The Legislature Raids

Given what you know today about BC Rail, does this sound right to you? Robin Mathews replies: Yes!

2012-01-28T14:44:00.000-08:00

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BC Mary explains: With Robin Mathews' permission, I have posted something he wrote to another friend on the my previous posting: "BC Rail - does this sound right to you?"

Robin Mathews says:

Yes. The early information provided here - "sounds right" - to me.

                     The matter is a little more complicated than that, as I see it and have experienced it. Mary has kept the drug aspect at the forefront because it was so closely tied to the investigation from the beginning - and, in fact, was the motivator for it at the start. And then it was semi-split off; and as she points out the Bains trial and conviction were almost buried, as if the Crown (and its friends) didn't want it noticed, keeping the spotlight on Basi, Virk, and Basi.

                     But there is a problem. It is the suspicion that matters were set up from the beginning to mislead the public in the whole matter. And that nothing Winteringham says can be trusted. That suggestion is given basis by the end of the trial - when it was clearly evident that further cross-examination of the Gordon Campbell circle (as good a name as any) would reveal that they couldn't answer questions or they would prove the Defence claim throughout that big, big crimes were not the lower level misdoings of Basi, Virk, and Basi but the actions of very top politicians and their corporate allies.

                     When the court HAD TO give Defence the right to question on "connected matters" dealing with the Basi, Virk, and Basi charges [Berardino tried to get a ruling that Defence couldn't ask those questions - and even Anne MacKenzie, judge, didn't dare at that point support Berardino because and Appeal Court would have overturned her decision and slammed her for it], THAT BLEW THE TRIAL OUT OF THE COURT. The 'big boys' (as I read it) had to face grilling that they couldn't deal with because they would either say NOTHING or incriminate themselves. I can imagine panic among the Gordon Campbell circle. Then the rapid "deal making" with the Defence. The three accused had REAL power in the deal-making - Dave Basi for instance insisting that all charges against his young cousin Aneal Basi be dropped completely, and they were. And the infamous $6,000,000.00 paid (not to the Defence remember) but to the Defence ON BEHALF of the two major accused.

                     The matter is more complicated partly because of the experience I had. First: no one of Mainstream Press and Media would TOUCH the information I unearthed that Bill Berardino was wrongly appointed, was illegitimate, and shouldn't have been in the court at all. Even Big Hero Bill Tieleman not only refused to touch it but reported falsely on his blog or on Tyee that I was WRONG and Berardino had been cleared of suspicion! ! ! And Berardino had not been and never was.

                     The body language and actual interactions in court and in the foyer (where interviews, scrums, etc, happen) were very strange. The three major Prosecutor people were Berardino, Winteringham, and MacKay. First MacKay (who I always greeted and small-talked with) cut me off and would sweep pass without acknowledging me. (I thought that was dumb because it gave 'something' away.) That came after I began to insist in reports that Berardino was improperly in the court. Then, very near the end of the trial, I came out to a media scrum that Berardino was addressing and he stopped, looked at me, and told me it was a private conversation, they weren't talking about the case. I asked if the Special Prosecutor could have a private conversation with the press. He insisted. I went. He came over to assure me it was a private conversation. Then that evening, on his blog, Ian Reid who writes - is it "the Real Story" with the cow on the masthead? - wrote that he was in the scrum, it wasn't a private conversation, they were dealing with the case, and Berardino had lied to me.

                     THEN, as I see it, we got to the end, nearly, of the trial and its wrap up, and (I believe) a little piece of chicanery was set up - MSM would ask for the documents dealing with RCMP investigation only into, and only RCMP, of Basi, Virk, and Basi. Some of it was pretty sleazy and would make the three accused look like sleaze artists. Nothing else was to be released "to the public". Anne MacKenzie, judge, said yes. Then Janet Winteringham rose and said the material was sensitive and she thought it should only go to the "accredited journalists". The court and the court's MSM committee had cut me out of the accredited journalist list. The Defence rose and argued that if it was to be released to the public, it should not be restricted to the "accredited journalist" list only but to "the public". (I believe the Defence got the message fast that Winteringham was trying to keep the material from ME.) The judge didn't accept what Defence said. I was cut out. The Mainstream Press and Media could cut and paste the released material to protect the Gordon Campbell coterie and to keep me from seeing a shred of it.

                      And I believe that is what the MSM did.

                      So there you have MacKay, Berardino, and Winteringham, the judge, and all the boys (mostly boys) in the MSM working to keep material from the only person who was not towing the line and doing what the Campbell coterie wanted done, and showing that they were really angry with me. Andrea MacKay started the rejection of me by the Prosecution quite early on when I began talking about the evidence that proved Berardino was appointed in violation of the legislation covering appointments of Special Prosecutors, and I laughed to myself, thinking they have boiled behind the scenes and she is too dumb to keep up an appearance that they don't care. When they cut me out of seeing the last released material, one of the MSM reporters who'd had a fairly nice relation with me admitted he thought it was awful what they did - but he didn't, of course, lift a finger publicly.

                      I tell that aspect of the story because there is only one person who lived it and could see what was going on. And that person is me. I don't like talking about myself, but I have to here, to tell the story.

                     good wishes, Robin

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First to Profit from $1Billion Smart Meter Program: Liberal Insiders (March 2011)

2012-01-28T08:21:00.000-08:00

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Firm winning $73 million contract is connected to BC Hydro director, has close ties with Libs.

By: Will McMartin
TheTyee.ca - 7 March 2011

View full article and comments:

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/03/07/SmartMeterProfits/

BC Mary comment: It would be well worth your time to read this 2011 roll call of all our old friends and what they were getting up to even then ... although I don't understand all the herky-jerky promotions(?) of David Emerson, do you? I understand that he's working(?) for a very large Chinese corporation now.

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BC Rail under attack again

2012-01-26T21:45:00.001-08:00

Port's hunger for farmland a 'declaration of war'

By Jeff Nagel

Richmond Review - January 26, 2012

A farmer works the fields at a property in Delta.

BC Mary remembers: Vicki Huntingdon, MLA, referred to this very war as protecting business from the community when she was battling the Free Trade Zone [or Foreign Trade Zone] proposed for Delta.

Metro Vancouver politicians are up in arms after Port Metro Vancouver CEO Robin Silvester told them more Agricultural Land Reserve farmland should be sacrificed to make way for more port expansion and the jobs that will bring.

Silvester made the presentation Thursday at a special strategy session of the Metro board in Chilliwack, where he described the ALR as emotionally but not economically important to the region and said more must be done to ensure land is available for industry.

Read more HERE:

http://www.burnabynewsleader.com/news/138168994.html

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Given what you know today about the corrupted sale of BC Rail, does this early info. sound right to you?

2012-01-26T08:53:00.005-08:00

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BC Mary comment: This is something I saved from long, long ago. I re-discovered it today, while searching for another ghostly figure, Cirilo Lopez, who seems to have disappeared from our West Coast media without further trace just like Jasmohan Bains did. Note that the Brotherhood of ... Trainmen is headquartered outside Canada, in Ohio. Does this make them more free to report the facts? I doubt it. I think it suggests that blatant self-censorship has been at work in Vancouver newsrooms.

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Drug probe led to B.C. Rail case (The Canadian Press circulated the following story on May 8.)[BC Mary says: I don't think so. I searched and found nothing similar. If others find Cirilo Lopez and/or Jasmohan Bains reports, please let me know. Thanks.]

VANCOUVER — A former government aide facing fraud and breach-of-trust charges was allegedly involved in laundering drug money before police began investigating him in connection with the sale of B.C. Rail, a Crown lawyer said yesterday.

Janet Winteringham said that, starting in August 2002, police were investigating Dave Basi's alleged drug connection with his cousin, for whom the Crown alleges he was buying property to launder drug cash.

She said word on the street was that Jas Bains, Basi's cousin, had taken over the drug trade on Vancouver Island after another man, Cirilo Lopez, was arrested in the U.S. for importing drugs.

In April 2003, police connected four calls from Bains to Dave Basi's cellphone at the B.C. Finance Ministry, Winteringham said. In November 2003, police learned that Basi was involved in alleged criminal matters related to the sale of Crown-owned B.C. Rail, Winteringham said. Basi, who was an aide to former finance minister Gary Collins, has been charged in connection with the sale of B.C. Rail to CN Rail.

The second probe spun out of the drug investigation and led to a raid on the provincial legislature in December 2003.

Bobby Virk, Basi's brother-in-law, who was an aide to then-transportation minister Judith Reid, is also facing fraud and breach-of-trust charges, while Aneal Basi, another cousin, is charged with money-laundering in the B.C. Rail case.

The Crown said it has not decided whether it will go ahead with any of the alleged drug charges against Dave Basi.

The Crown alleges that, between May 2002 and December 2003, Basi and Virk received benefits from lobbyists at a firm called Pilothouse Public Affairs Group in exchange for providing them with confidential government documents regarding the sale of B.C. Rail.

The second round of proposals for the B.C. Rail sale was also leaked by Virk and Basi, Winteringham said, adding they were promised federal government jobs to hand over the documents.

In November 2002, both men went to Denver, where they were entertained by OmniTRAX, one of the three bidders for B.C. Rail, Winteringham said.

The government abandoned its plans to sell B.C. Rail's Roberts Bank spur line after the information was disclosed, she added.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Want a Public Inquiry into BC Rail?

2012-01-25T20:21:00.001-08:00

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BC Mary Comment: BC Rail keeps popping up in news headlines seen across the nation, as New Democrats surge ahead of the BC Liberals ...

Editorial: Latest poll confirms the obvious.

Kamloops This Week - Jan. 28, 2012

Excerpt:

... And, it does not appear anything will change the party’s fate in time to avoid an unpleasant reckoning when voters go to the polls in precisely 474 days.

Yes, the HST was the dagger that inflicted the most damage, but there are many other wounds spread throughout the B.C. Liberal body.

There is the festering sore that remains [of] the BC Rail scandal and the yet-to-be-answered question as to why taxpayers paid millions to cover the legal bills of two men who pleaded guilty to amended charges stemming from original fraud charges ...

Read more HERE:

http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/opinion/138087953.html

BC Mary says: Pssstt ... to whoever

would be BC premier after the next provincial election,

please make your immediate solemn promise that

as soon as your new government is elected,

you will launch

a full Public Inquiry into the tainted sale of BC Rail.

Guarantee it, and guarantee that the Public Inquiry will be held immediately, and I'd say that

your victory is also guaranteed.

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After BC Rail, CN said in its lawsuit that Mr. Harrison’s move to CP would be “devastating.”

2012-01-24T17:20:00.011-08:00

BC Mary comment: Looks to me as if BC Rail made a vital difference to CN's success ... but Hunter Harrison is still keen on "railroading" upcoming events ...

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‘Co-production’ with CP not vital to CN

brent jang AND jacquie mcnish

Globe and Mail - Jan. 24, 2012

Canadian National Railway Co. (CNR-T75.86-3.74-4.70%) is playing down the importance of reaching new co-operation deals with rival Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., (CP-T70.56-0.90-1.26%) saying future pacts will only have a modest impact on reducing freight bottlenecks.

Hunter Harrison, CN’s former chief executive officer who is being touted by a U.S. hedge fund as the logical choice to become CP’s new CEO, is a proponent of “co-production,” the industry term for competitors working together along certain stretches of track in order to move goods more efficiently.

More related to this story:

CP turnaround can be dramatic, Harrison vows
CN suspends Hunter Harrison’s pension payments
CN muscles in on CP’s potash deal
Canadian National Railway (CNR-T)
75.86 -3.74 -4.70%
As of Jan 24, 2012 4:00

But CN chief operating officer Keith Creel said Tuesday that CN and CP have already made breakthroughs in sharing tracks to speed up rail shipments. {Snip .... }

Since 2004, Canada’s two largest railways have been co-operating on the West Coast as the Port of Vancouver gets ever busier. Between Vancouver to Kamloops, B.C., freight destined for the Port of Vancouver moves along CN tracks while goods headed toward Alberta are transported on CP lines.

CN chief executive officer Claude Mongeau, who replaced Mr. Harrison as CN’s CEO on Jan. 1, 2010, said it’s best for CN and CP to remain vigorous competitors. “The best hockey or sports franchise really get to their full potential when they meet a strong opponent. So, we’re all for a strong CP and we wish them well,” he said.

Mr. Mongeau commented after CN announced that it will be raising its dividend by 15 per cent, buoyed by an 18-per-cent jump in its fourth-quarter profit. CN will raise its quarterly dividend by 5 cents to 37.5 cents a share, to be paid March 30.

Canada’s largest railway reported that its profit for the three months ended Dec. 31 climbed to $592-million from $503-million in the same period of 2010. CN’s adjusted share profit in the latest quarter of $1.30 exceeded analysts’ expectations.

For the full 12 months of 2011, CN posted a $2.46-billion profit, up 17 per cent from $2.1-billion in 2010. All of CN’s commodity groups thrived on revenue increases in 2011, including metals, intermodal and grain.

CN said it is targeting annual growth of up to 10 per cent in diluted earnings per share, “despite significant headwinds from additional pension expense of about $120-million in 2012.”

In the latest sparring between Pershing Square Capital Management LP and CP, Mr. Harrison said Tuesday that he expects to achieve “just as dramatic a turnaround” at CP as he did at CN. “I've been a railroader since I was 19 years old. I love the industry, the people in it, its culture and the role we play in connecting customers and communities,” he said. “Together, we can transform CP into the railroad its customers, employees and shareholders deserve. I would be proud to help lead CP to that victory.”

His remarks were made in a Pershing Square statement that outlined its proposed alternative slate of directors at CP.

CN took the unusual step on Monday of suspending Mr. Harrison’s lucrative retirement benefits after the railway filed a legal claim that its former CEO had breached a non-compete agreement by teaming up with Pershing Square to campaign for the top job at CP. Underlining the historic and often bitter rivalry between the two railways, CN said in its lawsuit that Mr. Harrison’s move to CP would be “devastating.”

Read more about CN HERE:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/co-production-with-cp-not-vital-to-cn/article2312731/

Now about an informative CN Executive meeting, read more HERE:

The Mainstream Press, Falsehood, and Loyalty to Stephen Harper

2012-01-22T10:51:00.000-08:00

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By Robin Mathews
Sunday, January 22, 2012

People in the world of the Internet and other “Social Media” insist the Mainstream Press and Media make up part of the large, private, corporate, capitalist elite that is destroying democracy.

The process the Mainstream Press uses to spread “disinformation”, “smear”, and half truth goes along with the practice of withholding facts, shutting the doors on those with other views, and selecting carefully what will be reported. All that is in favour of big Corporations as the rightful governors of Canadians.

My own experience in the B.C. Supreme Court gave me the opportunity to see those processes in action. Mainstream Press and Media (hereafter, MSM) would not report that the “journalist accreditation” system is corrupt. It uses MSM journalists (made in fact court officers) under a judge. Those journalists then are supposed to remove themselves from that role, report on trials and criticize the conduct of judges where necessary. The system is corrupt because MSM journalists are in a flagrant, obvious conflict of interest.

In four years of pre-trial and trial conducted in the BC Rail Scandal (Basi, Virk, and Basi) matter, not one MSM reporter criticized the actions of a judge – ever. Not one. Surprise!

Not one MSM journalist would report the wrongful appointment of the Special Prosecutor (which nullified the legitimacy of the Basi, Virk, and Basi process). Nor would any report that the presiding judge, Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie, refused to act when fully cognizant of the illegitimate situation, and so was delinquent.

And, today, the Postmedia paper, the Vancouver Sun, gives another example of MSM conduct. Harvey Enchin is given three-quarters of a page to assault “anti-oilsands groups”. [Aren’t they properly called “the anti-tarsands groups”?] Will the Sun provide three quarters of a page to the opposition for a reply?

Historians and journalists and others who communicate to the public are permitted their biases and prejudices, of course. Those people, however, are asked to give the facts. Then, how they interpret the facts, and from them, is their choice. But they are not to violate fact.

And so Mr. Enchin’s sub-headline to the effect that the “companies they [environmental groups] are trying to vilify spend millions on school bursaries, donate generously to charities and invest heavily in the environment” might just be seen as obvious, cover-up, and fawning propaganda.

It’s not a lie. And surely if one were to track the history of – say -tobacco companies, one would discover they spent “millions on school bursaries…and…and…and”. That would not change by one iota the fact that tobacco is a major killer. Nor do ‘the good things’ the tarsands corporations may be doing change the facts. They are engaged in environmental calamity.

Putting on his economist’s hat, Harvey Enchin tries to rap the knuckles of the dummies . They are claiming, he says, as part of their argument, that many of the tarsands corporations “are wholly or partly owned by foreign entities”. Which, Mr. Enchin wants them to know, is not the same as [the negative activity] of “foreign direct investment in Canada”.

That sleight-of-hand by Mr. Enchin isn’t a falsehood. But it’s getting close to being one. First. Some of the foreign tarsands corporations have engaged in foreign direct investment in Canada by takeovers of Canadian enterprises and their expansion. Secondly. Since the economic task force inquiries of the 1950s, we know that the foreign entities on the ground can be devilishly destructive of Canadian enterprise.

And that is because they sit here, make profit, pay pennies in taxes to Canada, and use the accrued profits made in Canada (off the backs of Canadian workers and Canadian resources) to BUY MORE of the Canadian economy. Let’s not try to convince Canadians those immense multi-national corporations want the good of the Canadian people. Even Mr. Enchin doesn’t go that far in his fantasy.

Mr. Enchin’s smoke and mirrors might be intended to confuse ordinary people who haven’t spent time examining what is called “economic imperialism and its operation”.

Then he leaps into what I believe is a falsehood. Building a ‘palava’ about the 99% and the 1%, Mr. Enchin asserts that the anti-tarsands group makes a false claim. They want money taken away from the 1% by taxes (or other social requirements) on behalf of the 99%. Their belief that “would bring societal [he means ‘social’] benefits”, Mr. Enchin writes “ – is untrue”.

Taxing in relation to “ability to pay”, called “progressive” taxation, was the main way of taxing for decades. Corporations did well. Social improvements could be paid for. The rich stayed rich. The rest had the opportunity to live decent lives. Then the corporations moved into government, stripped regulation, stripped away oversight, turned taxation upside down. We now have ‘regressive’ taxation. The rich are taxed least; the rest are taxed most.

I think it is disingenuous (which is a nice way of saying I think it is a lie) to say taxing the way the environmentalist want would not bring social benefits. It would. History is there to prove it.

Then Mr. Enchin asserts what I believe is an outright falsehood. The battle he says, is about the tarsands, not about “the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline”. Pardon?

Tell that to the communities in British Columbia’s north. Tell it to the First Nations people scattered across B.C. Yes, there are people who want the tarsands closed - or cleaned up in a way the Harper government and Big Oil have no intention of cleaning up.

But the Northern Gateway Pipeline proposal is its own issue – threatening destruction of rivers and streams, threatening pollution of clean land, and eventuating in almost certain Tanker Catastrophe off the B.C. coast. I suggest Mr. Enchin tries to go round that subject because it is so hot he can’t find a way to throw cold water on it in a way that would fool anybody ... even himself.

Then Mr. Enchin spends paragraphs telling us that we have been an economic colony for going on a hundred years – and so, of course, we should continue. The “foreign companies” “create high-paying jobs, generate revenue for governments, support local businesses, develop innovative technologies, pay dividends to Canadian shareholders, boost Canada’s economy, sponsor sports and cultural events and train the next generation of skilled workers and managers”.

WOW!

The simple answer to that (as every country in the world that tries to get out from under the boot of economic imperialism demonstrates) is to take back the resources and the development of the resources and the sale of them when refined here. Then many MORE of the good things Mr. Enchin lists above happen for the people of the country. Many, many, many more.

When he tells his reader what stunningly positive things the tarsands giants are doing for the environment, then readers may be permitted to retch. They may be permitted to throw up.

Canada has cut loose from the Kyoto Accord. Canada has refused to ally on the absolutely critical matter of carbon cutback. Large U.S. (and other) corporations have done everything they can to erase the truth about environmental disaster and global heating - to prevent government policies of environmental responsibility. Mr. Enchin isn’t, of course, lying. But he is being so selective, engaging so much in what I think might be called “disinformation”, that Canadians reading his article might be seriously misled about the reality of tarsands pollution.

The next falsehood he engages in, as I see it, is his claim that environmental groups are trying to stop the small steps being taken by the big corporations. Some want no tarsands activity. That DOES NOT MEAN that environmental groups “want to stop all” the palliative work corporations are engaging in. To claim that is getting close to dishonesty. And we know Mr. Enchin would have nothing to do with dishonesty in his journalistic activity!

Then he does the same thing again. No environmental group wants to find a better way to extract oil from the tarsands, he argues. Period. How does Mr. Enchin know that? He read one presentation given in 2008 by one organization. I don’t think Mr. Enchin can be so dumb as to make that argument innocently. Then why does he make it?

The final, grand, insupportable insult Mr. Enchin delivers is his attempt to erase Canadian concern. “The foreign-funded environmental groups….” “The “radical” foreign-funded environmental groups….” Etcetera. The environmental concern, plainly – in his article – comes from U.S. interests. Canadians are involved in a secondary way, or not at all. “…groups backed by U.S. foundations are trying to undermine Canada’s regulatory process, destroy Canada’s energy industry and do irreparable harm to Canada’s economy”.

That, I believe, is an outright lie. But it comes from – we remember – the MSM. It’s Postmedia Corporation. It’s supporting Stephen Harper policy. Stephen Harper policy is Tarsands Corporation policy which, we may be convinced, is Vancouver Sun policy. Mr. Harvey Enchin works for the Vancouver Sun. What more is there to say…?

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About a full Public Inquiry into BC Rail

2012-01-21T19:07:00.002-08:00

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BC Mary comment: Bill Tieleman sends good news about BC Rail.

Bill plans some excellent news for his blog next week. That's all I know about it, except that it concerns a Public Inquiry into the BC Rail Political Corruption affair. Probably to appear on Tuesday. Follow Bill's blog at:

http://billtieleman.blogspot.com/

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N.V.G. has some interesting early, innocent quotes at his blog HERE ...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=35&ved=0CDcQFjAEOB4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bcndpcaucus.ca%2Ffiles%2F09FOI%2FBinder_11_%2520Premiers_Office%2F11-05.pdf&ei=VrAcT6OTIa3UiALF6tXCCA&usg=AFQjCNGuiTd6lSRu_TW0_jXjOtOnEf_Z_Q&sig2=6ZNtKOlnt6w_E3EkSWt1Og

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B.C.'s Christy Clark. Ken Boessenkool, and Stephen Harper. A trap for B.C. conservatives.

2012-01-19T17:10:00.002-08:00

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By Robin Mathews
January 19, 2012

There are, in British Columbia, “conservatives” who care about Canada and B.C. and want to fix some of the broken things in the province. They are not in the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark coalition of Right forces in British Columbia. They are not ‘profile’ federal Conservatives or other declared federal Conservatives in B.C.

That becomes clear when the new ‘love-in’ relation between Christy Clark and Stephen Harper is examined. It becomes clear, too, when the appointment of Gordon Campbell by Stephen Harper as Canadian High Commissioner in London is looked at - and the appointment of Ken Boessenkool as Ms. Clark’s Chief of Staff.

Commentators say Christy Clark is trying to tell conservatives in B.C. they don’t have to go with the renewed John Cummins B.C. Conservative Party. The B.C. Liberals are Right for them, she is saying. But that’s not all … by half.

What about Harper’s appointment of Gordon Campbell to London? What about his slipping in Ken Boessenkool as Ms. Clark’s Chief of Staff? Mr. Boessenkool – besides having been a senior adviser to Stephen Harper - was also, like Harper (as prime minister), a lobbyist for Enbridge, proposer of the Gateway pipeline.

Federal Conservatives with a conscience in B.C. are holding on to Stephen Harper’s false image. What else can they do – except leave the party? An online commentator in B.C. believes that all the bad things since the federal election have been spawned by Harper advisors and policy makers. The commentator calls them colourful names. They are – he believes – soiling the image of a principled prime minister who is marked by his integrity. Leading him astray….

But Stephen Harper leads the wolf pack. He was involved or involved himself in the scandal of the federal 2006 election when money was funneled through 68 constituency offices to be used illegitimately in the election! The Party pleaded guilty in court to that offence.

He was the architect of the two ugly prorogations used to defeat the will of Parliament. He supported the $50 million sidelined for pork-barrel purposes by John Baird and Tony Clement at the time of the G8 summit (2010). He even supported Peter MacKay’s blatant misuse of air force craft for his own personal use. He violated collective bargaining practice in Canada to suppress claims to fair working conditions and wages of both the postal workers and Air Canada flight attendants. And more.

Those were not activities that he somehow got suckered into by his advisors. No one in the Harper Conservative ranks makes policy that Stephen Harper doesn’t want. As the on-line commentator remarked: “Corrupt is, as corrupt does”. But still he calls Harper throughout: “sir”. B.C. Federal Conservatives are going to have to make up their minds - to go along with Stephen Harper corruption and sacking of B.C.… or to jump ship.

Pre-dating the new love-in of Stephen Harper and Christy Clark was the sudden and – to many – surprising move by Stephen Harper to lift Gordon Campbell (just out of the B.C. premiership) to London as Canadian High Commissioner there. (The High Commissioner is the chief Canadian diplomat in England.)

Gordon Campbell’s popularity was diving. Belief in British Columbia was hardening that he was personally highly involved in the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to CNR. Unpopularity was based – additionally - on his whirlwind about-face on the HST and the conviction of a large body of British Columbians that he had betrayed trust - had simply lied his way back into power.

The HST, in fact, takes from the poor and gives to the rich, one of the bases of Stephen Harper ideology.

Add to those matters the Gilbert and Sullivan absurdities of B.C. Ferries. A generally well-run operation, BC Ferries was (like BC Rail) intended to be flogged outside of Canada. Its finances were looted to make the province’s budget look good. Gordon Campbell’s U.S. million dollar baby, David Hahn, spent much time in his first years travelling the world, trying to dump BC Ferries. Failing that, he turned it into a cash cow for himself and so-called ‘senior administrators’. (Even Hahn’s successor makes over a half million a year, with unspecified “expenses” taken care of.)

As well (though, not by any means all) Gordon Campbell created the monster BC Hydro has become, with its disastrous links to (foreign-owned) Accenture, to the U.S. energy network, to the environmentally destructive privatized river-energy boondoggle wired into the U.S. energy network, and to a built-in attempt to bankrupt BC Hydro.

And – just for the record – he and Christy Clark set to work to cripple unionism in B.C. by breaking contract with the Hospital Employees Union and violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to knee-cap the teachers of B.C. Both moves have been overthrown by higher courts.

ALL OF THOSE MOVES are the kind that meet the approval of Stephen Harper. He has attacked unions and violated their rights. He has set up and seen sold off to U.S. interests Stelco, Canada’s major Steel company. And when the buyers were proved to be violating the purchase agreement, Harper let them off the hook in a dirty back-door deal. He violated the rule of law to break the Canadian Wheat Board – setting it up to have its work taken over by gargantuan U.S. food monopoly operators. He just let Canada’s last, major publisher, McClelland and Stewart (founded in 1906), fall into foreign hands – and he had to violate the Investment Canada Act to do it. And there’s more ….

Stephen Harper believes in and works for the deindustrialization of Canada and in a life for this country as an economic “hewer of wood and drawer of water” for the U.S.A. He just signed a deal that will let THEIR police operate in OUR country.

