Saturday, December 15, 2007

What's the government hiding in the Basi-Virk case?

The always interesting PacificGazette takes a look at the government's effort to keep secret documents the lawyers in the Basi-Virk trial say are needed to defend their clients.
The government is apparently choosing to invoke lawyer-client privilege to keep documents from the court. Like any client, it could choose to waive the privilege and release the information.
The Gazeteer offers a good summary and links here.
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4 comments:

  1. RossK10:14 AM

    Thanks Mr. Willcocks.

    For both the kind words and the link.

    I actually have a request for your readers....

    If anyone has a pdf of the final 'Fairness Evaluation Report on the BC Rail Restructuring'* that was released in Dec 2003, I would be forever grateful if they could Email it to me at:

    pacificgazette at yahoo dot ca

    Thanks again Paul - much appreciated.

    RossK



    _____
    *it's a long and wordy title, I realize, but it would appear that it is an important document as it was commissioned by then Transportation Minister Judith Reid and apparently, according current Minister Falcon at least, demonstrates that everything was above board regarding the sale to CN. Unfortunately (?), the link to the report on the Ledge Library website is dead - details about this are at the bottom of the post that Mr. W. provides a link to.


    .

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  2. Anonymous7:58 PM

    Nowhere to hide

    http://www.archive.org
    is a handy site.

    Just stick in the URL - http://www.prov.gov.bc.ca/prem/down/bc_rail/Fairness_Report.pdf - and up comes 139 [.PDF] pages titled: "Fairness Evaluation of the Restructuring of the BC Rail Freight Division" dated December 11, 2003.

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  3. Anonymous9:42 AM

    In a continuing example of arrogance, the government released some of the material to the defence via FOI more than 2 years ago (as stated in court by the defence)!

    The defence have been chasing these documents for over two years and now the government is denying them?

    We also have the Premier saying that the Deputy Attorney General will decide what information is privileged when previously the Cabinet secretary was providing instructions through Cabinet!

    Trying to change the perception that there has been no political interference n'est pas?

    This is clearly an attempt by the government to continue to stonewall this case.

    Question: Will the decision regarding documents by Justice Bennett lead to a government appeal?

    Answer: Of course they will appeal. The government cannot deny these documents and then roll over.

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  4. RossK12:06 PM

    Anon-Above--

    Thanks!


    (comments about an interesting statement in the 'interim' report now up at my place for those interested here)

    ReplyDelete