This Day In Snookland....The Bonfire Of The Harmonies.

SeveranceIsAsSeveraneDoes
CultVille


Bob Mackin, writing in The Tyee, has the story of the payout for recently severed Snoodlandian Deputy Minister, Mr. Graham Whitmarsh.

The number is $461,643 which, of course, is all that you will hear from any and all screamers that follow up on this story, however briefly, over the weekend-deadened newscycle.

But, to his credit, Mr. Mackin (who we assume was under the thumb of that 72 hour FOI release rule thingy and was thus forced to publish today or get scooped on his own stuff come Monday) goes a little deeper:

...Whitmarsh (then Deputy Finance Minister) and David Loukidelis, deputy attorney general, were involved in the controversial $6 million deal to pay Dave Basi and Bob Virk's legal bills in October 2010, triggering surprise guilty pleas by Basi and Virk in the corruption trial related to the privatization of BC Rail...


Which is good to know.

But in our opinion the normally very thorough Mr. Mackin missed a spot.

Specifically, Uncle Bob neglected to note that the very fine fellow who was scheduled to take the RailGate stand back in the fall of 2010 when the Geoff Plant-defended six million dollar deal went down was a most excellent former public servant named Gary Collins.

And...

When Mr. Collins suddenly resigned in the wake of the Ledge Raids way back in the first term of our Gord, he almost immediately went to work for a now-defunct airline named Harmony.

And guess who else also once worked for Harmony and it's owner, an uber fine fellow named Mr. David Ho?

Well, that's a story we have hidden away in our PublicEye-assisted, cultish, whiny and extremely sanctimonious archives:

....Former RailGate era Finance Minister Gary Collins once worked for David Ho's now defunct Harmony Airways.

....Current Deputy Finance Minister Graham Whitmarsh, who helped Deputy AG David Loukidelis put together the super-secret $6 million dollar plea-copping bonus-baby deal that ensured that former Minister Collins would never have to testify, under oath, in front of transcripts of RCMP surveillance wiretaps, at the RailGate trial, also worked for Harmony back in the day.

But here's something we didn't know, courtesy of Sean Holman's fantastic archives over at Public Eye.....

.....Current Deputy Finance Minister Whitmarsh was 'relieved' of his duties at Harmony on Nov. 30th 2006.

....Former RailGate era Finance Minister Collins resigned from Harmony just one day later on Dec. 01 2006.

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As you might expect learning of the business connection between Mr. Collins and Mr. Whitmarsh led me to ask the following question of Mr. Whitmarsh's then boss, the finest of all fine men who ever worked for our Gord, Mr. Colin Hansen, on the very last day of 2010:

"How, exactly, was it NOT a conflict of interest to have Mr. Graham Whitmarsh, who is a former business associate of Mr. Gary Collins, work out a deal that prevented Mr. Collins from testifying in open court, under oath, about his role, or lack thereof, in the (now established) illegal leaking of documents and information to private concerns regarding the longterm leasing of public assets then under the control of BC Rail?"

Now.

To the best of my knowledge no answer was ever provided.

Which is not the least bit surprising.

But what is truly astonishing is that a question such as this was never, again to the best of my knowledge, ever put to the good Mr. Hansen by a member of the Lotuslandian proMedia.

'Nuff said?


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Regarding the cult of whine and the sanctimony?....This...And, of course, this!


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