Under the rose, he worked with and approved of everything – legal and otherwise – Gordon Campbell was doing to destroy the economic and financial independence of British Columbia. And so when Campbell got into deep trouble, Stephen Harper reached into B.C. and lifted Campbell out and moved him as far away as he could – to London, England, in a cushy, expenses-paid job at the court of St. James. Poor Elizabeth ll – what she has to put up with at her receptions for Commonwealth “dignitaries”!

Gordon Campbell and Stephen Harper are long-time allies. Just think of the “deserving” Conservatives in Canada who should have been posted to London as Canada’s High Commissioner. But Harper turned to a Liberal, to Gordon Campbell, and gave him the job. It smells.

His present love-in with Christy Clark is consistent. She was deputy premier and the confidant of dubious actors all through the corrupt BC Rail giveaway. It was she, as minister of education, who violated the charter rights of the B.C. teachers. Her political position and Stephen Harper’s are the same.

And they both like Ken Boessenkool. He lobbied for Enbridge – as Harper does. He was a lobbyist for U.S. corporations – as Harper is. He even became a lobbyist for Taser International at the time of the first phase of the brouhaha over the Robert Dziekanski killing by RCMP officers at the Vancouver International Airport.

As an associate of Stephen Harper, it is perfectly consistent that he should have been lobbying – as British Columbians see it – for a U.S. company attempting to deny justice in Canada. What better person to be in the B.C. premier’s office telling her what to do on behalf of the overall policy to sell out Canada, as Gordon Campbell sold out B.C. Christy Clark may even have suggestions of her own … and she’s used to showing contempt for the rule of law.

Watch carefully. Watch for attempts to buy, or to practice fraud in the next B.C. election. Watch for the moment Christy Clark announces Stephen Harper has forgiven the $1.6 billion HST payback debt.

Whatever Christy Clark may want for herself, Stephen Harper wants B.C. under his thumb for the next four years. What a coincidence that a close advisor and ideologue of Stephen Harper, and friend of Christy Clark, is now in one of the most important positions in British Columbia politics. If you don’t believe that about the premier’s Chief of Staff, ask Martyn Brown (Gordon Campbell’s Chief of Staff for nearly ten years). Or ask anyone who will be honest with you about how Martyn Brown wielded the lash as if he was driving slaves on a U.S. cotton plantation.

Many conservatives in B.C. want justice for British Columbians and for the province as a whole. They know they won’t get it from Christy Clark. They know they won’t get it from her love-in partner Stephen Harper and his boy, Ken Boessenkool, living close by Christy’s side.

What do B.C. conservatives do?

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Piracy

2012-01-17T12:59:00.003-08:00

.
All day, I have been typing and re-typing the posting intended for this space.

No such luck.

It concerns BC Rail and the cocaine trafficking charges against Mr Big.

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Now and then, some hard-hearted citizen beaks off with the idea that "nobody cares" about BC Rail.

The following comment came in today but the context is long ago when Basi and Virk were expected to go to trial.

Michelle has left a new comment on your post "As the date for the Basi-Virk trial approaches, le...":

Such a great article it was which Don Faulkner, proud of being a BC Rail trainman, [was] worrying about cost-cutting measures brought in by the new owners, in particular the braking systems and the added length of the trains. The BC Rail trainmen had developed an expertise suited to B.C. terrain. 100 boxcars were a maximum; but CN would soon decide that 150 boxcars would bring in more profit. Thanks for sharing this article.

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Corraling The Dean With A Confidential Missive

2012-01-16T08:49:00.002-08:00

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By RossK
Pacific Gazette - Jan. 16, 2012

BC Mary says: Dang! DangDangDangDang and Dannnng!

I wanted to show you the most amazing photo of two unexpected (to me, at least) lovebirds ... and to urge you to find out what's got the guy in the left foreground so pissed ...

http://pacificgazette.blogspot.com/

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Kenny gets things done; he lobbied for the Taser Company as well as for Enbridge.

2012-01-14T19:19:00.000-08:00

.

Boobs-not-so-kool ("Ken" or "Kenny" as Christy Clark referred to him in a soundbite today) was not just a lobbyist for Enbridge, but also for the Taser company. You remember the Taser company, the one that tried to mislead and intimidate a public inquiry?

So, let's see... a shill for Big Oil, Big Pharma and a deadly-weapons manufacturer.

Look out! We'll soon all be tasered, drugged into submission, and floating face down in crude oil.

Oh, the first two things (tasering and mass drugging) are already happening, especially in BC's "residential care facilities".

Maybe that's what Clark meant when she said "The thing about Kenny is, he gets things done."

Yah, but I'm just worried about what things "Kenny" has in mind for us (or his handler, "Big Steve").

Anonymous

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Justice, not entertainment, is needed in B.C. courts

2012-01-14T19:10:00.000-08:00

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Jim Nelson, retired school principal, fired off a good one at the premier in Tricity News on January 13. He wrote: "Justice, not entertainment, is needed in B.C. courts." And then he went on to say ...

Quote:

Don’t get me wrong, we were all disgusted with how the Stanley Cup rioters besmirched the image of Vancouver but our disgust is palpable enough, we shouldn’t need to publicly bathe them in notoriety.

But Premier Clark, while you’re at it, maybe you could instruct prosecutors to televise the trial of the most egregious thing to happen in recent history: the unprecedented raid on the B.C. legislature and the odious BC Rail scandal ...

End of quote. Read the full article HERE:

http://www.tricitynews.com/opinion/137189473.html

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Old crowd in? Deeper, stronger, worse!

2012-01-12T16:31:00.001-08:00

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BC Mary comment: Campbell in a skirt (if you'll pardon the unintended pun):

Quote:

"Premier Clark has appointed an Albertan super-lobbyist as her chief of staff," [John] Cummins said in a statement.

"Ken Boessenkool has lobbied for some of the biggest companies in Canada including the Bank of Nova Scotia, Cameco and GlaxoSmithKline," he added.

"Instead of focusing on the economy, she is shuffling the deck chairs of the titanic. In 2012 British Columbians are facing the worst unemployment rate in the west, higher MSP, ICBC and Hydro rates, the highest tax bill for average families west of Quebec, and the highest gas taxes in Canada. Today is further proof that the only people getting ahead in Liberal BC are lobbyists, cronies and insiders."

End of quote.

Read about it HERE:

http://www.vancouversun.com/touch/story.html?id=5986935

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The Rotten State of Law and The Courts In Canada: Madness

2012-01-11T21:29:00.002-08:00

By Robin Mathews
January 11, 2012

The higher (and other) courts in B.C. are in the news again – this time because of the almost ridiculous state of financial deprivation the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark government has put the court system into. Courts are starving. Judges are in short supply. Staff is minimal. Legal Aid support is a disgrace. Serious cases are being tossed as a result of unacceptable delay. Justice is being denied ….

Major court commentator (Vancouver Sun) Ian Mulgrew trivializes the situation by using it to insult a lawyer trying to do something to ease the injustice. Madness.

But madness is afoot in a British Columbia staggering from high-level corruption. And the madness is incarnated in the Mainstream Press and Media, as Ian Mulgrew shows.

Begin by recognizing a fundamental point. Good, effective (especially) higher courts are a threat to corrupt governments and corporations. There could be a direct connection between that fact and the starving of the courts in B.C.

The rule of law is under attack in Canada – led by the Stephen Harper government which eludes justice in cases against it and laughs in the face of law, contract, and decency. Maybe I should say “led by the Stephen Harper government which is following the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark government that violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in its first years by attempting to smash unions - breaking contract with the hospital employees union and denying teachers fundamental bargaining rights”. Both actions have been overturned by the courts. Christy Clark has yet to restore the rights of teachers, even after a Supreme Court of B.C. order more than a year ago.

How’s that for open contempt for the rule of law by the Christy Clark government? Open, public rejection of a Supreme Court order.

The BC Rail Scandal trial of Dave Basi, Bobby Virk, and Aneal Basi threatened the survival of the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark government and many of their “cooperating” corporate associates. The trial was dubiously conducted from the beginning of pre-trial hearings. It was slammed shut four years later in a way that has scandalized even usually unobserving Canadians.

We’ll look at that – and at the B.C. Attorney General’s attempts to get – (and getting) - “independent” whitewashes of deeply soiled processes involving top government officers.

What do we know about the corrupt state of the Basi, Virk, and Basi trial?

(1) We know material placed on public record was kept from the public, to protect, I believe, wrongly, a number of people.

(2) We know the court operates a “journalist accreditation” process that uses Mainstream Press and Media journalists as court officers, giving them illegitimate judicial power, and guaranteeing they will act in major conflict of interest.

(3) We know that the Special (Crown) Prosecutor, key to the later investigations in the BC Rail Scandal case and to the charges laid against the accused – as well as their prosecution in court – was appointed in clear violation of the legislation governing the appointment of Special Prosecutors. He was, in short, illegitimately in the court conducting cases arising out of the BC Rail Scandal.

(4) We know the removal (by promotion) and replacement of Madame Justice Elizabeth Bennett in the Basi, Virk, and Basi case involved a motion made by the illegitimate Special Prosecutor presented to Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm to have her removed. And we know that Associate Chief Justice Dohm declared in that process that he had Bennett’s replacement all ready (obviously before the hearing even occurred to present the motion).

(5) We know that the Chief Justice, the Associate Chief Justice, and the judge on the Basi, Virk, and Basi trial received formal notice (with evidence) that the Special Prosecutor was appointed in violation of the legislation governing appointments and was, therefore, illegitimately in the court and that his wrongful appointment made the pre-trial hearings and the trial itself illegitimate. The Chief Justice, the Associate Chief Justice and the judge on the Basi, Virk, and Basi case did not deny the facts presented, but they refused to act. Madness.

6) We know the people in the three positions were informed again formally. [Patrick Dohm had retired as Associate Chief Justice and Anne MacKenzie was raised to that position.] Once again major judges of the Supreme Court of British Columbia refused to act in any way. Once again, they did not deny the evidence presented to them. Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie replaced Elizabeth Bennett as judge on the case, and permitted the illegitimate Special Prosecutor to remain.

(7) We know the evidence of the wrongful appointment of the Special Prosecutor was presented to the Attorney General’s office and that the Assistant Deputy Attorney General replied by saying – falsely – that the Attorney General’s office could not act because the matter was sub judice. The appointment of William Berardino as Special Prosecutor was never sub judice.

(8) We know I wrote to Attorney General Michael de Jong and asked for a reply on the matter from him. I received no answer.

(9) We know I wrote to the Canadian Judicial Council – final resource in Canada for complaints of judicial misconduct – and reported Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie was guilty of misconduct for allowing the illegitimate Special Prosecutor to act in her courtroom.

(10) We know that the Chief Justice of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench (Supreme Court), Neil C.Wittmann, replied for the Canadian Judicial Council in the words of his court officer. He judged the complaint was not a matter of conduct and so was dismissed. He added that he had no opinion about the matter of William Berardino’s wrongful appointment. Chief Justice Wittmann is a member, as Associate Chief Justice MacKenzie is, of the Canadian Judicial Council.

(11) We know that Attorney General Michael de Jong (who refused to reply to my correspondence) set up UBC Vice-president Stephen Owen to do a two-month review of the Special Prosecutor process. What I believe was the cover-up move came when Terrence Robertson, looking into allegations of election misconduct in the case of Kash Heed, Liberal candidate, had to resign for an alleged conflict of interest. Though informed of the William Berardino matter while doing his review, Stephen Owen never made any acknowledgement. He completed his Report in July 2010, without mentioning the major appointment violation in William Berardino’s case.

Stephen Owen reported the Special Prosecutor process is in good health.

Michael de Jong got the whitewash that I believe he sought.

(12) We know that the next Attorney General Barry Penner asked President and Vice-Chancellor of UBC Stephen J. Toope in May of 2011 to review the process for granting indemnities to cover legal costs of B.C. public servants. I believe Attorney General Penner wanted a whitewash of the astounding payment made to cover the costs of two of the convicted in the Basi, Virk, and Basi case – six million dollars.

The appointment of officers of the University of British Columbia , I insist, to do work for the B.C. government, creates a clear conflict of interest.

The B.C. government has power over UBC, and could bring it to its knees if it wanted to do so. An officer of UBC is in a master/servant relation with the B.C. government.

Legal theory says that a servant cannot act independently in relation to his or her master, and cannot be believed to do so. And yet Stephen Owen, UBC Vice-President, and now Stephen J. Toope, President and Vice-Chancellor of UBC, both lawyers, both informed about matters of conflict of interest, both accepted “tasks” from government in which they were to judge “independently” government actions and processes. Madness. They are a part of the madness.

The two top officers of UBC, I allege, have tainted themselves with the corruption of the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark government.

In a move to clean himself and to be something other than he is, Stephen J. Toope presents his report as “Professor”, not as President and Vice-Chancellor. He is, in effect, claiming that he isn’t acting as President and Vice-Chancellor but as a mere, powerless professor. That pose would stand up in a court of law for about 13 seconds. It is rubbish.

In his report written, it seems, not from B.C. but from lawyer fantasyland, Toope tells us the Attorney General (in B.C.! ! ) “provides impartial and independent legal advice to government”.

He goes on to acknowledge that his review was brought about in some degree by “public interest in the indemnities granted to Messrs. Basi and Virk in criminal proceedings against them.” (p. 2) And he admits there is some focus on their case as well as others.

He clears the Ministry of the Attorney General of suspicion, not referring to any other aspect of the astounding “deal” that closed the trial and avoided cross-examination of many people the public suspects of criminal behaviour. Toope writes:

“Using firmly established common law method, the officials charged with exercising discretion have justified their decisions by drawing out principles present in existing cases and analogizing those principles to new circumstances. As far as I can tell from the documents to which I had access, the results to date have been principled….” (p.29)

In two sentences, President and Vice-Chancellor Toope white-washes the actions of the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark government in the matter of the $6 million payment for the costs of Basi and Virk. Madness.

No wonder the present Attorney General, Shirley Bond, declared herself delighted with the Report!

And then there’s Ian Mulgrew. He admits the court system is in terrible shape. He admits angry court staff are beginning to withdraw services to focus on the refusal of the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark government to do ANYTHING.

And so Ian Mulgrew attacks Kevin McCullough who flies to Vancouver to get the release of jailed people – “doing duty counsel services” - who cannot get to trial. And he attacks McCullough because he was counsel for Bobby Virk in the BC Rail Scandal trial and - in bargaining with Special Prosecutor (?) William Berardino - got a financial deal for his client on payment for services.

Ian Mulgrew has never reported that William Berardino was appointed Special Prosecutor in violation of the legislation covering such appointments. He has never reported Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie refused to act on the fact of an illegitimate Special Prosecutor in her court. Madness – and, I would say – a failure of journalistic integrity, too.

But he draws a picture for his readers of “celebrity Victoria lawyer Kevin McCullough [looking] like Mother Teresa flying to Vancouver to help spring the poor, the indigent, the unfairly locked up….”

Then – missing the point completely – Mulgrew gives the instance of a fellow with 78 convictions, arrested on “sex assault, assault and threatening charges” who Kevin McCullough got released.

But of course he did! When the legal and court system fail, ALL the jailed (not yet tried and judged, and so, in our system, innocent) are done injustice. It is easy for the irresponsible to say “why shouldn’t THIS ONE stay in jail. I don’t like the look of him or her”.

But that a major commentator on law and the courts for a major Canadian newspaper would suggest that kind of thing is … well … Madness.

Madness.

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BC Rail, etc: Rafe's call to revolution within B.C., And how long do you think the public will take this shit [sic] without fighting back?

2012-01-09T10:51:00.006-08:00

Stopped in Our Tracks by a Sham Democracy And 99 stupid things

On decisions that matter most, how much say do you and I really have?

By Rafe Mair, Today, TheTyee.ca

Paper politics: This system only pretends to empower us.

When our MPs debate, there's nothing really at stake. Why even pay attention?

{Big snip of personal stuff} then Rafe continues:

It's traditional at this time of the year for loud mouths like me to look into the crystal beer glass and pronounce upon what is to come.

Since the beginning of time, the struggle has been between them that has and them that hasn't. This goes back, I daresay, to Uncle Uglug's time, as he fought over hunting grounds. I know that what I've just said seems trite but it is especially worth pondering as we look ahead to 2012 and beyond.

The less advantaged levels of society have always fought for whatever they could nip from the pie, always securely held by those who control the treasury and the law, controls that largely pass from generation to generation.

History, largely written by the "haves" (of which I and my family are a part), tells us that the progress from feudalism through the Renaissance/Reformation, the 100 Years War and the revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries has brought a steady supply of positive change to lower income groups and that things changed.

Looked at objectively, that's a hard case to make. The Reformation didn't break the power of the church, just made a few more of them. Powerful priests remained, moderators and archbishops replaced cardinals, and took a little power from the Pope and spread it around a bit. The 100 Years War made countries into nations but scarcely ended wars, which, as always, are soldiered by the "lower" classes; the Industrial Revolution brought even greater prosperity to the rich (rather it created a whole new rich class) while devastation for labourers who lost their jobs to machines; revolutions came and went leaving little to show other than grudging extensions of the franchise, gradually to women and to men who owned property; revolutions or fear of them forced western "Establishment" to recognize, grudgingly, some rights for others; slavery was abolished in the U.S., 80 years after their lofty Bill of Rights was passed -- in actuality it wasn't really abolished, it was just that "massa" had to pay (pitiful) wages and he couldn't sell his labourers.

It's hard to detect any comparative change -- if the poor did improve their lives, the improvement of the richer class was proportionately greater.

What was created was a "middle class," which to the poor was indistinguishable from the upper class.

Rights grudgingly granted

But didn't 19th-century democracy bring the trade union? The vote? The right to property for all? The right to seek the justice of the law?

Marginally.

After uprisings like the Tolpuddle martyrs, the blood of the Peterloo massacre, The Haymarket massacre and the fear of worse, the Establishment grudgingly expanded rights, always keeping their hands on the till, on the justice system and the tools of governing. In fact the yielded rights did nothing to erase the caste system and the "rule of law" meant laws set down to preserve the status quo. The inner cities of the Industrial Revolution have been replaced by the ghettoes and homeless in that part of our cities the nice people choose to ignore.

We are witnessing the "Arab Spring" as millions, here in the 21st century, seek, in the same way as in olden times, equality and freedom, the right to prompt and just justice, the right to vote and have that vote count. The Establishment will, maybe, ease the burden of the poor by gently transferring chump change to the poor from the rich without them fussing too much. The reality mostly being "same old, same old." My point is a simple one. The powerful, be they Uncle Uglug, Henry VIII, Napoleon, or the evil dictators of the 20th century or the governments of so-called democracies -- the names may change but political and economical reality hasn't. If you have the bucks you get what you want.

What do we have in Canada today?

Much better freedom and justice than, say, Pakistan, North Korea or Saudi Arabia. But do we have a democracy where everyone counts and justice is free, prompt and just?

Of course we don't -- and our so-called justice system is none of the above. Judges are selected by the "haves" behind closed doors, the time the system takes as it mosies along at its leisurely pace is contemptible and the cost puts the system beyond the reach of all but the rich. What is or is not a crime -- and the punishment -- often militate against the poor and often forgive the well off.

Do we have a stratified system?

Of course we do and any who strays outside the acceptable bounds of dissent is "sent to Coventry." [Review what was done to the esteemed Professor Robin Mathews in BC Supreme Court (Anne MacKenzie presiding) when he needed to record the trial proceedings as the Basi Virk Basi fiasco seemed to be getting under way. - BC Mary] The Mainstream Media is owned by the Establishment and those who work in it either self-censor or are censored. The "journalist" doesn't need to be told what to say or write. As the wise man said, "You cannot bribe or twist / Thank God the British* Journalist. / Considering what the man will do / unbribed, there's no occasion to." (*Put in any nationality to suit.)

Ask anyone who's been jailed for defending ordinary citizens against the bulldozers of the large corporations how fair the system is.

Ask those who want to protest conferences or other gatherings of heads of state and government who, in a just world, would be behind bars.

Ask those who protest the building of a highway through pristine natural preserves.

Illusion of democracy

What we have in Canada is the appearance of democracy, but as the scales fall from our eyes, we see the sham. In the U.S. we see millions being spent to elect a governor who makes $250,000 a year, hundreds of millions to elect a president who makes half a million. Are we to assume that no payback is expected for this, ah, generosity?

In Canada it's no better. We spend hundreds of thousands electing MLAs and MPs who have exactly zero influence on what government does. We say "let's vote for Bloggs, he'll make a great MLA" -- even though he goes to Victoria as a slave to the premier. Indeed the premier likely pays more attention to his barber than poor Bloggs or any one in his caucus (Maybe he should!).

Think upon it. If you are a Canadian voter, in your hand is the ballot paper, the key to power and the exercise of that power, right? Permit me to put a few questions,

* How much say have you in permitting salmon farms? In their proliferation?

* What say do you now have as the licences increase?

* How much say did you have in saving BCRail? In fact, Premier Campbell promised not to sell BCRail but did it any way.

* Did you have any say, Hell, knowledge, of the criminal aspects to how it was sold?

* How much impact have you had on an energy policy that devastates our rivers so that private power companies can sell the power to BC Hydro, which though it doesn't need it must buy it for double what they can re-sell it for?

* When did you vote to change a public-power system into a private one? What power do you have to save BC Hydro from the bankruptcy it's technically now in?

* How much say will you have stopping pipelines carrying tar sands gunk to Kitimat to be sent by tanker down our coast, at the same time the most beautiful and treacherous coastline in the world?

Here it is in a nutshell. We, the people of B.C., have not had and never will have the slightest impact on these decisions, which will destroy our way of living. They'll all be made by CEOs, approved by a paid-for premier or prime minister, who having no one to stop him will have it approved by a captive cabinet then by the lickspittles on the government backbench.

We have never needed democracy more than now and the lack of it will cost us dear. For unless there's a sea change in how we're governed, we will have violence.

The public knows that our environment is in serious jeopardy because our governments are so in thrall to the corporate boardroom that they dare not fight them. The public sees that the democratic option is gone.

End of their tether

Now we see Premier Photo-Op surveying the scene, pronouncing that she will have no opinion on the Enbridge pipeline and the consequent tanker traffic until the Environmental Assessments -- the "rubber stamp" process -- is complete!

Any damned fool, with the exception of Premier Clark, knows that pipeline ruptures and tanker spills are not risks but certainties waiting to happen. By approving the pipelines and tanker traffic we will have certain disaster... not perhaps, not maybe, not only if we have bad luck, but certain catastrophe.

What can the enraged and neutered populace do? Do we allow these desecrations to our home take place without a fight?

When an all powerful autocracy emerges, history teaches us that the resultant combination of frustration added to anger turns good men and women to civil disobedience,

You tell me, Madam Clark, Mr. Harper -- what are we to do?

Depend on Parliament/legislature?

Depend upon the courts to back us up on our quest to save and return our heritage? Uphold the rule of law when it has been reduced to that which suits the powerful only?

I put it to the captains of industry and their purchased politicians -- read your history! See what happens when the public has reached the end of its tether. Then ask yourself, what's different today?

And how long do you think the public will take this shit without fighting back?

Rafe Mair writes a column for The Tyee every second Monday. Read his previous columns here. He is also a founding contributor to The Common Sense Canadian.

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Very special thanks to Rafe Mair and to David Beers at The Tyee for permission to post part of Rafe's column. I believe it to be the most important column The Tyee has ever published and it sorely needed saying. Thank you, thank you. - BC Mary.

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Minor note: Maclean's magazine has just published something called:

99 stupid things the government spent your money on.

And guess what? Our $6Million bribe nearly didn't make the cut!! Here it is:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/01/11/99-stupid-things-the-government-spent-your-money-on-v/

98 Guilty fees: A November report called the B.C. government’s decision in late 2010 to cover $6 million in legal fees for Dave Basi and Bob Virk—two former political aides who pleaded guilty to charges of corruption—“highly unusual.”

________________

BC Mary comment: Does it truly convey an impression of massive government issues, trials, petty crooks at work, reputations shredded, towns at risk, industries going under, a major railway lost, a premier forever tainted, and a proud nation under a cloud of disrespect. Not. Oh, it so NOT conveys those points. But this is Canada, from coast to coast to far-off coast. As Rafe says: we have to be our own media.

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--------------------------------------------------

Arithmetic on Northern Gateway pipeline adds up to big numbers, as in 2+2 now equals 22, or some such thing

2012-01-08T20:52:00.000-08:00

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BC Mary comment: Here is an amazing piece of media-stenography although I'm not exactly sure who is dictating these incredible numbers from Edmonton Journal to Vancouver Sun. Please visit the site, as they don't seem too keen to have their news getting around ...

Title: Arithmetic on Northern Gateway pipeline adds up to big numbers

Read about it HERE:

http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Arithmetic+Northern+Gateway+pipeline+adds+numbers/5964649/story.html

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Talking frankly -- frankly, I tell you ... about BC Rail, wasted money, wasted opportunity, and oh yes: the wasted trial of Gordon M. Campbell, Christy Clark ... errr ... Basi, Virk & Basi:

2012-01-08T09:48:00.006-08:00

.
BC Mary says: Good comment by Iain Hunter, an old-fashioned journalist writing for an old-time newspaper. They are talking frankly -- frankly, I tell you ... about BC Rail, wasted money, wasted opportunity, and oh yes: the wasted trial of ~~Gordon M. Campbell, Christy Clark~~ ... errr, oops ... Basi, Virk & Basi:

By Iain Hunter
Times Colonist - 8 January 2012

Excerpt:

... The prime example is, of course, the one involving skullduggery reaching into ministerial offices when Clark was deputy premier - the B.C. Rail case which made it to court, but was so abruptly derailed.

These days, as on Shaw Cable's Voice of B.C., the premier says no public inquiry is needed because a couple of miscreants in ministerial offices "were found guilty" and pursuing the thing further would "throw good money after bad."

Then she spoils it, rather, by adding: "I don't know that there are any more answers to be found out there." Does she not consider that it's her job, now, to find out?

Does she really believe that the ministerial aides who pled guilty in a deal negotiated apparently by their lawyers and someone in government behind the back of the special prosecutor appointed to pursue the case through the courts that they "were found guilty?"

Does she think that costly trials of real import should be abandoned because justice is too expensive to be done, and just the easy ones, like those of the Stanley Cup hooligans who were caught on camera, should become a relentless public spectacle?

Doesn't she see that some of the "bad money" thrown away was the $6 million taxpayers provided for the legal costs of the two ministerial aides as part of the deal that ended the trial?

Clark appointed UBC president Stephen Toope to review the practice of indemnifying public servants charged with criminal and other offences. She says his report is "great" and will "make the process better."

Toope's appointment was pretty casual, given the millions his university receives from the government, but the report is thorough. I wonder if Clark saw this conclusion:

"What needs to be avoided is the indemnification of public servants in criminal cases that are not associated in any way with work."

Hasn't it always been the government's position that the two miscreants were acting alone, without the direction or knowledge of ministers?

Or was breach of trust and accepting bribes part of their job description? Would their legal expenses be covered if they joined a looting hockey mob? And would they get a conclusive trial, maybe on TV?

cruachan@shaw.ca

Read more:

http://www.timescolonist.com/sports/Hockey+rioters+Rail+scandal/5963822/story.html#ixzz1it8gRmlX

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BC Mary hangs head, scuffs toe, and confesses: blaming my computer, I apologize for somehow pasting in the top half of that column, not the part I intended. Dang. It's good work on Iain Hunter's part and I really wanted more people to see it ... so would you please visit the URL (as below) and read the bottom half about Basi, Virk, Basi?:

http://www.timescolonist.com/sports/Hockey+rioters+Rail+scandal/5963822/story.html#ixzz1it8gRmlX

and get Iain's well-shaped point-of-view on who did what to whom on the Basi, Virk, Basi file?

