RailGate Run-Around....ProMedia Catches Up To Bloggers Five Days Late

AllTheNewsThat'sKinda/SortaFitToPrint
PublicInterestVille


Here's TODAY'S lede, by Camille Bains, from the Canadian Press:

VANCOUVER, B.C. (Aug 21/2009) - Emails to and from a political insider show he had a strong relationship with CN Rail, suggesting the company was pegged to win the bid to buy Crown-owned BC Rail, says a defence lawyer.

Michael Bolton told a B.C. Supreme Court hearing Friday he wants to cross-examine Patrick Kinsella about his connection to CN Rail while he was also a consultant for BC Rail.

Bolton read a string of emails from between April and May 2004 showing Kinsella was the conduit between top-level executives for both BC Rail and CN Rail and a senior B.C. civil servant when the sale seemed to be in jeopardy.

"The way in which (BC Rail) gets answers to CN Rail is to go to Kinsella rather than directly to CN," Bolton said in a hearing related to fraud and breach of trust charges against three former government employees.

Bolton, who is defending one of the accused men, said the trio were tasked by their political masters to keep a third company in the bidding process to make it appear that the sale of BC Rail to CN Rail wasn't rigged by the Liberals.

Bolton also said lobbyists at a Victoria firm called Pilothouse, which was representing Denver-based OmniTrax, a third company bidding for BC Rail, had also known about Kinsella's involvement with CN Rail while he was working for BC Rail.

"Kinsella working for CN," said an Aug. 19, 2002 handwritten note in a journal kept by Pilothouse lobbyist Brian Kieran, defence lawyer Kevin McCullough told the court......

So.

Isn't that interesting.

Except....

Here's what blogger GAB told us TUESDAY, based on her eyewitness account of the courtroom hearing on MONDAY......

________________________________________

I was going to wait for Laila, but given this post, I think it is important to get this part of what was said today out.

The materials that contained the reference to Bruce...

Also contained 2 instances of Brian Kiernan writing in his notebook from 2002

"August 19 Kinsella working for CN" referenced on page 62/63

There was some difficulty finding the second, but the judge found it and I think she said it was on page 60 and I didn't catch a date only that it again said "Kinsella working for CN".

McCullough stated clearly that the notebook was for Kieran's use only, so there was no reason to believe that his statements that Kinsella was working for CN from the notebooks would be there for any reason other than his personal reference.

GAB
Great Aunty Bertha | 08.18.09 - 12:19 am | #

________________________________________

The 'Laila' referred to in GAB's comment is fellow eyewitness and blogger Laila Yule who wrote a very detailed post on Wednesday that can be read in its entirety here.

Now.

This led to a tremendous discussion in the comments to Laila's piece.

But it also led to some codswallop.

Including media monitoring contract-style codswallop like this:

".....Since when do they let stupid little blooggers into Supreme court? Shit, things must be wrong if they let you supid little wannabes in there. You know why real reporters dont write about this extra stuff Laila? Because it just doesn’t matter. It doesn’t add a thing to the story, you idiot. And if I were you, I would watch what you write about Kinsella. And the premier."

And so, almost an entire week after the fact, when there is finally a smidgeon of proMedia reporting about the fact that a notebook belonging to one of Crown's 'star' witnesses includes a passage that appears to explicitly link the former campaign manager of the Premier of British Columbia (a very fine fellow who was AT THAT VERY TIME [ie. 2002] in the employ of BC Rail) to the ultimately successful private bidder for BC Rail, was discussed in open court, well.....

The time has come to ask ourselves the following question:

Is it any wonder that the public of British Columbia is not paying attention to this story given the egregious lack of in-depth coverage of it by the Lotuslandian proMedia?*

____
**And I also ask Vaughn Palmer, and Keith Baldrey and Bill Good, who insist on calling members of the public who actually pay attention to this stuff 'cultists' who just make stuff up exactly the same question.

.