education
*Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources becomes Ministry of Energy
*Ministry of Environment
*Ministry of Finance
*Ministry of Forests and Range becomes Ministry of Forests, Mines and Lands
*Ministry of Health Services
*Ministry of Healthy Living and Sport – dIsestaBlIshed
(the Olympics is over)
*Ministry of Labour
*Ministry of Natural Resource Operations - new
*Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General
*Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market
*Development becomes Ministry of Regional Economic
and Skills Development
*Ministry of Small Business, Technology & Economic Development, becomes Ministry of Science & Universities
*Ministry of Housing and Social Development becomes Ministry of Social Development
*Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts becomes Ministry of Tourism, Trade and Investment
*Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands); the Aboriginal
Relations Branch (from the Ministry of Energy, Mines, and
Petroleum Resources); and ‘the Ecology and Earth Sciences,
Bio-ecological Classification Plan Ecology, Wildlife Habitat
and Range Ecology, Climatology and Soil Conservation,
Fish-forestry Interactions and Watershed and Silviculture
Research Sections of the Research, Innovation and
Knowledge Management Branch of the Competitiveness
and Innovation Division of the Ministry of Forests and
Range are transferred to the Ministry of Natural Resource
Operations.’

This last paragraph, lifted directly from the Order-in-Council covering the cabinet restructuring, illustrates both what is being changed and the organizational complexities which underly the need for change.

The new ministry is not the only area where significant responsibilities, along with the staff responsible for them, are being transferred. Although many of the existing ministries continue under the same name, some of the name changes indicate a significant shift in their focus from people to business.

There are enough changes so that the Order-in-Council carries a 35-page table listing which ministries are now responsible for which pieces of legislation.

It will clearly be some time before the pieces of government which have been flung into the air by this restructuring settle into their new homes and roles.

The current situation of premier-in-limbo leaves this fundamental reorganization unassailable.

___________________________

Double Editorial: Gordon Campbell's final hurrah: the restructuring of BC government
Nov 11 and 25, 2010

Maybe Premier Gordon Campbell's 'cabinet shuffle' (actually a restructuring of BC government) followed by a quasi-resignation was no strange muddle but rather a carefully planned strategy. BCLiberals are left with a new, currently unassailable ministry designed to exploit BC's environment. Will they have the courage to undo this? (Restructuring listed in detail.)

Read:
http://www.islandtides.com/assets/reprint/bcgov_11112010c.pdf   and  http://www.islandtides.com


‘Island Tides’ is an independent, regional newspaper distributing 18,000 print copies throughout the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island from Victoria to Campbell River.

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The Campbell government's explanation  is HERE:
http://hmaland.com/blog/?p=153

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BC Mary comment:  In my view, this is planned chaos intended to cripple the next government no matter who forms the next government.  We must all understand that the duly-elected or duly-hired participants in British Columbia's civic life face the enormous challenge of rebuilding what it means to be a sovereign, independent province ... 


If you ask me, that means getting past the "Me good, You bad" school of partisan politics.  And getting past the corrupted media which pretends that everything is OK when B.C. is at the tipping point soon to go over the cliff.

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BC Mary comment: This is the only reference to the new Ministry of Natural Resource Operations that I've seen in Big Media, and it's only a glancing reference in a Province column by Michael Smyth:

Quote:

... [Bill] Bennett criticized Campbell twice in the last few weeks. Both times, he was bang on the money.

He slammed Campbell's reckless reorganization of government, which is causing havoc in the bureaucracy.


Read more HERE
http://www.theprovince.com/This+political+knife+fight+will+only+uglier/3846683/story.html#ixzz16ae0fa5t
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Comment from Skookum1, cross-posted:


It strikes me that this new mega-ministry may be a constitutional violation of some kind; something that would require changing the provincial "constitution", the British Columbia Act or whatever it's called.

Though it's true that even the new system of deputy ministers reporting directly to the Premier's office instead of their ministers is also a constitutional change, though "they got away with it" by "convention" ("what we can get away with you can't stop"). Even the outsourcing of government agencies and services to companies in other countries (i.e. not just selling resources, but selling government operations) may be a violation of constitutional sovereignty.

All big legal research cases if there's anything to them; and the money that would take, well, let's just say the people on the other side are the ones who have money for lawyers. Or are, as in the case of too many politicians, actual lawyers. And dang nab it, wouldn't you know it - 100% of judges, 100%, are lawyers. No wonder the court system is what it is......add in a stew of media/communications spin - note that Knowledge Branch of the MoF - and you've got a marketing machine for Alberta-style environmental/industrial rapine )or perhaps "Asia-style" might be the better term, considering the scale of the market and also of what the extractions will look like and what they will cause....).

this new ministry strikes me as First Lieutenant or something; the Finance Minister is normally the second-in-command, or the most powerful anyway, though in BC of late it seems the Attorney-General's ministry has been, well, being too powerful and not, er, very impartial. But Natural Resource Operations, that's got so many hats stuffed into its box it's like half the government....or more. Is this the position for hte new "shadow Premier"....'cause I think the plan this time is to give us a Reagan-like puppet, and have someone else hold the reins. And this ministry is certainly those reins.....

Another question is exactly whose idea is it, the mega-ministry - and is it widely supported by Liberals, or some crazy-jack action from Gordo acting semi-alone? i.e. is this cabinet configuration going to stand definitely (do all leadership candidates support it?).

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Patrick Brown's reply to Skookum1:


Yes, the reorganization is a constitutional matter, because the resource Acts (Mines, Forests, Water, OIl & Gas, and much of Environment) assume and authorize Ministries devoted to their policy development, regulation, licencing, and enforcement.

What the reorganization does is separate out the policy function from the regulation and enforcement, thus rendering the policy moot (and mute) in the face of an implied (but not legislated) policy that government exists only to assist the corporate sector in its development of the province's resources. This is the ultimate and extreme expression of neo-Gordoism, maybe more extreme than has been implemented in any western 'democracy'.


To actually legislate this would require rewriting all the resource Acts, probably too much fuss. And since the BNA Act gives the provinces authority over resources, probably in contravention at least of its purposes, since all government is carried out in the name of the Crown, which represents the sovereignty of the people. (See our [Island Tides] editorial: 'The Crown and the Government' in our October 28 issue.)

There doesn't seem to me much question as to whose idea it was, since we now find out that a couple of deputy ministers have been working away on it for about eight months, and the cabinet was not aware it was going on. And, of course, there is no legislation and no debate, let alone public debate or consultation.  - Patrick Brown

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BC Mary comment: as to who will form the next provincial government for the long-suffering Province of British Columbia, well ... The Great Satan says (with tricky bits edited out) ...


2011 . . . a New BC Dark Ages


In all likelihood by March of 2011 the next Premier of BC will either be Christy Clark or Kevin Falcon.

I have known these individuals since the mid-1990s and with regards to Christy as far back as 1993  [snippety-hoo-haw] ...

Christy personally told me [much later] she was going to be Canada's first elected female prime minister ...

Kevin and Christy are as loathsome human beings, even more malevolent than Gordon Campbell, since for all his malice Gordon in comparison to these two is lazy, unmotivated and easily distracted by . . . chemistry and biology.

Kevin, the more overtly aggressive of the two, believes in "attack all the time" but has never mastered the sophistication of the big-lie and sweet smile approach.

So as bad as Kevin is, he is largely honest about being a storm-trooper.