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Times Colonist may be a bit mixed up, too. They have a 2nd column under the same URL:

Hockey Rioters and BC Rail

http://www.timescolonist.com/sports/Hockey+rioters+Rail+scandal/5963822/story.html

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Excellent comment cross-posted from "Chinese Sneakers" ...

Chinese Sneakers has left a new comment on your post "Talking frankly -- frankly, I tell you ... about B...":

This article is a pretty nice find, being as it's from the lame stream.

Do forgive me, though, if what i am about to write sounds a little skeptical about these well-paid stenographers, like Iain Hunter, who take money for years of saying nothing that matters, only to show up super late and to start making some big noise--mostly about somebody they don't like and want to get rid of.

No doubt Mr. Hunter's telling it like it is, partly; and for that, he should supported, finally.

To quibble, though. When he writes--

"Does she really believe that the ministerial aides who pled guilty in a deal negotiated apparently by their lawyers and someone in government 'behind the back of the special prosecutor' appointed to pursue the case through the courts that they "were found guilty?"

--i have to disagree that the basi/virk deal was done behind Berardino's back.

In fact, I would categorically assert that deal was done with Berardino's full participation, exactly in keeping with the rest of the charade of a legal process we call the basi/virk trial, and Mr. Hunter needs to keep that in mind when he starts assigning blame.

Let me be clear: It is certain that crispy was in on the robbery, at least the Roberts Bank Trunk Line sideshow part of it. Her trusty aide, eric "spidey" bornmann, has already stated for the record that she, crispy, was working with him, eric, to funnel some informations from her office, that of deputy premier's, to the dirty little fingers over at Pilot House, where Brian Keiran has also publicly admitted to passing certain confidential government informations onto to their clients, Washington Mutual, SFNM.

However, i am not about to dump the whole ball of wax onto crispy and call it day; which is what i suspect that patty k. is in the midst of trying to pull off right now. NO WAY, JOSE.

This robbery involved perps from far beyond the crispy circle of comers and we must not be persuaded by clever scribes to look away from them. To be frank, it is my firmest belief that crispy's circle was set up and let in to a second-tier play, as a form of distraction, one meant to be focused on a small branch of the railway, and thereby used to keep our eyes off the big play and their robbing us of the really big prize, namely--the rest of the assets of BCRail.

After the fact, when the cover up team came together around the Dohm, it included from the very beginning the oh-so-well-connected, Bill Berardino, who has since been totally immersed in all aspects of the trial. To even suggest that he was suddenly cut out of the loop in the final hours and unawares of what was taking place on his watch just defies belief. Maybe Mr. Hunter will do a little more research and get down to brass tacks, including the key role played by Mr.Berardino.

Anyway, thanks for keeping the flame lit, Mary.

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Another excellent comment from Anonymous:

Hurray for Chinese Sneakers! With a quick, short whack you exposed Iain Hunter for the revisionist that he is. The paint ain't even dry on the page yet.

Anyone who's paid even a modest amount of attention even just to the mainstream media stories (including those that ran in Hunter's own newspaper, the Times Revisionist) would know that Bernardino was outed as an inside fixer of the corrupt deal. The Keystone Cops stories that came out in the days after the dirty deed was done showed that clearly.

Iain Hunter knows that.

Bernardino and his well-connected ilk from the underbelly of BC's legal industry were caught out in the media on that little piece of skulduggery.

The question is -- why is Iain Hunter and the Times Colonist trying to put lipstick on the pig Bernardino? And why now?

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Troubles with accessing heroin story

2012-01-06T14:11:00.001-08:00

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BC Mary comment: Our friend, Merv Ritchie of Terrace Daily News, wrote to tell me that he couldn't access any of the heroin reports on Kandahar Airfield, asking if I could provide copies. It looked true: Yikes, I couldn't raise a copy off my own post (BC Rail 8 years later - Dec. 29, 2011). Panic mode ... !

So what I did was Google the entire headline off my story of Dec. 29:

Shocking new story:

huge alleged heroin hotbed in

Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield

The Tyee - Dec. 29, 2011

I can't explain the malfunction (couldn't even find the story on The Tyee) but if it's any help to others who may have run into the same mysterious difficulties, here's how 2,670 hits begin on Google with:

Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield an alleged heroin ...

- Georgia Straight
www.straight.com › News and Views › News Features29 Dec 2011

– Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield an alleged heroin hotbed ... he will shoot me,” the young heroin dealer told the Georgia Straight in an interview. ...

Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield an alleged heroin hotbed ...
www.straight.com › News and Views › News Features29 Dec 2011 – New accounts suggest NATO's presence helps fuel the gigantic Afghan drug trade.

The Legislature Raids: BC Rail 8 years later ...
bctrialofbasi-virk.blogspot.com/2011/12/bc-rail-8-years-later.html28 Dec 2011

– The Tyee - Dec. 29, 2011. http://www.straight.com/article-571351/vancouver/ kandahar-airfield-alleged-heroin-. hotbed?page=0%2C1 ...

Canadian Centre for Investigative Reporting | Facebook
www.facebook.com/pages/Canadian-Centre-for.../49250481208... Team.

http://www.straight.com/article-571351/vancouver/kandahar-airfield- alleged-heroin-hotbed ·

Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield an alleged heroin hotbed ...
Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield an alleged heroin hotbed - Sid-l ...
groups.google.com/group/sid-l/browse.../67a4ab039656001a?...
1 post - Last post: 29 Dec 2011
http://www.straight.com/article-571351/vancouver/kandahar-airfield-al. ... Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield an alleged heroin hotbed ...
[BOT] Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield an alleged heroin hotbed ...
drugpolicycentral.com/bot/xarticle/straight9078.htm30 Dec 2011 – Webpage: http://www.straight.com/article-571351/van. ... Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield an alleged heroin hotbed ....
Northern Insights / Perceptivity: "The drugs Canada is peddling"

northerninsights.blogspot.com/2012/.../drugs-canada-is-peddling.htm...3 days ago – http://www.straight.com/article-571351/vancouver/kandahar-airfield-alleged- heroin-hotbed.

[Sorry for the muddled appearance. Sorry for the inconvenience. Can anybody explain?? - M.]

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The coal would be trucked 69 kilometres to a Canadian National rail line and then be transported to ports at either Vancouver or Prince Rupert, B.C., to be loaded on ships that would take it to Pacific Rim markets ... + disinformation tactics

2012-01-06T05:26:00.009-08:00

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BC Mary comment: Peter Ewart provides context for "news" such as the Canadian Press item which follows ... which, in my estimation, is providing free advertising to promote the for-profit resource extraction corporations.

Enbridge, Ipsos-Reid poll, and disinformation tactics

By Peter Ewart

Friday, January 06, 2012

One of the aims of disinformation campaigns is to shake the resolve of people. And we are seeing ample evidence of this in the campaign to sell the Enbridge pipeline which, if constructed, will stretch across the lands and waterways of Northern BC and result in major oil tanker traffic in the ocean waters off BC’s Pacific coast.

This poll, of course, was commissioned and paid for by the Enbridge Corporation.

The results are almost the exact opposite of another poll conducted by the Mustel polling group in 2010 and commissioned by pipeline opponent group “Forest Ethics”. That poll showed a 51 to 34 percent margin against the pipeline. The gap between the two polls is stunning.

Nonetheless, despite the huge disparity in poll results, the Postmedia News chain was quick to punch out headlines such as: “New poll points to pipeline support”, as well as articles claiming that the poll could be a “game changer” for project opponents. For its part, Enbridge has issued a statement that the “new poll” will set a ’proper context’ for the launch of National Energy Board hearings into Northern Gateway that begin this month in northern B.C.” ...

Read the whole story HERE:

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/22658/1/enbridge,+ipsos-reid+poll,+and+disinformation+tactics

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And now, The Canadian Press says:

$301M to build Carbon Creek mine

by The Canadian Press - Jan 5, 2012

Cardero Resource Corp. (TSX:CDU) says its consultant estimates the Carbon Creek coal deposit in the Peace River district of northeast B.C. could support construction of a $301-million mine and related infrastructure.

The mine would take three years to build and would have a 30-year production life, based on various assumptions used in the preliminary economic assessment compiled for Cardero by Norwest Corp.

The assessment looks at various scenarios. Assuming metallurgical coal at $185 per ton, the mine would pay back the pre-construction costs at the end of the third year of production.

The Northwest report envisages construction of an open pit mine followed by an underground mine, which would be operational two years after the surface mine begins production.

The coal would be trucked 69 kilometres to a Canadian National rail line and then be transported to ports at either Vancouver or Prince Rupert, B.C., to be loaded on ships that would take it to Pacific Rim markets.

Cardero owns 75 per cent of the Carbon Creek joint venture. It acquired the property with the acquisition of Coalhunter Mining Corp. last year.

" " " " " " " " " " " "

Enbridge, Ipsos-Reid poll, and disinformation tactics

By Peter Ewart

Friday, January 06, 2012

Recently, an Ipsos-Reid poll, released exclusively to the Postmedia News chain, is alleging that, by a whopping 48 to 32 percentage, most people across the province are now in favour of the controversial pipeline. This poll, of course, was commissioned and paid for by the Enbridge Corporation. The results are almost the exact opposite of another poll conducted by the Mustel polling group in 2010 and commissioned by pipeline opponent group “Forest Ethics”. That poll showed a 51 to 34 percent margin against the pipeline. The gap between the two polls is stunning.

Read the whole story HERE:

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/22658/1/enbridge,+ipsos-reid+poll,+and+disinformation+tactics

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When I began attending the pre-trial hearings of the Basi, Virk, and Basi case, I had no idea how deeply troubled and how dangerous the system is. I have described what I call "the least important" of my negative experiences. The more important of them I will relate in the next column.

2012-01-04T07:11:00.004-08:00

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By Robin Mathews
January 4, 2012

The question of our higher courts has come up again. It's been sparked by some rumblings about the U.S. federal court - pronounced there by some -"th' feral court" - not inappropriately.

Here at home, here in B.C., the higher courts as self-supervised, self-controlling entities have come more and more into question. For a long time Canadians thought highly of the supreme courts, believing they were a bastion of fairness - maybe slow, maybe complicated, but fair. Canadians believed the best people to guard the integrity of those courts were their members. That belief is fading very, very fast. And it's fading all the way to - and including - the Supreme Court of Canada.

The rule of law in Canada is in jeopardy. It is treated with contempt by politicians in power. The courts ruled that the Harper moves against The Wheat Board, for instance, were in violation of the requirements of fair consultation. The Harperites laughed and said "we make the laws". A catalogue of times the Harperites have shown open contempt or open disrespect for the rule of law in Canada is a growing, dangerous catalogue. The rule of law is also treated with dubious propriety by some of the judges themselves - a fact which is like a blow on the head with a hammer when you watch it happening. (Or when it happens to you.)

In B.C. - in relation to the BC Rail Scandal trial, the trial of Dave Basi, Bobby Virk, and Aneal Basi for fraud, money-laundering, accepting a bribe, etc. -
the integrity of the court is in serious question. Two things happened, in which I was engaged, ("I was there.") that sent my head spinning.

Look at the least important first. This column will be about the first example. The other will follow. When the trial began (after years of pre-trial), we who had been covering it from the start were told that everyone had to gain journalistic accreditation in order to see materials placed on public record* and to be permitted to carry a recorder into court in order to check quotations and such to assure accuracy of reporting.

I began my career on a small town newspaper. I have written for papers and magazines all my life, besides writing books, what are called "learned articles", supervising graduate theses in universities, and so on. And I had been covering the pre-trial hearings almost daily for all the years they were being held.

I was refused journalistic accreditation when the trial began. By whom?

Before answering that, look with me at the * (asterisk) above. I put an asterisk on that statement to accent its location. Anyone needed "journalistic accreditation" in order to see materials placed on public record. That is a contradiction in terms. If materials are placed on public record, ANYONE IN CANADA has access to them. Except ... except .... Except there may be very rare cases where putting materials on public record might require that they be held back for a time for very, very special reasons ... rarely. That should be on very, very, very rare occasions.

In the Basi, Virk, and Basi case materials placed on public record during the trial could not be seen by the public. I believe that was ruled in order to protect people who did not have the right to be protected. I believe that decision was made in defiance of the rule of law in Canada. The materials could be seen by those given "journalistic accreditation". People who were given journalistic accreditation were the smug, in-group circle of journalists.

People who decided who would be given journalistic accreditation were neither the judges on the bench nor their "officers of the court". The people who decided were from the "smug, in-group circle of journalists".

How could that happen? There is, apparently, a judge who oversees the committee of journalists. Those journalists are given the power of the court to sit on applications and decide who will be granted "journalistic accreditation". Men and women - who are supposed to be completely independent of the courts because they report on them and may have to report negatively on judges - are now made, in fact, officers of the court themselves! Their conflict of interest is so obvious it should cause huge embarrassment to the judges and to the journalists themselves. It doesn't.

When I was refused, the spokesperson for the vetting committee was Vancouver Sun journalist and court reporter Neal Hall. He said I could ask the judge on the trial to change the decision to exclude me. I wrote to Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie. She refused, of course, to address me.

But a little later one of the legitimate officers of the court wrote to me and told me that I could make out an application, submit it [PAY FOR THAT PRIVILEGE] and have my application "considered" - no guarantee I would be granted "journalistic accreditation".

I wrote to the officer in question and pointed out that in doing what she suggested I would be APPEALING a decision by the court. The first hearing - approved of by the structure of the B.C. Supreme Court - had denied me accreditation. Now I was invited to appeal that decision. I stated clearly that I didn't believe the first consideration legitimate and so I would not - under any condition - join the misuse of justice and lodge an "appeal". I heard no more.

Three more important points: (1) The Special Crown Prosecutor, William Berardino, was appointed (illegitimately) in violation of the legislation governing such appointments. I confronted Neal Hall with the fact that he refused to report that hugely important matter. Mr. Hall refused to respond when I pointed it out to him.

(2) At the end of the trial a very strange piece of manipulation was undertaken. The Globe and Mail and others asked the Court to release the police investigation reports and other materials on the accused (and not on any others). Those reports, read in isolation, just happened to paint the accused in very dark colours. The judge granted that request ... for a selected release of materials. Then Janet Winteringham - for the prosecution - rose and said that the reports were delicate and she believed that while they should be placed on public record they should only be examinable by ACCREDITED JOURNALISTS!! The judge agreed. That was - I believe - an astonishing misuse of the court's powers.

All that material went on public record but only accessible to what I believed were people who would not assess it critically, but would follow 'the party line' and report in a way that would support the Gordon Campbell circle. In my judgement that is exactly what happened.

Leaving the courtroom from that event, I said to a lawyer (who will go unnamed) that I had a strange feeling during the event that there was one person the prosecution was aiming at, one person the prosecution did not want to see the police investigation reports - and that person was me. The lawyer chuckled and said he thought I might very well be right, but please, he said, don't quote me. If I am right, the judge and the lawyer for the prosecution worked to keep materials on public record from the public ... and especially someone who had been following the case from the beginning and reporting on it in a way the Mainstream Press and Media did not like, the prosecution didn't like - and the judge on the trial did not like.

(3) In what I am going to write now I do not wish, in any way, to asperse Neal Hall, reporter for the Vancouver Sun. Not having seen him since the close of the trial in October 2010, I ran into him by accident very recently. I was determined not to mention our differences, but to cheerily move on. But he brought up the subject and suggested that I had undertaken an internet campaign against him. I only point that out because he seemed to me to see nothing wrong whatever with the process of which he is still a part - the screening OUT of people so they may not see materials "on public record" in the B.C. Supreme Court. In our brief, unhappy discussion - which I did not want - Neal Hall suggested that being denied the right to see materials from the court on public record and being refused permission to take a recording device into the courtroom were really not important matters. Our conversation ended there.

I wrote above that I have no wish to asperse Neal Hall, and that is true. (Apart from this mess I like him.) I want merely to point out how far from the fair administration of justice and how far from the rule of law we appear to have moved. The actions of the presiding judge on the case are one thing (to be dealt with in the next column). But a major reporter for a major Canadian daily newspaper is (seemingly) without fundamental knowledge of what 'the administration of justice' means in Canada. He seemed to me to be ignorant of the role of the courts, and the purpose of a presiding judge. He seemed to be ignorant of the fundamental rights of all Canadians in relation to trials in which the Crown (for the people) is prosecuting a person or persons who have allegedly committed acts (crimes) that violate the whole society.

One of the fundamental principles of law and justice in Canada is that no judgement made in secret can be a good judgement or can be believed. For that reason our system demands openness. We call our system "an open court system", meaning that trials are held publicly. They are held before any members of the public who choose to be present. When materials are placed "on public record" that means exactly what it says - as a part of "the open court system" - materials placed on public record are there for the public to examine.

Our court system is in very, very bad condition. When I began attending the pre-trial hearings of the Basi, Virk, and Basi case, I had no idea how deeply troubled and how dangerous the system is. I have described what I call "the least important" of my negative experiences. The more important of them I will relate in the next column.

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Comment from Gary E. relates to these issues:

This appears to be a good place to add some questions I had in 2008 to the prosecution. There had been some manipulation of the courts in that dates were changed just prior to court sessions. Many of us were pissed off at what was going on so I decided to ask some questions to Mr. Berardino. Following is that email:

"I am writing to you as a very concerned citizen regarding the recent developements of case #23299 of which you are the special prosecutor.

"There was a hearing tentatively scheduled for May,2,2008 which was changed by you to one day earlier, May,1,2008. A reason given by a sheriff in the courthouse was that you did not want to deal with the
public.

"I would like to hear from you personally whether or not this allegation is true. You see as a citizen of this province and this
country I cannot beleive that this statement was even thought of.

"Secondly, there was a question about a letter written by Mr. McCullough to four people who don't want to be examined or
cross-examined in court. Was this question dealt with on May,1,2008. And if so, what was the outcome?

"I am one of many Bloggers on the internet following this case and I would surely appreciate some answers from you ... But answers to these questions may surely help me make some sense of what is going on."

The response I received was from a lawyer in Berardinos office. I was denied permission to print that response but I can tell you that the blame was laid on the defense. The defense disagreed with that response so the prosecutor refused permission.

It may be worthy to note here that the "accredited media" never asked these questions and I still wonder why they didn't pursue the matter. When they refused to grant Prof. Mathews it made sense to me.

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John Roberts and his colleagues in the federal judiciary answer to no one. And they want to keep it that way.

2012-01-03T12:40:00.002-08:00

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BC Mary comment: Seldom does a U.S. news item get onto my BC Rail blog. There's a reason for this. I find U.S. politics distracting, off-topic, and not about us. You know what I mean? It'd be like trying to describe our own family issues by talking about people in the next town. It's best if I focus on our issues: how did we lose Canada's 3rd largest railway, and how do we get it back in public ownership again.   This means what did our government do for the people, what did the police do, and especially what did the BC Supreme Court do when the chips were down? Especially, what are the things we need to do next because this issue is far from over. We've been down this lonesome road before, already.

So it was like a cry in the night -- that there's something about the "Legal schnauzer" which we need to hear about. I plan to follow his blog from now on ... at:

http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2012/01/chief-justice-draws-guffaws-with-his.html

[U.S.]Chief Justice Draws Guffaws With His Claim That Federal Courts Operate Honestly

John Roberts
January 3, 2012

John Roberts, chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, says in a year-end report that he has "complete confidence" that federal judges behave in an ethical fashion. One prominent legal journalist calls the Roberts report a "whitewash." We would call it a sign that Roberts is living on Fantasy Island. More importantly, it's a sign that oversight is needed in courts because judges clearly cannot be trusted to police themselves.

Roberts' report comes at the end of a year marked by questions about the ethical standards that apply to federal judges, including those on the nation's highest court. Critics have argued that at least two justices on the U.S. Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan, have conflicts that should force them to step down from hearing any constitutional challenges to President Obama's health-care law. But we've seen no sign that either justice will recuse him or herself-- and in our current system, such decisions are left up to the judge.

Questions related to Obamacare only skim the surface of ethical problems with the federal judiciary. We have shown that Bush-era political prosecutions, such as those involving former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and Mississippi attorney Paul Minor, were enabled by numerous unlawful rulings from federal trial-court judges. We also have shown that federal appellate judges unlawfully upheld those rulings, apparently more interested in protecting their judicial brethren than in ensuring that the law is applied correctly and fairly.

In my own legal world, 2011 was filled with examples of federal district judges ruling contrary to law on matters that are clear and simple--and with judges from the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta mostly upholding findings that are contrary to long-standing precedent. In the first few months of 2012, I will be presenting ample evidence from my own legal battles that show our federal courts are infested with corruption. [Emphases by BCM.]

A key issue in my experience has been discovery. Specifically, federal judges have repeatedly allowed opposing parties to get away with not turning over relevant documents in discovery--or in one case, a federal judge actually ruled on summary judgment when no discovery had been conducted in the case at all. That simply cannot be done under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, but an 83-year-old Reagan appointee did it anyway. We encourage you to stay tuned in 2012 for indisputable evidence that our federal courts are a cesspool.

So how does John Roberts reach his conclusion that all is hunky-dory in our federal courts? Answer: He's trying to protect his turf, and he isn't interested in making sure courts actually serve the public and uphold the law. Andrew Kreig, a journalist, lawyer, and director of the D.C.-based Justice Integrity Project, puts it in stark terms:

The federal courts function honestly, according to the annual report on the federal judiciary that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued Dec. 31 in the middle of the New Year's holiday weekend. Noting at the outset the disgrace that bribery brought to baseball in 1919, Roberts said the federal judiciary needs no reforms because its members seek to address their duties in an ethical manner. Roberts said he had "complete confidence" in the integrity of judges, including his colleagues on the Supreme Court. As chief justice, Roberts presides over both the nine-member Supreme Court and the administrative office of the federal judiciary. His report focused heavily on the need for public confidence in the judiciary. But he recommended nothing more than what he called continued self-discipline by judges.

"Whitewash" is the most obvious description of the Roberts report by those of us documenting flagrant abuses of the public interest by judges. Our Justice Integrity Project, among many others, has documented judges who have been enriched or otherwise co-opted by benefactors and political allies, while protected by cronies and toadies.

Kreig even hints that Roberts released his report late on New Year's Eve so that it would largely slip under the radar of the mainstream media:

The Roberts report was released at 6 p.m. Saturday night on Dec. 31, thus guaranteeing minimal attention from the public aside from those reporters provided advance copies

What does it tell us that John Roberts has confidence in the system he oversees? Absolutely nothing, of course. Roberts' confidence in the system is not the issue. The issue is this: Should the American public have confidence in the federal judiciary? The answer is no.

What might make a difference? Kreig offers a suggestion:

Reform is simple: Oversight hearings by the House Judiciary Committee, with aggressive investigation by the FBI of corruption complaints against dishonest federal judges, whether high or low, Democrat or Republican. Little scrutiny exists currently except for the most obvious crimes.

The Los Angeles Times was one of the few mainstream news outlets that picked up on the Roberts report. The Times makes clear that Roberts wants no part of any serious reforms:

The chief justice gently batted aside several suggestions for change. He said the justices as a group have not and should not review a decision by one of their colleagues on whether to drop out of case. Such a policy “would create an undesirable situation in which the court could affect the outcome of a case by selecting who among its members may participate,” he wrote.

He also noted the high cost of one justice stepping aside.

If one of the nine justices were to withdraw from the healthcare case, the outcome could be a 4-4 tie vote. That would leave the law in a muddle because the healthcare’s individual mandate has been deemed unconstitutional in one regional circuit and upheld in another. A justice cannot withdraw from a case “as a matter of convenience or simply to avoid controversy,” Roberts wrote.

In the end, Roberts sounds like a mafioso, instructing others to stay off his turf:

The chief justice also warned Congress to keep its distance. Twice, he cast doubt on whether lawmakers can impose an ethics rules on the high court, a separate branch of government. While the justices choose to abide by the current ethics rules, he said, “the limits of Congress’s power to require [them] have never been tested.”

Under the current system, John Roberts and his colleagues in the federal judiciary answer to no one. And they want to keep it that way.

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Sincere appreciation to blog-owner, rshuler3156@gmail.com and best of good luck in the coming year.

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Basi-Virk first anniversary renews calls for inquiry

2012-01-01T14:17:00.001-08:00

.
BY BOB MACKIN,
Contributing Writer
Vancouver Courier
OCTOBER 13, 2011

Excerpt:

Tuesday is the first anniversary of the halt to the bribery trial of ministerial aides ...

“It's certainly one of the biggest political scandal cases B.C. has ever seen,” Tieleman said. “We've never seen the Legislature of the province raided by the police before for evidence, we've never seen the finance minister of the province under RCMP videotape surveillance in a fancy downtown Vancouver restaurant before.”

“After they sold it, the way that it was sold and the myriad of questions that have arisen from that sale, you're left with only one conclusion,” said Tsakumis. “This government has done it to themselves, they have lost complete moral authority to govern this province.”

Two narrow reports are coming, but neither is a substitute for an inquiry. University of B.C. president Stephen Toope was hired to examine the general policy of paying public employees’ legal bills. That report is due Oct. 28. Auditor General John Doyle sued the government to get a copy of Basi and Virk’s legal bills for his audit, expected by year-end.

“Look at what's happened to the key players,” Tieleman said. “[Campbell] is sitting in London as the high commissioner, Bornmann is a practising lawyer in Ontario despite bribing public officials, Gary Collins is a successful executive in Vancouver, Ken Dobell's got the Order of B.C, Gordon Campbell got the Order of B.C.,
CN Rail is making loads of money off B.C. Rail, and Basi and Virk are under house arrest.”

The whole story is HERE.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Basi-Virk-Public-Inquiry/115993351804803

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BC Rail: You've got to know when to hold 'em

2011-12-31T12:12:00.003-08:00

.
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.)

2011 Vancouver Gang War Year in review

... 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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Off-topic, but Jaysus, Mary and Joseph: reality check ...

2011-12-28T21:30:00.003-08:00

.
Oh Canada’s Become a Home for Record Fracking

[para. #2 corrected Dec. 29/2011.]

Early last year, deep in the forests of northern British Columbia, workers for Apache Corp. performed what the company proclaimed was the biggest hydraulic fracturing operation ever.

Workers on a natural gas drilling rig near Longview, Alberta. (Larry MacDougal/Canadian Press via AP Images) [Please note that this is a photo caption and really isn't connected to the northern story being reported here. The photo got left out but the caption (showing Longview, Alberta instead of the once-deep forests of northern B.C.) got jammed into place when the system failed to copy the photo which originated from U.S.A. Sorry for the confusion, which happened after I had cross-checked it. - BC Mary.]

The project used 259 million gallons of water and 50,000 tons of sand to frack 16 gas wells side by side. It was "nearly four times larger than any project of its nature in North America," Apache boasted.

The record didn't stand for long. By the end of the year, Apache and its partner, Encana, topped it by half at a neighboring site ...

Please read it all HERE. These people don't care! Tuum est!

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/28-10

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BC Rail 8 years later ...

