Sunday Stories...

AllTheWordsThatFit
MusicalAndOtherwiseVille


From a new blog called 'Bring a Nickel' from a young musician I know a little...

"Spent a few hours in the Granville Island Public Market yesterday, took a while to get used to singing over all the noise, different accoustics than the metro station. As I was about to leave my spot next to the Terra Breads, the banjo player who had booked the spot after me asked me to play a tune. I went with "Fogtown", and he joined in on the last verse and chorus, very fun, and very generous of him to let me take up a few minutes of his precious half-hour time slot..."

Imagine that!

(Will show up on the blog crawl with some regularity I reckon)




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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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What Mr. Loukidelis Said About The Six Million Dollar Deal In The Fall Of 2010

ThePublicRecordNever
ForgetsVille

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Update Late Friday....Gary Mason, in his Saturday Globe column, tills some of the same ground we in the Bloggodome covered in detail, as discussed in part below, a month ago...Surprise!

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About a month ago Paul Willcocks, myself, and others got into a discussion with former BC Liberal Government Attorney General Mr. Geoff Plant about the 'chronology' of how the Six Million Dollar Deal to suddenly end the RailGate Trial  in the fall of 2010 actually went down.

This occurred because of a blog post that Mr. Plant wrote. 

In the end, Mr. Willcocks and I both disagreed with Mr. Plant. Essentially, we both felt that if there was an 'understanding' that there would be a fee waiver (ie. what turned out to be the Six Million Dollar Deal) if the accused were to plead guilty, well..... The actual chronological mechanics of the way the deal was formally presented to the accused did not matter because there was, essentially, a de facto prior inducement to make said deal.

Which, of course, is just an opinion from two citizens, neither of whom are lawyers.

However....

All of this led to Mr. Plant pointing out exactly what Mr. Loukidelis said about the deal at the time, in writing.

And....

Given that Mr. Loukidelis suddenly resigned today just two days after Mr. John Van Dongen raised this matter on the floor of the legislature this week, we thought we should reprint our post in which we had a look at the 'Loukidelis Statement' that Mr. Plant was nice enough to point us towards.

That post went like this....

The Six Million Dollar Deal...What Mr. Loukedelis Said.

AllTheClarificationsThatFit

BlindfoldedDucksInParallelRowsVille

Last week we disagreed with former BC Liberal Government Attorney General Geoff Plant who insisted that, despite the fact that there was an 'understanding' (Mr. Plant's term, not mine) that legal fees would be waived after the fact, that there was no prior inducement for Mess'rs Basi and Virk to plead guilty and suddenly end the RailGate Trial in the fall of 2010 just before former BC Liberal Government Finance Minister Gary Collins was scheduled to appear as a witness, under oath, in open court.

Now.

Taking another tack on this matter....

If there was, indeed, an 'understanding', where might such a thing have come from if, as Mr. Plant indicated, the plea agreement (which involved an initial deal between the special prosecutor and the accused), and the fee waiver (which was subsequently granted separately by BC Liberal government Deputy Ministers David Loukidelis [Attorney General's Office] and Graham Whitmarsh [Finance]) were granted sequentially and separately?

Well....

According to a written statement from Mr. Loukidelis that Mr. Plant was good enough to point his readership towards that is not entirely clear.

Here is a portion of Mr. Loukidelis' statement from Oct 20, 2010 that was released to the media at the time:

"....On October 5, 2010, it came to the attention of the Legal Services Branch, Ministry of Attorney General, that the special prosecutor had proposed resolution of the prosecutions through guilty pleas.

Discussions then took place between the Legal Services Branch and defence counsel, including with respect to their clients’ liability to repay their legal costs. (The indemnities provided that they would have to do so unless acquitted on all counts.)

Legal Services Branch referred the matter to me and to the Deputy Minister of Finance. The Deputy Minister of Finance has authority under the Financial Administration Act respecting this matter. He and I considered the issue. A major consideration was the relatively small amounts that might be recovered from Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk compared to the millions of additional dollars it would cost the government to continue to fund defence, prosecution and court-related costs through to the completion of the trial, and to fund any appeals, with no guarantee of convictions.

