I write this not just as a New Year’s thought but also as one looking personally at his ninth and presumably last decade. And a sad scene I see.

From the commencement of time ownership and control of societies have been shared, preposterously unfairly, between “them that has and them that doesn’t”.

It continues today as never before. What the super rich don’t own, they control. 100s of thousands of jobs, thanks to the computer, have been exported to lands where labour is dirt-cheap and where benefits are minimal if they exist at all.

We are witnessing the corporatization of our government by the powerful. It’s an easy task, for the ordinary MP or MLA, by reason of our rotten system, does what his or her leader orders. The decisions of society are no longer made by parliaments - if they ever were - but in the corporate boardroom.

A question or two:

What say did you have re: fish farms? What say have you about the huge damage these farms present? What say have you now on new licenses?

What say have you had in the destruction our rivers by large and very rich foreign companies? Have you agreed that it’s a good thing that these private sector companies get a sweetheart deal, where they sell power to BC Hydro for more than twice what it's worth, forcing Hydro to buy this power at a huge loss when they don’t need it?

BC Hydro is technically bankrupt – is that what you thought you would have when the Campbell government set forth its private energy policy, turning over power production to rich companies like General Electric?

What say did you have in the privatization of BC Rail where the Campbell government gave our railroad away in a crooked deal that the government hushed up?

What about the Enbridge Pipeline scheduled to ship hundreds of thousands of barrels of Tar Sands gunk (aka bitumen) from the Alberta to Kitimat? Have you had a say in this matter? The only reason to send this gunk to Kitimat is so that it can be shipped down our coast through the most dangerous waters in the world – have you had a say in this?

Of course you haven’t and it's instructive, I think, to note that Premier Clark will only express her opinion after the rubber stamping National Energy Board has deliberated.

Premier Photo-Op doesn’t seem to understand that the approval of the pipeline means oil tankers at almost one a day sailing down our pristine coast line.

Is the premier that dumb?

Or is it that her government is prepared to approve tanker traffic?
 
The companies and politicians talk about minimal risk – the plain, incontrovertible fact is this:

THESE ARE NOT RISKS BUT CERTAINTIES WAITING TO HAPPEN.

The issue facing BC can be simply stated: will we give up our land and resources to the private sector and, while we do it, will we accept the destruction of our environment?

The Corporations say that these efforts, fish farms, private power, pipelines and tankers will being lots of money and lots of jobs into BC.

I ask two questions – what money and what jobs? Building fish farms, private dams and pipelines bring construction jobs, mostly to off shore crews, and leave behind a few caretakers to watch the computers. The profits go out of the province into the pockets of Warren Buffet and his ilk.

This is the fact Premier Clark must ponder and soon: will the public of BC simply accept these destructions of our beautiful province? Will they just simply shake their heads and go quietly?

In my view they won’t. Through the ages the long-suffering public takes so much and no more. Read your history, Madame Premier – there comes a tipping point where the public will take no more and in my judgment we have reached that point.

I beg of you, Premier, shake the scales from your eyes, look and think! This isn’t a right wing versus left wing matter but a question of right and wrong.

The last thing in the world I want to see is violence but I tell you fair that the decision rests upon you – if you don’t deal with the fish farmers, the energy thieves, the pipelines and tankers there will be violence, and that will be the legacy of the Campbell/Clark government.

Read this latest chapter in the saga of the Basi-Virk trial and Railgate scandal from blogger Alex G. Tsakumis. More damning evidence that Christy Clark knew much more than she has ever let on. (July 13, 2011)

Get MP3 (53 MB)

Listen to Damien Gillis' June 8 appearance on CHLY Nanaimo's "Sense of Justice". Damien and host Rae Kornberger discuss the Christy Clark Liberals and how the NDP needs to man up and earn the public's confidence.

"We're the suckers that have all this incredible wealth at our fingertips that we seem intent of squandering. That's the legacy of this government - that's the Liberal government in a nutshell. They're pissing away everything of value in this province and they're not managing these resources to the benefit of the general public."