2011-12-28T13:43:00.008-08:00

Shocking new story:

huge alleged heroin hotbed in

Afghanistan's Kandahar Airfield

The Tyee - Dec. 29, 2011

http://www.straight.com/article-571351/vancouver/kandahar-airfield-alleged-heroin-

hotbed?page=0%2C1

______________________

BC Mary comment: Bill Tieleman's latest Tyee posting reminds us of what B.C. has endured these past 8 years, since police with Search Warrants entered the B.C. Legislature searching for evidence of drug trafficking. The BCRail hanky-panky came into view, after this got under way. The funny thing is, the evidence was found, the perpetrator (Jasmohan Singh Bains) went to trial in Victoria, he (thought to be Mr Big) was found guilty, and was sentenced to 8 years plus a large fine ... and not a word of it was published in West Coast or national media. Not.one.word.

The story came to light only because of a citizen who attended BC Supreme Court almost every day, who overheard some courtroom conversation (not secret). He looked around the courtroom and saw no big media journalists ... and decided to pass the tip to BC Mary.

Although grateful, I couldn't believe his report. I couldn't imagine Big Media letting that kind of story pass by unnoticed. So I did plenty of due diligence, even got the judge's Reasons for Judgment, and there was no doubt: Bains had been arrested, tried, convicted, fined, imprisoned ... under the full protection of secrecy. I will never rest until I find out why that information was kept from the public. [But what a co-incidence, to see this huge heroin centre revealed today, operating at a high level amongst our own troops in Afghanistan, cloaked in "wartime" secrecy. - BC Mary.]

But ... getting back on track with Bill Tieleman ... here's the Basi, Virk, Basi story reviewed again ... with a flip!

How BC Rail Was Made to Disappear

Eight years later, looking back at the BC legislature raid, and where we've arrived.
By Bill Tieleman, Yesterday, TheTyee.ca

Dec 28, 2003: Police seize documents related to BC Liberals' $1 billion privatization of BC Rail.

Give it 1/5
Give it 2/5
Give it 3/5
Give it 4/5
Give it 5/5

Railgate, A to Z
Five years after the legislature raid, a who's who guide to BC's biggest political scandal.
Railgate? Asked and Answered, Says Clark
Premier calls me out as she rejects Basi-Virk inquiry. Yet questions do persist.
'I Want Everything Released': Basi
Convicted Railgate figure says 'Who's your daddy' wiretap comment was a joke, not about procuring sex.

What happened when an unprecedented police raid on British Columbia's legislature took place eight years ago Wednesday?

How did the BC Liberal government's $1 billion privatization of BC Rail spark the province's biggest political scandal in decades?

Why did the ministerial aides to then finance minister Gary Collins and then transportation minister Judith Reid -- David Basi and Bob Virk -- defend themselves against charges of breach of trust and fraud for six years only to make a surprise guilty plea bargain when their trial had heard just two of a likely 40 witnesses?

Who knew what and when?

And when, if ever, will we find the answers to these questions?

                          ______________

BC Mary response:

Hi Bill,

Your Tyee column today is terrific. Nice analogy too, the Princeton dirt-pile ... the image stays in the imagination.

I wanted to leave a comment on Tyee but couldn't get on (what a nerve! - I've been a member for 6 years and 39 weeks!). But wanted you to know how welcome your comments are ... for those of us who worry about the BC Rail story going stale.

One aspect I'd like to see you explore ... I've heard it said that any agreement reached by fraudulent means then itself becomes null and void. It makes sense to me!

Also: There are clauses, in all agreements (even including the BCR-CN agreement) which specify certain actions or conditions under which the deal becomes untenable, and ownership is revoked.   In this case, with BC Rail the tentative ownership would lapse and be re-possessed by the BC government under certain circumstances. As I recall (from memory) reasons for breaking the deal between BCRail and CN included CN failure to maintain certain rail-lines; or if CN fails to buy the promised 600 rail-cars, etc. And it's my understanding that both those sins had been committed by CN ... which is why I tried to institute a "Show Us The Deal" campaign for July 14, 2009 (5th anniversary of the deal, designated for review).

Q. Why would the Campbell / Christy-Clark governments shrink from that question? Seems to me it would be a win-win for BC if, as a result of a Public Inquiry, the BCR-CN deal is shown and proven to be corrupted. I'd love to see your analysis of this.

I'll try to post this on your Tyee review, if I can access it now. Happy New Year!

Mary.

                             _______________________________

And here's the URL to a column by Mark Hume at the time, which explains the inexplicable Ken Dobell as well as the imponderable BC Rail "trial".

Dobell defends his perusal of seized files in BC Rail probe.

http://tno.gov.bc.ca/the/servlet/tno.otis.servlet?commands.showstory

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'Struth: we once had a premier named Boss Johnson

2011-12-25T12:13:00.002-08:00

Welcome confirmation from The Galloping Beaver ...

Deborah Grey gives Harper a reformer wedgie

On CBC's The House, Evan Solomon asked Reform Party matriarch Deborah Grey about Harper. Harper used to be her legislative assistant so we can probably safely assume she has some insight into the way he thinks.

While she waxed on about how wonderful Harper is and how he's a Conservative and therefore the neatest thing since the invention of peanut butter, she slipped from referring to "conservatives", in a general sense to "Reformers", specifically. Solomon latched on:

Solomon: Is he still a Reformer?

Grey: Pardon?

Solomon: Is Stephen Harper still a Reformer?

Grey: Oh, I'd say so.
Grey: Oh, I'd say so.
Grey: Oh, I'd say so.

[Grey quietly to herself: Uh oh, maybe I shouldn't have said so.]

So much for the "mellowing" his supporters keep trying to foist on us. If you go to link and listen to the audio you can pick it up at about minute 18.

Posted by Dave at 14:35

BC Mary says: I remember Deb Grey as one of the rare Reformers who came across as believable. Maybe the old originals felt more confident of their sincerity. That has changed.

Plus, did you know that her Uncle was a BC premier? By the name of "Boss Johnson" ... who was premier of a Liberal-Conservative Coalition ... and I did NOT make that up. Premier Boss Johnson lasted from 1949 to 1951 when his Coalition government was "defeated" (ha ha) by Social Credit.

http://www.nottobetrustedwithknives.com/2010/06/20/boss-johnson/

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Christmas Greetings to all, 2011

2011-12-24T12:57:00.002-08:00

.
BC Mary sends Christmas Greetings to all. Somehow I think I'll feel better if I send a special Christmas Greeting to our former premier, Gordon Muir Campbell (now Canada's representative in the highest government appointment of all). What to say ... what to say ... hmmm.

.
John Wood writes: I came across this Canadian government site and thought the comments on Campbell's bio to be deliberately misleading and somewhat fictional at the end.

Canadian Representatives Abroad

United Kingdom - London
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)

Mission         The High Commission of Canada to the United Kingdom

Web site         www.unitedkingdom.gc.ca

Email         ldn@international.gc.ca

Street Address         The High Commission of Canada
Macdonald House, 1 Grosvenor Square
London, United Kingdom
W1K 4AB

Telephone    General    (011 44 20) 7258 6600

Fax    General Fax    (011 44 20) 7258 6333

Fax    Consular Fax    (011 44 20) 7258 6533 (Consular and Passsport Services) *

Position Name
High Commissioner    Gordon Campbell
Deputy High Commissioner    Mr C. Boucher
Minister    Ms A. Arnott
Minister-Counsellor    Mr M. Fletcher
Minister-Counsellor (Economic/Commercial)    Mr B. Parrott
Minister-Counsellor (Political/Public Affairs)    Mr D. Proudfoot
Counsellor    S. Nordstrum
Counsellor    Mrs D. Spencer
Counsellor (Commercial - Alberta)    J. Sundquist
Counsellor (Commercial - Ontario)    M. Stewart
Counsellor    Mr M. Theilmann
Counsellor (Commercial)    Ms J. Daubeny
Counsellor    Mr R. Kondo
Counsellor (Commercial)    Mrs S. Gera
Counsellor (Public Affairs)    Mrs V. Alexander
Counsellor (Immigration)    Mr D. Cochrane
Counsellor    Mr R. Sinclair
Counsellor    Mr R. Khatchadourian
Counsellor (Economic)    Ms E. McLaughlin
Medical Attaché    Dr. S. Bertrand
Medical Attaché    Dr. M. L. LeBlanc
First Secretary (Administration)    Mr P. Bonser
First Secretary (Immigration)    Mr R. Stevenson
First Secretary    Mr K. Gupta
First Secretary    Mrs S. Rossiter
First Secretary (Immigration)    Miss F. Galarneau
First Secretary (Commercial)    Ms A. Desmarteau
First Secretary (Immigration)    Mr C. Raymond
First Secretary    M. Ryan
First Secretary (Immigration)    Mrs A. Corbett
First Secretary (Immigration)    G. Rent
First Secretary (Administration)    D. Morency
First Secretary (Immigration)    Mr C. Goldsby
First Secretary (Immigration)    Ms M. Williamson
Attaché    Mr P. Cyr
Second Secretary (Immigration)    J. Hansen
Second Secretary (Immigration)    I. Van Haren
Second Secretary (Immigration)    W. Wolbert
Second Secretary    Ms A. Bretzlaff
Attaché    D. Ridley
Attaché    Mr M. Derkaoui
Commander and Defence Adviser    K. Williams
Counsellor (Defence Research & Development)    D. Dyck
Naval Adviser    Capt(N) H. Harsch
Air Force Adviser    P. Keddy
Army Adviser    M. Makulowich
Assistant Army Adviser    LCol D. Janelle
Assistant Air Force Adviser    LCol A. Agnew
Assistant Naval Adviser    A. James
Attaché    A. Rivera
Attaché    Mr N. De Chamaillard
Attaché    Mr J. Aranda-Espejo
Attaché    C. Barber
Attaché    Mrs C. Lanteigne
Attaché    H. Nagra
Attaché    P. Tejada-Hache
Attaché    N. Savard
Attaché    D. Wonnenberg
Attaché    Mrs G. Laplante
Attaché    Cpl J. Lyster

* Consular and Passport Services: Macdonald House, 38 Grosvenor Street, London W1K 4AA
** Immigration and Medical Services: Macdonald House, 38 Grosvenor Street, London W1K 4AA
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Date Modified:
2008-12-23

Thank you, John Wood, for sending this list. Happy New Year to you and your loved ones.

http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/united_kingdom-royaume_uni/offices-bureaux/biography-biographie.aspx?lang=eng&view=d

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No Deep Integration with U.S.A., you gotta be kidding!

2011-12-21T07:02:00.001-08:00

.
B.C. allies back Blaine Amtrak station

By Jeff Nagel
Surrey North Delta Leader - News
December 20, 2011.

Visit Source for additional links.

Amtrak trains pass through White Rock but don't stop. Years of lobbying have failed there, but a new campaign is underway to create an Amtrak stop in nearby Blaine, just steps from the Peace Arch.

Efforts to get a White Rock stop for Amtrak passenger trains have so far failed, but a new push is now on to use Blaine's historic train station just a short stroll across the border. The idea is that Canadians – particularly from cities like Surrey, Langley and Abbotsford – could park near the Peace Arch border and board trains there to Seattle.

"It would have heavy Canadian usage as they could cross the border by foot or bike even," predicts Bill Becht, one of the Blaine residents behind the campaign to restore the shuttered station.
The issue has become urgent in Blaine since BNSF Railway applied for a permit to demolish the old station building.

The city has postponed the decision one year while the building's significance is assessed."I just want to get more awareness and hopefully there will be a groundswell of support," Becht said. "Tearing a historic train station down is an asinine thing to do."

He thinks Canadians will be key allies in the fight.The current Vancouver-Seattle service, which has no intermediary stops north of Bellingham, is much less convenient for the 600,000-plus South of Fraser residents who must first get to Vancouver's Main Street train station to board Amtrak or else wait in border lines and drive to Bellingham to connect.

Surrey resident Gordon Hall notes Amtrak's morning trains leave Vancouver too early for anyone from Surrey to get to the station on public transit. "If we could park north of the border, walk to customs and get on the morning train headed south, then return on the evening train, it would work very well," he said.

Numerous Canadian supporters have already posted on the blainestation.com website. "This concept would bring hundreds of BC residents into Blaine for travel to Seattle and further," predicted White Rock's Christy Grant.

"We would love to take the train south but driving to downtown Vancouver or Bellingham doesn't make sense," added Bill Hughes. "It would be far more efficient and convenient to use my Nexus pass to cross the border and hop on a train to Seattle, or points south, than to catch a plane from Vancouver International Airport where I would have to spend two hours or so clearing security," wrote Kane Scott.

Metro Vancouver residents also suggested TransLink buses run an extra eight blocks east from White Rock to the Peace Arch to support the service. Others said the stop may even reduce pollution and lineups at the Peace Arch crossing.

Amtrak now runs two daily trains in each direction between Vancouver and Seattle. Amtrak has opposed adding another stop because it would lengthen run times.

A proposed stop in White Rock was even more challenging because of the need for passengers to clear customs – a problem that would not exist in Blaine. "They'd have a leg up there," White Rock Mayor Wayne Baldwin said. "But it's certainly not going to be a cakewalk."

He noted hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to upgrade the passenger rail line to reduce the travel time.

Blaine's old train station is near the intersection of Marine Drive and Peace Portal Drive.
[See map and photos at source.]

Source:

http://www.tricitynews.com/news/135967553.html

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BC Mary question: BC Rail was successful in promoting the economic wellbeing of British Columbia, from Vancouver northward to the top of the province. CN came along and switched the focus from provincial prosperity to private profit-making. That's our history ...

So how are we to read this push southward? How does this improve British Columbia's economic future? It's offered so innocently: merely a "convenience" for shoppers in the lower mainland of B.C. ... but in BC Rail terms ... B.C. is being railroaded one giant step toward closer integration with the U.S. economy.

Why would we want to do that?

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When B.C. rail gives a Christmas gift to Port of Vancouver

2011-12-20T18:59:00.000-08:00

Roberts Bank Rail Corridor upgrades benefit communities, boost Asia-Pacific trade

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TSAWWASSEN, BC, Dec. 20, 2011

CNW/ - Local commuters, farmers and truckers now have a safer, more reliable route to cross Deltaport Way at 41B Street without being delayed by long trains and truck traffic, thanks to a newly completed overpass.

"Demand for Canadian exports in Asia-Pacific markets continues to grow at a rapid rate, and investments such as these along the Roberts Bank Rail Corridor are furthering Canada's competitive advantages, improving infrastructure in local communities, and creating jobs and prosperity for workers, businesses and families," said the Honourable Ed Fast, Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway. "With the completion of the 41B overpass and, eventually, the Roberts Bank Rail Corridor overall, we are strengthening Canada's Asia-Pacific Gateway, while positioning the West Coast as the corridor of choice between Canada and the high-growth Asia-Pacific markets."

41B is the first of nine projects completed in the $307-million Roberts Bank Rail Corridor (RBRC) Program and will ease traffic congestion in the communities of Delta, Surrey, the City of Langley and the Township of Langley. The RBRC Program comprises eight overpasses and one railway siding in a 70-kilometre stretch that connects Roberts Bank, which contains Canada's largest container facility (Deltaport) and coal terminal (Westshore), to the North American rail network. The RBRC is expected to carry increasing volumes of goods from around the world that we use here every day, as well as Canadian exports.

"Strengthening infrastructure to get our goods and services to expanding markets in Asia and the world is a pillar of the B.C. Jobs Plan," said B.C. Agriculture Minister Don McRae on behalf of Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Blair Lekstrom. "The 41B project, which created more than 150 construction jobs, supports our growing trade and improves the quality of life for local farmers and all families by providing a safer connection within the community."

The overpass will also provide improved access to the Tsawwassen First Nation Gateway Logistics Centre.

"The Asia-Pacific Gateway and Deltaport are key areas for growth opportunities for Tsawwassen First Nation's new Tsawwassen Gateway Logistics Centre — which links directly to Deltaport and the South Fraser Perimeter Road system," said Chief Kim Baird of the Tsawwassen First Nation. "The 41B overpass is a critical link in expediting traffic from our centre and is a further indication of the strategic economic partnership TFN has with the B.C. government."

The RBRC Program is funded by 12 public and private partners: Transport Canada, the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, TransLink, Port Metro Vancouver, the Corporation of Delta, the City of Surrey, the City of Langley, the Township of Langley, CN, CP Rail, British Columbia Railway Company and BNSF Railway.
The $24-million 41B Street overpass project is funded by the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure ($5.5 million), British Columbia Railway Company ($12.6 million), Transport Canada ($3.5 million) and Port Metro Vancouver ($2.4 million).

"The RBRC Program exemplifies the Asia-Pacific Gateway strategy in action," said president and chief executive officer of Port Metro Vancouver, Robin Silvester. "Working together with the federal and provincial governments, we are advancing infrastructure projects that will benefit the community, and support Canadian trade and jobs in the most sustainable way possible."

The RBRC Program is working proactively to make improvements to road and rail to accommodate increasing traffic around growing communities and ensure residents can travel through the corridor safely, with minimal delays and impacts on their quality of life. British Columbia's trade with Asia is increasing through Canada's Pacific Gateway. Pacific Gateway partners have committed $22 billion to expand and enhance port, rail, road and airport infrastructure in the Pacific Gateway to meet those growing demands.

For more information about the Roberts Bank Rail Corridor Program and the Pacific Gateway, visit www.robertsbankrailcorridor.ca.
Transport Canada is online at www.tc.gc.ca/eng/tc-main.htm. Subscribe to e-news or stay connected through RSS, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr to keep up to date on the latest from Transport Canada.
This news release may be made available in alternative formats for persons living with visual disabilities.

Backgrounder Information

Roberts Bank Rail Corridor 41B Street overpass at Deltaport Way

The Roberts Bank Rail Corridor (RBRC) Program is a comprehensive package of road and rail improvements funded through a unique collaboration of 12 public- and private-sector partners. The $307-million program is designed to improve the safety and efficiency of the road and rail network. It will also enhance the quality of life for residents of communities through which rail traffic travels to and from Port Metro Vancouver terminals at Roberts Bank in Delta.
The partners are working proactively to improve road access and safety for local residents by providing alternate routes over busy railways. Partners include Transport Canada, the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, TransLink, Port Metro Vancouver (PMV), the Corporation of Delta, the City of Surrey, the City of Langley, the Township of Langley, CN Rail, Canadian Pacific, British Columbia Railway Company and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway.
The eight overpasses and one rail siding project in the RBRC Program will be completed by 2014. Other rail improvements will reduce whistle blowing, close rail crossings and provide an advanced early warning system that will notify drivers of approaching trains. These improvements will also reduce vehicle idling time and greenhouse gas emissions.

These RBRC projects are underway to connect each of the corridor communities and provide drivers with alternate routes over rail lines, reduce congestion, increase safety, improve emergency vehicle access and reduce idling times.

The $24-million 41B Street overpass project was designed to improve safety and community livability and enhance economic opportunities. The overpass enables local commuters, farmers and trucks to cross Deltaport Way and the rail lines without idling or being delayed by long trains and heavy traffic. The 41B project also meets the demand for increased international freight to and from PMV's Deltaport and Westshore terminals.
The Tsawwassen First Nation (TFN) was a key part of this project, working with the contractor to build a detour road, providing better access to TFN and creating new employment opportunities.
For further information:

Contacts:
Rudy Husny Press Secretary Office of the Honourable Ed Fast Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway. Ottawa 613-992-7332			Media Relations Transport Canada, Ottawa 613-993-0055

Kate Trotter
Government Communications and Public Engagement
B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure
250-356-8241
Barbara Joy-Kinsella, Media Relations
Port Metro Vancouver
604-665-9267
Barbara.joy-kinsella@portmetrovancouver.com

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GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

www.gov.bc.ca/
Victoria, British Columbia

British Columbia is the western most of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu ("Splendour without Diminishment"). Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858. In 1871, it became the sixth province of Canada.
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Transport Canada

www.tc.gc.ca/eng/aboutus-menu.htm
Ottawa, Ontario
4700 employees

Transport Canada is responsible for transportation policies and programs. It ensures that air, marine, road and rail transportation are safe, secure, efficient and environmentally responsible. Transport Canada reports to Parliament and Canadians through the minister of Transportation, Infrastructure and Communities. It works with its portfolio partners, other government departments and ...
More on this organization

Before we drive off the cliff ...

2011-12-20T16:44:00.000-08:00

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This is our Arab Spring!

After Durban: We must pull the emergency brake before the 1 per cent drive us off the cliff

By Derrick O'Keefe
| December 16, 2011

On behalf of Canada, Environment Minister Peter Kent recently spent several days in Durban at the UN climate talks treating the global community like, well, shit -- disrespecting her, ignoring her wishes and just generally displaying rude and selfish behaviour.

But Minister Kent did not have the guts to break up with the global community face to face in Durban. So he waited until he landed back home in Ottawa before officially announcing that Canada was dumping the Kyoto Protocol, making us the first country to ratify the agreement to abandon what is -- for all its flaws and shortcomings -- the only legally binding international climate treaty in existence.

Ironically Peter Kent, years ago when he was a respected CBC TV journalist, had narrated and helped produce a groundbreaking documentary on global warming way back in 1984.

From 1984 to 2011 -- that's 27 lost years. Twenty-seven years of failure to do what must be done. In 1984, Kent's documentary inquired about a potential ban on fossil fuels, or a 300 per cent tax on carbon dioxide emissions.

But nothing like this type of serious, drastic action ever happened. And that's because the past three decades of the climate crisis have coincided with three decades of neo-liberal politics and economics. The market came before society; money came before science, the environment, reason and even morality.

The result of the 2011 Durban climate talks is that the big polluters have given themselves a few more years to fiddle while the world burns. They spin this by telling us that at Durban they agreed to a "roadmap" to a future agreement.

But the map of the road agreed to at Durban leads only one place for humanity -- off the cliff.

In the lead-up to Durban, new evidence emerged about just how quickly we are speeding towards the edge:

- In November, the International Energy Agency reported that the world was headed for irreversible climate change in five years, unless we immediately cease creating new oil and gas infrastructure.

- Then, at the beginning of this month the Global Carbon Report revealed that global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year.

Then, on Monday, as the world reeled from Canada's irresponsible decision to pull out of Kyoto, there came a new report that suggested it may already be too late to stop our collective drive off the cliff. The story ran in the UK Independent. It read, in part:

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane -- a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide -- have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter…

Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.

Reading this news report hit me hard.

My mind raced back 15 years, to when I was sitting in a first-year environmental science class at the University of Victoria, riveted as the professor explained the theory of the potential for runaway climate change. The theory is simple but horrifying: that the initial effects of warming -- melting polar ice and permafrost, for example -- will set off "positive feedback loop" effects like the release of stores of methane gas that in turn cause additional warming. Once a certain tipping point is reached -- and the science tells us this is likely somewhere in the neighbourhood of two degrees Celsius of warming -- there will be no possibility of curtailing or reversing the climate change.

Catastrophic climate change will go from theory to reality.

The new findings of massive Arctic methane plumes are perhaps the most startling warnings yet that runaway processes may already have been set into motion. It's the latest indication that we are hurtling towards the cliff. If and when we go over, it won't just result in massive loss of life and dislocation for us humans -- we will also take millions of species over the cliff with us.

This is where the neo-liberal, capitalist joy ride has taken us. Heading over the edge. Only an unprecedented collective mobilization and effort can save us.

It feels like it's now or never. And the once unthinkable thought is becoming the unavoidable thought: it may already be too late.

I'm tempted to suggest that the 1984 Peter Kent would tell the present-day Peter Kent to go to hell. But maybe Kent's just been a vacuous opportunist all along and only the words on the teleprompter have changed. And, secondly, this is much, much bigger than Mr. Kent and the rest of the sock-puppets and salesmen for the tar sands and the rest of Big Oil.

This is now about political power. Forget speaking truth to power. We are going to need to take power, and transform power. It's an almost unbelievable challenge in front of us, especially the younger generations.

Those of us who grew up in the neo-liberal years were told again and again that politics was the art of the possible, but now we face a situation where we must do the impossible.

Walter Benjamin once wrote: "Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake." Pulling that emergency brake today will require a global movement like we have never seen before.

We are going to need a revolution. An energy revolution. A social revolution. And a revolution in international relations -- waging war on climate change, instead of war on countries with the misfortunate of sitting on top of oil and other coveted resources.

To achieve all this we are going to need to summon an unprecedented collective will to take back the public sphere, including the media, and we will have to re-imagine our democracy, our cities, our societies, and our daily lives. (My Note: This starts in our communities and broadens out to include every neighbouring community. When? NOW!)

But our first task is clear: Those who have driven us to this perilous point -- the 1 per cent, the rich, selfish, shortsighted, uncultured and ignorant ruling class of our times -- must be removed from behind the wheel once and for all. (And have their keys taken away, too, for good measure.)

System change, not climate change -- this is indeed our only option left.

Note: I did a radio version of this commentary on Wednesday morning, some hours before Justin Trudeau called Peter Kent a "piece of shit" in the House of Commons. For this written version, I made a few tweaks and added one "s-word." You can listen to the original audio here; it's from a segment on the W2 Morning Radio Project, which airs Monday to Friday, 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., on Vancouver's Co-op Radio.

Link: http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/derrick/2011/12/after-durban-we-must-pull-emergency-brake-1-drive-us-cliff

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Vancouver Sun has a history: The Sun's incorporation paper in 1912 had stated the newspaper shall not "editorially, nor in its news columns or otherwise, adversely criticize, condemn, oppose in spirit or letter such policy or policies, principle, principles ... or leaders of the said Liberal party - and such shall be considered a violation of the constitution of this company."

2011-12-19T20:21:00.002-08:00

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An interesting history of Vancouver Sun ... is it 78? or 104 years old?

And would you be surprised to discover that allegiance to the Liberal Party is built right into their DNA?:

Excerpt:

The Sun had long given up being the editorial arm of the provincial Liberal party. Said Straight, in 1953: "We operate this way: if the CCF (now the NDP) has a newsworthy case, it gets treated on its merits as a story. There are no sacred cows on the newsdesk."

The Liberal party had once been the most sacred of cows. The Sun's incorporation paper in 1912 had stated the newspaper shall not "editorially, nor in its news columns or otherwise, adversely criticize, condemn, oppose in spirit or letter such policy or policies, principle, principles ... or leaders of the said Liberal party - and such shall be considered a violation of the constitution of this company."

Read more HERE:

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/matter+still+pretty+frisky/5883933/story.html#ixzz1h2qYEBnw

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/matter+still+pretty+frisky/5883933/story.html

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Robert Fisk explains

2011-12-18T09:13:00.000-08:00

Published on Sunday, December 11, 2011 by The Independent/UK

Bankers are the Dictators of the West

by Robert Fisk

Writing from the very region that produces more clichés per square foot than any other "story" – the Middle East – I should perhaps pause before I say I have never read so much garbage, so much utter drivel, as I have about the world financial crisis.
But I will not hold my fire. It seems to me that the reporting of the collapse of capitalism has reached a new low which even the Middle East cannot surpass for sheer unadulterated obedience to the very institutions and Harvard "experts" who have helped to bring about the whole criminal disaster.

Let's kick off with the "Arab Spring" – in itself a grotesque verbal distortion of the great Arab/Muslim awakening which is shaking the Middle East – and the trashy parallels with the social protests in Western capitals. We've been deluged with reports of how the poor or the disadvantaged in the West have "taken a leaf" out of the "Arab spring" book, how demonstrators in America, Canada, Britain, Spain and Greece have been "inspired" by the huge demonstrations that brought down the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and – up to a point – Libya. But this is nonsense.

The real comparison, needless to say, has been dodged by Western reporters, so keen to extol the anti-dictator rebellions of the Arabs, so anxious to ignore protests against "democratic" Western governments, so desperate to disparage these demonstrations, to suggest that they are merely picking up on the latest fad in the Arab world.