Christy, on the other hand, is a crafted product of the Federal Liberal system of political-correctness, propaganda, evasion and media-sweetness.

Kevin is by his very nature incapable of hiding his reactionary right-wing values for any extended period of time and under pressure defaults to his Reich Protektor operating mode.

Christy Clark though, a creature of late 1990s Fraser Institute neo-con thinking, is actually devoid of any ideological limitations and is a creature of pure individual opportunism.

For those familiar with the rise of Joseph Stalin between 1925-1934, you would see the consummate opportunist who would shift whenever necessary between alliances with the Lenin, Trotsky and Bukharin wings of the Communist Party.

Ultimately, for Stalin by January, 1934 and the Communist Party Congress of Victors, Stalin was the last man standing, having demonstrated that raw human malice triumphs over ideology.

This is not an attempt to compare Madame Clark to Joseph Stalin, for she actually tends to identify with the hard-sell propaganda "sales" methods of Argentina's Evita Peron, but it does illustrate Christy Clark's standard operating procedures for acquiring her ultimate personal objectives.

Considering the inherent weakness of the NDP's leadership and the hard line pro-Liberal bias of BC's beautiful media, it would not be a stretch of reality to see a "renewed" BC Liberal Party win an election between 2011-2013.

A government lead by either Christy Clark or Kevin Falcon would certainly introduce economic and administrative measures designed to destroy not only all trade-unionism in BC but likely to result in the demise of the traditional middle-class.

Under either of these two political raptors BC would likely become a 21st Century version of 1850s Industrial Age England.

A new Dark Ages would descend on this province.

-30-

***************************************


 
.
BC Mary comment:  It isn't often we get a chuckle out of BC politics these days. This comes from Prince George. A tip o'the tuque to Ben Meisner who says:


All Hail King Kevin?

By 250 News

Friday, November 26, 2010

I think we should get rid of MLAs Pat Bell and Shirley Bond and thank God we have gotten rid of Gordon Campbell because, according to a number of people in Prince George, it was Kevin Falcon who did all the good things for Northern BC.

According to an ad in a  local paper, Falcon is solely responsible for:
Cariboo Connector,
Twinning Simon Fraser Bridge,
Expansion of the Prince George airport,
establishment of the Northern Development Initiative Trust,
establishment of the BC family residency program.
Hell, according to the ad he even is responsible for the kicking Horse Canyon Bridge, and removal of the toll booths on the Coquihalla.

When Premier Campbell was in town telling the population that the Cariboo connector would be built over the next ten years, he must have been actually speaking on behalf of his Cabinet Minister Kevin Falcon. Same thing when it comes to the Simon Fraser Bridge.

What the hell, why not get rid of the whole damn legislative assembly and just have Kevin Falcon as King?  He has, according to the spin, done it all anyway and all of those MLA’s from Kamloops who fought over the tolls, and the MLA,s from the Kootenays must have just been on hand for show and tell.

Now according to the spin Falcon also did a number of great things for Northern and rural BC like establishment of the Northern Development Initiative Trust. Now that’s where a portion of the sale of the BC rail was put into a slush fund. I hope the Minister will finally take credit for being responsible for the sale of BC Rail that will definitely ad to his popularity.

I can't wait to be one of the people to do an interview with candidate Kevin Falcon on his run for the job as Premier, trust me, it will be exciting.

I’m Meisner and that’s One Man’s Opinion.

Source is HERE:

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/18457/7/all+hail+king+kevin%3F

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BC Mary comment:  No yelling, please. At least ... not until AFTER you have read what the Communist Party of B.C. has to say about the resignation of Gordon Campbell.  Here goes ... 


Campbell was Devoted to Corporate Welfare

Statement by the Communist Party of British Columbia on the resignation of Gordon Campbell

Nov. 5, 2010

The three terms of the Campbell Liberals have been characterized by implementing the lowest taxes for the wealthy and  corporations in North America at the expense of the standard of living, wages and social programs of BC residents. His forced resignation is a compliment to a tenacious and awakened electorate who has had enough.

In his devotion to corporate welfare, Gordon Campbell kept the minimum wage at the lowest level in Canada while presiding over an economy where the top ten CEO’s collectively in 2009 earned $70 million dollars. Upon the imbalanced scales of extreme wealth and extreme poverty, Gordon Campbell’s weight was always on the side of extreme wealth.

For seven years British Columbia has had the worst child poverty in Canada. After nine years of tuition fee increases, B.C. takes in more from tuition fees than it does from corporate taxation. The massive privatization of healthcare services, with parallel cutbacks in quality and accessibility, has channelled hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into corporate bank accounts, while rolling back healthcare wages 15% and then freezing them at that level.

The Campbell Liberals repeatedly broke election promises that had value to the public, and steadfastly adhered to every policy that gave away public resources to private business. They have brought almost every school board in B.C. into a funding crisis that has put nearly 200 schools on the closure list so far. They broke their promise not to privatize BC Rail, and in the corrupted bidding process implicated cabinet ministers in a scandal currently hidden behind two scapegoats and a plea bargain that hides the extent and involvement of elected officials in betrayal and corruption.

The Campbell Liberals have gutted the Environmental Assessment Act and created Cabinet powers that overrule municipal by‑laws and autonomy to the point that municipalities can only govern if they don’t interfere with corporate interests. They cut the transfer of gambling profits to Charities and the Arts from 33% to 10%. They made massive funding cuts to women’s shelters, closed down homeless hostels, and cut and slashed their way through almost every social or special needs program in the province.

For Gordon Campbell to whine about a vindictive public and the strain on his family after ruining so many lives is typical of the arrogance and contempt he and his government have exercised. The NDP MLAs and Party Leader who stroke him on his way out with platitudes about “years of public service” should tell the truth and expose the years of “corporate service” if they don’t want to appear as members of the same club.

Gordon Campbell was not brought down by the parliamentary opposition; he was not brought down by a caucus revolt. He was brought down by massive public rejection of the Liberal Government’s record of lies broken promises and deceit that made it impossible for him to continue. The HST debacle and the transfer of $1.6 billion from the public to the private purse has become the catalyst, the glue of all the diverse forces screaming betrayal.

The historic pending referendum is evidence of the public rage. Gordon Campbell is going, he should be gone and his entire caucus that supported him doggedly should leave with him.

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BC Mary comment: It's interesting that Toronto Dominion bank's Chief Executive Officer is saying much the same thing as the Communist Party is saying ... 


Lower taxes for the poor, TD Bank says

The Canadian Press / Toronto Star
Published Thursday Nov 25 2010

TD Bank CEO Ed Clark addresses the Montreal Canadian Club at a luncheon in Montreal on Thursday. He said Ottawa should consider cutting taxes for low-income Canadians who are being hit by both economic restructuring and an inequitable tax system that “discourages people from participating in the workforce,” ...

“The shape of the recovery will not leave Canadians equally well-off,” Clark told the Canadian Club in Montreal Thursday. “There is a clear risk that lower income Canadians will bear the brunt of the slow recovery.”

Lower income Canadians already face much higher marginal tax rates than higher-income Canadians, he noted, adding that high employment taxes also hit lower-income earners harder.

“We should encourage people to work — not discourage them,” he said in his speech marking the bank’s 150th anniversary in Quebec ...

