Robin Mathews, Vive le Canada
Justice Destroyed. The Grand Opening of a Trial That Isn’t. The Disgrace of the B.C. Higher Courts.
To Canadians in general and to British Columbians in particular, the growing disgrace of our higher courts, the staggering decay of the RCMP, and the aggressive corruption of governments awaken two large questions. Who will begin a real clean-up? And how will it be brought about?
The now-famous names, Basi, Basi, and Virk, in B.C. concentrate all of those matters: government corruption (the dirty sale of BC Rail); dubious, dangerous, obstructive, and perhaps criminal RCMP actions; courts that grow increasingly unbelievable, courts of questionable integrity, and those given to pure pretence and make-believe. Our courts, apparently, more and more, believe that the interests of the Canadian people are nothing. The interests of corrupt governments and corporations are everything and must be served by the courts.
April 18, Courtroom 54. In the Supreme Court of British Columbia. Finally – the trial of Basi, Basi, and Virk – a splash-off from the rotten sale of BC Rail and the odious cancellation of the intended government sale of the Roberts Bank spur line is here. Finally (after years of delay) that trial – announced with fanfare – started on April 18.
Except it didn’t.
Basi, Basi, and Virk were nowhere to be seen. The absurdity of the pretence that the trial had begun seemingly escaped almost all the circle of journalists present and working for the Gordon Campbell government. There may be a sicker set of journalists in Canada but if there is, it will be hard to find.
The Grand Opening of the Basi, Basi, and Virk trial was held without Basi, Basi, and Virk, and without the Special Crown Prosecutor, William Berardino. The reason? Because it wasn’t the beginning of the trial at all. It was another pre-trial hearing. Perhaps the Supreme Court of British Columbia has mismanaged the whole Basi, Basi, and Virk matter so massively, it decided the trial must pretend to begin. That is entirely possible. It pretended to begin on April 18.
Ably, clearly, with careful preparation, Defence counsel Kevin McCullough (for Bobby Singh Virk) took up the matter of the February 26 Application for Disclosure of evidence withheld from the Defence. And he began work that would (as he remarked) take up the next few days to bring some matters in that Application to finished argument.
Before the trial of Basi, Basi, and Virk can begin the Defence will – as pre-trial business – argue that RCMP violations of legal processes invalidate evidence necessary to the Crown’s case. The Defence will argue as well that the Charter rights of men charged have been so badly violated that the charges must be nullifed.
Until those matters are decided there can be no trial of Basi, Basi, and Virk. If the matters are decided in favour of the charged men, there will be no trial at all. And so, obviously, the trial did not begin on April 18. Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett declared that it did. All the sedate journalists nodded in agreement. CanWest’s Vancouver Sun (April 18) carried a tiny, tortured, mangle of a story that completely obscured the fact that the charges against the men are still in significant argument. And it announced that the “criminal corruption trial of two former senior government aides begins today….” That is strange. It didn’t, and since 2004 the number charged has been three.
What is this smoke and mirrors? Is Madam Justice Bennett saying she doesn’t care what evidence is brought forward to disable the charges against the three men? That the trial has begun? Strange? Is Madam Justice Bennett saying that the solemn argument being made before her this week will be treated as empty posturing – whatever the evidence, and the trial will go ahead?
In fact, Defence counsel Kevin McCullough took up where he left off (in the Application for Disclosure) nearly two months ago. Major evidence is missing. Major material has not been disclosed. RCMP has held material back. Highest political officers might be implicated in wrong-doing. The actions of cabinet figures and others lie in shadows of doubt.
Madam Justice Bennett listens and listens. Demurely. Smiles. And – as in the past – does nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Everything is going as it should, except….
Except the February 26 Notice of Application for Disclosure was a bombshell. It was leaked to certain journalists. Madam Justice Bennett read about it in the Globe and Mail before she had seen it herself. And “a member of the public” wrote to her to complain that the public was shut out from such information because of the odious gag-order imposed by the Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm that only serves the little in-group of “pals”.
At the March 6 hearing Madam Justice Bennett responded. Documents were going to be wide open, available to the public, she said. But her little piece of theatre seems to have been a sham. At the April 18 pre-trial hearing, misnamed a trial, Kevin McCullough referred to the Crown’s Response to the February 26 Application for Disclosure, a document.