The truth is somewhat different. What drove the Arabs in their tens of thousands and then their millions on to the streets of Middle East capitals was a demand for dignity and a refusal to accept that the local family-ruled dictators actually owned their countries. The Mubaraks and the Ben Alis and the Gaddafis and the kings and emirs of the Gulf (and Jordan) and the Assads all believed that they had property rights to their entire nations. Egypt belonged to Mubarak Inc, Tunisia to Ben Ali Inc (and the Traboulsi family), Libya to Gaddafi Inc. And so on. The Arab martyrs against dictatorship died to prove that their countries belonged to their own people.

And that is the true parallel in the West. The protest movements are indeed against Big Business – a perfectly justified cause – and against "governments". What they have really divined, however, albeit a bit late in the day, is that they have for decades bought into a fraudulent democracy: they dutifully vote for political parties – which then hand their democratic mandate and people's power to the banks and the derivative traders and the rating agencies, all three backed up by the slovenly and dishonest coterie of "experts" from America's top universities and "think tanks", who maintain the fiction that this is a crisis of globalization rather than a massive financial con trick foisted on the voters.

The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop decade after decade to anoint their own national property owners. Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and the UK, each gobbling up the people's wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine.

I didn't need Charles Ferguson's Inside Job on BBC2 this week – though it helped – to teach me that the ratings agencies and the US banks are interchangeable, that their personnel move seamlessly between agency, bank and US government. The ratings lads (almost always lads, of course) who AAA-rated sub-prime loans and derivatives in America are now – via their poisonous influence on the markets – clawing down the people of Europe by threatening to lower or withdraw the very same ratings from European nations which they lavished upon criminals before the financial crash in the US. I believe that understatement tends to win arguments. But, forgive me, who are these creatures whose ratings agencies now put more fear into the French than Rommel did in 1940?

Why don't my journalist mates in Wall Street tell me? How come the BBC and CNN and – oh, dear, even al-Jazeera – treat these criminal communities as unquestionable institutions of power? Why no investigations – Inside Job started along the path – into these scandalous double-dealers? It reminds me so much of the equally craven way that so many American reporters cover the Middle East, eerily avoiding any direct criticism of Israel, abetted by an army of pro-Likud lobbyists to explain to viewers why American "peacemaking" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be trusted, why the good guys are "moderates", the bad guys "terrorists".

The Arabs have at least begun to shrug off this nonsense. But when the Wall Street protesters do the same, they become "anarchists", the social "terrorists" of American streets who dare to demand that the Bernankes and Geithners should face the same kind of trial as Hosni Mubarak. We in the West – our governments – have created our dictators. But, unlike the Arabs, we can't touch them.

The Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, solemnly informed his people this week that they were not responsible for the crisis in which they found themselves. They already knew that, of course. What he did not tell them was who was to blame. Isn't it time he and his fellow EU prime ministers did tell us? And our reporters, too?

Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper. He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

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Investigating the legitimacy of the Berardino appointment to the BC Rail case

2011-12-17T18:43:00.001-08:00

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Canadian Canary's comment on "B.C. Chief Justice. Playing to the Gallery":

Mr. Mathews, you say no one is asking to have the legitimacy of Bernardino's appointment investigated. Could we appeal to you to send a letter to the Auditor General re Bernardino, or have you done that already?

It seems that request should at least be on record with the Auditor General's office. I would do it myself as an ordinary citizen, but you are much more knowledgeable about the Special Proscecutor in the BVB/BC Rail case.

Alex Tsakumis might also be someone who could do that, having some specific knowledge about Bernardino. However, he seems to focus his towering anger on Christy Clark almost exclusively, particular his evidence. Also, Mr. Tsakumis is rather vague on Bernardino, admitting that he was in conflict of interest as Special Prosecutor, but that he likes Bernardino personally -- a compromising balancing act, I think.

So you're the only one who I can think of who could/should make the request to the Auditor General to investigate the appointment of Bernardino as special prosecutor.

Finally, special disgust must be reserved for the BC NDP, especially Leonard Krog and Mike Farnworth for their willingness to protect wrong-doing at the highest levels, and playing footsie with Mike de Jong in his whitewash of Bernardino's appointment. This isn't the first or last time the NDP rubber-stamped the Liberals' decisions or stayed quiet in the background.

This is the party that wants to form the next government of BC?!?

People who are putting their faith in the NDP to call a public inquiry will have a rude awakening. The BC NDP have had multiple major opportunities on different issues to prove they aren't as craven and self-serving as other parties but they drop the ball most of the time.

Sadly, I don't believe we can trust the NDP to do the right thing on behalf of the people of BC -- in the BVB/BC Rail matter or any other. They will also work in the interests of their friends and "base" supporters, not in the interests of the public.

I'm in a conundrum. Never voted for Campbell/Liberals -- saw through that deceptive destructive megalomaniac long before he started to get caught out. Had high hopes for the NDP, especially when Horgan emerged as a possible leader, but Dix and Sihota prevailed. Now we're seeing the sad return to the worst of the hard left, who will turn out to be untrustworthy dictators as much as the hard right (Harper) but in different areas.
_____________________________________________

BC Mary forwards Canadian Canary's comment to Robin Mathews:

From: Mary Mackie
Date: December 17, 2011
To: Robin Mathews
Subject: re BC Chief justice

Dear Robin,

Here's a thoughtful response to your column. If agreeable to you, I'd like to post your reply to him.

Mary.

______________________________________________

Robin Mathews replies:

Dear BC Mary. You know that I don't, as a rule, reply to comments on articles. But since you ask for a reply in this case, I reply.

                          In normal circumstances, the person to request investigation and resolution from is the Attorney General of the province: called 'the chief law officer of the Crown'. I, of course, made that request. The assistant deputy Attorney General wrote to me that the matter was sub judice and so he couldn't comment. Mr. W. G. Gillen's reply was in error. Over the period of the Basi, Virk, and Basi case the Gordon Campbell Attorney General's office repeatedly replied to questions about any aspect of the B.C. Rail Scandal (often in the legislature) by saying the matter was sub judice when it often was not. And so I wrote again to the Attorney General and asked for a reply directly from him, pointing out that the reply from the assistant deputy Attorney General was in error.

                          The Attorney General never answered my letter.

                          A matter is considered "sub judice" when an action in court is in process, is not decided. The appointment of Willliam Berardino in December of 2003 was never sub judice. He was conducting the prosecution but his status was never "in process" in any court. And - I believe - W. G. Gillen knew that as well as I did.

                          Consider: if an Attorney General and a Deputy Attorney General - both closely associated with the Special Prosecutor appointed - violate the legislation governing the appointment of Special Prosecutors, their successors are not going to open up the appointment to public scrutiny unless they are moved aside so it may be opened up. By directly or tacitly accepting the illegitimate appointment, all succeeding Attorneys General, I allege, become accessories, all are engaged in the wrongdoing.

                          You ask, I believe, too much of the Auditor General. That is not surprising since there is nowhere else to go. The RCMP has refused to investigate the BC Rail Scandal and the Gordon Campbell cabinet involvement in it. The Mainstream Press and Media has been shamefully irresponsible. You see the response of the Supreme Court of British Columbia to clear, irrefutable evidence of the improper presence of the Special Prosecutor in the courtroom.

                           The powers of the Auditor General do not extend to ordering what should be police investigation of possible wrongdoing. The job of his office is to oversee expenditure of public money to make sure it happens with integrity and responsibility. If, in the process, the findings of the Auditor General's office should reveal what appears to be criminal negligence, then the members of the legislature to whom the Auditor General's Reports are made, and the Mainstream Press and Media on behalf of the general public, should call upon the RCMP to investigate for wrongdoing.

                           For all the years of the Gordon Campell/Christy Clark Liberal government, I believe, the Auditor General's annual reports have carried a designation which indicates serious uncertainty about the government's book-keeping. (That is putting the matter with great delicacy!) The Opposition and the Mainstream Press and Media should, by now, have demanded investigation either by fully empowered Public Inquiry or by the RCMP.

                          Remember that the RCMP is in negotiation for a twenty year policing contract with a government that it should be investigating for widespread corruption. Remember that allegations were made - as the basis of the Defence strategy - that the accused in the BC Rail Scandal, Dave Basi, Bobby Virk, and Aneal Basi, were "targetted" and had the charges against them "tailored". If that is true, the only possible people who could "target" and "tailor" have to be the investigating police and the Prosecutor with whom they consulted. Remember that the trial of Basi, Virk, and Basi fell apart when Defence asked of Martyn Brown - long-time Gordon Campbell chief of staff - what he knew of the relation between investigating RCMP officer Kevin DeBruykere, his brother-in-law (then) BC Liberal Party Executive Director Kelly Reichert, and Gordon Campbell, (then) premier.

                          Before answers to that question and to many, many others of key importance could be given, the trial was shut down.

                          The Auditor General, I am sure, understands there may be many contradictions in the operation of the Appointments Process to Find Special (Crown) Prosecutors. The revelation that there may be as many as a hundred other cases where "special arrangements" may have been made that may parallel the "deal" made with the accused, Basi, Virk, and Basi, suggests that. I doubt that the Auditor General's powers extend to the matter of the APPOINTMENT of Special (Crown) Prosecutors, since that is not essentially a "money matter" - unless government friends over the years received outrageous payment for services. If "deals", made dubiously or not recorded properly in accounts, were made (as is alleged in the Basi/Virk case) to spend taxpayers' money to pay for costs of convicted wrongdoers connected to police, civil service, legislature members, and/or members of cabinet - then the Auditor General can reveal them in full detail.

                          It is then the responsibility of the Opposition, the RCMP, the Mainstream Press and Media, and the higher courts of the province to provide the remedies required. They have all massively failed the people of British Columbia. The Auditor General, alas, is not the Atlas who can shoulder all of their responsibilities as well as the responsibilities of his office.

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BC Mary comment: speaking of responsibility, consider this:

Saturday, December 17, 2011
Campaign Research Con cats are out of the bag

Campaign Research client and House Speaker Andrew Scheer ruled it "reprehensible" while Campaign Research client and Con House Leader Peter Van Loan defended it as "vital free speech", but Campaign Research cofounder Nick Kouvalis put it best when he described his firm's now infamous phone calls to Lib MP Irwin Cotler's constituents :
“We’re in the business of getting Conservatives elected and ending Liberal careers. We’re good at it.”
Since 2003. For 39 Conservative candidates in the last federal election alone.

Kouvalis, who managed Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's successful campaign, was also election day chair for Kitchener-Waterloo Con MP Peter Braid.

Other Campaign Research staff currently include the other co-founder Richard Ciano, now running for presidency of the Ontario Con Party, and Aaron Lee-Wudrick, campaign manager for Con MP Peter Braid.

In 2009, Ciano, Wudrick and Braid participated in a series of workshops hosted by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association and the Preston Manning's Manning Centre for Building Democracy, where Ciano was Executive Director of Practical Politics til Feb 2010 . At one such training session in February 2009, Wudrick and Ryan O'Connor, 9th VP of the Ontario Con Party, were taped instructing students to set up Con-friendly "shell organizations" and "front groups" :

Wikileaks :
"With the apparent support of representatives from both the Ontario Progressive Conservatives and the Conservative Party of Canada, the OPCCA is attempting to covertly influence the political climate of Ontario's university campuses.

Presenters and participants are caught on tape advocating for the creation of front groups for the Conservative Party to masquerade as non-partisan grassroots organizations, influencing the political discourse on campus, stacking student elections with Party members, and conspiring to defeat non-profit organizations because of political differences, all with the intention of hiding their affiliations to the Party in the process."
(37:10) Aaron Lee-Wudrick : I say we, because, even though [Ryan O'Connor] was the forced neutral [as Student President] and me as the Tory president, it was all orchestrated obviously behind closed doors, and it actually worked out well because it looked like different groups of stakeholders, like I'm the outsider coming in, and you guys were just the responsible student government and we had other members of council, a guy he appointed to council, he got speaking rights but he wasn't an elected member, but just as another voice at the table, it made it look like there were all kinds of different corners where in fact we were all on the same team.
(42:14) Aaron Lee-Wudrick : Campus Radicals for Action on Zimbabwe Yes, or something like that, they were a great shell group. Feel free to use Campus Coalition for Liberty, that's ours so we have a logo and everything.
(50:05) Ryan O'Connor : When Aaron was doing the petition campaign, which "I knew nothing about;" I was printing them in my frickin office in student government, of course I knew about it, of course we were behind it, I couldn't take a public position on that issue because although I wasn't running for reelection, this was three months before the end of my mandate ... if we had made them an issue, no Tory would ever get elected to student government again.
Ryan O'Connor : Sometimes you can't attach the party's name to something. You just can't. If it's a really controversial issue on campus or something that might show up in the newspaper, you want to be careful. You just have your shell organization and have the Campus Coalition for Liberty and two other Tory front groups which are front organizations, all of those groups might actually qualify for funding too.
Aaron Lee-Wudrick : Don't think that the Party doesn't like that, because they do. They're things that will help the Party, but it looks like it's an organically-grown organization and it just stimulated from the grassroots spontaneously. They love that stuff. And they don't have to bear the burden of having any of it attached to their name."

You know, like pretending to be spontaneous grassroots fake twitterer Karen Philby or making anonymous calls to talk radio. (h/t Montreal Simon)

Plus ça change, plus c'est la fucking Con même chose, eh?

Bonus : Out here in BC, Campaign Research was "the single largest beneficiary of the HST contracts, pulling down $167,000 of the $250,000 total budget for "conducting telephone town hall meetings" related to the implementation of the controversial tax change".

They were hired on by BC rightwinger Suzanne Anton in her unsuccessful Vancouver mayoralty bid, and also set up a fake website mocking Christy Clark for signing up a cat as part of her party membership drive in their campaign work for her rival George Abbott :
In the source code, the author of the website was identified as Bo Chen, who works for Toronto-based Campaign Research

The Campaign Research Con cats are definitely out of the bag.

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B.C. Chief Justice. Playing to the Gallery.

2011-12-16T20:24:00.002-08:00

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Special to The Legislature Raids, December 16, 2011

By Robin Mathews

There is much to laugh about in the politics of B.C. (when one is not crying). Keith Fraser of the Vancouver Province has just filed a story reporting that the Chief Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court has made a bold move.

Robert Bauman has ordered that newspaper ads be run to attempt to locate people who have received the kind of special pay-off received by Dave Basi and Bobby Virk at the end of the Basi, Virk, and Basi trial.

Bauman’s bold move on behalf of justice and clarity is – to be generous to the Chief Justice – too, too little, too, too late, and almost, but not quite, laughable. Not quite, because the Auditor General who has asked for the ads is really trying to do his job well.

We know – don’t we – that then Attorney General Michael de Jong set up (in 2010) a feather-weight review of the appointment process for hiring “Special Crown Prosecutors” – the (mostly) boys who would manipulate what the court chooses to call the “special indemnities” paid to accused in apparent contradiction of policies not to pay legal fees (of those mostly in or connected to government) when declared guilty.

Out of nowhere, Michael de Jong wanted the feather-weight review. Was he aware that his government was being closed in upon – and might get caught…?

We know – don’t we – that with the assent of Leonard Krog, NDP Attorney General critic and Mike Farnsworth, NDP Solicitor General critic, feather-weight reviewer Stephen Owen found the process for appointing Special Prosecutors as pure and sweet as a spring breeze over Skaha Lake. Lovely. Well run. Fine. Great. Fastidious. Praiseworthy. But there is reason to believe the process has been used to appoint people who will work against justice and clarity, to cover-up for powerful people allied to the Liberal government of B.C. A real investigation of the process to appoint “the boys in the golden circle” as Special Prosecutors still needs to be done.

We know Wally Oppal was caught misusing the process. The trial he pushed into operation against the alleged bigamists of Bountiful was tossed out of court and killed on the spot because of the wrongful actions of the former Supreme Court appeals judge and Attorney General, Wally Oppal. Maybe Oppal didn’t know the rules. I mean we have to be fair to him, don’t we. But then the accused in the case went to court – and Oppal was named in the wrong. Maybe he didn’t know the rules….

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of B.C., Robert Bauman, on the other hand, was told twice, formally, that the Special Prosecutor in the Basi, Virk, and Basi case was appointed in violation of the legislation setting up the position of Special Prosecutor. Not only was William Berardino appointed in violation of the legislation, but in violation Big Time, as they say.

Special Prosecutors are not supposed to have any relation with cabinet members, police, civil servants and their like when taking a case that even might relate to them. Special Prosecutors are not supposed to have any relation that would lead even to a perception of bias. They don’t have to have proved bias. They just have to look like they might SEEM to be biased, and then they can’t be appointed.

William Berardino was appointed to the case in 2003 when he had not long since been partner and colleague of appointing Attorney General Geoff Plant for seven years and of appointing Deputy Attorney General Allan P. Seckel for eleven years.

The Basi, Virk, and Basi case was anchored in the activities of the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark cabinet. Major civil servants were involved in the whole baroque structure of deceit which corruptly transferred BC Rail to the CNR. The Special Prosecutor appointed should have had no relation to anyone anywhere near those people. But he was appointed by a ministry containing a member of cabinet and a top civil servant – both of whom had been in long, close association with him.

When that information was revealed, I wrote to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of B.C., Robert Bauman, the Associate Chief Justice, and the judge on the Basi, Virk, and Basi case and, formally, informed them of the matter. They refused to act. They DID NOT SAY I was wrong. And so I wrote to them again, formally. They refused to act. They DID NOT SAY I was wrong.

Chief Justice Robert Bauman and Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie – knowing William Berardino was wrongly appointed, and knowing that his wrongful appointment made the trial illegitmate – refused to do anything and permitted the trial to go on. They permitted, I insist, an illegitmate trial – which they knew to be illegitmate – to continue.

Think about that.

When is was ALL over, and when two of the accused admitted kinds of guilt, and when all their legal and court costs were paid by the taxpayer, the Auditor General of B.C. began to ask questions. He even had to go to court to force answers from the Christy Clark wedge of the BC Rail Scandal.

And now he wants to know more – he wants to know what is going on in the internal machinery of the Special Prosecutor process. He wants to know everyone else who received the kind of treatment over payments of legal costs that Dave Basi and Bobby Virk received at the end of the illegitimate trial that was illegitimate because the Special Prosecutor in the case was appointed in violation of the legislation governing appointments.

No one is asking to have the legitimacy of William Berardino’s appointment investigated.

Within his powers to oversee expenditures, the Auditor General of B.C. wants to know how the taxpayers’ money is being spent in matters that relate to the appointment of Special Prosecutors AND to people who have found themselves in a like situation as Dave Basi and Bobby Virk have found themselves.

We taxpayers can only wish him the best of luck. And we need to ask, don’t we? why Chief Justice Robert Bauman and Associate Chief Justice (and judge on the trial of Basi, Virk, and Basi), the Honourable Anne MacKenzie, permitted William Berardino to remain Special Crown Prosecutor when they were formally told that he was present in the court illegitimately.

Will anyone ever go to court to get that answer?

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The Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) has approved the new design concept for the Mufford/64th Ave. at Highway 10 rail overpass.

2011-12-16T09:16:00.001-08:00

Mufford Rail Overpass to proceed in 2012

12/14/2011 Updated for clarification Dec. 15, 2011

LANGLEY - Drivers have faced delays crossing rail lines near the Township of Langley because of long trains carrying B.C. exports to Roberts Bank for Asia and the world. The new overpass will provide them with an alternate route over the tracks that will reduce delays, improve road safety and provide better response times for emergency vehicles.

Residents asked for a crossing over the rail corridor that had the least effect on agricultural land. The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure worked with project partners in developing a new design concept that was presented to the public at open houses this fall and which is now approved by the ALC. Quotes:

Ed Fast, Minister of International Trade and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway -

"The Mufford Rail Overpass is not only an important step toward completing improvements to the Roberts Bank Rail Corridor, but also a step forward in further strengthening Canada's Asia-Pacific Gateway which is positioning our west coast as the corridor of choice between Canada and the high-growth Asia-Pacific markets."

"These strategic investments and partnerships are furthering Canada's competitive advantages, improving infrastructure in local communities and creating jobs and prosperity for workers, businesses and families."

Transportation and Infrastructure Minister Blair Lekstrom -

"The Agricultural Land Commission's decision and endorsement from the mayor and council of Langley Township means we can go ahead with this needed overpass that will reduce traffic congestion while respecting Langley community lifestyles. The Mufford overpass will give Langley residents improved access, while protecting farmland."

Langley MLA Mary Polak -

"The Asia-Pacific is one of our most important trade partners. This overpass will allow us to continue to develop that trade relationship without putting a traffic burden on our residents."

Fort Langley-Aldergrove MLA Rich Coleman -

"I'm pleased to see this important project move forward. It will help people get home quickly and safely, without sacrificing our ability to move goods or protect the Agricultural Land Reserve."

Township of Langley Mayor Jack Froese -

"The Agricultural Land Commission's decision is great news for our community. Each year, trains get longer and more frequent, amplifying a safety issue that will not go away unless positive action is taken. The Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure has examined the agricultural land issues and addressed them to the satisfaction of the commission."

"We are now one step closer to alleviating the congestion caused by trains interfering with traffic on our roads and look forward to working with the ministry to make this proposed solution a reality in the near future."

Quick Facts:

* Total project cost is estimated at approximately $51 million, to be cost-shared among the Roberts Bank Rail Corridor Program partners: the Township of Langley, Port Metro Vancouver, TransLink, Transport Canada and the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.

* The project is expected to generate more than 250 jobs over three years.

Learn More:

www.robertsbankrailcorridor.ca/proposed-projects/64th-avenue-at-hwy-10/_rbrc_project

Contact:

Kate Trotter

Government Communications and Public Engagement

Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure

250 356-8241

Connect with the Province of B.C. at: www.gov.bc.ca/connect

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Quizz: do you understand BC justice??
http://www.theprovince.com/news/judge+orders+track+down+recipients+Basi+Virk+style+court+deals/5872713/story.html
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This is the BC Rail we remember

2011-12-15T18:07:00.006-08:00

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Canadian Railroads: The late great BC Rail

Date: 12/14/11
Author: sarailfan

Unfortunately I only made one serious trip to the BCR prior to the CN giveaway. In my young and foolish days the draw of heavy traffic in the Fraser and Thompson Canyons was too much to resist.

However, I did go to the Lillooet once, on a day when the canyon looked slow. Here, for your consideration, are a pair of shots from July 3, 2004, as a short work train winds its way along the shore of Seton Lake, behind a pair of cowled GEs.

This is the BC Rail I knew - red, white, and blue, in the best scenery the province has to offer. R.I.P., BCR.

Darren Boes
Lethbridge, AB

Thanks for the post . . brings back lots of good memories . . . that particular location up on the hill just south of Lillooet gives you some very nice shots with a good telephoto lens like you used . . . as the track curves around the lake about four times as the train heads toward town.

Craig
http://mcmrailvideos.com/
Date: 12/15/11 10:27
Re: The late great BC Rail
Author: Nictd1000

Very nice post. What a great railroad it was. I made the long trip several times to visit - wish now I would have spent more time there.

Source is HERE:

www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?15,2636155
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BC Mary comment: It warmed my heart, to see these train-spotter comments. It's strengthening, just knowing that BC Rail lives on, this way. Please visit the source, to see images of two BC Rail GF6-C, 6,000 electric locomotives eastbound with empty 98-car coal train.

One significant factor which didn't fit itself into their discussion is the crucial economic importance of the "late Great BC Rail" -- and how it accounted for the assured loading of the vital goods being produced all along the BCRail line, from North Vancouver to the far northern parts of this big province. I don't remember ever staying awake at night, worrying about how many minutes could be shaved off CN's rush from Chicago (or wherever) to the ports of Vancouver or Prince Rupert. In fact, CN's wild races leave me feeling like road kill.

No, we cared that BC towns, villages, sawmills, cities, farms, tourists, the whole complex society which needed BC Rail to bring them certain essential necessities, was safely in place, as usual. We took pride in the fact that BC Rail was there, through good times and bad. When British Columbians needed BC Rail all the more, when it came time to ship their products to market ... without begging and pleading for the cars ... the cars were there.

BC Rail did all that, quietly and efficiently and if you'll forgive me, I'd say BC Rail responded graciously, promptly, effectively.

I simply don't believe that CN can match the Late Great BC Rail by merely adding boxcars, increasing speed, and eliminating service to towns which are temporarily having economic difficulties. In my view, by increasing their own private profits CN are doing nothing meaningful for the length and breadth of British Columbia -- which BC Rail undertook as a matter of course, as an essential component of their mandate. On the contrary, British Columbia is virtual roadkill while cheap products are whisked in from China and dirty products are slung out from our tar sands and abused mine-sites ... and this is CN's mandate.

BC Rail belongs in the forefront, as it had been all along. In my opinion, British Columbia would be doing very, very nicely -- ideally suited to meet the challenges of to-day and the future.

Let us hope. And if readers are wondering, there are re-possession clauses in that semi-secret set of twilight deals which the Gordon Campbell/ChristyClark governments negotiated back in 2003- 2004. And we do still own the railbed and line. We should never forget that.

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It's the lethal BC Rail process again

2011-12-15T08:06:00.002-08:00

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BC Mary comment: The "news" these days ... it's hard to know when it's humour, when it's true, when it's obfuscation, when it's an outright lie, or when it's history repeating itself. For example, I understand that the Harper-Cons got themselves a get-outa-jail-free card yesterday by saying light-heartedly, "Oh yes, we lied. We knew Irwin Cotler wasn't quitting. We just wanted to make his constituents think so." And the Speaker of the House whose job it is to rule on legalities, actually recognized the lies and called them "reprehensible" but said, on the other hand, Harper-Con lies would be accepted as a good enough reason to interfere with the democratic process. See what I mean? Do we laugh, or call the cops?

Then there's Lord Acton's hoary old warning which never goes out of date. He pronounced: "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Perhaps not everybody noticed that we're seeing history repeat itself. Shift gears from federal to provincial, and turn the clock back to 2001 to the scenes of cowboy chaos we saw in British Columbia when the democratic process brought in 79 so-called BC Liberals (actually, Reform/Socreds - Harper-style) facing a 2-person Opposition which did their best ... but ... well, 79 to 2 = Absolute Power. So among the priceless public assets we lost, we saw Canada's 3rd largest railway slide out of public ownership under that lying, cheating regime of absolute power.

Today, Justin Trudeau brought home a similar image of absolute power riding rough-shod over the democratic process. Justin Trudeau has me wondering if discussion is pointless, when so many Harper-Cons are setting their hair on fire over a precise home-truth he shouted across the House of Commons: a tiny, common noun. There's no doubt in my mind now, that Peter Kent the so-called Environment Minister is a piece of sh!t, as are the rest of the Harper Gang for what they've done to Canada and Canada's reputation world-wide. Did we notice when the Harper-Cons dumped Atomic Energy of Canada, and with it, Canada's position as a world leader in that field, from mining to building the laboratories to creating the finished products? World leader. It was a classic obfuscation, shutting down the laboratories, firing the key managers. Then virtually giving AECL away for peanuts. The BC Rail process.

But for today, let's just consider:

The Harper Gang “For the first time ever ... refused to accredit any members of the Opposition for the COP 17 conference in Durban,” Mr. Trudeau told The Globe in an email, while Question Period was still continuing. “This was extremely difficult for my friend Kirsty Duncan, our Environment Critic, who tried, unsuccessfully, to pay her own way to get to Durban.”

He said that the rationale from the government was “we have a majority, we don't need to bring dissenting voices.”

“So when Minister Kent got up and dared say ‘if the member opposite had been in Durban...’ I lost my cool,” he said.

