What's Scarier, The Government Of British Columbia Or......

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....Really, Really, Really Bad Guys?

AllThePrivilegeThatFits
InformerVille

So.

It looks like the "Go/No Go" decision regarding the real start of the BC RailGate Trial might come down to whether or not a top secret, cone-of-silence, presumably fearing-for-life-and-limb informant can remain so, from everyone, including the defense attorneys for David Basi and Robert Virk.

By way of explanation, the following is an exchange between Mr. Basi's lawyer and a judge overseeing a hearing yesterday that attempted to settle the issue, with interpretation and clarification from the The Globe's Mark Hume:

Michael Bolton, representing Dave Basi, has argued that defence attorneys must be present at the hearing if the accused are to get a fair trial.

He asked how defence lawyers could challenge the assertion of informer privilege, for example, if they weren't allowed to ask any questions about the police source.

"If the witness they wish to cloak with privilege is ... someone with material evidence, such as one of the [government's] political operatives ... the defence will have no opportunity to consider pursuing that evidence," he said.

Mr. Bolton said the defence doesn't want to know the informant's identity, just the circumstance under which the police agreed to grant privileged informer status.

Mr. Justice Ian Donald cautioned, however, that the identity of an informer could inadvertently be leaked through a line of questioning.

"What if a review of the informant would put you on a line of inquiry which would make it obvious [who the informant was] to anyone in the know ... in other words connect the dots," he said......


Which on the surface of it seems just fine and dandy, I guess.

But let's look at that last line from the judge one more time:

"What if a review of the informant would put you on a line of inquiry which would make it obvious [who the informant was] to anyone in the know ... in other words connect the dots," he said.

Is there not something bizarre about this argument?

After all, what, exactly, is the informant so scared of in a case that the public has been repeatedly told only involves a railway company, a group of formerly well-connected lobbyists and, just maybe, some fast-fading former figures in the provincial government of Mr. Gordon Campbell.

Now, why is the identity of the folks involved important here?

Because, apparently, the RailGate special prosecutor is invoking the Air India case as a precedent where a witness was so scared of other really, really, really bad guys and/or bad guy governments that they sought complete secrecy.

So, does that mean that the secret informant in the RailGate case is really, really, really scared of rail companies, lobbyists, or the government of Mr. Gordon Campbell?

I guess that's possible, especially if you figure that the latter is, indeed, scary.

Or does it mean something else?

Like, maybe, there actually were some really, really, really scary bad guys involved in project "Every Which Way" , the original RCMP investigation that got the whole LedgeRaid/RailGate ball rolling in the first place way back when.

And if there were such really scary bad guys involved, wouldn't that change the whole tenor of this investigation/trial?

Not to mention the public's (and maybe even the media's) perception of it and many of the folks involved?

Just askin'*

OK?



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*After all, what else can you do but ask when after more than four years, everything is still a secret.


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