Railgate Renumeration Revisited...A (Very Well-Informed) Reader Weighs In.

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Longtime reader 'Lew', who is extremely knowledgable about all things Railgate, left a comment at the end of our post the other day about last week's discussions by the Standing Accounts Committee of the Legislature.

You remember those discussions, right?

They revolved around the Auditor General's report on the six million dollar pay out to Mr. Robert Virk and Mr. David Basi that was 'associated' with the sudden ending of the trial just as Mr. Gary Collins and the rest of the Railgate Top 40 were set to take the stand.

Here is that comment:

Again, the “understanding” was not because of the Agreement to Release, as the Auditor General says. The Agreement to Release hadn’t and wouldn’t be signed by the Crown until and unless the defendants delivered their part of the contract by pleading guilty before the court. The “understanding” was because of the contract (the October 14, 2010 agreement) they had in their back pockets requiring the Crown to sign the agreement to release if they pleaded guilty and were convicted. That is the inducement; its offer made by the Crown in writing for acceptance by the defendants, and it was clearly concluded before the guilty pleas were offered to the judge, who was the only authority who could accept them.

Palmer’s current glossing-over of the real issues relates to the consideration of the Auditor General’s report on special indemnities by the Select Standing Committee on Public Accounts in Vancouver on June 24th. Take a Gravol before reading the transcript of the proceedings. Some of the committee members showed up to ask such probing questions as, “What’s a special indemnity?”, thereby revealing that they hadn’t bothered to read the audit report or the report conducted by Stephen Toope before struggling into the room. MLA Throness even attempted to have the committee congratulate the government on its role in creating this atrocity in the first place!

MLAs Eby, Corrigan, and Simpson were notably more interested in getting some answers, but let the witnesses get away with red-herring tosses that seemed well practiced, especially the nonsense claiming that the original indemnities did not constitute loans. Using the rationale provided, the Agreement To Release wouldn’t be valid either, but nobody took them to task on it.

Good stuff, no?

Puffed-up Lotuslandian proMedia Punditry, please take note.

(and if Mr. Obvious has a notion....Please feel free....Neither Lew nor I will mind...Much...)


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The transcript of the Public Accounts Committee session referred to by Lew is....Here.
A small comment on comments 'round here...With only one or two troll-bo eruptions over the years (the worst perpetrator is now a Twittmachine Troll) I have rarely had any problem with comments...Some of that, of course, is probably a result of the fact that, most of the time,  I'm preaching to the converted...However, I also think that part of it is that because I got into this blogging thing after being a commenter myself back in the early 'salad days' of blogging.... And I did that commenting at three sites where the commenting was very interactive (Billmon's place, Steve Gilliard's place, and the early, still blogspot-powered FDL)...The upshot?.... I take pride in moderating by actually reading and paying attention to what folks have to say rather than just looking for profanity, etc.


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