The Legislature Raids

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BC Mary comment:  There's an old song I often think of -- a gambler's song -- which makes my husband laugh whenever I mention it out loud because, he says, it doesn't sound like me. But it does sound like me in a particular time and place: like, at this time of year when we mark off another sad anniversary of crooked, cheatin', bribing, mean-spirited goomers who were caught on December 28, 2003 trying to run our world for us.

Caught, fair and square. By the police. And then the game started up in earnest. From then on, Who was in the game? What were the rules? Who could look at the evidence? Who was protected and who was vulnerable? Who would pay the price? Who would go to jail?

Dave Basi, Ministerial Assistant to his good friend, the Minister of Finance (Gary Collins) was fired immediately after December 28, 2003 when police raided the BC Legislature. (Such a shocker had never happened before within the British Commonwealth.)  His cousin, Bobby Virk, was put on paid leave for 1 year, then fired.  8 other people were charged but barely  mentioned. Mr Big, Jasmohan Singh Bains, also Dave Basi's cousin was, in fact, not mentioned even when the highly successful investigation produced charges, a trial, a verdict, a sentence, and a hefty fine, on charges of cocaine trafficking ... a trial which took place a few blocks down Blanshard Street from the Victoria Times Colonist. No mention. For 6 months (June 2009 - December 2009) no mention ever.

After due diligence based on a citizen's report from BC Supreme Courtroom, BC Mary (that would be I) published the Bains trial in December 2010. Nobody picked it up in MSM.

Feb. 17, 2010 ... after a brief conversation with Ian Mulgrew in which I said "Ian, I wish YOU had been assigned to the Basi-Virk trial because ... " and I outlined the Bains story. Mulgrew picked it up ... it appeared one time only ... in Vancouver Sun a full 60 days after I broke the story.  Now I'm only mentioning this because it's so glaringly obvious what's going on here. {And I eliminate Mulgrew from this accusation because he DID report it ... but seems to have been stifled since then.}

Things which DON'T happen are the hardest to explain.  For example, our leaders might have given the impression that nothing had happened.  Because neither Campbell nor Paul Martin rushed to BC's Capital City to stand on the steps of the Legislature and say something reassuring like: "We're worried. We know you are worried and let me assure you, we are on the case."  They were so dismissive, it had a certain stink to it right from the get-go. So there was no reassurance for a frightened province.  No.  When days after cops were pacing the corridors of the Legislature, Gordon Campbell wandered back from Hawaii ... and I imagine him with his hands in his pockets and his eyes gazing all bored into the far horizon while he says, "I know nothing more than YOU know ... " which is laughingly, tragically comical when you really stop and think about it.  He knew. He had to know how BC Rail happened to end up as a book-end for CN instead of as a lifeline for the Province of B.C. But surely he knew everything of what Basi and Bains knew too.  Everything and more.

At the time, without undue haste, days later, Prime Minister Paul Martin sauntered along -- big Paul, who just had one of his Canada Steamship Line come into Sydney Harbour with a shipment of cocaine strapped to its exterior hull, what did he say? He said "I know nothing, too." Then Paul said he'd make everything look better by transferring ownership of Canada Steamship Lines in trust, to his sons. God, how they must've laughed, Gordo,  Paul and the boys.

But then, not much is ever investigated (or so it appears) about how such massive shipments of simple marijuana ($6Billion a year cash trade) -- let alone the hard dangerous traffic in cocaine, heroin, and all that -- make their way into Canada, or across Canada, and within Canada. But isn't that what Jasmohan Bains was convicted for, fair and square and quietly?

Let me ask you: what benefit do you see in these new "Free Trade Zones" which Vicki Huntingdon more aptly calls "Foreign Trade Zones" -- in which, it seems to me, new cities are being built -- for example, near Winnipeg Airport -- to which sealed containers will be shipped and stored for rapid trans-shipment to export. Under some fancy new customs terms?  Is it possible that these could be something we damwell don't want?

And that's where the beloved BC Rail comes in. BC Rail was more than a railway ... but now it's only a chunk of trackage on the highway to hell.  BC Rail is now a simple join-up with the purpose of hurling freight across B.C., and onto ships bound for export. BC is virtual road-kill.

BC can be, once again, what it was in the past: the vital link between agriculture and markets, between industries and cities, between villages, towns, tourists and their destinations. It can once again be the singing heart of a highly productive province, instead of the off-loader of precious raw resources. BC Rail is exactly what British Columbia needs and wants again. Didn't we have forests and a forest industry when we had BC Rail? Yes we did, and now we don't. I still say that a deal achieved by illegal or crooked means is no deal at all. With determination, British Columbia could say to CN that it's time to stop playing silly buggers ... time to return BC Rail to its rightful owners.

Remember the brilliant foresight of W.A.C. Bennett in establishing BC Hydro? Well, he set up BC Rail too.

My readers may find re-possession of BC Rail a very big dream. It is a big dream, but it's an achievable dream if we're determined to put things right. As I've said before, the BC Rail heist was the first tragedy but there are other disasters to attend to as well. Somebody has to call a halt.

And that's why I keep singing:

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, 
Know when to walk away, know when to run.


You never count your money when you're settin' at the table,
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done. 


- The Gambler Song by Don Schlitz, 1978. The song tells the story of a late night meeting on a train. An un-named old man is talking to the narrator and notes that he's down on his luck. He offers this advice in exchange for the last swallow of whisky. 

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Noted in passing:

GANGSTERS OUT BLOG (AGENT K.)


... Yet I do think Saanich Police officer Dillon Sahota's son Paul Sahota and son in law Jarrod Nicol's involvement in the drug trade is very significant since Dillon Sahota owned one of the houses where drugs were seized and how that whole Victoria cocaine trade is tied to the BC Liberals through the Bassi Virk BC Rail scam.

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