Based on the above, in our respective capacities the Deputy Minister of Finance and I decided to release Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk from their liability to repay. I communicated that decision to the Attorney General on October 8, 2010.
No one outside the Legal Services Branch, myself and the Deputy Minister of Finance had any knowledge of this or involvement. For clarity, neither the special prosecutor nor the Attorney General had any knowledge of the matter or any involvement in this...."


Fair enough as far as it goes, right?

Maybe.

But please go back and re-read that last paragraph, bolded above.

It states that the BC Liberal Government Attorney General of the day, Mr. Mike de Jong, had no knowledge of the coming fee waiver agreement.

And neither did the Special Prosecutor for the RailGate case, Mr. William Berardino, who put together the initial guilty plea deal.

Which, taking Mr. Loukidelis' statement at face value, means that neither Mr. de Jong nor Mr. Berardino could have conveyed an 'understanding' to the accused or, we can only surmise, their lawyers.

Now....

Mess'rs Loukidelis and Mr. Whitmarsh obviously knew what was going down given that they put waiver deal together (sans Treasury Board approval, of course, which is a separate story we will return to in a later post).

But we can only assume that, as very fine public servants of the utmost integrity, neither Mr. Loukidelis nor Mr. Whitmarsh conveyed an 'understanding' to the defense prior to plea agreement.

So.

If there was someone in the know who could have conveyed an understanding prior to the accused pleading guilty, who's left based on Mr. Loukidelis's statement?

Well....

As is clear from what Mr. Loukidelis wrote above, it would appear that an unamed person or person(s) inside the 'Legal Services Branch' may have known what was happening before it happened.

And yet....

Somehow I doubt that any full time members of said branch, which is also made up of legal professionals and public servants of the utmost integrity, would convey such an understanding to the accused which could have later been viewed, at least by some, as a 'prior inducement'.

But....

Is it possible that....

...They 'deputize' members of said legal branch when the need arises?

And/or hire legal-type 'consultants' with the right 'connections' for short-term assignments?

(just askin', because finding a record of any such short term hires in October of 2010 could, perhaps, be something that the Auditor General of British Columbia, who is looking into the Six Million Dollar Deal, might want to undertake)

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Robocalls Re-Rising...The Multi-Headed Hydra.

AllTheCourtFilingsThatFit
ECanadaVille


Following up on reports from McMaher in PostMedia and the finally starting to catch-up Globe, The Six Estate goes straight to heart of the hydra regarding two important matters.

The first is the fact that the IP address used by Pierre Poutine to send out misdirection calls is the same IP address that was used by a Con Party campaign staffer in Guelph to send out other calls, apparently legitimate, through Rack Nine.

The second is the fact that another Con Party campaign staffer, he who was subsequently thrown under the bus, allegedly raised the matter placing misdirection calls (more than once, again allegedly) before they actually happened.

The 6thE's report (and more) can be found here.


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Update: Alison, at Creekside, has way, way more, especially about the cross-border stuff going down, here....


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RailGate Pickin' Up Steam Again....Throw The D.M. From The Train!

AllTheFootSoldiersThatFit
SeveranceVille

____________

Update: It's Mr. Loukidelis.... And it's a resignation...More later...And, yes, we will return to our 'conversation' with Geoff Plant




Double-Secret Probation Update: More about what Mr. Loukidelis said about the Six Million Dollar Deal and when he said it, here....

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Ian Reid is reporting, cryptically, that one of the two Deputy Ministers involved in the arranging of the Six Million Dollar Railgate pay-off is jumping and/or was pushed from the train. 

No word on which one, exactly.

Although there are whispers in the #bcpoli that do not contain either a G or a W.

No matter....We're pretty sure that which ever one it might turn out to be will hit the ground rolling....All snug and protected in a nice thick, heavily-wadded, net zero-free Michelin Man severance suit...