Read more HERE.

http://www.thestar.com/business/companies/article/897034--lower-taxes-for-the-poor-td-bank-says


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And now, for a bit of mystery, here is Ian Reid
** The Real Story **
asking who negotiated the $6 million deal to pay Basi & Virk legal expenses?

Click HERE
http://therealstory.ca/2010-11-26/bc-liberals/the-bc-rail-plea-bargain-the-question-that-hasnt-been-asked

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Thursday, November 25, 2010

 

The RCMP. The BC Rail Scandal Basi, Virk, and Basi Case. The RCMP. The War Measures Act of 1970 and the FLQ. Two stories. A single thread connects them.

.
By Robin Mathews
November 25, 2010

36 hours after the War Measures Act was imposed on October 16, 1970, I was at a party a few blocks away from the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.  Many of the people present were NDP – most present were going to the protest demonstration the next day, a Sunday, against the imposition of the War Measures Act (the WMA).

Organizing had gone on, and Conservative, NDP, Creditiste (Quebec Social Credit) MPs were anxious to be at the protest, as well as many, many others.  The day before, I had been on the phone to Eric Neilson, Conservative MP for the Yukon.  He had trouble hearing me.  “This phone line is terrible”, he said.  “I can hardly hear you. I wonder what’s the matter.”

“I’m afraid it’s quite simple,” I said.  “The RCMP is tapping my phone and yours, too.  That drains the line.”  “They can’t be tapping my phone here in the Parliament Buildings,” he said.

He was right.  To do so was a violation of Canadian Constitutional practice.  He proved later that the RCMP was tapping his phone. And that was just the beginning….

Eight days after the War Measures Act was imposed, I gave an address at York University in Toronto.  My speech challenged Pierre Trudeau and the WMA and traced its ill effects on reform activities and radical groups across the country.  Unknown to me, the RCMP recorded the address and put it in my RCMP file in Ottawa.  The last time I could get someone “inside” to check, it was still there.

As the party near the Parliament Buildings was winding down, someone turned on the TV – and there was the news that the murdered body of Pierre Laporte (kidnapped Quebec cabinet minister) was found in the trunk of a car near St. Hubert airport. He was the second of two kidnapped – the other being James Cross, British diplomat, later freed. After the imposition of the WMA, (before the death of Laporte) hundreds of Quebecers were arrested, jailed arbitrarily without charges and without reason given … pulled from their homes often in the middle of the night. The whole process looked planned….

Our house party ended.  The next day, Sunday, thousands of shocked and puzzled Canadians flowed to the lawns around the Parliament Buildings, disturbed and unhappy.  NOT, as the Mainstream Press reported, to “support Trudeau and the WMA”.

The planned protest?  No Conservatives, no NDP, no Creditistes appeared.  Only Ottawa’s leading lady activist Charlotte McEwen and about eighteen Marxist Leninists and … me. We had placards. We discussed and conversed with people for hours… with barely a hint of animosity from anyone there.

The death of Pierre Laporte was crucial.  The arranged protest had almost evaporated.  The mood of the country changed … suddenly.  The story has been told … and told (falsely, says Louis Hamelin).

Now he has just retold it in a 600 page novel in which real characters (barely disguised) abound.  The novel (in French) is the result of eight years of intensive research by author Louis Hamelin.  In it, apparently, he repeats the idea that involved mediator/novelist (at the time) Jacques Ferron argued - that Pierre Laporte didn’t have to die. But was sacrificed believes Hamelin… for the long laid plans of Trudeau and … others.

Louis Hamelin believes that the people in power and the RCMP played the part of puppet-masters in a way that even the principal FLQ actors didn’t know.  Pierre Laporte was manipulated (to his death): “It is my interpretation of the October Crisis: [says Hamelin, ACTUALITE, Oct, 2010] a man was sacrificed, when he could have been saved”.  The felquistes, too, (as they’re called in Quebec) were also the playthings of power, manipulated unknowingly by political power and the RCMP.

We knew already that the RCMP created fake FLQ cells and blew things up – to frighten the population and make it believe the FLQ was stronger than it, in fact, was. FLQ cells were no sooner disbanded or broken up than new ones formed.  That wasn’t difficult when the RCMP was forming them.

We know the RCMP lawlessly raided offices and stole parti Quebecois membership lists.  We know it burned down a barn in the countryside, intending to blame the FLQ for the fire.  We know those things – and others - created the most expensive Royal Commission (to that time) in Canadian history: the McDonald Commission.  One of the causes of the Commission [take note] was that the RCMP had conducted 400 break-ins without warrant, mostly in B.C. All of those things, and more, brought forth the McDonald Report.  Its title showed its farcical nature – “An Inquiry into certain activities of the RCMP”.

People don’t know that Trudeau went very far from Quebec to find someone totally independent for the Royal Commission– and appointed, by the merest accident, a Liberal flack known as such in Alberta where he lived.  People don’t know that the terms of the Inquiry limited David McDonald and prevented him from looking at RCMP overseas activity where the Force is alleged to have arranged the death of people connected to the FLQ.

Hamelin suggests that even the first kidnap – of James Cross was “perhaps a gigantic police provocation”.  The police had foiled attempts to kidnap the Israeli consul in Montreal and the U.S. consul later.  How come they let the kidnap of James Cross go ahead? Hamelin believes they intended to let it go ahead … and he suggests the CIA had a hand in matters.

The point is made.  The RCMP was up to its armpits in illegal activity in the matter of the FLQ Crisis – even if we don’t go as far as Louis Hamelin does.

What was the historical result of such concentrated and continuous lawlessness on the part of the RCMP?

David McDonald was appointed in 1977 and he finished his Report in 1981. Very obviously agreements had to be made, and recommendations had to be of such a kind that the RCMP wasn’t embarrassed or rebuilt in any significant way.  The RCMP had high cards to play.  If David McDonald tried to steal RCMP power, or if the Liberal government did, then the RCMP could … talk …  could embarrass government in a huge way. The historical result was that the RCMP couldn’t be reined in.

Louis Hamelin has his theories – which he plays out in his novel, “La constellation du lynx”.  My theory, too, is that the government of Pierre Trudeau enlisted the RCMP (the army, the CIA, British Intelligence, and more) in a gigantic, lawless move to do what it could to destroy the FLQ as well as any and all left and independence movements in Quebec.

What government didn’t know it had done - was create an RCMP that could move increasingly, at its highest levels, independently of its lawful mandate, into what I insist on calling ‘organized crime’. It could move, now, independently of government, now in support of neo-conservative governments, now in cooperation with governments engaged in breach of trust at the least, and in criminal activity at the worst.

Remember that in the December 2005, in the heart of the federal election the RCMP broke constitutional practice – again – to help the Harperites win the election, by announcing a criminal investigation into Liberal cabinet member Ralph Goodale’s finance department.  Remember, the RCMP – I am convinced – conducted a highly flawed investigation of Glen Clark to assist Gordon Campbell in gaining the premiership of British Columbia.

And remember that the RCMP chief of the investigation in the BC Rail Scandal during 2003-04, Kevin Debruyckere, was brother-in-law of Kelly Reichert, Executive Director of the B.C. Liberal Party.  Defence alleged Debruyckere was informing Reichert who was informing Gordon Campbell all about the investigation. But the trial was brutally aborted before any of that matter could come before the jury.