I have asked for that document and have been refused it, even when I appealed to Madam Justice Bennett. On April 16 Madam Justice Bennett presided at what the Legislature Raids site called an almost secret hearing to decide a protocol for releasing documents important in this case. Though I have requests in, have written to the judge, and have complained publicly, I was not informed of the hearing. Today I wrote Madam Justice Bennett again. I wrote to the Chief Justice, Donald Brennen, on April 12, asking to see important documents. I await his reply. I await her reply.
But let us have no doubts in these matters. They are more and more a sham. My absurd dance to try to get documents that it is my right to see suggests madness in the operation. In my view, the behaviour of Madam Justice Bennett is as close to insanity as it can be. Only the trappings of the Supreme Court, the gun-toting security men everywhere visible, the bowing of the well-dressed lawyers, the sober and sombre courtrooms, and the fawning of reporters from the big, private corporations give her behaviour the colour of sanity, in my view.
The situation is insane – or very, very much worse. For almost years now, Defence has been arguing before her what Kevin McCullough is arguing yet again. Evidence has been and is being withheld. People are withholding it. People are hiding it. People in the RCMP, for instance. Months and months ago Madam Justice Bennett should have ordered the Special Crown Prosecutor, William Berardino, and the top RCMP officer in B.C., and others, to produce required material and to do so by a reasonable date or face contempt of court charges. She did not do so. She does not do so.
Across the hall in the Supreme Court building, Madam Justice Brenda Brown – on behalf of a U.S. corporation raping West Vancouver “wilderness” – has handed out, like Hallow’een treats, charges against decent Canadians who dared prevent the U.S. corporation from working a few days in order to focus public concern about the environment and Olympics destruction. Those people were dealt with harshly and hurriedly by Justice Brown, even to the point of sending a sick, aged Native protester to unsuitable prison and to her death. (For that intemperate conduct Madam Justice Brown faces a Complaint presented to the Canadian Judicial Council asking that she be removed from the bench.)
Meanwhile, Madam Justice Elizabeth Bennett – in the face of obstruction, delay, truculence and an apparent determination on the part of some (powerful people?) to pervert justice in an enormously important piece of public business – does almost nothing. On April 18 she began doing nothing in what she calls a “trial” which cannot possibly be a trial.
Is that what we mean when we speak in unjust times of a law for the rich and another law for the poor?
After a marathon series of revelations some months ago (by Kevin McCullough) to demonstrate that evidence was being withheld from the Defence, Madam Justice Bennett proved she could make things happen. The truculence and apparent obstruction was so flagrant – on the part of the Special Prosecutor, the RCMP, and possibly others, it would seem – she ordered the opening of the famous “Project Room” in Victoria. Untrained observers divined that was not the whole story and she needed to act more forcefully, more universally, more searchingly. She did not do so.
Remember, this is the judge who sat for 136 days on the Glen Clark trial, refusing to call it vexatious, failing to see what more and more British Columbians believe they see – that the whole set of public actions and media attacks against wholly innocent Glen Clark was a Right Wing coup d’etat to put in place the corrupt Gordon Campbell regime.
In this case, the dance of the dumb, the dangerous, the demented, and the deadly hides a reality that the court, the private corporate press, the cabinet, the RCMP, and powerful politicos seem determined to keep from view.
What is the reality?
Quite simply it seems to be this. Out of the apparent drug investigations of 2003 seemingly linked to the dirty sale of BC Rail – when the RCMP was (among other dubious actions) denying that any public officials were being investigated – at least one was, and, perhaps, many more should have been. In fact, if the whole direction of investigation at that time had been turned upon policy makers and top politico/wheeler-dealers in B.C. involved in the B.C. Rail sell-out, and to related, and to connected sleaze, instead of (or at least as well as) junior underling “fetch-its”, there would very, very likely be a very different trial taking place in courtroom 54 this month and the government of Gordon Campbell would very likely be crumbling before our eyes (if it had not crumbled months ago).
But that is not to be – at least not yet. What, you might ask, is the role of Madam Justice Bennett in this pre-trial called a trial of people who may not be the most important wrong-doers (or wrong-doers at all!) connected to the rotten sell-off of BC Rail? The endless delay that was called “pre-trial hearings” has now been transformed into what is now (incorrectly) called a “trial”. What does that mean? More cover-up? And what is the role of Madam Justice Bennett in what I call this charade, this non-trial, this entertainment for the corrupt private corporate press?
That is a question that will not go away.
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