March 10 Update:

Here is the touching song by Kendel Carson and Chip Taylor called “I Don’t Want to Live on a Street”:

…….

As the Braidwood Commission of Inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski plods along, one thing should be apparent to the most casual observer; when the RCMP investigates itself, the interests of justice are not well-served.

Strip away the obfuscation created by a couple of dozen lawyers and their well-rehearsed clients, and the basic facts are now pretty clear. Four burly, well-armed male members of Canada’s national police force confronted a confused, weary, disoriented, unarmed immigrant and immediately shot him repeatedly with the “less than lethal” Taser. He expired as the RCMP stood around waiting for medical attention to arrive. Incidentally, these basic facts do not resemble the self-serving description that RCMP media spokesperson Pierre Lemaitre gave the public after the event, and before bystander Paul Pritchard’s video surfaced.

Were it not for the amateur video, the RCMP would have successfully covered up the fatality, like so many others, and there would have been no multimillion dollar public inquiry into the affair. Sure, this inquiry will have a predictable result; the Commissioner will be urged to put himself in the police officers’ shoes – they didn’t know how much of a threat they were facing, Dziekanski was non-compliant and combative, they followed their training, blah, blah, blah -and there may be some recommendations about better airport services, better communication, better police training etc., but hopefully the public will see the single biggest issue.

Our criminal justice system is biased in favour of police officers. They get breaks and benefits that no other civilians receive. When they make serious mistakes resulting in a civilian death, their colleagues close ranks around them and ensure that they will not face the accountability that the law demands of the rest of us.

We need a new system and we need it now, before the next unfortunate person, like Robert Dziekanski, Ian Bush or Kevin St. Arnaud, is killed by the RCMP in this province. We need to have immediate independent investigations performed by a civilian investigative team that reports to an independent prosecutor. This isn’t rocket science, but the powerful police lobby will fight these necessary changes tooth and nail.

A former environmental activist with the Friends of Clayoquot Sound has won an appeal of a lower court decision awarding Creative Salmon Company Ltd. damages for defamation. The west coast salmon farming company had sued Don Staniford for damages as a result of two press releases he authored about the company. At the end of a twelve day trial, the judge found that the releases had defamed Creative Salmon and ordered that Staniford pay damages of $15,000. The Court of Appeal has found that the trial judge erred in applying the law and has set aside the decision and ordered a new trial.

The result means that Staniford will be relieved from any obligation to pay Creative Salmon at least $100,000 which includes the judgment, court costs of $75,000 for trial and estimated appeal costs of $10,000. He should recover some of his costs as well.

We had only a peripheral role in the case, representing the interests of Friends of Clayoquot Sound, but we welcome this major victory and congratulate Mr. Staniford and his lawyers for standing up to the bullying tactics of the plaintiff.

Read the decision here: 2009 BCCA 61 Creative Salmon Company Ltd v. Staniford

‘Pro-business’ provincial government refuses to provide just compensation
Geoff Olson, Vancouver Courier
Published: Friday, February 06, 2009

For many Vancouver retailers, the Canada Line might as well have been a neutron bomb. Stores were left standing during construction, but customers vapourized. As I wrote last week, Mark Kenna and Alex Barker experienced the fallout firsthand from the transit project, losing control of their retail gift business Obsessions. The company is now filing for bankruptcy.

“We’ve struggled with debt and interest we normally wouldn’t have had in the course of this business because of the Canada Line, that’s stayed with us there all these years, and its been in the there behind us, dragging us down and down and down,” Alex Barker said in an interview. Obsessions’ three remaining stores have closed as a result of the mounting costs associated with their Yaletown location, and the couple are struggling to keep their apartment on English Bay.