Remember the RCMP was investigating finance minister Gary Collins on December 12, 2003.  Remember that almost on that same date William Berardino QC was appointed Special Prosecutor in violation of the legislation governing such appointments. The investigation of Collins stopped without any formal record of its termination.  And the trial was aborted before any of that matter could come before the jury.

Glen Clark was forced to resign as premier in 1999 in B.C. What I call ‘the fraudulent RCMP investigation and trial of Clark” ensued, his political career was ruined by both the accusations begun in Gordon Campbell’s constituency office and by an RCMP investigation headed up by a friend of Campbell who was twice invited to run for office on Campbell’s ticket. The Mainstream Press and Media conducted a vilification campaign against Clark without parallel in B.C.

Proof for me that the RCMP investigation was fraudulent came to me when I asked for a Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP review of the investigation.  The RCMP shut it down.  I persisted.  Finally, a full three years later, the Public Complaints Commission sent me its Report – finding that two experienced RCMP officers “wrongfully” terminated the investigation! And then, of course, Glen Clark had spent 136 days in trial – his lawyer insisting more than once that the “evidence” against him was valueless. When the trial ended, Clark was absolved of all charges. But by this time – as planned, I believe – Gordon Campbell was premier of British Columbia. (And his relation with the RCMP was solid.)

Louis Hamelin believes that in Quebec “the fix was in”.  The October Crisis was fabricated.  The outcome was drafted before it began. Many in B.C. believe that before BC Rail went up for sale “the fix was in”.  And a part of that “fix” was that the RCMP would do a tailored and thoroughly corrupt investigation.  They never, in fact, undertook to investigate the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to the CNR.

In fact, top government officials talked with the RCMP about the (search warrant) raids to be conducted on the legislature, December 28, 2003, keeping no records. Documents I examined reported Beverly Busson, top RCMP officer in B.C., was present at one of the planning meetings.  When the ‘raids’ were completed Martyn Brown, Gordon Campbell’s Chief of Staff, (by his own testimony) spoke on the phone to Gary Bass, soon to become the new top RCMP officer in B.C.

Gary Bass, incidentally, refuses to investigate the major people involved in the corrupt transfer of B.C. Rail to the CNR.

Louis Hamelin believes the FLQ members involved in the kidnaps were “set up” by the RCMP and were the Media Front Men for a process intended to do something they never planned.  Yes, they were criminals. But they were used brilliantly by others. And all the other crimes involved in the October Crisis have never been touched.  Many of them committed by the RCMP.

Many, many people in B.C. believe Basi, Virk, and Basi were set up by the RCMP and were Media Front Men to disguise a criminal process undertaken by others.  Yes, two of the accused men admitted guilt.  But they were used brilliantly by others. And all the other crimes involved in the BC Rail Scandal have never been touched. Many of them committed by the RCMP.

The difference between the two historic events is that the felquistes had almost nothing on the RCMP or the governments of Quebec or Canada. Basi, Virk, and Basi had been in close with the government operatives managing the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to the CNR.  And so they could “deal”, even though they were cornered.

In both cases the RCMP (so far) got away Scot free.  The power of the RCMP grows.  It tightens its relation with unsavoury governments.

It moved from its role in the October Crisis  - in which, I believe, it was asked to act lawlessly – to the BC Rail Scandal where it repeated its role, I believe, as a facilitator of criminal activity.

When the Pubic Inquiry into the BC Rail Scandal is set up, a major portion of its work must be the investigation of the role played by the RCMP.


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The RCMP.  The BC Rail Scandal Basi, Virk, and Basi Case.  The RCMP. The War Measures Act of 1970 and the FLQ. Two stories. A single thread connects them.

36 hours after the War Measures Act was imposed on October 16, 1970, I was at a party a few blocks away from the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa.  Many of the people present were NDP – most present were going to the protest demonstration the next day, a Sunday, against the imposition of the War Measures Act (the WMA).

Organizing had gone on, and Conservative, NDP, Creditiste (Quebec Social Credit) MPs were anxious to be at the protest, as well as many, many others.  The day before, I had been on the phone to Eric Neilson, Conservative MP for the Yukon.  He had trouble hearing me.  “This phone line is terrible”, he said.  “I can hardly hear you. I wonder what’s the matter.”

“I’m afraid it’s quite simple,” I said.  “The RCMP is tapping my phone and yours, too.  That drains the line.”  “They can’t be tapping my phone here in the Parliament Buildings”, he said.

He was right.  To do so was a violation of Canadian Constitutional practice.  He proved later that the RCMP was tapping his phone. And that was just the beginning….

Eight days after the War Measures Act was imposed, I gave an address at York University in Toronto.  My speech challenged Pierre Trudeau and the WMA and traced its ill effects on reform activities and radical groups across the country.  Unknown to me, the RCMP recorded the address and put it in my RCMP file in Ottawa.  The last time I could get someone “inside” to check, it was still there.

As the party near the Parliament Buildings was winding down, someone turned on the TV – and there was the news that the murdered body of Pierre Laporte (kidnapped Quebec cabinet minister) was found in the trunk of a car near St. Hubert airport. He was the second of two kidnapped – the other being James Cross, British diplomat, later freed. After the imposition of the WMA, (before the death of Laporte) hundreds of Quebecers were arrested, jailed arbitrarily without charges and without reason given … pulled from their homes often in the middle of the night. The whole process looked planned….

Our house party ended.  The next day, Sunday, thousands of shocked and puzzled Canadians flowed to the lawns around the Parliament Buildings, disturbed and unhappy.  NOT, as the Mainstream Press reported, to “support Trudeau and the WMA”.

The planned protest?  No Conservatives, no NDP, no Creditistes appeared.  Only Ottawa’s leading lady activist Charlotte McEwen and about eighteen Marxist Leninists and … me. We had placards. We discussed and conversed with people for hours… with barely a hint of animosity from anyone there.

The death of Pierre Laporte was crucial.  The arranged protest had almost evaporated.  The mood of the country changed … suddenly.  The story has been told … and told (falsely, says Louis Hamelin).

Now he has just retold it in a 600 page novel in which real characters (barely disguised) abound.  The novel (in French) is the result of eight years of intensive research by author Louis Hamelin.  In it, apparently, he repeats the idea that involved mediator/novelist (at the time) Jacques Ferron argued - that Pierre Laporte didn’t have to die. But was sacrificed believes Hamelin… for the long laid plans of Trudeau and … others.

Louis Hamelin believes that the people in power and the RCMP played the part of puppet-masters in a way that even the principal FLQ actors didn’t know.  Pierre Laporte was manipulated (to his death): “It is my interpretation of the October Crisis: [says Hamelin, ACTUALITE, Oct, 2010] a man was sacrificed, when he could have been saved”.  The felquistes, too, (as they’re called in Quebec) were also the playthings of power, manipulated unknowingly by political power and the RCMP.

We knew already that the RCMP created fake FLQ cells and blew things up – to frighten the population and make it believe the FLQ was stronger than it, in fact, was. FLQ cells were no sooner disbanded or broken up than new ones formed.  That wasn’t difficult when the RCMP was forming them.

We know the RCMP lawlessly raided offices and stole parti Quebecois membership lists.  We know it burned down a barn in the countryside, intending to blame the FLQ for the fire.  We know those things – and others - created the most expensive Royal Commission (to that time) in Canadian history: the McDonald Commission.  One of the causes of the Commission [take note] was that the RCMP had conducted 400 break-ins without warrant, mostly in B.C. All of those things, and more, brought forth the McDonald Report.  Its title showed its farcical nature – “An Inquiry into certain activities of the RCMP”.