About Mr. Trudeau’s heckling, Ms. May said: “It took my breath away that Peter [Kent] would say to Megan Leslie that ‘if she had been at Durban’ as though she passed up a chance to go.”

Ms. May paid her own way to the conference, as did NDP MP Lauren Liu.

“So even though the slur was against an NDP MP, it was appalling. My jaw dropped. (And I am not prone to yelling and never heckle). Fair to say Justin just lost it. And he did jump up to apologize (not that excuses it),” she added in an email.

Nor should we allow ourselves to be fooled by the uproar over use of the word "shit". It's a clumsy attempt to draw attention away from the outrage of double-crossing everybody trying to protect the nation (and the world) from the ravages of pollution. Have a look at a few of the comments following The Globe and Mail story on Justin Trudeau's "terrible" deed:

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/durban-dust-up-spurs-justin-trudeau-to-swear-at-environment-minister/article2271211/

SOME COMMENTS:

Elder Gonzo wrote: I agree with Justin Trudeau 100%!

tj1808 wrote: Peter Kent would be called much worse if he were to walk the streets of Europe, Japan, or even China or India.

DisingenuousHarperRegime wrote: Kent deserved it. He did not accept the apology either. What a toad.

BackroomBob wrote: Justin just became the most popular opposition figure in Canada.

Can't believe it wrote: That's not swearing!!! It's a very apt description of the minister of "OZONE"!!!

Conservative Lies wrote: Isn't it ironic...that the Conservatives DON'T have to apologize for spreading lies about Irwin Cotler retiring, but the Liberals DO have to apologize for TELLING THE TRUTH! Peter Kent is already considered a laughing-stock to the rest of the world. Imagine an Environment Minister for even a third-world country not knowing what 'ozone' is? What an unqualified buffoon!!!

Bok Globule wrote: I'm surprised this is the first time. This is the most dishonest, hypocritical, and mendacious government I've ever seen in Canada. It's disgusting. Doesn't excuse Trudeau's cursing, but it doesn't surprise. My only exposure is through the media; if it was my day job I probably would have snapped long ago.

beefair wrote: Well said Justin, but Pat Martin said it better.

Its_My_Canada wrote: J. Trudeau was way too kind in his remark.

leaand wrote: That is the best description I have heard of our Fake Environment Minister yet. Time someone told the truth about this Calgary Oil Patch Puppet. He serves his puppet master well, and he doesn't serve the interest of the people of Canada.

Nanakanda wrote: Lets put kent, harper, mckay,toews all in jail permanently, they are all pieces of canuck sh!t

Truth First wrote: Congratulations to Justin Trudeau. I'm surprised more opposition MP's haven't done likewise. He hit the nail on the head with his remark. The only way to improve on it would be to call all members of this dictatorship canadians sufffer under sh!!s.

Eliza Grey wrote: Can anyone remind me the last time a Conservative mp apologized for anything? Certainly didn't for Cotler, for joy riding in search and rescue vehicles. Anything anyone can remember?

Trudeau was wrong for swearing and he apologized, that is not a capital offense. As another poster noted, why did we even bother sending Kent, could have skyped him saying over and over again, no, no,no. Would have saved us all money and then perhaps someone who actually wants to see things improve could have gone on that dime.

shaun47 wrote: He shouldn't have had to apologise. He was just exercising his right to free speech. Besides, there have been rumours going around for years now that Peter Kent IS a Piece of S**t.

In fact, maybe they should do a poll in his riding: "Given that Peter Kent has been rumoured to be a piece of s**t, how will you vote in the next election?"

Happy & Safe wrote: Justin's description of Kent is validated when Kent fails to apologize to Kirsty Duncan, and since Steve is the only one giving orders in the Reform Party, Steve smells as bad as Peter.

I_Heart_Canada wrote: Pretty disgusting of Conservatives who are so desperate for seats that they fast-track minor celebrities like Peter Kent.

He was a horrible reporter and now he is a horrible politician doing the bidding of the American Republican party.

Nice going Justin!

mark Kluepfel wrote: Peter Kent follows the Peter principle, incompetents rise to the top.

"internationalist" wrote: Eh Cons...get used to Justin Trudeau as Justin has balls!

George.91 wrote: Way to speak on behalf of your constituents and many Canadians!!! This Government is a PIECE of SH*T, let alone Peter Kent.

Sure his rhetoric and behavior was not appropriate for Parliament and disrespectful. But wait the Harper Government is a thousand times worse.

Allan Beveridge wrote: What do you do when you are dealing with lying, cheating and contemptuous bullies? The CPC do act like classic bullies personified. They continue to act like grade school children and then are suprised when some people get a little fed up? I remember struggling to deal with this kind of attitude when I was younger, where one tries to play nice and fair yet gets pushed and pushed and pushed and inevitably something gives. Often it is the person who was bullied who pays the price even though they were not the ones in the wrong.

Just how much cr@p are people expected to take from these CPC cretin? The endless stream of bs from this government shows that the CPC are without integrity and honour and devoid of any moral character. They surppased any previous Canadian government in this regard a long time ago and now its shows in just about everything they do (the handling of the contracts for military vessels being one of the rare exceptions).

I don't condone what Justin did, but I do understand it. Frankly, I do not know what the opposition MP's can do to deal with this bunch of hooligans that is now our government, especially when they still enjoy the support of the MSM. But we must find a way to do something or else we are going to simply have to watch as they continue to abuse their privileges and trample on and degrade our democracy. [cont'd.]

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An ICBC employee who accessed information on 65 people, including 13 of the shooting/arson incidents has been fired, RCMP said today.

2011-12-15T03:36:00.000-08:00

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By Gordon Hoekstra
Vancouver Sun - Dec. 14, 2011

METRO VANCOUVER -- Police are looking for more suspects in a strange case in which people affiliated with the Justice Institute of B.C. were targeted for arsons and drive-by shootings.

An ICBC claims adjuster — who police say accessed information on the targeted people through work files — has been fired but not charged with a crime.

RCMP spokesman Sgt. Peter Thiessen said Wednesday police are "quite confident" more than one person is involved.

"Someone — person or persons — had to commit the shootings and the arsons," said Thiessen.

He said the ICBC employee's role in the case has not been determined.

"It's an ongoing, very active investigation, and when we have the appropriate evidence to support charges ... we'll certainly move forward on that," he said.

The Justice Institute, a post-secondary institution based in New Westminster, provides instruction in areas such as public safety, justice and social services. For example, paramedics, sheriffs and municipal police officers receive their training there. About 30,000 students a year take courses at seven campuses around the province, including in Vancouver, Maple Ridge, Chilliwack and Victoria.

The RCMP first told the public in early September that 10 people linked to the Justice Institute of B.C., including three employees and two past students, had their homes and vehicles targeted by an unknown shooter and arsonist over the summer.

The ICBC claims adjuster had already been identified and terminated at the end of August, but that information was not released at the time. Thiessen said the information was withheld until now for investigative reasons.

On Wednesday, another three people were added to the list of people victimized in the series of arsons and shootings.

The RCMP would not provide specific details on when and where the incidents occurred, saying they took place in the first eight months of 2011 and in various municipalities throughout the Lower Mainland. None occurred on any Justice Institute campuses.

Both homes and vehicles were hit by the arsons and drive-by shootings. No one has been physically hurt.

Thiessen would not say if people were at home or in their vehicles during the incidents.

The victims do not appear to be affiliated with any criminal activity, but police say they are looking at all avenues in their investigation, including links to organized crime. "We're still attempting to determine what the exact motive is," said Thiessen.

Police said the investigation showed the ICBC claims adjuster accessed personal information on 65 individuals, including the 13 identified victims.

ICBC president and CEO Jon Schubert said management is "unbelievably" shocked ... {snip ...}

He said he and his executive team visited victims this week to apologize and offer support.

Schubert said ICBC is paying the deductible for damaged vehicles and offering to change the licence plates of victims.

He said there have been no such cases in the past, and ICBC has taken steps to guard against them in the future.

It has put in place computer software that will pick up patterns of access to its information that are not for legitimate business purposes.

The Justice Institute of B.C. has also beefed up its security following a review, but will not say what changes it has implemented. "We want to let people know that we've enhanced security, but believe it's prudent not to say what," said justice institute spokesman Chris Wong.

He said the institute has been communicating with its staff and students about the incidents throughout the investigation.

Read more HERE: http://www.vancouversun.com/news/ICBC+employee+fired+wake+shootings+arsons/5862470/story.html#ixzz1gbKGJeMQ

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BC Rail: A simple truth

2011-12-14T09:18:00.000-08:00

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By Norm Farrell
Re-posted from November 3, 2011

For British Columbia Liberals, the BC Rail/Basi/Virk story is like a slow growing cancer. Left unresolved, it is metastasizing, nudging the afflicted party toward an inevitable conclusion.

I've tried to understand why Liberals, or at least ethical members within the party, have not demanded an end to this distress through a public inquiry that would label the villains and clear the innocents. Why put up instead with stalling and evasion of responsibility that tars all? I put that question to a person with a direct connection to the Liberal caucus. The response:

"More than anything, they hope to survive and they realize, if the full truth emerges, the Liberal Party is history and their political careers ended."

Obviously, this story will not go away. The circumstantial evidence of political and economic fraud at the heart of the Liberal government is extensive, so pervasive that no reasonable person can deny it.

Liberals missed the opportunity for confession and absolution after caucus pushed Gordon Campbell out the door. MLA's knew that Christy Clark's assumption of leadership ended opportunities to clean the slate. Her own involvement in the railway scandal meant that cover-up would continue. With exception of the obtuse Harry Bloy, caucus rejected Clark's candidacy in the leadership race. Liberal MLA's understood her culpability in the scandal that continues to undermine the party. They tried to establish new directions but the party leadership wanted more of the same.

Evil Eye said...
It is sad, but your post should be on the front pages of the two daily fish-wraps, but it will never be as the two daily fish-wraps have been aparty to the BC Rail scandal.

The ever growing stench from the BC Rail scandal and cover-up will increase exponentially as the daily exposure of the maleficence of those involved, until it is over powering.

My read now, is that jail time is a real possibility for Mr. Campbell and Ms. Clark and they are fighting for their political life. [continued ... ]

Source: http://northerninsights.blogspot.com/2011/11/simple-truth.html

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Norm lays it out even more clearly, here:

We can, but we won't

By Norman Farrell
Northern Insights - June 13, 2010

I recall voting Liberal in the 2001 provincial election and for years now, I've been wondering what led me to that regretful choice. Perhaps, I suffered early onset of age-related intellectual impairment but I prefer to believe there were other causes. In search of those, I read through the BC Liberal 2001 Platform. I suspected it would provide clues and it did.

It turns out my error was one of naivety. My mistake was believing what the Liberals said. I provide here a number of their promises and little editorial comment is required. I've held back items related to health and child welfare because those subjects deserve separate attention. What do you think readers, did he work wonders?

It’s time for a New Era of Accountability. Our plan will deliver real transparent, accountable government.
Establish workable initiative legislation, to make it feasible for British Columbians to call for a referendum on issues of province-wide concern that fall within the provincial government’s jurisdiction.
Establish workable recall legislation, to make it easier for citizens to hold MLAs accountable.
Give all MLAs and citizens a better voice in government through active legislative committees.
Hold open Cabinet meetings at least once a month that are televised and broadcast live on the Internet.
Give all government MLAs a meaningful new role in policy development and service planning through a new system of Cabinet decision-making.
Introduce free votes in the Legislature, to allow all MLAs to vote freely on behalf of their constituents on all matters not speciﬁcally identiﬁed as a vote of conﬁdence.
Not sell or privatize BC Rail.
Vigorously defend the Crown's ownership of provincial land and resources.
Protect BC Hydro and all of core assets, including dams, reservoirs and power lines under public ownership.
Restore an independent BC Utilities Commission, to re-regulate BC Hydro’s electricity rates.
Pass a Living Rivers Act to protect and improve BC’s river systems with scientiﬁcally-based standards for watershed management, enhancements to ﬁsh habitat, and a 10-year program to correct past damage.
Push for provincial control over the management and revenues of BC’s offshore ﬁsheries, to improve ﬁsheries management and protect ﬁshery jobs.
Adopt a scientiﬁcally-based, principled approach to environmental management that ensures sustainability, accountability and responsibility.
You shouldn’t have to pay higher than necessary electricity or auto insurance rates, because government wants to play politics with BC Hydro or ICBC.
Give school boards multi-year funding envelopes, to improve long-term education planning and budgeting.
Ensure that music, arts and physical education curriculums are fully funded in BC’s public schools.
Hold the line on court fees, to ensure that everyone has affordable access to our justice system.
Establish regional transportation authorities that are accountable to local taxpayers and give local communities more control over their transportation needs and planning.
Require taxpayer approval by regional referendums prior to authorization of any new type of TransLink tax or levy.
Outlaw “ofﬂoading” of provincial government costs onto the backs of local property taxpayers.
Restore open tendering on government contracts to allow fair competition for businesses and provide better value to taxpayers.
Implement a ﬂexible, innovative program to increase the supply of affordable housing.

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BC Rail: Does B.C. Cabinet Corruption Continue – With “A Yankee Fix”?

2011-12-10T07:57:00.002-08:00

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By Robin Mathews
December 10, 2011

The search, Christy Clark says, in the government propaganda video, was “extensive”. It wasn’t. An “extensive” search was made, she says, for an independent police monitor for B.C. He may be called a Chief Civilian Director for Independent Investigations of police misdoings.

Then premier Christy Clark and Attorney General Shirley Bond - in the same propaganda video - modify the statement to say appointee Richard Rosenthal will deal with “some” police misdoings – explicitly, deaths allegedly caused by police, and/or the use of physical violence. Some time later … much later … he might get to other things.

Other things? Well, he might get to police collaboration with Special Prosecutors appointed by the Attorney General to destroy, to bury, or to fabricate evidence on behalf of cabinet members and their corporate friends. He might get to the refusal of the RCMP (as top B.C. RCMP officer Gary Bass refused) to act on formal requests to investigate alleged criminal actions by members of the cabinet (including then premier Gordon Campbell).

But he probably won’t get to those things … at all.

In fact, Richard Rosenthal is instructed, he is ordered, he is PAID – not to look at any police misdoings before December 7, 2011. Richard Rosenthal has agreed to those terms, throwing both his credibility and his integrity into doubt from Day One.

What are the specific terms of Richard Rosenthal’s appointment? Neither Clark not Bond has attempted to tell the public. How much is Richard Rosenthal being paid? We have not been told. Why not? Will he be paid $1 million a year like the other Yankee appointment, David Hahn, head of B.C. Ferries?

Was Richard Rosenthal hired for the same reasons David Hahn was hired? To go around the people of B.C. and serve a corrupt cabinet by doing special dirty work?

If the search was “extensive”, and a Canadian was sought, why didn’t we know about it? Why didn’t we see ads in the Globe and Mail? Why didn’t we see an announcement of the search on the Attorney General’s website? Why didn’t Christy Clark announce in press conferences that the government was looking for a tough, independent, Canadian of irreproachable integrity to begin work as police monitor and to build for B.C. a tough, truly independent, public oversight body with real teeth?

I suggest we didn’t see those things because Christy Clark did not want that kind of person anywhere near corrupt police activity in B.C. and its intimate link to the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark cabinets.

Because there was not an “extensive search”, we may ask why a U.S. person was chosen – who doesn’t know Canada, doesn’t know B.C., doesn’t know Canadian law, doesn’t know the culture he is entering, and doesn’t know any ordinary Canadians in B.C. with whom he can chat and consult – even off the record?

Let us not fool ourselves. Let us not be gulled by Christy Clark and Shirley Bond. To set up an independent, B.C., non-police, public body with real power to oversee police behaviour is NOT Rocket Science. It requires some care and decent enabling legislation. The best person to undertake the task is a B.C. Canadian with integrity. I suggest Christy Clark and Shirley Bond would be terrified to appoint a B.C. Canadian with integrity.

The reasons they would choose someone from the U.S.A. become, upon reflection, clearer and clearer. Let us count some of the ways.

The first reason must be that, though belatedly, the new NDP leader Adrian Dix is on the record as believing there needs to be a Public Inquiry into BC Rail (the BC Rail Scandal).

Those with careful memories remember (reason #2) that Christy Clark was Deputy Premier through the dirty years when BC Rail was corruptly transferred to CN Rail. We remember, too, (reason #3) that during some of the dirtiest cover-up months when key email correspondence was being buried or destroyed in the BC Rail Scandal trial of Basi, Virk, and Basi, Shirley Bond was Deputy Premier of British Columbia.

Ms. Bond (reason #4) was elected in 2001 and has been in cabinet (sharing “cabinet responsibility”) through years of the corrupt administrations of Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark.

Reason #5 has to loom large. Not only was Christy Clark Deputy Premier during the early BC Rail Scandal years, she was much more. We know a police search of the home of her brother Bruce Clark turned up confidential cabinet documents allegedly delivered to him by the men convicted in the Basi, Virk, and Basi case. He appears to have been an agent for a party interested in the sale of BC Rail.

Bruce Clark was never charged with anything. Christy Clark was familiar with and had conversations with the convicted men. Those conversations need examination. Erik Bornmann, Liberal activist and self-confessed briber in the case against Basi, Virk, and Basi, was – especially – exempted from charges as a Crown witness. Bornmann was a partner with Brian Kieran, also never charged with anything and – in fact – apparently never thoroughly investigated. Christy Clark, it is alleged, was a friend or acquaintance of all those men.

Defence counsel alleged during the years of pre-trial and trial that the three accused men were “targetted”, the charges against them “tailored”. If the allegation is true, those things could not have happened without the close collaboration of the RCMP and the Special Prosecutor illegitimately appointed to the case by the Attorney General’s office. We may say with some confidence that the cabinet very much wanted convictions against the three accused. One may argue (reason #6) that Premier Christy Clark and Attorney General Shirley Bond do not want any police activity looked at that occurred before December 7, 2011.

In such a case – where thick clouds of suspicion hang over government leaders, over their wealthy and powerful corporate friends, over the police, and over significant members of the judiciary – what can political power do?

Political power can pretend it wants a clean slate, a Brave New World – and that it wants to bring back The Rule Of Law to the land. If it is successful in its sham display – the mountain of crimes it has allegedly already cooperated in can be buried, or at least pushed out of sight.

How can political power carry that off?

It can do so by finding someone to create a brave, new beginning -who will live in a bubble – talking only to mostly corrupt politicians, their mostly corrupt corporate friends, to mostly corrupt police officers, and to some corrupt members of the judiciary, and to members of the media – mostly bought servants of the corporate class. Political power can do so by having the person brought from afar to live in what is an almost completely closed world. It can do so by having the terms of the person’s appointment so narrow that he can only cover up or block access to past misdeeds.

Where can someone like that be found? Why, in another country, of course. But what country? The U.S.A. might be a good country because many Canadians are indoctrinated to believe Yankees are, somehow, always superior to Canadians. Why not, then, a Yankee, right out of the U.S.A.?

Perfect. Get him. Pay him well. Give him his orders. Make him answerable only to his corrupt employers. Restrict his meetings with real Canadians. And … let … him … go.

Most important. Have him set up – as fast as he can – barriers to the investigation of crimes police are alleged to have committed with and for corrupt politicians, their wealthy corporate friends, corrupt members of the judiciary, and corrupt members of “the oldest profession” – the press and media.

If he succeeds, all the criminals working in B.C. in “the BC Rail Scandal” before December 7, 2011, will get off scot-free. Except, of course, for the three non-white men, the three Sikhs chosen to take a pratfall so, hopefully, they disguise the endless list of real, serious, heavy-weight, white-skinned criminals.

When things got hot and heavy for the real criminals in the trial – the trial of Basi, Virk, and Basi – the more than seven year fabrication collapsed in hours. It collapsed with the Gordon Campbell/Christy Clark cabinet paying every cent of lawyers’ fees, court costs, and all … all the rest. That payment was so odious the Auditor General of B.C. is investigating and having to go to court to force answers from squeaky-clean Premier Christy Clark and Attorney General Shirley Bond.

Richard Rosenthal should never have been hired to B.C. from Denver, Colorado. Richard Rosenthal should never have accepted the terms of his appointment. He should be invited to leave British Columbia, now. Whenever Richard Rosenthal appears in public, Canadians should have one thing to say to him, and one thing only: “Yankee Go Home”.

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"This cannot be allowed to stand ... " BC gov't can't hide ministers' records from FOI with 'Out of Scope' claims

2011-12-08T12:28:00.000-08:00

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By Stanley Tromp
The Hook (Tyee) - December 8, 2011

[Editor's note: When a big ruling on Freedom of Information requests came down yesterday, The Tyee sought an expert opinion on what it meant -- and that expert happened to be at the heart of the case. Here is what Stanley Tromp emailed us as an explanation.]

The B.C. government cannot hide parts of ministers' records from Freedom of Information Act requestors with the claim that these are "out of the scope' of the law.

That order came down on December 7 from adjudicator Jay Fedorak in the office of the B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner. The government has 30 days to appeal to court.

"It looks like the government was trying to create another, bigger hole to hide information, and thankfully they got shot down," said Vincent Gogolek, executive director of the B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association (FIPA).

"The government chose to use one computer program for all these files, and run it out of the minister's office, then the Act applies to it. The provincial government was hoping they could get ministers’ offices moved outside the law, the same way they are in Ottawa. The Commissioner's office wasn't buying it."

In April 2009, this reporter filed an FOI request for the daytimer of meetings of the B.C. transportation minister from January 2002 to June 2004. (That is, about 1,200 meetings noted for Judith Reid, then 900 entries for Kevin Falcon. These are just mentions of who the minister was set to meet with, and what date and time, with no subject matter.) The hope was that the records might shed a bit of light on the events surrounding the BC Rail controversy and the December 2003 police raids on the Legislature.

The Ministry released some of the records (although it could not locate any from January 2002 to January 2003). But it withheld five per cent of the daytimer entries, those relating to the Minister’s MLA constituency or party caucus activities, and so are outside the scope of the FOIPP Act. The Speaker of the Legislative Assembly endorsed the ministry's claim. {Snip ... }

"I do not accept the Ministry's characterization of individual calendar entries as each constituting a separate record," the adjudicator wrote. "In this respect, I agree with the journalist that each calendar is a single record (it was generated by the Ministry as such) and that, if the original records were paper day-timers or calendars instead of electronic calendars, there would be no dispute about this."

As well, some of the minister's daytimer entries were withheld under FOIPP Act section 17 (when release could harm the government's "economic interests"), and section 22. The government also withheld the dates that the minister met with the B.C. ombudsman, using an "out of scope" claim, which the OIPC adjudicator rejected.

The next stage. Such are the claims that a record portion is outside of the scope of the law. Yet there is a separate but quite similar concept, which is likely the topic of the next legal battle.

For years, in response to FOI requests filed by myself and others (such as environmental groups), the government sent back records with sections blanked out, with a little "o/s" handwritten upon the blanks. This is meant to denote "out of scope of the request," i.e. the subject matter is not relevant and so "the information is 'not responsive' to your request."

Of course, being unable to see the "o/s" parts, the applicant has no way of knowing if the deleted portions were truly "out of scope" or not, unless he/she appeals to the commissioner (and waits two years for a ruling), which very few do.

Acting brazenly as a law unto themselves, bureaucrats in principle could split one record into 20 records, with 20 separate FOI decisions, one for each. I argue that a single indivisible record is a single indivisible record, to no avail. As the OIPC ruling noted, "The journalist also says that, if it is possible for the government to arbitrarily categorize parts of a requested record as individual records, then this could be done in almost any case where electronic records are involved."

The B.C. Freedom of Information and Privacy Association astutely wrote about this problem in its submission to the 2010 Legislative committee review of the FOIPP Act:

"FIPA has run into repeated instances where public bodies have removed large parts of records on the grounds that they are "out of scope" of the request.

"'Out of scope' is not an exception listed in Part 2 of the Act. Nor do officials ever state that the requested records are those listed in Sec. 3(1) of the Act as not being subject to the Act. What this means is that officials have created their own unlimited new exception to the requirement to release records. This cannot be allowed to stand. . . . What happens now leads to the suspicion that what is described as 'out of scope' may be information the public body does not want to release, but cannot find any legal reason to withhold."

Most troubling is that (according to statistics supplied to me by the Labour ministry), the "out of scope" claim had been applied to withhold information in 345 requests over the 2001-2010 decade, that is, five per cent of the total requests, and the number has been rising. FOIPP Act law reform and regulation is urgently needed for this problem. This practice may appear to be a bland, minor, arcane point of administrative law and so elude notice, but I believe that it has over the years caused much vital information to be concealed from FOI applicants and the public.

Stanley Tromp is a Vancouver-based journalist who regularly contributes to The Tyee.

Source is HERE:

http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/2011/12/08/Govt_Cant_Hide_Ministers_Records/

RED FLAG:

Public Inquiry ... Now!

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Wise words of caution from Nelle Maxey

2011-12-08T11:04:00.000-08:00

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----- Original Message -----
From: Nelle Maxey
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Subject: Are you ready for a new Environmental Assessment Act in Canada?

You know, this re-assessment of the Environmental Assessment Act may have much to do with the new Border Security agreement announced today.

There is much of this agreement that is NOT being discussed in the press. I highly recommend that everyone read the document released in Feb regarding what this agreement covers.

http://www.borderactionplan-plandactionfrontalier.gc.ca/psec-scep/assets/pdfs/RCC-CCR_Eng.pdf
Appendix 2 (beginning on page 21) in the PDF link above discusses various parts of the agreement.

There are 4 categories which will undergo change:

1) Agriculture and Food,
2) Energy and Environment,
3) Transportation and
4) Health and Consumer Products.

As an example, the Energy section lists this as one strategy:

“Streamline permissions for and construction of new cross-border energy infrastructure, e.g., a single Canada–U.S. regime for permitting oil and gas pipelines.”

See what I am saying? Canadian environmental guidelines will be changed in a big way.

Water is at risk for sure.

Nelle

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Shades of BC Rail

2011-12-07T12:20:00.000-08:00

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Open house Wednesday on Deltaport expansion plan

By Sandor Gyarmati,
The Delta Optimist December 5, 2011

Port Metro Vancouver will hold a pair of public open houses next week on major expansion plans for the Deltaport container terminal at Roberts Bank.

Part of the port authority's Container Capacity Improvement Program, public consultations are currently underway regarding the Deltaport Terminal, Road and Rail Improvement Project.

The project, according to the port authority, is a series of improvements to the existing three-berth Deltaport terminal.

{Snip ... }

Noting container traffic through Canada's Pacific Gateway is expected to double over the next 10 to 15 years, the port authority is looking at building an entirely new three-berth terminal in Delta, a controversial project known as T2.

Preliminary geotechnical and seismic work started earlier this year with an extensive offshore drilling program around Roberts Bank. A number of other field studies are scheduled to take place as well.

Deltaport is the largest container terminal in Canada with a current capacity of 1.8 million TEUs.

Current road and rail constraints limit the capacity of Deltaport to meet forecast demand for additional container movements, according to the port authourity.

The road and rail project has several key elements, including an overpass on the existing Roberts Bank causeway that will separate road and rail traffic, reconfiguration of rail track, additional container handling equipment within the existing Deltaport terminal and road improvements on Deltaport Way.

The project also involves additional rail track within the existing railway corridor and a portion of what's known as the Option Lands.