From Public Eye Online - June 8, 2011

by Sean Holman

When Christy Clark was running for the provincial Liberal leadership, she did so using a chartered plane from one of businessman David McLean's companies, Public Eye has exclusively learned. A spokesperson for the premier has confirmed the use of that plane was recorded as a $23,035 in-kind donation from Blackcomb Aviation LP, which is part of the McLean Group of Companies. Mr. McLean is chair of the group, as well as Canadian National Railway Co. - which was the successful bidder to operate British Columbia Railway Co.

Fromt he Globe & Mail - March 15, 2011

by Mark Hume

Copies of more than one million pages of documents related to a political corruption trial, including confidential material from B.C. government cabinet meetings and internal e-mails among MLAs, must be destroyed or returned to the Crown.

In a decision released Tuesday, Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie of the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled that Dave Basi, Bob Virk and Aneal Basi cannot retain documents they obtained through disclosure in the BC Rail case.

She stated the three former government employees only had the material, which included RCMP files, to prepare their cases – and they are not entitled “to use the material for purposes collateral to making full answer and defence in this proceeding.”

Dave Basi and Mr. Virk, former ministerial aides who were convicted on fraud and breach of trust charges, had argued they should be able to keep the documents and to release them in the event of a public inquiry into the sale of BC Rail.

Aneal Basi, a low-level former government information officer, against whom charges of money laundering were dropped, had wanted to retain the material for use in possible future litigation.

But Judge MacKenzie said when the material was released to them during disclosure, all three were bound by an implied undertaking, and that undertaking has not expired even though the trial has ended.

She ordered lawyers for the three men to “deliver forthwith to the Office of the Special Prosecutor or the RCMP … any and all documents disclosed by the Crown.”

As an alternative, stated Judge MacKenzie, the lawyers can file affidavits with the Crown saying the material has been destroyed.

Crown lawyer Janet Winteringham said much of the material at issue is in electronic form, but there are also substantial paper files.

“It’s got to be over one million pages,” she said.

Michael Bolton, Dave Basi’s lawyer, said the judgment means all the material gathered during the long-running case will not be seen by the public.

“I would conclude its a decision that forecloses any public access to those materials,” he said. “I think the judgment is pretty clear.”

Dave Basi and Mr. Virk were convicted of leaking confidential government files in relation to the government’s $1-billion sale of BC Rail in 2003. They were sentenced to two years less a day under house arrest.

Read original article

We are pleased to present this new Common Sense Canadian cartoon by Gerry Hummel.

BC Liberal leadership frontrunner Christy Clark - whose possible ties to the Basi-Virk/BC Rail case have been brought to light in recent memos exposed by blogger Alex G. Tsakumis - insists the public is no longer interested in Railgate. But can her bid survive the growing calls for a Public Inquiry into the scandal?

There’s the old saw, “if a husband sends his wife flowers for no reason, there’s a reason." So be it with the BC Rail scandal – if Christy Clark, Deputy Premier at the time of the “negotiations,” or “fix," choose to suit, sees no reason for a full-fledged investigation into the mess, there’s a reason. The same applies to the other candidates for Liberal leader who were in cabinet at the time.

The reason an investigation must take place is to see if there was a crime, or more than one crime committed. I do not say that there was criminal activity, besides those of ministerial aides – but to discover the truth is critical so that if there was a crime it is disclosed and disposed of, and to remove the stain of suspicion that presently exists and may or may not be unfair.

Take for example this salient fact that arose out of the Basi-Virk case – two men close to a minister and reporting to him have admitted that they committed a crime. The logical question to arrive at is simple: if these aides committed crimes while doing work on a minister’s instruction, did that minister commit a crime?

The minister, of course, was Gary Collins, then Minister of Finance. Mr. Collins was not given the opportunity to clear his name because Crown Counsel, Bill Berardino, QC, settled the case on the eve of Mr. Collins’ appearance on the witness stand. Presumably Mr. Collins was on the list of ministers for a reason and one can assume that the Crown didn’t want him to demonstrate the innocence of the two accused.

