The Supreme Court of British Columbia: A Naturally Dysfunctional Basket-Case? Or Something Else? What the “Journalist Accreditation System” Tells.
Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm signed search warrant material at a foreign holiday spa to “further” the B.C. Premier Glen Clark (almost baseless, 1999-2002) fraud case. I call it the “fraudulent investigation and trial of Glen Clark” – months and months of RCMP investigation and 136 days of trial costing millions of dollars, to fight over some ten or twelve thousand dollars spent on a residence sun deck. Clark was cleared of all wrong doing … but was (as intended?) ruined politically.
The first questions about Clark’s propriety in the matter came from … (wait for it) the constituency office of Gordon Campbell.
RCMP Sergeant Peter Montague (an alleged friend of Campbell’s) was caught on a to-be training film (at the Gustafsen Lake melodramatic fiasco against Native sun-dancers in 1995) sharing the assertion that we (the RCMP) are specialists in smear and disinformation. He moved in to be chief investigator in the Clark case (1999-2002). The examination (I applied for) of the prolonged RCMP investigation of Clark was stopped wrongfully the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP reported (three years after the complaint!). Nothing was done. No badges came off.
Is B.C. determined to make life here strive toward the condition of a third-rate Hollywood Thriller? You might think so.
The same Associate Chief Justice Patrick Dohm signed search warrants in the BC Rail Scandal matter (2002-???) like confetti falling at a summer wedding. They were part of (but only part of) the now-famous “legislature raids”, December 28, 2003. Dohm refused to do the usual thing – release the search warrants after the fact. Pushed on the matter, he finally handed them over – with 80% of the material blacked out and never – to this day - revealed. Why?
Some of the raids occurred on the offices of (now accused) Dave Basi and Bobby Virk, Order-in-Council appointees close to Gordon Campbell, Chief of Staff Martyn Brown, and cabinet minister “bosses”, Gary Collins and Judith Reid. No other legislature offices were searched – though other locations around Victoria and Vancouver were “raided” – and though all the close superiors of the men accused were also close participants in the corrupt transfer of BC Rail to CNR (an aspect of which brought the charges against the three accused). A whole year followed before charges were laid against the two men and also against Order-in-Council appointed Aneal Basi, accused of money laundering in the case. A whole year. What was going on in that year?
[Just to sweeten the story, the Special Prosecutor appointed to the huge and varied task was appointed in violation of the legislation governing the appointment of Special Prosecutors - which calls for unquestionable independence. He had been a partner and colleague, for years, of the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General in the ministry that appointed him.]
Pre-trial hearings lasted more than three years – to be cut off fairly soon after a change in judges took place that many saw as inexplicable and unnecessary … and even dubious. (Patrick Dohm had a part in that, too.) To add luster to the Grade “C” movie character of the goings-on, a retroactive publication ban was imposed (March 2010) covering all pre-trial matters of importance.
I consider the ban an affront to the public’s right to know … an on-going affront which the Mainstream Press and Media have accepted almost completely and silently, tugging on their forelocks ….
Which brings the story to my request (after reporting for more than three years on the BC Rail Scandal) for “accreditation” as a journalist – a status that lets the person granted take a small recording device into the court in order to assure that quotations made in reports are accurate. The person recording may not publish or broadcast parts of the trial – even though it is “open” and “public” when the jury is present…. (more on that in another column, later).
I was refused “accreditation” by the strange group formed to screen applicants. And I go on being refused until I make formal application, “serve” copies on Prosecution and Defence counsel, and request of the Crown a time in which to be heard on the matter (and not necessarily, even then, granted “accreditation”). If I hadn’t been refused, I might not have looked into the accreditation process – which, upon examination – is more ridiculous, more unbelievable, more damning of the Mainstream Press and Media – and the B.C. Supreme Court than such a simple little matter suggests ….
In the first place, no accreditation should be needed. (“Accreditation” is Orwellian – favourites of the court will be granted, antagonists refused.) Criminal trials are held in “open court”. Any Canadian should be able to walk into a trial with a recording device. At that point a sheriff could approach the person and say: “there are rules attached to using a recording device. They are as follows….” Instead Canadians are generally judged as dangerous and most likely criminal in the matter, and so are judged in advance and refused the right to record. That is unacceptable in a democratic society.
Secondly, “accreditation” is undertaken by “favourites of the court”, journalists from Mainstream Press and Media appointed (or accepted) who should refuse any kind of appointment by the court. Their primary role as journalists is to be free of connection, to be independent and to be able to turn the spotlight on anything they believe the public should know about in the court system.
By accepting appointment as “accreditation” officers, they become a part of the court system they are supposed to be free to criticize. They become “court lap dogs”.
I believe the Mainstream Press and Media representatives have failed repeatedly to criticize “the court” when it needed criticism in the BC Rail Scandal matters. I believe they have failed tragically to demand release of materials on behalf of the public’s right to know, and – now – fail to challenge the draconian publication ban imposed by Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie. Court lap dogs.