The Options Lands are properties along the Deltaport Way corridor that had previously been expropriated by the province, but later sold back to local farmers, subject to options to purchase to create a new rail right-of-way. The options were negotiated in anticipation of future expansion of railway operations and extend to a 200-foot (60-metre) strip immediately south and adjacent to the existing right-of-way between Arthur Drive and 41B Street. The options were exercised by B.C. Rail in 2008.

The myriad of rail improvements also includes the construction of a new lead track (a rail track that connects the rail yard with the main line) between 72nd Street and the Roberts Bank causeway, as well as other tracks. The port authority says a total of 70,000 feet of new track is required.

Already underway, meanwhile, is the separate $300 million Roberts Bank Rail Corridor Program, which includes one road network improvement project and eight overpasses in Delta, Surrey and Langley.

The public consultation sessions on the Deltaport Terminal, Road and Rail Improvement Project wraps up Jan. 6, 2012.

The upcoming open houses in South Delta will take place Wednesday, Dec 7 at the Coast Tsawwassen Inn, from 6 to 9 p.m., and Saturday, Dec. 10 at the Delta Town & Country Inn, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

In addition, the port authority is holding a number of multi-stakeholder meetings in Delta and Richmond next week with local governments, community, agricultural and business groups.

For more information, visit www.portmetrovancouver.com.

Read more HERE:

http://www.delta-optimist.com/life/Open+house+Wednesday+Deltaport+expansion+plan/5813354/story.html#ixzz1fsjDggZ0

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One year after Gordon Campbell ...

2011-12-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

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The NDP candidate for Vancouver-Fraserview sees little difference between Premier Christy Clark and her predecessor.

By Gabriel Yiu,
The Straight - December 2, 2011

After former premier Gordon Campbell’s resignation, his successor Christy Clark brought in a brief period of greater popularity for her party. One year on, this has all but faded.

An opinion poll released last month found that the B.C. NDP has 40-percent support, way ahead of the B.C. Liberals’ 31 percent. Compared to the previous poll, the B.C. Liberals have dropped 13 percentage points while the B.C. Conservatives enjoyed a big jump, with the support at 18 percent of the populace.

The opinion poll sounds the alarm for the B.C. Liberal Party. This is because if this trend is maintained, the next poll could show that support for both the B.C. Liberal and B.C. Conservative parties stand in the 20-percent territory. At that point, the B.C. Liberals could no longer claim that they’re the natural party that can defeat the NDP.

There was indeed a honeymoon period for Clark, when the B.C. Liberals' support rebounded from the bottom and Clark’s personal approval ranked way ahead of her party. But after half a year of Clark’s governing, she was shown to be merely another Gordon Campbell.

The harmonized sales tax was not the only issue that brought Campbell down; the B.C. Rail corruption case played a large part, too.

In December 2003, the RCMP searched the legislature. The case involving high-ranking Liberal government officials was big national news. After years of investigation and legal procedures, the trial finally began in May 2010. But just before a former finance minister and a long list of witnesses were about to testify in court, the government struck a deal with the defence.

The agreement resulted in Dave Basi and Bob Virk pleading guilty and signing a nondisclosure agreement. They do not have to go to jail but would serve two years house confinement. What this means is that they can live with their family, go to work, go shopping, go to the gym, and take their kids to sports events.

The province promised to pay for their $6 million legal fees—contrary to the normal practice of the government only paying lawyers' bills for public servants found not guilty. The assets that were held as a lien for the legal fees were released to them.

The guilty pleas and sudden end of the B.C. Rail case were announced in October last year. At that time, Clark was a talk-show host on the radio. She raised a series of questions about and levelled some criticisms about the settlement. Nevertheless, once she became premier, she did an about-face regarding her position.

Some veteran pundits like Alex Tsakumis and Bill Tieleman have been writing articles pointing out that Clark, her brother, and her former husband were linked to the B.C. Rail corruption case, but the premier has maintained that the case is over and she has opposed calling a public inquiry.

Her position on the HST has also been inconsistent. Clark previously condemned the Campbell government’s tactics in bringing in and promoting the HST, but when she became premier, her government applied the same deceptive approach in its referendum campaign.

B.C. Hydro’s launching of the so-called “smart meter” is an exact duplication of the way of the HST. No consultation, a dark-room and under-the-table operation, neglect of strong public opposition (even the Union of B.C. Municipalities passed a resolution against the smart meters), wasting taxpayers’ money to buy ads to convince the public… The public can clearly see what Clark is doing. No wonder the B.C. Liberals’ public support is dropping.

Talking about B.C. Hydro, I should mention what was recently revealed by B.C.'s auditor general. The management of the Crown corporation was caught incorporating huge expenses already incurred onto the books in the future. This turned a deficit this year into a surplus one.

As a result, B.C. Hydro executives received a performance bonus. If this kind of practice was detected in the private sector, the Canada Revenue Agency would likely investigate, while those responsible would be fired. But when this happens under the B.C. Liberal government's watch, it is OK.

Source:

http://www.straight.com/article-555471/vancouver/gabriel-yiu-one-year-after-gordon-campbell

Gabriel Yiu is a small-business owner who was recently nominated as the B.C. NDP candidate in Vancouver-Fraserview.

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Latest U.S-Mexico drug tunnel highlights an emerging seasonal trend

2011-12-01T13:44:00.000-08:00

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BC Mary comment: Naahhh, ain't nuthin' to see here, folks. Just keep movin' along, thank you very much and have a happy Christmas.

DRUG TUNNELS

SAN DIEGO — The latest cross-border drug tunnel — equipped with a hydraulic lift, electric rail carts and a wooden staircase — has been discovered on the U.S.-Mexico border, highlighting an emerging seasonal trend: sophisticated passageways located shortly before the winter holidays. Officials speculate it's the result of smugglers taking advantage of Mexico's fall marijuana harvest.

By Elliot Spagat.

http://www.al.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/bc-ap-limited-digest/0653a786cfb04e48bdeb1c667e66182c

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The BC Liberals are clearly bleeding support to the BC Conservatives under their new leader John Cummins.

2011-11-30T11:10:00.001-08:00

Canadian Free Press Release Service

Press Release: BC voters dubious, anxious and want answers according to IntegrityBC poll

Submitted by PIRA on Nov 30, 2011

A public opinion survey finds BC voters are dubious about the BC Liberal government's honesty, anxious about their economic situation and want answers from the Clark government whether it's in the legislature or through a public inquiry into the BC Rail scandal.

These are just a few of the findings in a 48 question survey – the first commissioned by IntegrityBC – to get the pulse of British Columbians on a variety of issues facing the province from voting intentions to trust levels and provincial issues.

The Oracle Research survey shows the NDP with 43.8 per cent support among decided voters, the BC Liberals at 25.3 per cent, the Greens at 16.0 per cent and the BC Conservatives with 14.8 per cent.

It's a reversal of fortunes for the Liberals from how respondents had voted in 2009. According to the survey, 41.8 per cent voted Liberal, 34.5 per cent NDP, 15.8 per cent for the Greens and the Conservatives at 7.9 per cent. The BC Liberals are clearly bleeding support to the BC Conservatives under their new leader John Cummins.

“If this survey says anything, it should tell BC Liberals that BBM ratings don't always carry into the Premier's office,” said IntegrityBC executive director Dermod Travis.

For instance, only 23.8 per cent of respondents had a favourable opinion of Christy Clark while NDP leader Adrian Dix scored a rating of 42.5 per cent. Clark and the Liberals fared just a bit better when it came to being trusted to tell the truth. Twenty-eight per cent felt they could count on Clark and the Liberals to be honest versus thirty-nine percent who felt they can count on Dix and the NDP. A further 39.7 per cent felt Clark and the Liberals are arrogant and out of touch.

Remarkably, 80.5 per cent believe that the BC Liberals broke their word when they leased BC Rail to CN for 990 years, after promising not to sell the railway. A further 85.5 per cent, including 73.2 per cent of Liberal supporters, believe the government should come clean on the deal by answering the over 100 questions that the NDP tabled in the legislature and 68.5 per cent believe a public inquiry should be called, including 53.7 per cent of Liberal supporters.

Underlying all the results is a growing sense of anxiety among respondents over their economic and political situation with 61.1 per cent agreeing with the statement that many British Columbians feel the system is not working well for them and 64.5 per cent who feel sympathy for those who feel left behind.

Oracle Research conducted 600 interviews among voting age British Columbians between November 22nd and November 25th 2011. A complete copy of the survey is available at

www.integritybc.ca

Oracle Research is a full service public opinion and research firm that has polled in BC since 2000.

IntegrityBC is a non-partisan organization championing accountability and integrity in BC politics. By empowering British Columbians, IntegrityBC hopes to change politics in BC letting citizens regain their trust in government.

- 30 -

For more information:
Dermod Travis, Executive Director
250-590-5126 / 778-440-4683
info@integritybc.ca
Dr P.A. Seccaspina
CEO Oraclepoll Research Ltd.
Toll Free North America 800-494-4199
Mobile 416-986-7937
paul@oraclepoll.com
www.oraclepoll.com

http://www.wireservice.ca/index.php?module=News&func=display&sid=7060

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Rare BC Rail photo

2011-11-27T17:21:00.002-08:00

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I'm pretty sure Mile 25 is Moran, i.e. where Moran Siding is, and where the train-over-the-edge thing happened....it's the "slidiest" part of the Rattlesnake Grade...I'm pretty sure Pavilion is Mile 20 or Mile 19

..... (photo not printing) ........

this is a BC Archives photo, but don't worry about the credit, they can't restrict non-profit use and won't try; it's also originally a PGE photo and all Crown copyright is void after 50 years anyway

Cleaning some old mailboxes and found this...I may yet find the pics taken where they're trying to retrieve locos from Seton Lake, which is kinda what I'm looking for

--
Big Mike/Skookum1

Mike: Try other bloggers with better skills. This is really is worth a look. - M.

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BC Rail data search

http://www.pbase.com/search?q=bc+rail&b=recent+queries

_______________________

Railway Museum Squamish British Columbia Canada part 1 ...
Railway Museum Squamish British Columbia Canada part 1 West Coast Railway Association ...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq-MUtslGxk

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More about the gentle treatment of two Hells Angels in BC Supreme Court

2011-11-26T17:42:00.000-08:00

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BC Mary comment: Honestly, I can't begin to describe how Norm has put this important story together. But I urge you: Please read up on:

Norm Farell's excellent posting.

http://northerninsights.blogspot.com/2011/01/questions-of-perspicacity-and.html?showComment=1322355522064#c4952648320424162970

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The fight for control of Canadian Pacific Railway

2011-11-26T08:08:00.000-08:00

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By Jacquie McNish and Brent Jang
The Globe and Mail

When he flew to Montreal three weeks ago to meet with senior officials of Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., Bill Ackman came bearing a thick, limited-edition book.

The weighty volume is Mr. Ackman’s signature opening move. Ever since the New York-based shareholder activist founded Pershing Square Capital Management LP in 2003, nearly two dozen undervalued companies, including Wendy’s International Inc., Target Corp. and J.C. Penney Co. Inc. have received an Ackman book. The confidential studies, often the product of months of work by Pershing Square’s analysts and consultants, are detailed blueprints for boosting long-term profits at companies in his crosshairs.

CP shareholders can expect to learn within the next several weeks whether Mr. Ackman’s book will be embraced by the company as a road map to recovery or a declaration of war ... {Major snip ... }

In a quarterly letter to Pershing Square investors released this week, Mr. Ackman identified new management as one of his core strategies for “increasing long-term intrinsic value” at target companies. In his effusive account of the turnaround at J.C. Penney, Pershing Square’s largest investment, he trumpeted his recent recruitment of Ron Johnson, former retail chief of Apple Inc., to lead J.C. Penney’s recovery.

“I expect to look back on the decision by the company to hire Ron, and our role in identifying and recruiting him, as one of the most significant contributions that we have ever made to any company,” Mr. Ackman wrote.

He did not directly discuss management in the letter’s short four-sentence summary of the CP investment. But he left little doubt that the railway’s executive suite is a concern when he wrote that the railway’s poor performance “is generally not attributable to structural factors

Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article2250143.html#ixzz1epGg0xvk

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Tony Clement And The G8 Boondoggle. November 24. But BC Mary asks: how do we understand BC Rail by these rules?

2011-11-24T15:06:00.000-08:00

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By Robin Mathews
November 24, 2011.

Treasury Board president Tony Clement stands by the answers he gave to a parliamentary committee about the $50 million G8 slush fund apparently concocted by himself and (then) minister of transportation and infrastructure John Baird. The money was spent in Clement’s Muskoka-Parry Sound constituency at the time of the G8/G20 meetings (June 2010).

The role of Stephen Harper in what many believe was the misallocation of funds and the attempt to disguise the misallocation is by no means clear. What did he know of the undertaking?

Called the G8 legacy fund, the $50 million was used to make signs, to erect public washrooms, for sidewalks and prettyfied streets, for a gazebo, and for the expansion of an existing community centre that cost $16.7 million. Some of the gingerbreading happened miles from any G8 activity.

NDP critics Charlie Angus and Alexandre Boulerice make claims that, if true, should blow a hole in the Stephen Harper cabinet.

The critics say Clement misled the parliamentary committee on several points.

The first: Clement told the committee that proposals for (242) projects were whittled down by the municipalities themselves and that he had no role. The NDP critics allege that documents reveal Clement’s office was involved.

The second: The critics allege Clement reported that 33 projects were suggested and one was withdrawn by the municipality independently. They claim to have an e-mail showing Clement’s office advised the municipality not to submit the suggestion.

The third: Clement, minister for the regional economic development agency FedNor, stated that his officials were not involved, but his critics allege Clement’s office was involved in sending documents to FedNor.

In essence, Tony Clement argues that he made no decisions and that he didn’t influence decisions. How that could be? He was the incumbent MP for the riding and admits that he “had a recommendation role as a local member of parliament”.

The critics have asked Tony Clement to table documents the NDP is seeking that relate to the transactions involved in the $50 million slush fund. Clement avoids the question. So far he has not released the documents.

Strangely, Tony Clement argues that he had no “determinative” role in the decisions to spend in his constituency, but that the minister of transportation and infrastructure, John Baird, made all the decisions about how the slush fund would be spent.

Tony Clement admitted that the auditor general (then Sheila Fraser) found the $50 million was ear-marked for use related to Customs and border infrastructure, and that it was removed from that allocation without informing Parliament. The auditor general also stated that the awarding of the 32 projects in Tony Clement’s riding were made without adequate reporting.

MPs Charlie Angus and Alexandre Boulerice also allege the possibility of tampering with the integrity of Hansard, the parliamentary textual reproduction of words spoken in parliament and parliamentary committee. They want to know if Tony Clement deleted (or had others delete) from that record the fact (they claim) that he agreed to produce documents he will not produce.

In response to the allegations by the two NDP MPs, John Baird – minister of foreign affairs – made his, by now, stock kind of denial.

He spoke through his press secretary Joseph Lavoie. Lavoie said that “the NDP have not provided any new facts to prove their misleading attacks.” If what the NDP alleges most recently are “old facts”, they nonetheless suggest Tony Clement, president of the treasury board, misled a parliamentary committee, and – apparently – did so on purpose. The language used is careful. Critics in Parliament don’t say ‘X lied outright to save his skin’. They say ‘X misled ….’

Baird’s spokesperson also said that the “matter has been thoroughly aired by the [auditor general] and the RCMP”. The auditor general, we remember, at first made some very strong allegations of what may fairly be called wrong-doing in a leaked draft of her Report. The subsequent announcement that the allegations of wrong-doing were being trimmed back was not made by Sheila Fraser but by John Baird.

That was a very strange sequence of events.

The statement by Baird’s spokesperson that the RCMP “thoroughly aired” the matter is almost meaningless. Unfortunately, Canadians cannot place faith in the work of the RCMP. The nearest three RCMP Commissioners have emptied the Force of credibility. Guiliano Zaccardelli was removed in disgrace over his answers dealing with Maher Arar. Then (political appointee) William Elliott was removed for what was, apparently, boorish, insulting inability to administer and enormous “goofs”, such as phoning the B.C. RCMP officers involved in the death of Robert Dziekanski and “sympathizing” with them hours after the event.

Finally, the present RCMP Commissioner, Bob Paulson, was promoted to Deputy Commissioner by Commissioner William Elliott (just removed from the position for being administratively inept). Paulson was not among the officers who complained of Elliott’s unsuitability as Commissioner. And he was found pleasing enough to Stephen Harper to be appointed by him.

Has the present RCMP investigated the G8 Scandal to the satisfaction of Canadians? We have no reason to believe that it has.

The response from John Baird’s office only raises the level of stench in the matter.

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The cost of silence

2011-11-24T10:29:00.000-08:00

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Northern Insights / Perceptivity is an online journal exploring political and social issues, with a focus on justice, ethics and accountability, and a related interest in journalism. Bloggers are akin to pamphleteers of early days and the Internet is our tool of free speech. Value it. Use it. Respect it. Protect it.

Norman Farrell, North Vancouver, B.C.

http://northerninsights.blogspot.com/2011/11/cost-of-silence-highest-losses-in-bcr.html

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Outraged taxpayer says (and Norm Farrell adds):

2011-11-22T05:46:00.004-08:00

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No tenders put out, no announcements of interest, just "your" cash going straight into Stewart Muir's (and Athana Mentzelopoulos') bank account.

Just like in the bad old days of the Federal Grits and Paul Martin . . . PORK, PORK & more PORK!

Quote:

Husband of senior Clark aide wins lucrative PR contract

By Cindy E. Harnett and Rob Shaw
Postmedia News - November 21, 2011

The husband of one of Premier Christy Clark’s top advisers has been awarded a lucrative contract at the Vancouver Island Health Authority without going through the normal public process.

Stewart Muir, a former Vancouver Sun editor, was direct-awarded a $181,000 job as vice-president of communications and external relations for the health authority. The contract is good for up to a year.

Muir’s wife, Athana Mentzelopoulos, is Premier Christy Clark’s deputy minister for corporate priorities.

There was no public advertisement posted for the job.

Health Minister Mike de Jong said Monday he is sorting out the details of the hiring ...

Read more about it HERE:

http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Husband+senior+Clark+aide+wins+lucrative+contract/5746890/story.html#ixzz1eRNUsxZb

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Watch Norman Farrell's excellent blog:

http://northerninsights.blogspot.com/2011/11/cost-of-silence-highest-losses-in-bcr.html

Norm Farrell, North Vancouver, BC Canada V7J 2J7

Northern Insights / Perceptivity is an online journal exploring political and social issues, with a focus on justice, ethics and accountability, and a related interest in journalism. Bloggers are akin to pamphleteers of early days and the Internet is our tool of free speech. Value it. Use it. Respect it. Protect it.

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It was July 13, 2009, when as the clock struck midnight in the British Columbia garden of good and evil, every benefit accruing to CN was harvested. By them and for them. And we, the former owners, had no say.

2011-11-19T19:32:00.000-08:00

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By BC Mary
November 19, 2011

Today, while searching the archives for something else, I found this and grieved. The date was July 2009 and it all came rushing back: I had been feeling pretty bad, sad, and mad: Leonard Krog had let us down and the critical 5-year-anniversary date of the BC Rail - CN "deal" would take on a new dimension because we had been unable to muster our resources against it.

That was July 13, 2009, when as the clock struck midnight in the British Columbia garden of good and evil, every benefit accruing to CN was harvested. By them and for them. And we, the former owners, had no say. None. Not about selling this precious public asset. Not about the terms. Not about any sober, second thoughts on such a massive blunder as the loss of the nation's 3rd largest railway.

And so, our small world once again was shown as split apart: on the one side are those who see land and rights as bargaining chips in a massive gamble. On the other side are those of us who see precious lands, rights, and benefits as something to preserve and protect because they belong to us all, even into the future.

We may not know yet how they did it, or who did it, or why they did it. We only know that a treacherous deal was done behind our backs. Even before the deal was signed. CPR told us so. OmniTRAX told us so. Someday we'll know the whole story.

For now, we can keep a fierce grip on the notion that a deal contrived in secret, by questionable means, is not a deal at all. Never forget that. Never forget that if we have lost a battle we haven't lost the war to preserve and protect British Columbia.

Remember that nobody came to help us. It means that the rot has spread.

Grieve. Yes, grieve because at midnight that night, British Columbians lost something precious, massive ... but not irretrievable. So we dare not give up. You know that. There is a much bigger struggle underway and you know that too. Someone called us "the Nigeria of North America". You know why. BCRail is the template as well as the key.

What we can save from the BCRail deal, will be our gift to the future of the province we love.

Courage.

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CP'S RAILWAY TO RICHES

2011-11-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

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With big U.S. Invester on Board, CP faces a Boardroom Battle as it rushes to catch rival CN

{Snip} ... it’s only been recently that the rails have also been viewed as a vehicle for deep-pocketed investors to make carloads of money. Railroads, which haul everything from grain and iron ore to automobiles and refrigerators, offer exposure to the overall economy, not to mention a rare opportunity to invest in a near-monopoly business (you don’t hear about many new railroads being launched).

BC Mary comment: Here is some background reading well worth considering, given the threats and implications currently swirling around BC transportation issues.

http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/11/16/railway-to-riches/

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Grab-bag of BC oddities for the weekend ...

2011-11-18T09:26:00.005-08:00

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Kash Heed 'could have been premier'

By Michael Smyth
The Province November 18, 2011

Liberal MLA Kash Heed, former police chief of West Vancouver and a former provincial solicitor-general, was found guilty of election campaign violations.

[Please visit Smyth's column for gorgeous photograph by: Ian Lindsay, PNG files. BC Mary.]

It was one of the weirdest recent political scandals in a province known for its political weirdness.

It was also one of the greatest "what if" stories in B.C. politics.

What if Kash Heed's career hadn't imploded over a shabby dirty-tricks scam — a two-bit piece of political trickery that probably didn't help him much in the last election anyway?

"He could have been premier," says Barinder Sall, Heed's former campaign manager. "He had everything going for him."

Heed had the political smarts and the politician's gift of the gab. He had the rugged good looks and confident swagger of a successful cop. He had the burning ambition and workaholic's metabolism. [Argghh...gag me with a spoon! - BCM.]

It didn't hurt that he was a favoured son of the politically powerful Indo-Canadian community.

And it all came crashing down over a cheap anti-NDP election flyer that looked like it was produced with scissors, a photocopier and a bottle of Elmer's glue.

Sall admitted financing the sleazy Chinese-language flyer that appeared in Heed's riding in the dying days of the 2009 election. He was fined $15,000 and placed on probation.

Heed was fined $8,000 for going about $5,000 over his campaign spending limit, though he escaped more serious charges related to the illegal flyer, of which he claimed ignorance.

Sall was determined not to take the fall quietly. Since pleading guilty, he's been dishing the dirt on Heed, his former mentor, who remains a Liberal MLA.

Sall released embarrassing emails, in which Heed trashed his Liberal colleagues.

He told me about a secret phone in Heed's office that the former solicitor-general called "the bat phone."

"Kash thought he was Batman," Sall told me. Ouch.

But Sall's most serious charge was that the Heed campaign exceeded legal spending limits by about $40,000 — not the $5,000 determined by a special prosecutor.

On Thursday, Elections B.C. said Sall had not produced enough fresh evidence to warrant a new investigation, and the case was officially closed.

"I'm surprised by that," Sall told me. "I would have been happy to co-operate with them, but they didn't even contact me."

Heed seemed relieved and did not rule out trying to revive his battered career.

But I'd say it's all over now, except for the debate about what might have been.

Read more HERE and HERE:

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Kash+Heed+could+have+been+premier/5731241/story.html#ixzz1e4s6oHLX

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Kash+Heed+could+have+been+premier/5731241/story.html

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Lessons of a Police Chief: Militarization is a Mistake

By Norm Stamper

Seattle Police Chief who oversaw Seattle’s crackdown on WTO protesters, learned the dangers of militarization. His advice for a creating a police force that truly serves and protects communities.

YES magazine, THE NATION - Nov 16, 2011

They came from all over, tens of thousands of demonstrators from around the world, protesting the economic and moral pitfalls of globalization. Our mission as members of the Seattle Police Department? To safeguard people and property—in that order. Things went well the first day. We were praised for our friendliness and restraint—though some politicians were apoplectic at our refusal to make mass arrests for the actions of a few.
Then came day two. Early in the morning, large contingents of demonstrators began to converge at a key downtown intersection. They sat down and refused to budge. Their numbers grew. A labor march would soon add additional thousands to the mix.
“We have to clear the intersection,” said the field commander. “We have to clear the intersection,” the operations commander agreed, from his bunker in the Public Safety Building. Standing alone on the edge of the crowd, I, the chief of police, said to myself, “We have to clear the intersection.”
I’m convinced it is possible to create a smart organizational alternative to the paramilitary bureaucracy that is American policing.
Why?
Because of all the what-ifs. What if a fire breaks out in the Sheraton across the street? What if a woman goes into labor on the seventeenth floor of the hotel? What if a heart patient goes into cardiac arrest in the high-rise on the corner? What if there’s a stabbing, a shooting, a serious-injury traffic accident? How would an aid car, fire engine or police cruiser get through that sea of people? The cop in me supported the decision to clear the intersection. But the chief in me should have vetoed it. And he certainly should have forbidden the indiscriminate use of tear gas to accomplish it, no matter how many warnings we barked through the bullhorn.
My support for a militaristic solution caused all hell to break loose. Rocks, bottles and newspaper racks went flying. Windows were smashed, stores were looted, fires lighted; and more gas filled the streets, with some cops clearly overreacting, escalating and prolonging the conflict. The “Battle in Seattle,” as the WTO protests and their aftermath came to be known, was a huge setback—for the protesters, my cops, the community.
More than a decade later, the police response to the Occupy movement, most disturbingly visible in Oakland—where scenes resembled a war zone and where a marine remains in serious condition from a police projectile—brings into sharp relief the acute and chronic problems of American law enforcement. Seattle might have served as a cautionary tale, but instead, US police forces have become increasingly militarized, and it’s showing in cities everywhere: the NYPD “white shirt” coating innocent people with pepper spray, the arrests of two student journalists at Occupy Atlanta, the declaration of public property as off-limits and the arrests of protesters for “trespassing.”
The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.

Much of the problem is rooted in a rigid command-and-control hierarchy based on the military model. American police forces are beholden to archaic internal systems of authority whose rules emphasize bureaucratic regulations over conduct on the streets. An officer’s hair length, the shine on his shoes and the condition of his car are more important than whether he treats a burglary victim or a sex worker with dignity and respect. In the interest of “discipline,” too many police bosses treat their frontline officers as dependent children, which helps explain why many of them behave more like juvenile delinquents than mature, competent professionals. It also helps to explain why persistent, patterned misconduct, including racism, sexism, homophobia, brutality, perjury and corruption, do not go away, no matter how many blue-ribbon panels are commissioned or how much training is provided.
External political factors are also to blame, such as the continuing madness of the drug war. Last year police arrested 1.6 million nonviolent drug offenders. In New York City alone almost 50,000 people (overwhelmingly black, Latino or poor) were busted for possession of small amounts of marijuana—some of it, we have recently learned, planted by narcotics officers. The counterproductive response to 9/11, in which the federal government began providing military equipment and training even to some of the smallest rural departments, has fueled the militarization of police forces. Everyday policing is characterized by a SWAT mentality, every other 911 call a military mission. What emerges is a picture of a vital public-safety institution perpetually at war with its own people. The tragic results—raids gone bad, wrong houses hit, innocent people and family pets shot and killed by police—are chronicled in Radley Balko’s excellent 2006 report Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America.
Even as police officers help to safeguard the power and profits of the 1 percent, police officers are part of the 99 percent.
It is ironic that those police officers who are busting up the Occupy protesters are themselves victims of the same social ills the demonstrators are combating: corporate greed; the slackening of essential regulatory systems; and the abject failure of all three branches of government to safeguard civil liberties and to protect, if not provide, basic human needs like health, housing, education and more. With cities and states struggling to balance the budget while continuing to deliver public safety, many cops are finding themselves out of work. And, as many Occupy protesters have pointed out, even as police officers help to safeguard the power and profits of the 1 percent, police officers are part of the 99 percent.