You will remember the Sherlock Holmes story where he mentions to Watson about the dog barking at the scene and when Watson says, "but Holmes, no dog barked," and Holmes replies, “Quite. Why didn’t the dog bark?" One can apply this to Gary Collins. For several years, whenever BC Rail was mentioned, Mr. Collins' name came into the conversation as the minister responsible. Why did he never deal with the suggestions that he may have been up to no good? Isn’t that what you would do in his place?

And, when Mr. Collins was spared the witness box, why wouldn’t he then make it clear that he personally was clean, even though his employees weren’t. Isn’t that the natural thing to do? Isn’t that what you would do?

The same applies to the Premier, who was scheduled to give evidence after Mr. Collins. He might be forgiven for refusing to talk earlier – though I don’t see why – but surely he owes it to his colleagues, his supporters and, yes, the public to demonstrate that he’s not, well, a crook.

Cabinet has been silent. I don’t listen to kissy-ass radio so I’m not sure what Ms. Clark has said, but I’m advised that this has not been a big time topic on her show (though I am told her replacement Mike Smyth is taking up the issue and has given his predecessor a thorough grilling in her old time slot).

The media has a huge amount to answer for. People like me can do editorials based upon suspicions, but we have no large newspapers, TV, or radio stations to do investigations for us. I ask the columnists in this province if they applied the same standards of accountability to the Campbell government as they did to the NDP governments of the nineties. I don’t expect any answer much less an honest one.

The sale of BC Hydro in itself was a disgrace. The dream of WAC Bennett that we the citizens would get ferry service even though our community was too small to make a profit, rail service to open up the province, postponing profit, and a power company that would provide cheap power domestically and industrially has been shattered by this government.

The very least the public can expect is that these rotten decisions were made and administered honestly.

BC Rail simply doesn’t pass the smell test.

There must be a royal commission and one suspects that the politicians who resist the notion because there is no reason to, like the husband, don’t want us to put that decision to the test.

From alexgtsakumis.com - Jan 4, 2011

EXCLUSIVE/BREAKING NEWS: ‘The Basi Files’ Chapter VIII–Patrick Kinsella’s Unfettered Access to Both CN and the BC Government Through a Sham Process to Sell BC Rail

In this chapter, it’s now November 17, 2003, exactly one week before the deal to sell BC Rail to CN is formalized.

In a short, but explosive memo-to-file, Basi recounts how he spoke to then BC Liberal party Executive Director, Kelly Reichert, whom is colloquially referred to as “The Senator.”

Reichert, you’ll recall, is the brother-in-law, of legislature raid lead RCMP investigator, Kevin deBruyckere. Reichert recently left the BC Liberal Party, after consolidating control, under the tutelage of Gordon Campbell. He is replaced by another Campbell Imperial storm trooper Chad Pederson–infamous for returning calls of only compliant media, while he was Communications Director for the BC Liberals over the last decade (Translation: He must have Bill Good’s home number).

To the memo…

‘The Senator’ tells Basi of the broad-sweeping involvement of Patrick Kinsella in the deal. And for the first time Basi introduces us to the involvement of long-time BC Liberal PR spinner Randy Wood. Wood, for those of you unaware, is the long-time life partner of Marcia Smith, former MA to Stan Hagen (she preceded me) and general self-important, entirely overrated political hack, who worked with Kinsella on successive provincial campaigns along with other such chest-beating luminaries.

Reichert gives Basi the heads-up that Kinsella is sifting through the tax pool information–pivotal to CN’s position as buyer. While Kinsella stickhandles such key details, Basi writes that he is told by Reichert that Kinsella will “call Martyn (Brown, Principal Secretary/Chief of Staff to Premier Campbell) and the Premier directly if he needed anything…”

Read full story here

Alex Tsakumis is a journalist in the style of journalism in days of yore, when political reporters were expected to hold the “Establishment’s” and especially government’s feet to the fire. The days when there was incisive reporting with columnists staying with the story until the end are, alas, of a bygone era. Journalists were like pit bulls that you could not easily dislodge from the seat of your pants. Where are the fearless fighters for the truth that seemed to vanish after the NDP were defeated in 2001?
 