Thirdly, their qualifications are horrendously in doubt. Who is acceptable to be a court officer? (They will say ‘We aren’t court officers’. ‘If not that’, I reply, ‘what…?’) I’m not acceptable to be an accreditation officer, for instance. Nor – I suggest – is anyone else who has criticized the conduct of judges, court bureaucratic tangles, denial of the public’s right-to-know, etcetera. And so … the appointees, or volunteers, or whatever they choose to be called are – like it or not – court lap dogs, betraying, I say, the basic role they have, as journalists, in the structure of democratic society.
My “accreditation” committee of “volunteers” was made up of three CanWest reporters and a CTV journalist. I have unstintingly criticized CanWest for failing to report with integrity the BC Rail Scandal matters. I was refused accreditation by the committee.
Fourthly, what is the BC Supreme Court doing in taking “accreditation” out of its own hands and lodging it in the hands of “volunteer”(?) journalists from the so-called Mainstream…? If accreditation must be undertaken, it should be undertaken by a certified court officer. It should be a wholly court activity (which press and media are free to criticize.) The last thing the certified court officer should do is ask the Mainstream Press and Media folk if they “approve” of someone asking for accreditation.
To place the activity into the hands of “volunteers” from the press and media is an act of irresponsibility on the court’s part. Anyhow, most press and media in Canada now are owned by large private corporate entities with – many believe - distinct designs to limit Canadian democracy in order to increase profits. To hand any court activity to representatives of big corporate capital is an act of irresponsibility.
But that is happening increasingly. Private, for profit operators now, I am told, control the production of absolutely necessary transcript materials. They charge, I am told, exorbitant prices for publicly required materials necessary to the fair administration of justice. So much for justice.
Finally, if the Supreme Court is happy with Mainstream Press and Media “volunteers”, and they – in turn – are happy working for the Supreme Court, is there something else observers might conclude? That they are in each other’s pockets, for instance?
That is a touchy question, because it is so important. More and more observers wonder if the RCMP carried out something less than a full investigation of the BC Rail Scandal… an investigation pleasing to the Gordon Campbell forces. The publicly recorded failure of the RCMP – from the highest levels down – in the Robert Dziekanski matter suggests the Force can adjust facts to its own convenience quite readily. And then say almost … anything. Did it do so in the BC Rail Scandal?
The Mainstream Press and Media have never questioned the role of the RCMP in the BC Rail Scandal. They haven’t, either, questioned the appointment of the Special Prosecutor, wrongfully appointed. Instead, the Mainstream Press and Media, like the judge sitting on the Basi, Virk, and Basi case, pretend there is nothing to question. The solidarity of the court and the journalists on that matter is deeply disturbing.
Editorials in the major press should have pushed all of those matters. But when editorials are written (almost as if the case is unimportant), they are made of fog and posturing, mostly.
And then … there’s the delay. The delay. The delay. Begun on May 18, the trial has seen the jury in court for brief moments, rarely for a day. In all there can’t have been more than four or five full days in six weeks in which the jury was present. And now the two month break….
The court has been a place of tireless wrangling over (publication banned) matters of procedure. The judge, I insist, should lay out for the public the basis of the disagreement – in a statement to be published widely. She should take the public into her confidence and explain why the trial is being delayed (and will continue to be). This case is a criminal case, but not one that has any relation to “normal” criminal cases in Canadian courts. And so the judge has a responsibility to confide in British Columbians – ALL of whom are principals in this case.
It is a case that is of primary importance to every British Columbian – indeed to every Canadian. It is about government lies, deceptions, betrayal of trust, and the alienation of public wealth by planned, organized, misrepresentation. Because every British Columbian – every Canadian – is affected by the matter of this trial, Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie has a special responsibility to inform the public as plainly and as fully as possible.
She acts as if that is not so.
She is – almost perversely it seems – acting as if this is a trial in which she does not have special responsibilities. So enormous are the matters at the root of this case she cannot be excused. And, alas, she cannot escape the question of her alliances. Are they to the fair and impartial conduct of the courts in a search for justice? Or are they to special interests – none of which in my opinion have done their job: the Campbell government and especially the Attorney General; the RCMP and especially its head in B.C., Gary Bass; the Mainstream Press and Media – now a servant of the court; and the court itself which – over the years of Basi, Virk, and Basi matter before it – has raised serious questions in my mind about its impartiality.
Every delay and every smothering of information – like it or not – serves the power and the purposes of Gordon Campbell and his associates in the BC Rail Scandal. I believe if they had been properly investigated, they would be facing criminal charges now … and I have written that to Gary Bass, RCMP Deputy Commissioner in B.C.
The “journalist accreditation” tempest-in-a-teapot, it turns out, is more than that. It points to an unsavoury and demeaning relation between the B.C. Supreme Court and the Mainstream Press and Media. And it points outward from that to more serious uncertainties – all of which call into question the administration of justice in the province of British Columbia.
Stumble It!