The Six Million Dollar Railgate Deal...

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...Why Did The 'Cabinet Cut-Out' Question Disappear In The Fall Of 2010?

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Update: Busted/disappeared historical links in old post below now fixed - thanks to the help of NVG.

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Look.


Many folks in the Bloggodome, including Rafe Mair, asked Mr. Van Dongen's questions, the ones that caused all the kerfuffle in the Ledge this week, way back in the Fall of 2010 when the deal went down. 


Which were ....Why was cabinet cut-out of the deal?


And... Was that legal?


And then, suddenly, the story just went 'poof' and disappeared.


Why?


Well, it is my opinion that a big part of the reason for the disappearing, at least from a proMedia point of view, is that everyone was educated by The Dean who sniffed around in response to a request from a reader and then gave us an explanation (sans named source, by the way) that the Six Million Dollars was only a 'contingent liability'  rather than a real one. Therefore, it did not need to go to Cabinet or Treasury Board.


Thus, all decisions were instead made by two Deputy Ministers, in a neat and tidy (and, as we soon learned from one of them, a super-secret, cone-of-silence) manner.


Of course, one of those Deputy Ministers (the one who informed us about the super-secret cone-of-silence) resigned yesterday for, as a government spokesthingy apparently put it according to CKNW, reasons unrelated to Railgate.


Below is the post we wrote about this matter at the time.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Cutting The Cabinet Out Of RailGate's Six Million Dollar Straw Man

AllTheTechnicalities

ThatFitVille

According to Vaughn Palmer, Rafe Mair is wrong.

Why?

Well, apparently due to (another!) pre-planned indemnity double-down, Gordon Campbell and his cabinet are off the hook because they did not have to directly approve the six million dollars required to buy-off to Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk (and their lawyers).

Here is Mr. Palmer's explanation:

"...But the more problematic part of the deal for the Liberals was the second line of decision-making, namely to forgo any attempt to recover the $6 million advanced by the Crown to cover the cost of Basi's and Virk's legal defence.


The special prosecutor had nothing to do with that part of the deal. It was made in Victoria by deputy minister of finance Graham Whitmarsh in concert with deputy attorney-general David Loukidelis.....

{snippety doo-dah}


The deputy duo acted under the authority of the Financial Administration Act, de Jong added, which brought a provocative e-mail from a reader.

On what authority? he asked, noting that the act explicitly states that only the cabinet can forgive "a debt or obligation to the government if the amount forgiven is $100,000 or more."


The amount forgiven here exceeded that threshold by a factor of 60. But no cabinet order was forthcoming because the amount was not, technically, a debt. It could have been, if the accused had been convicted and the Crown had proceeded to try to recover the legal fees.


But when the decision was made, the outstanding legal bills were only a contingent liability, advanced by way of indemnity, and cancellable by the deputy minister of finance under his standing authority under the act. Whitmarsh, acting on the recommendation of Loukidelis, signed off on all the paper work.


The cabinet was thus out of the loop, which is surely preferable to having ministers make the call on any aspect of the deal to end this case....."

How convenient.

But here's the thing.

Mr Whitmarsh is Mr. Campbell's and, dare I suggest, Mr. Martyn Brown's man over at Finance.

So.

Has anyone asked the good Mr. Whitmarsh if he ever spoke to Mr. Campbell or Mr. Brown about this matter, regarding the details when the deal went down, or, and this is very important, when indemnity technicality was worked out BEFORE the deal itself was even conceived of?

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Oh......And it was good to see that Les Leyne is finally starting to keep up......What the heckfire am I talking about?.....Well, the other day Mr. Leyne didn't even mention Mr. Whitmarsh as being part of the dynamic duo when he was on the Ceeb with the the Puffmaster Flash.....But in his column today he at least acknowledge Mr. Whitmarsh's involvement...No discussion, of course, of the implications however......

And for the record....it was very nice to see Mr. Palmer follow-up on something that has been discussed, in considerable detail, by the 'Wingnuts/Cultists in the Blogosphere'...Credit where credit is due, and all that....Unless, of course, Mr. Palmer's E-mail correspondent was named 'Anonymous'....

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