Thursday, December 30, 2010

RailGate Remainders...Our Top Ten Questions Continued

SubJudiceThis!
NoLongerBeforeTheCourtsVille

Number 9.

In April of 2009 Gary Mason went all Ron Obvious once again and reiterated something that we and others had already brought up, which was the fact that once upon a time (ie. way, way back in 2003) Joy MacPhail asked Mr. Gordon Campbell a very important question on the floor of the BC Legislature. Essentially, Mr. Campbell left the question unanswered when he told Ms. MacPhail to go FOI herself.


And the following is how Mr. Gary Mason described it in the high profile, and very public, prints of the The Globe and (nolonger)Empire Mail:

....During the bid period (for the BC Rail deal), Mr. (Patrick) Kinsella was seen entering the Premier's wing of the legislature with CN chairman David McLean on more than one occasion. The relationship between Mr. Kinsella and CN was raised in the legislature in May, 2003, by then-NDP MLA Joy MacPhail, who identified Mr. Kinsella as a paid lobbyist for the national rail line.

In an exchange long since forgotten, Ms. MacPhail asked Mr. Campbell if he had ever met Mr. Kinsella and Mr. McLean during the bid phase.

The Premier said at the time he didn't have an answer, and that if Ms. MacPhail wanted to know she could make a freedom-of-information request.

The trail went dry after that.....


Indeed.

Except, then, somewhat inexplicably, Mr. Mason, did something rather non-obvious when he 'suggested' the following in the very publicly-printed pages of The Globe in the spring of 2009:

....But now the matter is quite different. There is the appearance that Mr. Kinsella might have been on the payroll of BC Rail and CN Rail during the $1-billion sale of the rail line. And that there were meetings and phone calls going on between Mr. Kinsella and Mr. Campbell and/or members of his office.


Hmmmmm....

Six years later the matter is suddenly quite different?

How, exactly, we could only wonder then, and are still wondering now.

Which brings us to our lingering RailGate Question #9, which is directed specifically to Mr. Gary Mason of the The Globe and Mail:

"Mr Mason, when you suggested in 2009 that there was an 'appearance' that Mr. Patrick Kinsella was simultaneously on the payroll of both BC Rail AND CN Rail at the time that the deal went down in 2003, did you actually have a source to back up such a suggestive assertion....Or..... Were you just making stuff up?"



Thank-you.

.


4 comments:

Kim said...

Thank YOU, RossK. You are one witty blogger, who brightens the discourse with your wit.

For What It's Worth said...

i Don't know whether you'll be in the mood for this: But i wonder if i might be allowed to answer your question as to how it had become different--to play the devil's advocate, as it were.

To put it simply, i would say that the dynamic parameters of the trial had been sufficiently narrowed in the passage of those 6 years.

To spell it out more fully, i would say:

1) patty dohm had long since read and redacted everything important

2) the bc rcmp were on-board and sitting silently on the raid-and-subsequent-search documents

3) an oh-so-special prosecutorial team was firmly maneuvering the trail to its pre-scribed conclusion

4) a new, far more amenable judge had be installed on the bench so as to limit any legal damage or loss to a lower-hanging branch and a few overly-ripe fruit.

5) kinsella and maclean, and even Capo campbell were no longer anywhere in the purview of the police or prosecutors.

6) sergeant seckel and general stone wally were firmly in place at the attorney's fort

7) any telling e-mails and other documents from the premier's office had been disposed of conveniently

And so, in light of all of these concrete alterations to the reality surrounding the case, the "M"ason man could safely reveal this little bit of the method-used one last time, most likely just to show he really was in the know way back when, before it got bundled up with all the rest of the dirty laundry and taken out to be tossed down the memory hole.

RossK said...

Thanks Kim!

______

FWIW--

Fair enough, but.....

What if all that laundry were to get stuck such that the memory hole suddenly starts backing up...bigtime?

.

kootcoot said...

FWIW:

It ain't worth much! Your opinion, that is, but hey if you aren't already employed by the PABlum Brigade get your resume in before the Campbelloids are are in gaol - you could be inline for a platinum parachute if you get in in time!