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Stay Christy, Stay (v8.0)

AllTheNumbersThatFit
LINO'sDivingVille


Because 23% (LINO) + 18% (Con) does not even come close to 48% (Dipper).

OK?


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And yappy, derisive responses from the Snook's right-handed gum-popper dismissing any and all concerns about non-zero-net pay-raises for political appointees out of hand will only increase that gap.... 


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Mr. Van Dongen Makes Good...

SomeAcceleratorsReallyDoNeed
FeetOfLeadVille


...By raising issues about the 'legal authorization' of the Six Million Dollar BC Rail Deal in the Ledge that we, and others, fussed about with Geoff Plant recently.


Ian Reid has the story:

...Yesterday he (Van Dongen) kicked off his (post-BC Liberal) campaign with a couple of interesting questions to Attorney General (yikes!) Shirley Bond (in the Legislature).

Van Dongen, citing the Financial Administration Act, blandly asked “which section of the Financial Administration Act or Regulations legally authorized the Deputy Minister of Finance to forgive and extinguish Basi and Virk’s $6 million liability?”

In other words, he asked Bond if her government had done the deal legally.

In the Hansard video you can’t see former Attorney General Mike de Jong whispering the answer in Bond’s ear but you can bet he was there, guiding the awkward minister’s answer.

Bond, like every other BC Liberal AG before her, stonewalled...

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And Lew, we haven't forgotten your value-added info...Follow-up post comin'...
Paul Willcocks weighs in here....

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Did Mr. Harper Get A Little Help From His NRA Friends...

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...With One Of His 'Accomplishments'?

"....The Conservatives proudly point to a string of promises that have been kept (during the first year of their majority): passage of the omnibus crime bill; the abolition of the long-gun registry; and the dismantling of the Canadian Wheat Board..."

Mark Kennedy, Postmedia News

May 1, 2012

"...The National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful lobbying group in the United States that advocates fewer gun controls, has been actively involved in trying to abolish Canada's long-gun registry for more than a decade, CBC News has learned.

Documents and correspondence obtained by the CBC show the NRA has provided logistical and tactical support to organizations such as the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action (CILA), established in 1998 to lobby Ottawa to shut down the registry.

The NRA provides the Canadian gun lobby group with "tremendous amounts of logistical support," and while the NRA's constitution prevents them from providing money, "they freely give us anything else," Tony Bernardo, an Ontario gun advocate and CILA's executive director, said in Canadian Firearms Digest in July 2001...

{snippety doo-dah}

...In 2000, the NRA paid $100,000 for an infomercial about what it called "the Canadian situation" that aired on The National Network in the U.S., according to Bernardo, who appeared in the video....

It cautioned gun owners the registry was a government plot to find out how many guns there were in order to seize them and leave citizens helpless to defend themselves.

Bernardo, a frequent guest on NRA chat shows updating U.S. gun owners on the fight to kill the Canadian registry, said the NRA was instrumental in helping him set up his Canadian lobby group, CILA, the lobbying arm of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), and a mirror group of the Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying arm....

{snippety doodle-dandy}

....In 2005, NRA strategist Glen Caroline came to Canada to provide logistical support in the form of "political action" training for an upcoming federal election.

"Who better to show us how to protect our rights," said the CSSA's promotional material for the event, "than the most powerful lobby group in the world, the National Rifle Association?"

In 2006, former NRA president Sandra Froman was the featured keynote speaker at the CSSA annual meeting in Toronto. Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz co-hosted the town hall meeting for the event.

Earlier this year (2010), Breitkreuz also found himself in hot water when a news release from his office called the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police a "cult" and "politically motivated" for supporting the long-gun registry. He later apologized and forced the aide who sent it to resign.

That aide, Brant Scott, now works for CSSA as its communications director....

CBC News

Sept 14, 2010

So....

When you hear the Hard-Cons whacking environmentalists up the side of the head over and over and over again for taking foreign money you may wish to keep the following mantra in mind....