The refusal of the B.C. government to compensate merchants along the Canada Line is something of a provincial mystery. Not so much a whodunit as a why-won’t-they. The mystery is compounded by the B.C. government’s recent offer to Tsawwassen homeowners to buy up their homes in the wake of the town’s power line debacle. Go figure: the reported health risks from high-tension wires rest on hotly debated statistics, yet the Canada Line’s ongoing damage to Vancouver retail outlets have been in plain sight for years.

As new immigrants to Canada 12 years ago, we had nothing,” Barker elaborated in an email. “No past business record, no credit history and no credibility. We earned all of that in spades over the following eight years. Then Canada Line stripped us of all of it.” At its height, the prize-winning Obsessions had 34 employees. “For eight years we built this wonderful business, and we had wonderful people.”

For Barker, the price has been higher than a trashed credit rating. One day last fall, a perfect storm of bad breaks and worse news pushed him over the edge. He and his partner had been to Royal Bank trying to negotiate a rescue package to refinance their business and pay off existing debts. Their loan was turned down, and the same day the couple learned the sale of their Denman street location had been turned down. Barker came home ” devastated and worried sick.” He drank a mickey of vodka, and took some of his partners’ sleeping and anti-anxiety pills. Kenna called for an ambulance, and doctors revived Barker at St. Paul’s hospital. “It was a wakeup call for me to stop the madness,” the businessman says in retrospect. “I wouldn’t say my home and business isn’t worth it, of course it is, but to let the government have taken me to that point…”

Barker says they have received virtually no help from Canada Line representatives or local politicians. “The government suddenly takes it away from you and you have that feeling you are totally powerless to do anything about it. I petitioned Lorne Mayencourt, petitioned Hedy Fry, Tim Stevenson, I had meetings with them all–dead end, dead end, dead end. It was absolutely crushing.”

Today Barker appears healthy and centred. Kenna is the one struggling for the right words to describe how he’s dealing with the epic dimensions of their years-long struggle. “I suspect again that this whole experience will offer me wisdom, strength for the next phase of my life. I am a very positive person and love the excitement of starting something or inspiring someone else through my own life lessons. I try each day to make sure I put a little time aside for myself to relax and reflect and focus on what I need to do the next day to keep me moving forward.”

He struggles with what’s been “taken away from us” by the Canada Line and the B.C. government. “I do believe that justice will be served. I do not care so much about the money, but I do care that they should be held responsible and accountable for what they did… it’s not right, it was cruel, total disregard and disrespect for our rights and principle and basically morally unjust. I still have a hard time thinking that this travesty happened here, in Vancouver, in British Columbia…. for God’s sake, this is Canada.”

Theirs is only one story of transit line hardship, Kenna adds. “Sixty or 70 stores have now closed… there are other people facing even more hardship than us.”

The pair are now looking for employment of any kind in Vancouver. It’s apparent to me these are two responsible, hard-working entrepreneurs, who had the misfortune to have a business in the way of a transit megaproject. Two assets to the local retail community, Barker and Kenna got shafted by the provincial government, which still has the unmitigated gall to present itself as the champions of small business in B.C.

Compensation is long, long overdue for merchants along the Canada Line.

www.geoffolson.com

The Court of Appeal issued reasons for judgment today which upheld the decision of the trial judge in the civil case arising from my arrest, strip search, wrongful detention and seizure of my car after Vancouver police somehow mistook me for someone who was conspiring to throw a pie at Prime Minister Chretien at a ceremony in Vancouver’s Chinatown in August of 2002.

Read the decision here: 2009 BCCA 23 Ward v. British Columbia

A few comments:

I am extremely grateful for the work of my lawyers, especially Brian Samuels, who took the lead for the six day trial and two day appeal and did terrific work on my behalf. I hope that this case encourages others to stand up for their rights.

The learned trial judge said I was “mistaken” about the events leading to my arrest by three Vancouver police officers. I certainly wasn’t, and this finding drives home the difficulty a citizen faces when it’s his word against the word of, in this case, three police officers.