Because those days are gone, the Campbell government and others’ fear of exposure of wrongdoing were minimized, if not eliminated - were it not for the Basi-Virk trial. Now it’s gone.
 
Alex has come into possession of four memos-to-file by David Basi which were certified by lawyer George Jones, QC. That doesn’t mean the contents were true, of course, but it does raise serious questions about the role played by a number of people both inside and outside of the BC Cabinet. It has not been denied that Crown Counsel had possession of those documents.
 
I urge everyone to go to Alex’s website and read the memos from David Basi to the file. If they are true, serious misconduct by the government occurred during the sale period.
 
I must say from the outset that I’m not accusing specific people of any wrongdoing. What I am going to do is deal with the settlement of the Basi-Virk case and ask some pointed questions. Absent a court case, it is you, the jury of citizens who must decide.
 
The issues started shortly after the 2001 election in which Premier Campbell pledged he would not privatize BC Rail. With the election behind him, Campbell asked for bidders and three came forward.
 
Let’s try to look at this 7 year case in a nutshell.
 
Nearly a year after police raided the offices of Gary Collins, then Finance Minister, Mr. Basi and Mr. Virk were charged with multiple counts of fraud and breach of trust. The two men were said to have, amongst other things, accepted benefits from one of the bidders for the Roberts Bank spur line in return for handing over confidential documents. The defendants maintained that they had instructions from Cabinet ministers to keep the bidding going because while CN was the favoured bidder and Campbell wanted the bidding to look good because CN was run by one David McLean, long a Liberal bagman and bosom buddy of his. Indeed that’s the essence of Basi’s memos.
 
The list of witnesses in the trial for the Crown included two Cabinet Minsters with several powerful public servants. To add to this murky pond was a $300,000 payment by BC Rail to Liberal eminence grise, Patrick Kinsella, for “consulting fees during the bidding process." Not surprisingly, this prompted the other bidders to holler foul, claiming that the government favoured CN all along and that the others were just window dressing to make the bidding look real and mask the truth that CN had a slam dunk.
 
Let’s look at two things – why Crown Counsel stopped the case just as important witnesses were to be heard, and what the crash of the case meant.
 
The short answer is that the accused men wanted to "cop a plea" and plead guilty to a couple of charges, getting away without going to jail and having their $6 million legal bill paid by the government.
 
This raises, to me at any rate, the obvious question: why did Special Counsel Bill Berardino, QC, accept?
 
Berardino knew he had a strong case, obviously fortified by the fact that defence counsel were admitting, off the record, that their clients were guilty, and the strongest part of his case was yet to come.
 
Asked if there was any government pressure to end the trial, which had so far contained embarrassing allegations for the B.C. Liberal Party, Berardino said: "This is my decision. I made it on my own by myself."
 
I’m sorry, I don’t believe that and subsequent statements bear out my skepticism. When I and others expressed our incredulity at Berardino’s statement, it was then admitted that, of course, the Assistant Deputy Attorney General, knew about it but he was by statute removed from the politics and that we should recognize that “cast in stone” independence the Crown Counsel Act vested in him.
 
It’s impossible for me to accept that the Premier didn’t instruct Crown Counsel to seek terms and, after the terms were given, order their acceptance. I don’t say that Crown Counsel was untruthful, just that I don’t believe his story.
 
I’ve been in government, folks, and I know governments don’t pay out $6 million, plus another $12 million in legal expenses without knowing why.
 
Indeed, a bit of further prodding and the Deputy Attorney-General was admitted to be part of the deal, and shortly after that we learned that the Deputy Minister of Finance was also involved. Now, instead of Crown Counsel being the only one involved, the proposed settlement meant that payment would have to be authorized by Treasury Board, meaning that if Campbell didn’t know all about it before, he sure as hell did now. To me, all suspicions were confirmed - the key point being not what Mr. Berardino said or did, but the irresistible inference that Gordon Campbell and his flunkies not only knew about the deal but gave the instructions to settle.
 