"Projection, much?"

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In The Face Of Low Ratings Premier Talk Show Fires Producer.

AllTheConflictsThatFit
SmallTownLedgeVille



Andrew MacLeod, in The Tyee, has the story. Here is his lede:

The deputy press secretary in Premier Christy Clark's office who is married to a CBC legislative reporter is leaving to take a communications job in a government ministry.

Rebecca Scott has been in the position since March 2011. In January, 2012, CBC Ombudsman Kirk LaPointe found television reporter Stephen Smart's marriage to Scott put him in violation of the public broadcaster's journalistic standards and practices....

Of course, as she has demonstrated time and time again, Premier Talk Show lets her media friends down easy.

Thus, Ms. Scott is moving on to a 'communications job in a government ministry'.

A word of advice for Ms. Scott in her new 'ministerial' position....

If the very fine fellow that some ministerial staffers used to called the travelling tourist (that's the nice version of the moniker they used)  happens to darken your new doorway anytime soon, you may wish to run away as fast as you can.

And if he calls on the phone?

Well....

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My Morning Ride.

FreeWheelin'
WithoutBobVille



Can't quite understand all these kids who whip by me on their fixed-gear bikes with buds in ears.

I mean, how do they hear the SUV's coming?

Not to mention the hybrids - which are scary quiet even when your ears are wide open.

Anyway.....

There is one good thing about all this rain.

The ferns are truly loving it.

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Wednesday Night Music Without Clubs

RecordingWithGrownUpSoftware
ProToolVille


Lauren O'Connell was part of the original late 'ought Rochester KidMusic mafia.

Then she moved west with those Pomplamoose grapefruit soda DIY freaks and she kept on keepin' on.

Anyway, awhile ago I bought her latest fan-funded album.

And here's the thing about this kid....

Not only can she play, and make pretty interesting video songs in the Jack Conte tradition...

But.

She has a gimmick.

And it's a good one.

Which is that she can really write.

Here's one I like, done live.

And here is the studio version, produced by Ms. O'Connell herself.

It really is the new, new music business, I reckon, where people who are good at it can carve out a space, and (hopefully) make a living, doing it themselves.

Which is a good thing.

OK?

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Shorter Peter Kent: Muzzling Government Scientists Is 'Established Practice'

AllTheCodswallopThatFits
FullOnConVille


And, according to Minister Kent, that is a good thing.

Mike DeSouza has the story, twice, in his PostMedia pro-blog.

The set-up is here....

The kicker, in which Mr. Kent boots all Canadians generally, and Canadian government scientists specifically, in the head is here:

...After being taken to task by NDP deputy leader Megan Leslie for his remarks, describing the government’s policies (on scientist muzzling) as an “established practice,” Kent suggested the quote was taken out of context.


“That is an outrageous misquote I think it is fair to say,” Kent said Tuesday in the House of Commons.

One day earlier, he told the Commons: “It is established practice to coordinate media availability. In fact, many of our younger scientists seek advice from our departmental communications staff.”

He also suggested that the government was controlling interviews given by its scientists because it didn’t like questions raised by the media.

“Where we run into problems is when journalists try to lead scientists away from science and into policy matters,” Kent said on Monday.

But the next day, Kent, a former award-winning broadcast journalist, suggested that the dozens of scientists from his department at a Montreal conference on polar issues were, in fact, “spreading the good news of the policies of our government, both with regard to mitigation of climate change, both within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as outside, with a number of like-minded countries, to address short-lived climate pollutants.”...

Meanwhile the breathy analyses of whether or not the first year of the Hard-Con 'Majority' has perhaps had an impact on Canada continue, unabated...


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Our original post on the 'muzzling' (with Milo Minderbinders included), which was based on a Postmedia piece from Margaret Munro, is here....
Dr. Dawg has a great post on the Hard-Con 'War on Data', here....


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But I Thought Mr. Olsen Was On Our Side?

