The Auditor-General has released her long-awaited report into the federal Liberals’ sponsorship program. She found that millions of dollars of taxpayers’ monies were siphoned off by Liberal friends and insiders from the sponsorship program administered by Public Works. Paul Martin, our new unelected Prime Minister, has professed surprise and shock and has vowed to get to the bottom of the scandal. He has said that he was “out of the loop” and knew nothing. Can we believe him?

I submit that anyone who has spent a month in the city of Ottawa in the last twenty years would become aware that the Liberal party has operated a gravy train, doling out vast sums of our money to its friends and supporters. I spent three years there while getting my law degree and I could see evidence of the Liberals’ largesse everywhere.

Paul Martin has been connected to the Liberal party his entire life, some 65 years. He has been an elected MP since 1988, some 15 years. Before ascending to his present job as Prime Minister, he was the Minister of Finance and the highest ranking cabinet minister from the province of Quebec. So, was he blissfully unaware that tens of millions of dollars were ending up in the hands of Liberal cronies?

Maybe the electorate should decide.

The Benchers of the Law Society of British Columbia have resolved, by a vote of 17-9, to instruct staff to prepare a form of referendum question dealing with the appropriateness of compelling BC lawyers to pay CBA fees as a condition to obtaining a practice certificate from the Law Society.

It is expected that the binding referendum will occur prior to the 2005 practice year. Past and present CBA executive members spoke against the referendum concept, but their views were rejected by a majority of the Benchers.

The Benchers of the Law Society of British Columbia have accepted Mr. Ward’s request to address the issue of mandatory CBA payments at the next Bencher’s meeting, scheduled for February 6, 2004. Mr. Ward has been given five minutes to set out his views on the subject.

Rich Coleman, Solicitor General and Minister of Public Safety for the Province of British Columbia, has reportedly announced that the search policies at the Vancouver Jail have been changed so that new detainees will no longer be automatically strip-searched upon admission.

If true, this policy change is long overdue. In December of 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada made it clear that routine strip searches violated section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The authorities could only conduct these intrusive and demeaning searches if they had reasonable grounds to believe that the subject was hiding a weapon or evidence related to the commission of the offence that resulted in detention.

Inexplicably, those in charge of the Vancouver Jail continued to strip search everyone admitted into their custody.

Our firm has filed a class action seeking damages on behalf of everyone who had their constitutional rights violated since December of 2001. We are currently seeking dates for the hearing of an application to certify the case as a class proceeding and hope that the matter will be argued in the next few months.

If you wish to become a member of the class, please contact us.

The six Vancouver Police Department members who were convicted of 18 counts of assault after they transported three people to a remote park and beat them up have now been disciplined by Chief Constable Jamie Graham. Two officers were fired and the other four received 20 day suspensions without pay.

Several questions remain to be answered in this disturbing case. Among them:

1. How much has this sorry episode cost the city’s taxpayers?

The six were on paid leave for over a year at a cost of about $300,000 and they received the services of six experienced lawyers as the charges and disciplinary proceedings were processed. I estimate that the cost to the public of these lawyers was at least another $300,000.

2. How often do incidents like this occur but go unreported?

The beating incident came to light only because a junior officer with a conscience reported it. The others involved tried to cover it up. The evidence suggests that the beating was premeditated and was a form of “rough justice” meted out from time to time.

3. Was the public interest served in the criminal prosecution?

Special prosecutor Robert Gourlay presented a sanitized Agreed Statement of Facts that was the product of an agreement with the accused’s six lawyers. It bore little resemblance to the facts as reported by the junior officer. Judge Herb Weitzel did not have an accurate and complete record when he imposed sentence.

4. Can the VPD be trusted to investigate other incidents of alleged misconduct or excessive force within its ranks?

In my opinion, absolutely not. The Internal Investigation section of the Vancouver Police Department has proven that it is incapable of investigating its own in a thorough and unbiased manner. The Hyatt case is an excellent example. Sgt. Sweeney and Insp. Rothwell conducted a year long investigation into some fifty complaints, substantiated by video footage, that members of the VPD Crowd Control Unit needlessly clubbed civilians over the head to disperse a crowd. They produced a voluminous document that failed to identify a single officer who inflicted blows and that was characterized as a “sham” and a “cover-up” by the lawyer for the Police Complaint Commissioner. The system needs major reform.

5. What has the Police Board done to address the issues raised by this case?

Although the Vancouver Police Board describes itself as “the governing body for the Vancouver Police Department”, the silence coming from that quarter has been deafening. It resembles an ostrich with its head planted in the sand.

Check out the Chief Constable’s disposition of the case.