People don’t know that Trudeau went very far from Quebec to find someone totally independent for the Royal Commission– and appointed, by the merest accident, a Liberal flack known as such in Alberta where he lived.  People don’t know that the terms of the Inquiry limited David McDonald and prevented him from looking at RCMP overseas activity where the Force is alleged to have arranged the death of people connected to the FLQ.

Hamelin suggests that even the first kidnap – of James Cross was “perhaps a gigantic police provocation”.  The police had foiled attempts to kidnap the Israeli consul in Montreal and the U.S. consul later.  How come they let the kidnap of James Cross go ahead? Hamelin believes they intended to let it go ahead … and he suggests the CIA had a hand in matters.

The point is made.  The RCMP was up to its armpits in illegal activity in the matter of the FLQ Crisis – even if we don’t go as far as Louis Hamelin does.

What was the historical result of such concentrated and continuous lawlessness on the part of the RCMP?

David McDonald was appointed in 1977 and he finished his Report in 1981. Very obviously agreements had to be made, and recommendations had to be of such a kind that the RCMP wasn’t embarrassed or rebuilt in any significant way.  The RCMP had high cards to play.  If David McDonald tried to steal RCMP power, or if the Liberal government did, then the RCMP could … talk …  could embarrass government in a huge way. The historical result was that the RCMP couldn’t be reined in.

Louis Hamelin has his theories – which he plays out in his novel, “La constellation du lynx”.  My theory, too, is that the government of Pierre Trudeau enlisted the RCMP (the army, the CIA, British Intelligence, and more) in a gigantic, lawless move to do what it could to destroy the FLQ as well as any and all left and independence movements in Quebec.

What government didn’t know it had done - was create an RCMP that could move increasingly, at its highest levels, independently of its lawful mandate, into what I insist on calling ‘organized crime’. It could move, now, independently of government, now in support of neo-conservative governments, now in cooperation with governments engaged in breach of trust at the least, and in criminal activity at the worst.

Remember that in the December 2005, in the heart of the federal election the RCMP broke constitutional practice – again – to help the Harperites win the election, by announcing a criminal investigation into Liberal cabinet member Ralph Goodale’s finance department.  Remember, the RCMP – I am convinced – conducted a highly flawed investigation of Glen Clark to assist Gordon Campbell in gaining the premiership of British Columbia.

And remember that the RCMP chief of the investigation in the BC Rail Scandal during 2003-04, Kevin Debruyckere, was brother-in-law of Kelly Reichert, Executive Director of the B.C. Liberal Party.  Defence alleged Debruyckere was informing Reichert who was informing Gordon Campbell all about the investigation. But the trial was brutally aborted before any of that matter could come before the jury.

Remember the RCMP was investigating finance minister Gary Collins on December 12, 2003.  Remember that almost on that same date William Berardino QC was appointed Special Prosecutor in violation of the legislation governing such appointments. The investigation of Collins stopped without any formal record of its termination.  And the trial was aborted before any of that matter could come before the jury.

Glen Clark was forced to resign as premier in 1999 in B.C. What I call ‘the fraudulent RCMP investigation and trial of Clark” ensued, his political career was ruined by both the accusations begun in Gordon Campbell’s constituency office and by an RCMP investigation headed up by a friend of Campbell who was twice invited to run for office on Campbell’s ticket. The Mainstream Press and Media conducted a vilification campaign against Clark without parallel in B.C.

Proof for me that the RCMP investigation was fraudulent came to me when I asked for a Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP review of the investigation.  The RCMP shut it down.  I persisted.  Finally, a full three years later, the Public Complaints Commission sent me its Report – finding that two experienced RCMP officers “wrongfully” terminated the investigation! And then, of course, Glen Clark had spent 136 days in trial – his lawyer insisting more than once that the “evidence” against him was valueless. When the trial ended, Clark was absolved of all charges. But by this time – as planned, I believe – Gordon Campbell was premier of British Columbia. (And his relation with the RCMP was solid.)

Louis Hamelin believes that in Quebec “the fix was in”.  The October Crisis was fabricated.  The outcome was drafted before it began. Many in B.C. believe that before BC Rail went up for sale “the fix was in”.  And a part of that “fix” was that the RCMP would do a tailored and thoroughly corrupt investigation.  They never, in fact, undertook to investigate the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to the CNR.

In fact, top government officials talked with the RCMP about the (search warrant) raids to be conducted on the legislature, December 28, 2003, keeping no records. Documents I examined reported Beverly Busson, top RCMP officer in B.C., was present at one of the planning meetings.  When the ‘raids’ were completed Martyn Brown, Gordon Campbell’s Chief of Staff, (by his own testimony) spoke on the phone to Gary Bass, soon to become the new top RCMP officer in B.C.

Gary Bass, incidentally, refuses to investigate the major people involved in the corrupt transfer of B.C. Rail to the CNR.

Louis Hamelin believes the FLQ members involved in the kidnaps were “set up” by the RCMP and were the Media Front Men for a process intended to do something they never planned.  Yes, they were criminals. But they were used brilliantly by others. And all the other crimes involved in the October Crisis have never been touched.  Many of them committed by the RCMP.

Many, many people in B.C. believe Basi, Virk, and Basi were set up by the RCMP and were Media Front Men to disguise a criminal process undertaken by others.  Yes, two of the accused men admitted guilt.  But they were used brilliantly by others. And all the other crimes involved in the BC Rail Scandal have never been touched. Many of them committed by the RCMP.

The difference between the two historic events is that the felquistes had almost nothing on the RCMP or the governments of Quebec or Canada. Basi, Virk, and Basi had been in close with the government operatives managing the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to the CNR.  And so they could “deal”, even though they were cornered.

In both cases the RCMP (so far) got away Scot free.  The power of the RCMP grows.  It tightens its relation with unsavoury governments.

It moved from its role in the October Crisis  - in which, I believe, it was asked to act lawlessly – to the BC Rail Scandal where it repeated its role, I believe, as a facilitator of criminal activity.

When the Pubic Inquiry into the BC Rail Scandal is set up, a major portion of its work must be the investigation of the role played by the RCMP.


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Who are they serving by deliberately knee-capping the Opposition?

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BC Mary comment: Why do they do it? Why does a clever journalist like Trevor Lautens -- who wrote some of the most delicious paragraphs in the following column -- slip into the ugly rhetoric of blaming the irrelevant NDP when, holy Ratzinger, the New Democrats at their absolute worst can't be accused of betraying the public interest by giving away the central, vital railway link in our province. The appalling crime of the NDP is that they seem to do nothing much of anything, and, in my books, their cardinal sin is that they've done nothing to save BCRail. Like, right now, Carole James should be riding (naked) a horse down Granville Street, beating a drum, and calling for (a) a Public Inquiry into what process took BC Rail from public ownership into private pockets against the public's wishes, and (b) a formal demand that all documents from the BC Rail trial be held in trust, in safekeeping, as the basis for the Public Inquiry or any other inquiry such as a Third Party Review. Those documents are an irreplacable part of British Columbia history.

What is it that makes hired journalists write these knee-jerk references to bad, bad New Democrats while they themselves are wading in the stench of the Campbell muck?