Let’s look at it from another angle – why would Campbell want this trial to end ingloriously when victory was as assured as such can ever be? He knew it would look like hell to the public. Obviously this means he knew it would be even worse if he and others were forced to testify. The only possible reason Campbell could have for stopping this 7 year legal odyssey was to avoid the damage surely to come if he and former Finance Minister Gary Collins had to testify and if Basi and Virk had a chance to give their version of events.

Here’s where Alex Tsakumis' dogged determination to discover the truth comes in. He learned that Dave Basi wrote at least four memos-to-file certified by a prominent lawyer and got possession of them. If you read them - and they are available on Alex’s website - it’s all there. The bribery, the deals, the lies, and the sleaze. Could one not infer from Campbell wanting the case to end that Basi’s memos are truthful? Doesn’t this make it pretty clear that Campbell knew what was in those memos?
 
If that’s the case, Campbell knew that further testimony could place him, former ministers Gary Collins, Judith Read, and even the untouchable Patrick Kinsella in serious legal jeopardy?
 
In the famous words of Emile Zola in the Alfred Dreyfus case, “J’accuse”  the government of BC, and Premier Campbell of perverting the course of justice, then stonewalling an Independent Commission to look into this entire sordid mess. Assuming he and his colleagues' hands are clean, wouldn’t they want to demonstration before an independent commissioner?
 
Surely, if they are innocent they would be begging to have a hearing.
 
But they aren’t. The former deputy premier during the sale of BC Rail, Christy Clark has made it clear she wants no scrutiny into her acts at the time.
 
If the Campbell government does not instruct a Judicial Inquiry, one can only conclude that Basi is telling the truth.
 
That being so, other heads should roll - but of course they won't.

Dec. 14, 2010

From alexgtsakumis.com

Some time in early November, after the obvious deal cutting between the B.C. government and co-defendants David Basi and Bob Virk, I received a phone call from someone close to the prosecution and very familiar with the BC Liberal government, who was appalled by what had just transpired.

A long-time retired lawyer with a storied reputation when he practiced, this wasn’t a man who was going to suffer the spin zone, and for reasons which, in part, are entrusted with him and his client, they provided me with several bankers boxes of information related to the sale of BC Rail.

We met several times over the course of a week. He explained his position and that of his client as I listened.

After several more meetings, I traveled to Nanaimo, where he introduced me to the man who delivered what I refer to as ‘The Basi Files’.

Over the next week or so I will release one ‘Memo-to-File’ per day. They are authored by Dave Basi alone, in his own words, and after he wrote each installment they were witnessed by Victoria lawyer George Jones, Q.C. whose unimpeachable integrity is without question and whose signature I have verified.

The memos are dated from October 6th., 2003 and extend almost two months to November 25th., 2003 (the day after the sale of BC Rail to CN was formalized).

What you will read is the clearest record we have thus far of how to two key government operatives, Dave Basi and Bobby Virk, it could not have been more clear: The BC Liberal government were running a heavily skewed process whereby BC Rail, an asset that we were promised by Gordon Campbell would never be disposed of, was being sold (990 year lease) to a company run by a very close friend and bagman of the Premier of British Columbia, David McLean. Additionally, during the course of the disposal of this asset, as it becomes clear as day in subsequent installments that you will read over the next week to ten days, that breathtaking risks were taken by Basi and Virk, all to satisfy direct orders CLEARLY coming from the Office of the Premier through former Finance Minister Gary Collins. From Basi’s own words, it is evident that not only was the Premier of the Province of British Columbia, Gordon Campbell, clearly involved in directing the sale (the unseemly pressure applied by the Premier in conversations with Bob Virk are documented by Basi), but that other Ministers, including Gary Collins and Christy Clark participated in various aspects through a process designed to favour one bidder, CN, over all others.

Read full article here