Friday, February 13, 2009

BC Rail and the MLAs' secrets

Bill Tieleman continues to serve the public well by following and reporting on the B.C. Rail corruption case's slow progress through the courts.
In the latest update Tieleman reports the Liberal caucus had a lawyer in court this week to ensure documents relating to communication between MLAs wouldn't be disclosed to the defence under a Freedom of Information request.
Which seems odd. If the defence believes the documents are relevant, the court can order their production.
But then an awful lot is odd in this case. Pretty much everything, really.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am sure glad that BC Liberal leader, Premier Gordon Campbell, is doing everything he can to be open, accountable and helpful to move this court case along as fast as possible!

Anonymous said...

What does this Liberal government have to do (or not do) to convince the electorate they are not who they say they are? Most recently they've applied a page out of a Left Wing economics text, which theories they've ridiculed, disparaged, and deplored for a decade, now embracing those doctrines as sound policy. And what happens? Rather than being recognized for the hypocrites they are their polls rise by 16%. Huh???

BC Mary said...

Doggone right, Paul, pretty much everything about the BC Rail corruption case is odd.

Odd, for example, is the way it has felt like we were already under a gag law for the past 5 years.

We know that the raids on the BC Legislature were sparked by an ongoing investigation into drugs trafficking.

Jasmohan Singh Bains was charged with trafficking at the same time Dave Basi was arrested and charged, based on information obtained by wire taps on Basi's phone. While listening to those phone conversations, police learned that there were alleged irregularities with regard to the sale of BC Rail. All entwined, all significant.

So I watched for the Bains trial to begin. Then in December 2008, a commentor to my blog said that he heard mention made during a Basi-Virk hearing about Bains' 9-year sentence. I went to a lot of trouble to find out that:

Bains had gone to trial in June 2008, the guilty verdict was pronounced in August 2008, and the sentence read in court in September 2008.

The Bains trial was held in VICTORIA Supreme Court, just a few blocks down the street from the Times Colonist building. They knew. They just didn't report on it.

Not a word of it -- not a syllable -- was reported in the CanWest press. How's that for odd.

There's more. Tons more. But I think that single omission tells us exactly hos "odd" this trial has been. And with their new lawyer pleading for more secrecy (for BC Liberal MLAs now), how odd the BasiVirk trial continues to be.

It will be a movie one day. Who will be the hero?
.

Anonymous said...

Well I am sure that the many meetings that the MLAs had with the various lobbyist's at the center of this scandal are not the kind of information the government wants to release less than 3 months before a tight election.

We know that money from the lobbyist went to the BC Liberal Party possibly from attending fundraiser's etc....So there is evidence that the lobbyist have been in contact with a number of MLAs over the years. With the release of the John Les email and other emails, I wonder if there is another damaging email waiting to be unearthed?