The first week of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games is over and Sweden has handed back more medals than Canada has won. Canada, with its vaunted “Own the Podium” strategy, has exactly zero medals to its credit thus far, prompting much hand-wringing among the chattering classes. What’s the big deal? After all, the Olympics are nothing but a jingoistic orgy of government and corporate spending where sporting achievement is almost an afterthought…Good for the athletes for training and trying hard, but there are certainly more important things to worry about.

I am back after a (well-deserved) month long holiday abroad that included attending Tom Waits’ gig in Prague. I somehow ended up a few rows from the front, dead centre, seated between Vaclav Havel and a famous Hollywood actor. Life in Vancouver can seem pretty pedestrian after an experience like that…

I also went to Lord’s for the third day of England’s test against South Africa, which ended in a draw, and to a bunch of golf courses around Royal Birkdale, where I was fortunate to be able hoist Paddy’s Claret Jug…

The Criminal Justice Branch is appealing a ruling by the Supreme Court of British Columbia upholding the decision of the Commissioner of the Frank Paul Inquiry that found that prosecutors and former prosecutors do not enjoy immunity from explaining why no charges were laid in connection with the death of Frank Paul.

Mr. Paul, a 48 year old homeless Aboriginal man, died of hypothermia in December 1998 after a Vancouver police officer left him in an isolated commercial alleyway. No coroner’s inquest was held, no charges were laid, and BC politicians refused to yield to public pressure to hold an inquiry into the matter until last year, when a public inquiry was finally initiated. Although the inquiry was mandated to consider the response of the Criminal Justice Branch to Mr. Paul’s death, the Branch refused to deliver documents or make its prosecutors available for questioning. No date has been set for the appeal.

News is coming in that yet another young man has died after being blasted by a police TASER. By my count, this latest fatality is the 355th TASER-related death in North America.

It is difficult to come to any conclusion but that a TASER is like a 50,000 volt lightning bolt: in the majority of cases the recipient experiences enormous shock and excruciating pain but sometimes, as with lightning, the victim’s heart stops and he can’t be revived.

It is unbelievable to me that this weapon was introduced to Canadian police without any public consultation or independent safety testing and that policy-makers continue to dither about whether to remove it from the police arsenal until adequate testing and research has been done. One thing is certain; as long as police use the weapon, more people will die.

Sara Lewis, the widow of Donald Dwayne Lewis, the 5’4″ , 139 pound unarmed man shot and killed by RCMP Cst. Cole Brewer at McLeese Lake in August, 2006, has to represent herself at the coroner’s inquest into her husband’s death after repeated requests for legal aid were turned down.

The inquest has been convened in Williams Lake, BC at considerable public expense. Taxpayers fund the coroner, the coroner’s lawyer, the sheriffs, the court reporter, two lawyers for the RCMP and the dozen or so RCMP members, including media liaison representatives from Vancouver, who have been in attendance at the inquest.

Mr. Lewis’ widow, however, is forced to try to grapple with complex legal issues of admissibility of evidence and proper questions for cross-examination as she tries to find out why her wounded husband bled to death after Cst. Brewer handcuffed him to a tree.

According to Attorney General Wally Oppal’s recent letter to me, “I have great sympathy for what your client has endured, and I respect her efforts to discover the facts surrounding her husband’s death in what must be difficult circumstances. However, the government provides funding for legal representation only in very limited circumstances…family participation at a public inquest does not meet this threshold.”

The inquest continues, as do the RCMP lawyers’ efforts to portray Don Lewis, who was simply camping on Crown land when he was accosted by police, as someone who somehow deserved to die.