AllTheSeverencesThatFit
GordCoReprisedVille


From the VSun's JFowlie's latest FOI foray:

British Columbia taxpayers paid $67,298 for Premier Christy Clark to terminate her former press secretary, Chris Olsen.

According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the $67,298 covers the entire severance for Olsen, including both salary and benefits. The documents did not provide a breakdown of payments.

Olsen was appointed as Clark’s press secretary on March 28, 2011 and was terminated Feb. 13, 2012. He was being paid $125,000.10 per year.

Olsen was replaced by Sara MacIntyre, who now serves as Clark’s director of communications....

Fired in favour of a Harp-Bot Fixer after less than a year, and then given essentially six month severance.

Wow.

Guess it pays to screw up big-time when you're servin' at the pleasure of the (not)Premier.


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The Campbell/Clark Government...Still Gaggin' After All These Years

SuperPacThis!
Pre-ElectionPoliticsOfDestructionVille



Wendy Stueck and Justine Hunter, in The Globe, have the story. Here's their lede...

The B.C. government has brought back a campaign-spending law that was previously struck down as unconstitutional, saying it has made changes to address the court’s concerns.

“The court said it didn’t like the law by my predecessor, so what we have done is we have brought in a revised law which responds to the court’s concerns – which I think were legitimate,” Premier Christy Clark said Tuesday in Victoria....

The 'Predecessor' whose name cannot be uttered by Premier Talk-Show.

Ha!

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Stay Christy, Stay!...(v7.0)

AllTheCapitalProjectsThatFit
WillyNillyVille


Last week the (not)Premier committed a BC Place roof-like amount of our money towards the building of two new hospitals in Comox and Campbell River over on Vancouver Island.

Which is a good thing.

Right?

After all, spending our money on infrastructure that the populace actually needs rather than laying out the large to make it easier (allegedly) to have a building that will be used, at most, 50 days a year for minor league sports spectacles, monster truck pulls, boat shows and chilli bake-offs is a good thing.

Isn't it?

Well....

Don't forget how close Campbell River and Comox are to each other.

Which means that, once the building shells are built there will be a lot of pressure to raise money, from the same citizen and business base, to fill those shells with actual, you know, medical stuff.

And then they will have to compete, through the same regional health authority for the resources to recruit and train actual medical-type folks to make all that medical stuff work.

Which means that, as Paul Rudan wrote in the Campbell River Mirror, in the end this will likely turn out to be a bad thing for all the people of the North Island:

"Earlier this year I wrote that “we” – the collective we – should reconsider the decision to build two new hospitals.

My opinion was based on my own experience in hospital combined with the opinions of the many health care professionals I spoke with; the vast majority of whom said one hospital would be better.

The column brought a lot of response from people on both sides of the fence.

All had valid views, but it was soon afterwards when I heard the “writing was on the wall” and there was no going back on the two-hospital option.

Well, so be it, the decision has been made and two hospitals we shall have.

Let me say this first, this was a political decision that will not result in better or improved health care for residents on the upper half of Vancouver Island.

How can they possibly provide better health care when you split up services, combined with competing fundraisers who try to out-do each other in getting the latest and greatest, and quite expensive, medical equipment for each hospital?..."

****

Bottom line - announcing plans to build buildings without having a plan to actually fill those buildings and then bring in the people to actually do the work in those buildings is short-sighted in the extreme.

Of course, that kind of PR-driven short-sightedness means that any and all shortcomings will only became apparent to the citizenry after the ratings book is released during next May's spring sweeps.

Which, I suppose, is exactly what we should expect from a talk-show government.

****

Now.

The remedy here is to have this  kind of politically-motivated codswallop called out for what it really is, long and hard.

Unfortunately....

Except for a quick hit by Robert Matas in The Globe, the pundits have pretty much all let the big picture implications of this story slide because they've got a whole lotta deckchair shuffling on the Titanic to cover - the latest being the change in job description for former Doobie Bros. frontman Michael McDonald.

Imagine that!

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