I think I know. I think we all know.

Sigh.

Well ... Lautens did write some good analysis too. Forgive me for picking a few of those gems. For the ugly rhetoric, go to the full article HERE.


http://trevorlautens.ca/writing/2010/11/24/justice-muted-by-basivirk-settlement/
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Justice muted by Basi/Virk settlement

Nov 24th, 2010
by trevor

Appeared in North Shore News – October 29, 2010

Gordon Campbell offered realignment this week. Better you should go to Canadian Tire, Carter Chevrolet etc. They know about  realignment.

With the wheels falling off his government, tires flat and the gas gauge showing empty, the premier faces the prospect that British Columbians will trade in his sputtering 2001 Model T Liberal machine for a new, glittering (only paint-deep?) NDP 2013.

{Big snip} ......

Thus B.C. politics, as the media love to say, is reduced to entertainment, a “blood sport,” the blood being Hollywood ketchup as   opposed to the real stuff shed by those in the past seeking liberty, dignity of the individual, freedom from arbitrary measures, and such quaint stuff.

Back to the case of Dave Basi and Bob Virk: These ministerial aides, after five years of denial, abruptly pleaded guilty to breach   of trust and accepting benefits (corruption, in street terms) in the province’s sale of B.C. Rail to CN Rail, and were sentenced to two years less a day of house arrest — a curfew hardly sterner than tough parents might impose on a naughty teenager. Everyone OK with that? Anyone? How about anyone other than those engaged in the legal industry, some masked men in the government, and maybe Basi, Virk and kin?

That case began with an unprecedented raid on the B.C. legislature almost seven years ago and turtled through the courts for five years, ending with a plea bargain — once associated in starchy Canadian minds with, horrors, the U.S. court system — which stuck taxpayers with $18 million in legal costs, including the pair’s $6-million bill, in return for their guilty pleas and the prisonless punishment. Two deputy ministers handled forgiveness of the legal bills. The special prosecutor negotiated the plea bargain. The court acquiesced.

One of the lawyers involved in this exercise explained at decorous length the progress of the case through the courts. To listen to it attentively was to admire the delicate filigree work, the stained-glass windows, the baroque music (Vivaldi comes to mind) of our vaunted legal system. What I didn’t hear was a single word of the libretto of justice.

The guilty pleas, quite coincidentally, absolved former ministers and others from testifying, which would have been an inconvenience at least, and maybe even an embarrassment at higher levels of the government. (Among those also spared as Crown witness was Brian Kieran, a journalist-turned-lobbyist whom I very much liked — though he once had the temerity to slag my goodly self in his Province column — who ruefully told CBC radio that he “kicks himself every day” for his tangential role in the affair.)

Gary Mason in the Globe and Mail noted that the B.C. Rail trial ended “with a couple of guilty pleas, and with it went any chance of finding out what was really going on behind the scenes of this $1-billion deal.”

This paper’s learned readership doesn’t need reminding that there are two standards that judges must meet in their rulings. In criminal trials, the required test is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” But in civil courts the test is the much lower “balance of probabilities” — closer to what the great unwashed would call plain sense and a basic grasp of human mendacity, selective memory and the plausible manner that hides a scoundrel.

On the balance of probabilities, it is my view that the official narrative of the Basi/Virk case is humbug — Blind Justice touching  one stone, unaware that it is part of the Sphinx. And as silent as the Sphinx, as Mason implied, about what really went on.

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BC Mary:  Not bad, really, if only he could get off the Paid Political Pounding of the New Democrats. Why not pick on the Green Party for a change? Or the 2nd coming of the Conservative Party? The Rhinoceros Party? Or how about the HPUBP (the Honest Public Affairs Bureau Party).  Sheesh, I'm as disgusted as anybody can be, with the non-performance of the BC Opposition (NDP) but really and truly, is this how an ethical media informs a suffering, bewildered, bamboozled public? I don't think so.

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Here is another astonishing twist to the normal workings of a civil society (and please, don't start calling me names ... this isn't about Bill Vander Zalm, it's about DEMOCRACY and a FREE SOCIETY). Have a look at what these citizens are reporting in a general mail-out received today:

BILL VANDER ZALM CALLS FOR RESIGNATION OF ELECTIONS BC ACTING CHIEF ELECTORAL OFFICER CRAIG JAMES

Vander Zalm: Elections BC decision to reject Recall application for Oak Bay-Gordon Head based on “too long word count” continues pattern of obstruction and incompetence

DELTA – Fight HST Leader Bill Vander Zalm is calling for the resignation of Elections BC Acting Chief Electoral Officer Craig James in the wake of his decision to reject the application for Recall by Oak Bay-Gordon Head proponent Michael Roy Hayes on the basis that the Recall statement attached to the petition application is “too long”.

Vander Zalm says in a letter to Recall proponent Hayes, James said he considers the words “MLA” and “HST” to be not two words, but a total of eight words (Member of the Legislative Assembly and Harmonized Sales Tax) on each reference, resulting in the application statement exceeding the 200 word allotment.

“This simply continues the same pattern of obstruction that has characterized Elections BC since Craig James was appointed by Premier Gordon Campbell to take over. If there were restrictions on acronyms, that information should have been given to the applicants at the time they were handed their application. But it wasn’t because Craig James obviously made it up yesterday when he decided this would be another way to serve his BC Liberal masters by trying to sabotage the Recall petition. It is outrageous!” Vander Zalm said.

Colin Nielsen, the Lead Organizer for the Oak Bay-Gordon Head Recall says he has also been told that since the application was rejected, over 150 canvasser applications must also be re-done and re-signed.

“This is a deliberate attempt to blow us out of the water before the Christmas break. All Elections BC had to do was call us up and let us know there was a ‘technical glitch’ and we could have easily fixed it. But James is doing everything he can to try to thwart the democratic process rather than facilitate it. It’s like he’s making up the rules as he goes along,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen says he and proponent Hayes plan to return immediately to Elections BC on Thursday with the revised petition application and the existing canvasser applications to demand that the application process be facilitated.

“Enough is enough. This has got to stop. There is no reason to make us waste weeks trying to re-do all of the canvasser application again. It is like we are living in some sort of banana republic run by corrupt officials,” said Nielsen.

Vander Zalm says the latest decision by James is part of a pattern of obstruction regarding the Fight HST group. “The Acting CEO was appointed by the government, not the BC Legislature. He does not enjoy the independence and support required to be effective in this critical role as guardian of the democratic process.”

Vander Zalm says that since taking office, Acting CEO James has made a number of questionable decisions that have led many in the public to conclude he is not acting independently of the BC Government, as follows:

James ruled that a BC Liberal government web site which contained dozens of HST advocacy videos at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars did not qualify as  “Initiative advertising” even though the web site by Fight HST did.
When the petition to end the HST was completed and validated, James refused to forward it to the Standing Committee of the Legislature as required by the Initiative Act, forcing the Fight HST proponents to get the Supreme Court to order Elections BC to submit the petition, at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars to private citizens.
James has undertaken a major overhaul of the Elections BC management structure, including firing deputy Chief Electoral Officer Linda Johnson, a 28 year veteran of the agency who also happened to rule against the BC Liberal government’s planned mailout during the petition.
James sent intimidating letters to over 2,000 British Columbians, including numerous elderly citizens who accidentally signed the Initiative petition twice, threatening them with two years in jail and $10,000 fines only one week before Recalls were set to begin and over three months after the petition had been counted and validated.
James has gone on record as saying that a referendum on the HST will take between one year and nine months to conduct, even though entire province wide elections have been held in the past within 4 weeks of a government giving notice to EBC that it has dropped the writ.
“Now he is telling the people of Oak Bay-Gordon Head their application for a Recall has been rejected because common acronyms like HST and MLA are actually eight words. It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious,” said Vander Zalm.