Just the Facts: It's a Locking-People-Up Problem
The American problem with mass incarceration is less about crime than about how—and who—we lock up.
There will always be situations—an armed and barricaded suspect, a man with a knife to his wife’s throat, a school-shooting rampage—that require disciplined, military-like operations. But most of what police are called upon to do, day in and day out, requires patience, diplomacy and interpersonal skills. I’m convinced it is possible to create a smart organizational alternative to the paramilitary bureaucracy that is American policing. But that will not happen unless, even as we cull “bad apples” from our police forces, we recognize that the barrel itself is rotten.
Imagine the community and its cops united in the effort to responsibly “police” the Occupy movement.
Assuming the necessity of radical structural reform, how do we proceed? By building a progressive police organization, created by rank-and-file officers, “civilian” employees and community representatives. Such an effort would include plans to flatten hierarchies; create a true citizen review board with investigative and subpoena powers; and ensure community participation in all operations, including policy-making, program development, priority-setting and crisis management. In short, cops and citizens would forge an authentic partnership in policing the city. And because partners do not act unilaterally, they would be compelled to keep each other informed, and to build trust and mutual respect—qualities sorely missing from the current equation.
It will not be easy. In fact, failure is assured if we lack the political will to win the support of police chiefs and their elected bosses, if we are unable to influence or neutralize police unions, if we don’t have the courage to move beyond the endless justifications for maintaining the status quo. But imagine the community and its cops united in the effort to responsibly “police” the Occupy movement. Picture thousands of people gathered to press grievances against their government and the corporations, under the watchful, sympathetic protection of their partners in blue.

Norm Stamper was Seattle’s police chief from 1994 to 2000, and a police officer for 34 years. He is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and the author of Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Exposé of the Dark Side of American Policing. He wrote this article for the Nation.
Copyright © 2011 The Nation — distributed by Agence Global

Source, with some photos, HERE:

http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/lessons-of-a-police-chief-militarization-is-a-mistake

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North Van's Grumps has left a new comment on your post:

What were bloggers called during the BC Rail Trial..... well whatever it was, times have changed, by the looks of it.

On Bobby Virk's lawyer's Website, visitors are encouraged to take a look at a link

Bloggers Comment on Kevin McCullough

And it all comes back to BC Mary's blog....... and bloggers.

There appears to be Tip of hat to you
BC Mary, from Kevin McCullough.

Posted by North Van's Grumps to The Legislature Raids at 18 November, 2011

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Engineering marvel ...

2011-11-18T07:56:00.000-08:00

Sicker mine prompted engineering marvel.

Special to The Citizen - Nov. 18, 2011

http://www.canada.com/Sicker+mine+rivalry+prompted+engineering+marvel+conclusion/5730518/story.html

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Would we have lost BC Rail if we'd had free speech in our legislatures? Elizabeth May speaks out ...

2011-11-17T20:20:00.001-08:00

ISLAND TIDES

November 17, 2011
www.islandtides.com

It was beginning to look as though I would not be able to deliver on a promise I made in the election. If you, dear reader, made it to any of the all-candidate meetings, or came to any smaller ‘house parties’ to meet your Green Party candidate, you likely heard my plan (even as one MP) for how I could contribute to greater decorum
in the House of Commons.

I had spoken with others—from Preston Manning to Carolyn Bennett—who began their time in the House pledging to never heckle but abandoned the highroad when
they tired of being heckled themselves.

It struck me as a new approach, worth trying, to improve decorum by refusing to heckle, and also refusing to continue speaking over heckling.

The principle seemed straightforward: interrupting and speaking in offensive
terms toward a Member of Parliament both violate Standing Orders of the House. Perhaps if I refused to continue over the interruptions and rudeness and simply sat down, even mid-question, the Speaker would call for order and then I could continue without the distracting abuse. And if the Speaker did not rise and call for order, I would miss my question.

My reasoning was, if I kept to my plan and missed many questions, the media would have to start covering my efforts and public support could push other MPs to change as well.

Since June, with one question per week in Question Period, and with over 100 interventions in debates andspeeches, I have been waiting for the first moment when I would be heckled. Yet, and this was a nice surprise, I was not being yelled at or interrupted. As the days and weeks went by, I began to assume that respect when I was on my feet in the House would merely continue. But then on November 3, I asked this question: ‘Mr Speaker, from 1913 to 1956, a period of over 40 years, time limits on debates were used ten times. In the last 40 days, it has been used seven times, making a new historical record. What used to be the exception to the rule appears to now be the rule.’

At this point I became aware of a great deal of yelling. Conservative members were shouting ‘TIME!’ The CBC’s Kady O’Malley noticed it and tweeted ‘Do the CPC MPs really have to heckle Elizabeth May…?’

My plan suddenly took hold and I simply sat down. MPs around me looked confused, so I said (not realizing my microphone was still on): ‘I am only sitting because I cannot be heard.’

The Speaker called for order and gave me back the floor. It was quiet, and I resumed: ‘Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to ask the government House leader if we can again restore a parliamentary tradition that limits on debates occur when matters are urgent or otherwise justified and do not
become routine?’

A second surprise: the Opposition benches broke into applause.

Not responding to the question came the reply from the Hon Peter Van Loan
(Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, CPC): ‘Mr Speaker, in the last election Canadians gave us a strong mandate to deliver on jobs for Canadians…’

It is good news to find that refusing to speak over the noise has had one successful test.

However, the main reason I wanted to share this exchange is that it points up a topic so sensitive to the government that heckling is immediate.

I have spoken out on asbestos, climate change, tax fairness, our fisheries, the threat of oil tankers, trade union issues, human rights, the Wheat Board, pharmaceuticals, Libya, and on and on. But this, the highlighting of a
government shutting down debate, provoked immediate abuse of decorum.

Ever since we resumed Parliament in mid-September, the government has moved to shut down debate and rush bills through Second Reading. From killing the Wheat Board, ending the Gun Registry, pushing through the Omnibus Crime Bill, the so-called Human Smuggling Act (which calls for the jailing of all refugees arriving by ship for a year), the budget implementation act, and the redistribution of seats, again and again debate has been cut short. It is a new historical record—and not one of which the prime minister should be proud.

This is not the only development in this fall’s session that points to increasing control by the centre to shut down democratic debate. Parliamentary committees, the least partisan aspect of the House of Commons, had already been politicized in the previous Minority Parliament.

Conservative Committee chairs were instructed to avoid any testimony embarrassing to their party, even if it meant throwing down a pen and storming from the room to bring proceedings to a halt. Now, with their majority, the Conservative government has found a new way to avoid evidence it does not want to hear.

More and more of the business of committees is being conducted in secret. In-camera committee meetings usedto cover private discussions, such as which witnesses should be called. Now the hearings can take place in secret when witnesses are testifying, or when a vote is held on motions of importance. After an in-camera session, it is impossibleto know who said what or how anyone voted.

The increasing limitations of debate and reduced daylight on House proceedings is not healthy. Many of us are wondering, with a majority of the seats and no election until 2015, why are the Conservatives in such a hurry? Is democratic debate really such a threat?

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Elizabeth May is the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands and leader of the Green Party of Canada.

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New RCMP Commissioner: "a Cop's Cop"

2011-11-16T20:29:00.009-08:00

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By Robin Mathews
Wednesday November 16, 2011

Globe and Mail for November 16 calls new RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson “a cop’s cop” which, in the language of Canadians, means Every Bad Thing Possible. Canadians want a people’s cop. They have had all they can stand of the other.

Guiliano Zaccardelli, a cop’s cop, interfered in the 2006 federal election and reported so badly on the handling of the Maher Arar file that he had to be removed in disgrace. He left such a mess in the ranks that it still lies there stinking. A cop’s cop.

William Elliott came next. He thought of himself as a cop’s cop. So much so he telephoned the alleged RCMP killers of Robert Dziekanski (before any serious investigation of their actions) to tell them how much he sympathized with them (?). They are now under charges of perjury, having been excused worse criminal charges by a Special Crown Prosecutor whose opinion of the case is not the opinion of many people in Canada.

William Elliot was a full-scale disaster – forced out because he did nothing for the ranks. And because the senior men who had to work with him were treated like idiots by him, and finally exploded in protest.

It was that full scale disaster, William Elliott, who named Bob Paulson Deputy Commissioner! William Elliott approves of Bob Paulson. Does Paulson need a worse testimonial?

If so, he has one.

The blindly incompetent political appointment of William Elliott was made by Stephen Harper right out of Stockwell Day’s office. What brains! What a smart move!

And now, the disaster called Stephen Harper has named Bob Paulson as new Commissioner of the RCMP. Duck everybody! Duck!

We are told very little about Bob Paulson except what a wonderful, sterling, tough, able, excellent, robust, down-to-earth, hard-working, dedicated, focussed, strong, dependable, firm, unflappable, effective, efficient, forcible police officer he is.

We may be forgiven for wanting to know more about this RCMP officer who spent 21 years in British Columbia, possibly home to the most corrupt RCMP force in history.

Where was Bob Paulson during the expensive, outlandish and wholesale boondoggle of an action at Gustafsen Lake in 1995 when an army of RCMP officers with help from the Canadian Army fought a huge and valiant battle to overcome about 23 mostly-peaceful Native People? One of the RCMP officers is on record there as saying the RCMP are experts in smear and disinformation.

Where was Bob Paulson when the 1997 APEC disaster happened at UBC. Out of it came the ridiculous and expensive Ted Hughes Report (hundreds of pages) that gave itself up to whitewash of every dirty act of the RCMP – for which Hughes seems to have been well rewarded?

Where was Bob Paulson when the RCMP – as I insist over and over – helped to fake a case against then premier Glen Clark to remove him on behalf of The Tragedy Of The Century – Gordon Campbell? I complained to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP about the investigation of Glen Clark. The RCMP chopped my complaint. The wonderful Commission for Public Complaints sent me a report THREE YEARS LATER to say my complaint had been wrongfully terminated by RCMP officers. And the Commission did nothing about that. Nothing whatever.

Where was Bob Paulson when the Gordon Campbell cabinet and its corporate friends were destroying BC Rail with what looks more and more like the assistance of the RCMP? The Basi, Virk, and Basi (BC Rail Scandal) trial was blown out of the water by deals even the Auditor General of B.C. is showing deep concern about. And the question that served as the dynamite that blew it out of the water concerned an RCMP officer’s relations with top Liberals including then premier Gordon Campbell. Where was Bob Paulson during those exciting years? What, precisely, was he doing?

Women have been revealing the distasteful sexual harassment going on in the B.C. RCMP during the years Bob Paulson was an RCMP officer in B.C. What did he do, and what did he think about that harassment going on around him?

Men have joined that chorus of complaint, saying the BC RCMP is sick, saying that complaints of unacceptable behaviour by senior officers are met with punishment of the people who complain. In B.C., Bob Paulson was an Inspector. How much did he inspect harassment of female officers? How much did he inspect legitimate complaints that were treated as invitations to revenge?

Bob Paulson – one may fairly believe - has been appointed and programmed to fail. Nothing in his past – or where he lived out his past – can give anyone reason to think he will succeed in doing what Canadians want done for the RCMP and for The Rule Of Law in Canada.

Bob Paulson is making positive sounds about reforming the RCMP and attending immediately to the charges of sexual harassment in the Force. He has about a month. A month. If nothing is happening by then, Canadians will know Bob Paulson is another robot put in place by Stephen Harper for political reasons – for the worst political reasons imaginable.

[Today, November 16, 2011 is the 126th anniversary of the bitterly controversial hanging of the Metis leader, Louis Riel, by NorthWest Mounted Police at Regina, Saskatchewan. Riel was a duly elected Member of Parliament and is considered to be one of the founding fathers of the Canadian nation.

Read more HERE, HERE and HERE. - BC Mary.]

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You thought the B.C. Rail corruption case would fade into history after the defendants pleaded guilty last year in return for getting their whopping legal bills covered by the government? Think again, writes Les Leyne.

2011-11-16T08:35:00.003-08:00

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By Les Leyne
Times Colonist - Nov. 16, 2011

The train of events set in motion by the long-running [BC Rail political corruption] case continues to trundle along. And Auditor General John Doyle signaled it will be a while yet before the stories come to an end.

The plea bargain arrangement that saw former aides Dave Basi and Bobby Virk excused from their $6 million legal bill after admitting to breach of trust charges arose from the indemnity agreement that covered their lawyers' costs in the first place.

That prompted enough public concern that the government asked University of B.C. president Stephen Toope to review how the government decides on whether to cover public servants legal bills. He reported last week on the general principles of such deals.

But while he was finishing that work, the auditor general filed a petition with the B.C. Supreme Court that came to light Tuesday. If he gets what he's after, it could fill his desk to overflowing with specific details about the legal bills and how the taxpayers ended up paying them.

Doyle's office is working on an audit of all special indemnities granted by the government over the last several years, Basi and Virk's included. There have been about 100 such deals struck and the audit is to determine if taxpayers got value for the money.

Based on his work to date, Doyle appears quite skeptical of the arrangements. In requesting full access to all details of the two men's indemnities, Doyle states to the court there are a number of apparent problems with such deals.

They are granted outside of established policy, there is no set approval process and government staff may not fully understand what they're doing in processing such indemnities, he said. And in a few cases, where the minister of finance approves an indemnity, usually for an elected politician, "the approval is not supported by legal advice from the attorney general's ministry."

Doyle is making a special effort to collect information on the Basi-Virk indemnities because they dwarf any of the deals that went before. Toope reported last week that most are for a few thousand dollars and don't come anywhere close to the $6 million tab rung up by defence lawyers over the years the B.C. Rail juggernaut rolled on.

But lengthy efforts to get all the financial data have run into repeated roadblocks over issues like solicitorclient privilege, cabinet confidentiality and specific confidentiality arrangements between the government and the defendants.

In a response to the petition, filed the same day, the government gives the appearance of being ready to cooperate with the watchdog - as soon as it is ordered to do so. The government said it has waived its claims of privilege and has repeatedly advised the auditor general it is willing to provide access to documents in question.
Reviewing all 100 indemnities, the government stated the number of documents generated over the years may be as many as 10,000 or more. They've all been imaged on to a hard drive and coded to be searchable.

As far as the Basi-Virk dealings are concerned, the government said the Legal Services Branch had outside independent reviewers go over the billings. It set up a process where all bills were identified and linked to the defence strategy so "as to permit fully informed assessment before billings were certified as payable." {Snip...}

Doyle's petition said both Basi and Virk last month declined to waive some of the restrictions on accessing the legal accounts.

The issue erupted in the legislature Tuesday, with the Opposition asking what the Liberals are trying to hide.

Attorney General Shirley Bond insisted the government backs Doyle and is collaborating with him. "We are supporting the court order that is required."

As it stands, the auditor general will likely eventually get a hard drive full of information on how assorted public servants have had their legal costs covered over and above the normal channels.
He's already disclosed he's got some problems with how these arrangements have been made over the years. The deeper he gets into them, the more unlikely it is his concerns will be allayed.

lleyne@timescolonist.com

_____________________________

And here's another good one ...

Basi-Virk audit blocked

'Independent reviewers' cite lawyer-client privilege

By Keith Fraser
The Province - November 16, 2011

Auditor-General John Doyle is heading back to court in a bid to get access to documents related to the government's controversial $6-million legal payments in the Basi-Virk case.

In July, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Greyell ordered the B.C. Attorney-General's Ministry to turn over all records related to the deal. But in a second petition filed in court this week, Doyle claims that some key documents haven't been released.

And he seeks to have two Victoria lawyers who were appointed to vet the legal bills in the Basi-Virk case provide their records to him.

The petition says that Doyle is completing the planning stage of an audit of the indemnity policy by which Dave Basi and Bobby Virk got their legal fees paid as government employees.

But Doyle claims that access to many documents over which the Attorney-General's Ministry claims either cabinet or solicitor-client privilege have been restricted.

Documents have either been delayed, edited or not released at all, slowing and hampering the audit process, he says.

"Full and unfettered access is fundamental to an auditor's role in scrutinizing the management of programs, services and resources he or she is auditing," he says.

The petition names two Victoria lawyers, Sandra Harper and Robert Jones, who were appointed as "independent reviewers" to vet the Basi-Virk bills.

But efforts to obtain documents in the possession of the lawyers were rebuffed when counsel cited solicitor-client privilege, Doyle says.

{Snip ... }

The ministry says that it will not refuse to give the access sought by Doyle as soon as a declaration is made that it may provide such access.

After only a few witnesses had been heard at trial, Basi and Virk pleaded guilty to breach of trust in connection with the $1-billion sale of B.C. Rail. They received conditional sentences.

kfraser@theprovince.com twitter.com/keithrfraser

© Copyright (c) The Province

Read more HERE:

http://www.theprovince.com/Basi+Virk+audit+blocked/5717866/story.html#ixzz1dt5drbe9

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Good Grief, haven't we seen this movie about 50 times before?

2011-11-15T18:33:00.000-08:00

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Auditor-General seeks more documents on Basi-Virk $6 million legal fee deal
By Keith Fraser
The Province - November 15, 2011

B.C. Auditor-General John Doyle is heading back to court in a bid to get access to documents related to the government’s controversial $6 million legal payments in the Basi-Virk case.

In July, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Bruce Greyell ordered the B.C. attorney-general’s ministry to turn over all records related to the deal.

But in a second petition filed in court this week, Doyle claims that some key documents haven’t been released.

And he seeks to have two Victoria lawyers who were appointed to vet the legal bills in the Basi-Virk case provide their records to him.

The petition says that Doyle is completing the planning stage of an audit of the indemnity policy by which Dave Basi and Bobby Virk got their legal fees paid as government employees.

But Doyle claims that access to many documents over which the attorney-general’s ministry claims either cabinet or solicitor-client privilege has been restricted.

Documents have either been delayed, edited or not released at all, slowing and hampering the audit process, he says. {Snip} ...

“Full and unfettered access is fundamental to an auditor’s role in scrutinizing the management of programs, services and resources he or she is auditing.”

In particular, the missing documents include complete indemnity files for “special” indemnities such as those given to Basi and Virk, copies of invoices from private legal counsel and briefing notes and e-mails.

The petition names two Victoria lawyers, Sandra Harper and Robert Jones, who were appointed as “independent reviewers” to vet the Basi-Virk bills.

But efforts to obtain documents in the possession of the lawyers were rebuffed when counsel cited solicitor-client privilege, says the petition. {Snip} ...
The Basi-Virk deal sparked controversy because the indemnity policy at the time called for the legal fees of government employees charged with criminal offences to be paid as long as they don’t plead guilty or are convicted.

After only a few witnesses had been heard at trial, Basi and Virk pleaded guilty to breach of trust in connection with the $1 billion sale of B.C. Rail. They received conditional sentences.

Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/Auditor+General+seeks+more+documents+Basi+Virk+million+legal+deal/5714849/story.html#ixzz1dpT16mVE

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Auditor+General+seeks+more+documents+Basi+Virk+million+legal+deal/5714849/story.html?cid=megadrop_story

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In Criminal Breach of Trust: Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party, 67 candidates in the 2006 election, Senator Irving Gerstein, Senator Doug Finley … and others

2011-11-14T16:25:00.000-08:00

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By Robin Mathews
Nov. 14, 2011

The 2006 federal election is key in the present illegitimate holding of a majority by the Harper Conservatives in the House of Commons. In that election more than 67 Harperite Conservatives and the Conservative Party conspired to defraud the Canadian people of a fair election.

The Prosecution of the violations by the people named above has been palid and ineffective. They should have been charged, one and all, with criminal breach of trust – a charge which the Criminal Code of Canada declares requires, because of its seriousness, less evidence when dealing with public servants. Like prime ministers, senators, and candidates for election, for instance.

The move by the Prosecution to accept a plea bargain in a matter of the greatest importance to all Canadians is an act of major irresponsibility, I insist.

Stephen Harper and at least seventy others colluded to engage in criminal breach of trust in a calculated violation of the Elections Act in 2006.

In standard Harperite practice the wholesale fraud is said to have happened without the knowledge of the man who lets nothing in the Party happen without his knowledge: Stephen Harper. But being leader, he cannot escape accusation.

After pleading guilty to plea bargain charges of breaching campaign spending limits and failing to report expenses, spokespeople for the Harper Party – with Orwellian lie-tactics – claim that guilt is not guilt, that the illegal is legal, that the profoundly unethical is ethical.

Orwell was describing the use of language in a fascist state.

In addition, the 2006 election campaign was marked by the entrance into campaigning – in fact – by the RCMP on behalf of the Harper Conservatives. Military and police interference in democratic elections proclaims a move towards fascism. In a break with honourable tradition, the RCMP announced – in the midst of election campaigning - that it was undertaking a criminal investigation of Liberal minister of finance, Ralph Goodale. The announcement was totally gratuitous, and, of course, Goodale was cleared completely.

But the RCMP helped – along with the wholesale criminal breach of trust of the Conservative candidates and Party – to shape an illegitimate minority victory for Stephen Harper.

Not long after, Guiliano Zaccardelli, RCMP head, was caught in perjury before a Commons Committee and was forced to resign. He was carefully tucked away by the Harper government in an Interpol position in France. We have heard no more about him because the Mainstream Press and Media are branches of the Harper office.

The Mainstream Media is a branch of the Harper office. Stephanie McDowall has written CBC about Evan Soloman’s slippery attack on Bob Rae on The House, November 12. I wrote to CBC after the embarrassing failure of Carol Off to interview the Harperite representative lying about the conviction of the Conservative Party for election fraud on November 10.

Questions that leapt to my mind: Why isn’t the lawyer for the Conservative Party being interviewed? Did or did not the Conservative Party plead guilty? (Ms. Off never asked that.) Did 67 Harperite candidates engage in the violation? Why won’t Stephen Harper be interviewed on the subject? Etcetera.

Ms. Off – to my mind – worked to kill the story.

In addition NO OPPOSITION REPRESENTATIVE was interviewed by As It Happens concerning the admission of guilt by the Conservative Party.

Canadians must publicize the “assistants to Stephen Harper” in the media whenever they show their heads. Perhaps we should have a petition to ask that Carol Off be removed.

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The Legislature Raids

Given what you know today about BC Rail, does this sound right to you? Robin Mathews replies: Yes!

First to Profit from $1Billion Smart Meter Program: Liberal Insiders (March 2011)

BC Rail under attack again

By Jeff Nagel

Richmond Review - January 26, 2012

Given what you know today about the corrupted sale of BC Rail, does this early info. sound right to you?

Want a Public Inquiry into BC Rail?

After BC Rail, CN said in its lawsuit that Mr. Harrison’s move to CP would be “devastating.”

The Mainstream Press, Falsehood, and Loyalty to Stephen Harper

About a full Public Inquiry into BC Rail

B.C.'s Christy Clark. Ken Boessenkool, and Stephen Harper. A trap for B.C. conservatives.

Piracy

Corraling The Dean With A Confidential Missive

Kenny gets things done; he lobbied for the Taser Company as well as for Enbridge.

Justice, not entertainment, is needed in B.C. courts

Old crowd in? Deeper, stronger, worse!

The Rotten State of Law and The Courts In Canada: Madness

BC Rail, etc: Rafe's call to revolution within B.C., And how long do you think the public will take this shit [sic] without fighting back?

Stopped in Our Tracks by a Sham Democracy And 99 stupid things

Arithmetic on Northern Gateway pipeline adds up to big numbers, as in 2+2 now equals 22, or some such thing

Talking frankly -- frankly, I tell you ... about BC Rail, wasted money, wasted opportunity, and oh yes: the wasted trial of Gordon M. Campbell, Christy Clark ... errr ... Basi, Virk & Basi:

Troubles with accessing heroin story

The coal would be trucked 69 kilometres to a Canadian National rail line and then be transported to ports at either Vancouver or Prince Rupert, B.C., to be loaded on ships that would take it to Pacific Rim markets ... + disinformation tactics

Enbridge, Ipsos-Reid poll, and disinformation tactics

Enbridge, Ipsos-Reid poll, and disinformation tactics

When I began attending the pre-trial hearings of the Basi, Virk, and Basi case, I had no idea how deeply troubled and how dangerous the system is. I have described what I call "the least important" of my negative experiences. The more important of them I will relate in the next column.

John Roberts and his colleagues in the federal judiciary answer to no one. And they want to keep it that way.

Basi-Virk first anniversary renews calls for inquiry

BC Rail: You've got to know when to hold 'em

Off-topic, but Jaysus, Mary and Joseph: reality check ...

BC Rail 8 years later ...

'Struth: we once had a premier named Boss Johnson

Christmas Greetings to all, 2011

No Deep Integration with U.S.A., you gotta be kidding!

When B.C. rail gives a Christmas gift to Port of Vancouver

Organization Profile

GOVERNMENT OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Transport Canada

Government of Canada

TRANSLINK

PORT METRO VANCOUVER

Corporation of Delta

BRITISH COLUMBIA RAILWAY COMPANY

BNSF Railway

Before we drive off the cliff ...

Robert Fisk explains

Bankers are the Dictators of the West

Investigating the legitimacy of the Berardino appointment to the BC Rail case

B.C. Chief Justice. Playing to the Gallery.

The Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) has approved the new design concept for the Mufford/64th Ave. at Highway 10 rail overpass.

This is the BC Rail we remember

It's the lethal BC Rail process again

An ICBC employee who accessed information on 65 people, including 13 of the shooting/arson incidents has been fired, RCMP said today.

BC Rail: A simple truth

BC Rail: Does B.C. Cabinet Corruption Continue – With “A Yankee Fix”?

"This cannot be allowed to stand ... " BC gov't can't hide ministers' records from FOI with 'Out of Scope' claims

Wise words of caution from Nelle Maxey

Shades of BC Rail

One year after Gordon Campbell ...

Latest U.S-Mexico drug tunnel highlights an emerging seasonal trend

The BC Liberals are clearly bleeding support to the BC Conservatives under their new leader John Cummins.

Canadian Free Press Release Service

Press Release: BC voters dubious, anxious and want answers according to IntegrityBC poll

Rare BC Rail photo

More about the gentle treatment of two Hells Angels in BC Supreme Court

The fight for control of Canadian Pacific Railway

Tony Clement And The G8 Boondoggle. November 24. But BC Mary asks: how do we understand BC Rail by these rules?

The cost of silence

Outraged taxpayer says (and Norm Farrell adds):

It was July 13, 2009, when as the clock struck midnight in the British Columbia garden of good and evil, every benefit accruing to CN was harvested. By them and for them. And we, the former owners, had no say.

CP'S RAILWAY TO RICHES

Grab-bag of BC oddities for the weekend ...

Engineering marvel ...

Would we have lost BC Rail if we'd had free speech in our legislatures? Elizabeth May speaks out ...

New RCMP Commissioner: "a Cop's Cop"

You thought the B.C. Rail corruption case would fade into history after the defendants pleaded guilty last year in return for getting their whopping legal bills covered by the government? Think again, writes Les Leyne.

Good Grief, haven't we seen this movie about 50 times before?

In Criminal Breach of Trust: Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party, 67 candidates in the 2006 election, Senator Irving Gerstein, Senator Doug Finley … and others