The Court of Appeal decision leaves the impression that I initiated the appeal. I didn’t. After I won at trial, the Province filed an appeal against the Court’s decision to award me $5,000 for the unlawful strip search that breached my Charter rights. After receiving notice that the Province was taking that step, I challenged aspects of the trial decision that I disagreed with.

My formal complaint lodged with the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner was dismissed as “unsubstantiated”. How could this be, if the courts found my rights were violated? Simply put, because the police investigated the police.

Finally, the City of Vancouver, which is responsible for the actions of its police, had at least two opportunities to avoid this lengthy and expensive litigation by simply providing an apology. I made it clear I would accept an apology a short time after the incident and again shortly before trial. The offer to drop the case for an apology was rejected both times.

In British Columbia, police still investigate themselves in cases where there may be suggestions of wrongdoing. Despite the obvious conflicts of interest inherent in such a system, our politicians have done nothing to address the problem. As a result, public confidence in the criminal justice system is waning and costs are rising.

Take the Robert Dziekanski case, for example. After the confused Polish immigrant arrived at Vancouver International Airport on October 13, 2007, he was confronted by four uniformed RCMP officers. He died moments later. In the initial stages of the RCMP investigation of the fatality, spokesperson Pierre Lemaitre misled the public about what had happened. When a citizen delivered a videotape of the incident to the RCMP investigators, they initially refused to return a copy to him. After he launched a lawsuit for its return, it finally became public:

The videotape clearly contradicted the RCMP’s description of the incident and, to any objective observer, showed that one or more of the officers had used excessive force when they shocked Mr. Dziekanski with 50,000 volts of TASER electricity before attempting to reason with him.

The RCMP investigation of itself, and the ensuing deliberations by Crown Counsel as to whether any charges were warranted, lasted nearly a year. Predictably, no charges were laid.

To attempt to quell the public uproar over the shocking incident, a public inquiry was launched. One can only guess how much the inquiry will cost BC taxpayers, but it surely must be in the millions of dollars. At the second phase of the inquiry, which commenced Monday, no fewer than 23 lawyers were in attendance, most being paid from the public purse. If we conservatively estimate that their collective meters are running at $6,000 per hour, assume that the inquiry will last six months, add an equal number of hours for out of court preparation, well, you can do the math…

All this cost might have been avoided, and the criminal justice system and police would appear much more respectable, if the fatal incident had been investigated by an independent body with the authority to lay charges.

Sometimes a single citizen can show more common sense in a letter to the editor than can a roomful of lawyers. Here’s a copy of a letter from the January 19, 2009 edition of Vancouver Province newspaper:

“Having viewed the video of the police Tasering of Robert Dziekanski numerous times on TV and on YouTube, as well as having followed the media reporting of the incident continuously, I must say that there are eight items that stand clear in my mind:

1. Mr. Dziekanski had endured a very long flight to arrive at Vancouver airport only to suffer a much longer delay (in terms of stress, not time) in the customs area. No one spoke his language and apparently he barely understood English, yet when communicated to by hand signals and gestures he complied immediately and without fail.

2. When Mr. Dziekanski became understandably irritated, airport security, rather than trying to assist him, merely stood by and watched. In fact, they moved toward him then retreated, and more than once.

3. When the four heavily armed (pistols, batons, flak vests and gloves) police officers arrived and crowded into the atrium, Mr. Dziekanski immediately and naturally assumed a defensive posture.

4. On no less than two occasions after their arrival, the police indicated via hand gestures where Mr. Dziekanski should locate himself — to which he immediately complied.

5. At no point did the officers give or attempt to give hand signals indicating Mr. Dziekanski should reveal what he was holding in his hand or hands.

6. As the officers began to encircle Mr. Dziekanski, it became apparent that he was fearful of the officers.

7. Most important, when the officers first arrived, who briefed them about the situation?

8. Most important of all: Please tell me again, why was it necessary to Taser Mr. Dziekanski?

Stephen Jacura, Burnaby”