“This time he has gone too far. We call on Craig James to admit he has lost the confidence of the people of BC and done irreparable damage to the independent reputation of Elections BC, and resign. Failing that, we call on the premier to remove him and we call on the entire BC Liberal caucus and all of the potential leadership candidates to immediately denounce this charade,” Vander Zalm concluded.

To comment on the article or to view the EBC Documents, click here: http://fighthst.com/press-release-vander-zalm-calls-for-resignation-of-ebc-ceo-james-for-rejecting-recall-application/

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BC Mary: I say again -- although no citizen should need to say these things -- I have no axe to grind, I know nobody (except Bill Tieleman) working on this RECALL campaign, but I believe these facts as presented. It's long past time where we can afford to keep calling one another bad names (Me good, You bad) in a time of crisis. 

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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

 

"Don't mention Organized Crime!"

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BC Mary comment: There was an episode in the British comedy series "Fawlty Towers" in which Basil Fawlty counsels his hotel staff, before the arrival of their first German guests, "Don't mention the WAR ...!" That was before he was hit on the head by a stuffed moose, after which Basil couldn't seem to open his mouth without mentioning "the War". That episode ended with the best goose-stepping display ever seen ... and the polite Germans asking one another "How did they effer vin The War?" ...






well ... somebody in the back rooms of British Columbia seems to have said "Don't mention Organized Crime!" when planning how to present news of the first police raid ever held on an elected Legislature in the entire history of the British Commonwealth. And in the Fawlty style ... Organized Crime is what we're talking about these days.


And why not? there are 133 recognized Organized Crime groups as well as 30 additional street gangs on record in BC. [http://www.macleans.ca/2010/10/14/the.worst.of.the.west]



Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security
Osgoode Hall, York University.

Organized Crime in Canada

A quarterly summary - Jan. to March 2004

Excerpt:

Organized Crime Activities ...



On December 26, [2003] the RCMP served a warrant to search the offices of two high-profile cabinet ministers at the B.C. legislature. Police announced that evidence uncovered during a 20-month drug and organized crime investigation led to a spin-off probe into commercial crime, which resulted in a series of search warrants served on the weekend, including several against key insiders with the federal and provincial Liberal parties.

According to some media sources, at least one - and potentially more - of the seven search warrants was also directly connected to the drug probe.  That includes either the warrant to search the legislature office of Finance Minister Gary Collins' ministerial assistant Dave Basi, or the warrant to search the office of Transportation Minister Judith Reid's ministerial assistant Bob Virk.  Basi was fired from his job, and Virk was suspended with pay. No charges have been laid in either case.

A special prosecutor, William Berardino, is assigned to the legislature case. Robert Prior, director of federal prosecutions for B.C., is handling the drug case. [BC Mary recommends http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:F0Own8WnQ9YJ:www.icclr.law.ubc.ca/china_ccprcp/files/Presentations%2520and%2520Publications/40%2520Reform%2520Brings%2520about%2520Changes_English.pdf+robert+prior,+federal+director+of+prosecutions+for+BC&hl=en&gl=ca&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjl7ZPhj971gBhbNAei6hF4uX7twylCZllx0sPy8ReDLEmBQNM_drP0qop4MWQyRgc0JpVp4PPcqWTFdl3rUL4UMc_R4e8H0S0V7ZBeDrYbBjZCAIb0-H8iq5nFiJxc-zULEAy9&sig=AHIEtbSsMhBpZWEgEmv8A7JeJKAdKLL5oQ]

Police have released few details about the two investigations, and will not explain how the worlds of politics, drugs and organized crime allegedly intersected. However, the RCMP did say the original drug investigation was launched in the spring of 2002 specifically targeting the involvement of organized crime in the sale of B.C.-grown marijuana in the U.S. in exchange for cocaine, which was then sold in Canada.

Twenty months after the start of the joint RCMP-Victoria police drug/organized crime investigation, nine people were recently arrested in Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria but released without charges.
A Victoria police officer has been suspended with pay in connection with the investigation. Victoria Police Chief Paul Battershill confirmed the drug investigation is connected to the December 15 suspension of Victoria police Const. Ravinder Dosanjh.

A statement issued by the RCMP acknowledges the evidence uncovered in the legislature case “combined with information directly linked to the organized crime/drug investigation, resulted in police securing warrants to search offices of non-elected staff members at the BC legislature” and other locations.

The seven warrants include the two at the legislature, the home offices of two people in the Lower Mainland, the offices of a private company doing business in Victoria and Vancouver, and Basi's home.  Basi, a prominent organizer for the provincial and federal Liberal parties and a well known supporter of Prime Minister Paul Martin, issued a statement saying he had done nothing wrong. Police also searched the Victoria and Vancouver offices of Pilothouse Public Affairs Group. One of the lobbying firm's two directors is Erik Bornman, communications director for the B.C. chapter of the federal Liberals and a party activist.  Police also visited the Port Moody home office of Mark Marissen, the husband of Deputy Premier Christy Clark. Marissen is a long-time Martin supporter, and is the prime minister's most powerful non-elected ally in B.C.

Three months before police raided the B.C. legislature, the head of B.C.'s Organized Crime Agency had warned a legislature committee that organized crime has its tentacles in everything in society, including police and “government staff.” “When I (say) government staff, I'm talking of people that are in positions of supplying information,” David Douglas told the B.C. legislature's standing committee on Crown corporations. “Something as simple as targeting somebody who works in the motor vehicle branch who can supply up-to-date information on the addresses and vehicles. That sort of thing. That's the sort of people they go after - information base-type people.” 


Douglas told 11 Liberal members on the committee that organized crime wants to take advantage of the celebrity status of high-profile people, including politicians. “There are lots of examples of this. David Peterson, who is the past premier of Ontario, was on the board of directors of YBM Magnex, a Russian organized crime stock market play that ended up being investigated in the United States,” he said.


In an overview of the problems faced by his agency and others in battling organized crime, Douglas said 75 per cent of organized crime in B.C. is drug-related. Douglas also said there is increasing co-operation between criminal groups who used to battle each other.

[Scroll down to an excerpt from this committee. - BC Mary.]


British Columbia's NDP leader called on Premier Gordon Campbell for a public inquiry into organized crime in the province. James said Campbell's Liberal government is operating “under a cloud of suspicion” but needs shift away from political damage control and deal with organized crime. James also called on Campbell to restore funding to the provincial Organized Crime Agency, the Crown prosecutors office and community policing initiatives.

Sources: CanWest News. “Search warrant executed at B.C. legislature Sunday related to drugs, source says.” December 30, 2003  // Canadian Press NewsWire. “Police are investigating possible links between organized crime, the B.C. legislature and two party workers.” January 6, 2004 //  CanWest News. “B.C. politicians warned of organized crime menace before recent raid.” March 12, 2004 // Canadian Press NewsWire. “Charges in B.C. legislature raid case months away, says Victoria police chief.” March 1, 2004 //  Canadian Press NewsWire. “NDP leader calls for public inquiry on organized crime in B.C.” January 11, 2004.

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See:  Report of Proceedings

Select Standing Committee on Crown Corporations

Wednesday, October 8, 2003

Source (in full): http://www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/37thparl/session-4/cc/hansard/C31008a.htm


Review of the Organized Crime Agency
of British Columbia

           D. Douglas: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the opportunity, on behalf of the Organized Crime Agency, to meet with you today to talk about the organized crime situation in British Columbia. What we're going to do over the next hour is talk about the challenge of organized crime in 2003, our strategic response and our performance in that area over the last year, and the accountability processes we've put in place.

           It's safe to say that organized crime is the world's fastest-growing industry — low investment, huge profits, little deterrent and an unquenchable thirst out there in the general public for contraband. It's a force that affects everyone. When you look around, you see it every day — increased health care costs due to drug use, increased home and car insurance rates based on break and enters and a tremendous number of thefts of autos. In fact, on the auto theft side alone it's a $600 million industry — a cost to insurers in this country. Increased credit card rates. Right now the banks are estimating that 1/12 of their revenue goes to counterfeit credit cards. That's why your interest rates are so high on credit cards. Just with grow ops alone, $1 billion is stolen from various hydro companies across this country. Of course, we have the resulting public safety issues.

           Its citizenship is global. We'll see from some of our investigations that go international, on day 2, that

[ Page 274 ]

transnational organized crime is a global problem. Its currency is cash. The International Monetary Fund estimates global money laundering to be somewhere between $1 trillion and $3 trillion a year. Its motive is profit and power. Money equals power, and that's the power to buy violence, to intimidate, to corrupt. I think we've all heard of "Mom" Boucher, who headed up the Hell's Angels in Quebec. His net worth assessment is over $250 million. Its by-product is human misery. We see that every day on our streets in the downtown east side — health issues, violence, victims of fraud.

           It's safe to say that in the past five to ten years, the face of organized crime has changed a great deal, and it has created unprecedented challenges for law enforcement not only in this country but around the world. Globalization — we'll touch on this in a minute — the fusion of criminal groups, multicommodity criminal activity, the use of technology, the geography of organized crime and the convergence of organized crime and terrorism…. As I said, that new face has created some real problems for us and some real challenges. You'll hear about those challenges over the next hour.

           Just with the external challenges of organized crime, when we look at changes in world politics and business technology, who would think that things like the European Union and NAFTA would be an advantage to organized crime? It's huge advantages to organized crime. The European Union has basically created a borderless Europe, customs-free. People and goods travel quite readily right across Europe. That creates all kinds of issues, and it makes that environment vulnerable for organized crime to extort.

           When we look at even our own situation, with the North America Free Trade Agreement, it is now possible to ship goods in bond from Mexico to Toronto without ever going through U.S. customs or Canada customs. Think of the opportunities that creates for organized crime if they set up — and they have — their own bonded customs importing businesses.

[0915]

           No borders for organized crime. When we look at the map of the world, we see borders and boundaries and international jurisdictions. When organized crime looks at that same map, they don't see any of those things; they just see a seamless opportunity for criminal activity.

           When we look at how fast advanced communications encryption has gone over the last five to ten years…. Think of something as simple as the cell phone you carried ten years ago compared to the cell phone you carry today and all of the different things that are built into that particular cell phone. Look at encryption. Look at the Internet. Certainly, organized crime has extorted those kinds of areas to their own advantage.

           The rapid movement of goods and people and money. It wasn't long ago that you didn't have on-line banking or ATMs. Again, organized crime has been very quick to jump on those opportunities.

           Diffusion of criminal groups is a very interesting thing, and this is the thing that has happened in the last five to ten years. These groups are now very cellular in structure. They're organized like terrorist cells. They're hard to infiltrate. When one portion of that cell is infiltrated, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be able to apprehend or interdict the other part of the cell, because there's separation in there, and they have very, very strong top-down leadership.

           They're run like corporations, because they see the benefits of cooperation. They share their expertise. They share their contacts. They've created these non-traditional alliances. We've heard about the turf wars of the past. We are now faced with attacking organized crime groups that are made up of Vietnamese, Russian, Indo-Canadian, Chinese, Eastern European, all kinds of different languages and all kinds of different dialects inside those languages. Our main business is wiretap investigation, so we have to find the people who can do the translation services for us. So just that one little area there creates huge problems for us.

           Entrepreneurial multicommodity criminal activity. These organized crime groups will become involved in a myriad of criminal activity. I'll give you an example of one of our projects called Coconut, and you'll hear about it a little later on. Within two weeks of starting the investigation, which went international on day 2 with various U.S.–based law enforcement agencies, we went from the exportation of B.C. bud to the importation of cocaine, huge money laundering, weapons trafficking, human trafficking and conspiracy to commit murder in New York State in two weeks. It crosses over all kinds of law enforcement stovepipes such as customs, immigration, state police, the FBI, the Secret Service. The coordination of that kind of investigation is difficult. They have created this kind of situation because they know we have difficulty dealing interjurisdictionally, both on relationships and the law.

           They're pooling their resources and their expertise, especially in the area of counterfeit credit card fraud, identity theft and the flexibility to meet emerging trends. They're extremely flexible. You've heard about the drug Ecstasy, a rave drug. It's produced primarily in the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a liberal attitude toward drugs. From a Europol intelligence report, there are 120 different organized crime groups in the Netherlands — and that's not a very big country — all vying to export 15 metric tonnes of pure Ecstasy into North America within the next year. They are very flexible to the emerging trends.

           The use of technology. You see the header on that news items there: "Hackers Crack A&B Site — Credit Card Details Revealed." The technology that fuels the legitimate economy also fuels criminal enterprise. We have crimes such as Internet crimes, on-line gambling, pornography encryption, software piracy, money laundering and denial-of-service attacks. We're coming into the world of on-line extortion and cyberterrorism. You just saw what happened when the power failed down in Ontario. Imagine if that was a cyberattack on a public infrastructure like a power grid, and they controlled that environment. They could bring it up, drop it down, bring it up, drop it down. Imagine what the implications of that are.

[ Page 275 ]

[0920]

           With respect to one particular case here, on-line gambling, where we had an investigation that went on for two years targeted at an organization in Vancouver called StarNet Communications, who had Hell's Angels on their board of directors…. When we took that company down, it had revenue in the amount of $48 million. Its stock was trading over-the-counter on the NASDAQ; its stock was worth $1 billion. On the day of the arrest its stock lost $250 million — the largest one-day loss in the history of the NASDAQ — and that was a Canadian organized crime company. That was on-line gambling.

           As I said before, organized crime has been very quick to jump on these opportunities. Software piracy. We just completed an investigation — and you'll hear about it later — working with Microsoft on what was the largest seizure of pirated software in Canadian history, worth $4.5 million. There is a lot of that going on out there.

           Then we have the geography of organized crime — seaports, airports, extended border and coastline. Just looking at the map, you can see what kinds of opportunities that creates for organized crime ...



There's much more HERE.  http://www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/37thparl/session-4/cc/hansard/C31008a.htm


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BC Mary comment: All this was known and discussed in the months prior to the police raids on the BC Legislature. Why didn't the Campbell Government leap into action, supporting and co-operating in such a critical investigation into crime?


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