The train wreck that keeps on wrecking

The sale (OK 99 year lease) of BC Rail is still fresh in everybody's minds. Truthfully, it's smelly and the sudden turn of Basi and Virk to a guilty plea will never be something easily swallowed.

Somewhere, somehow, a deal was made, involving taxpayers money, at the eleventh hour, which kept Gary Collins from having to testify and becoming the subject of an intense cross-examination.

There will be head on a plate. If it's not Campbell's, then the next leader of the BC Liberals (not to be confused with real liberals) will be sufficient.

So, no, Ms. Clark. It isn't over and it hasn't been dealt with. It isn't and never was within your province to make that proclamation in any case.

Who the hell does Gordon Campbell think he is?

It would be nice if we could call Gordon Campbell the former premier of BC. Except that's not what he is. The sonofabitch gets out in front of the media last week, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in a failed pitch to regain some popularity, announces that it's time for a new leader, calls for a leadership convention and then appoints himself the interim leader until a convention produces a new face.

Listening to all the fawning and goo-gooing last week from any high placed individual who could find a microphone, one would think Gordon Campbell was one of the most popular people in BC. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Most people, for most of Campbell's time in office, despised the man. He is arrogant, self-absorbed and unbelievably condescending. All of that on top of the fact that he's outwardly two-faced. And most people didn't vote for the BC Liberals because of him; they did so despite him.

Some wiener had the temerity to suggest that Gordon Campbell was a great man having brought the 2010 Winter Olympics to Vancouver. No mention of the unbelievable wreckage he leaves in his wake, the torn up labour agreements, the secret deals with his big business buddies, soaring ferry fares, increased child poverty, ad nauseum.

And I still contend that BC Rail was sold in an effort to generate quick cash to buy his way out of the one problem the International Olympic Committee saw as an impediment to Vancouver winning the Olympic bid - the Sea to Sky highway. Further, because it all had to happen quickly, many bidders claim the sale was rigged to favour CN.

The problem now is, he's still there. He still rules over his Vancouver centric cabinet... after having effectively resigned.

Of course, since he's still there perhaps he can start answering questions surrounding the Sea to Sky highway. Or maybe get the minister responsible to start talking. Because it appears we're still being lied to by the Campbell crowd and some people are coming closer and closer to exposing a dirty secret Campbell and his capos don't want you to get to close to. 

BC Liberals (who are actually not liberal at all) need to remind themselves that Campbell is poison and the longer they let him occupy an office at 501 Belleville Street the more difficult it will be to rid themselves of the toxins.

Get rid of him. Now.

Give us someone like Kevin Falcon in the interim. We still have a few questions to ask him too.

The Sea to Sky highway, the 2010 Olympics and the BC Rail link up

Ever wonder why there are no tolls put on the Olympic legacy known as the Sea to Sky highway?

There are tolls. Campbell promised them to his big business buddies. And we're paying them. But what you may not know is that at least one journalist reported back in the early days of the Sea to Sky project that the BC Ministry of Transportation was spending money, ($166 million), gained from the sale of BC Rail to fund phase 1 of the highway project.

Think about that for a minute.

Campbell promises that he won't sell BC Rail, then, suddenly, while falsely claiming that BC Rail was a money-losing proposition, puts it on the chopping block. Ideology of a fanatic bottom-liner or was there something more sinister at work here?

Here's some meat to chew on. The Vancouver/Whistler Olympic bid was not a sure thing. In the first round Pyeongchang, South Korea led the short list with 51 votes to Vancouver's 40. Salzberg, Austria received only 16 votes which effectively eliminated that city. What that meant was that virtually all of those who had voted for Salzberg would have to shift their votes to Vancouver if the Vancouver bid was to succeed in the second round of voting.

Problem. Money. Campbell, who had a bevy of pals wrapped up in the Olympic bid process, was made fully aware that the greatest stumbling block to a successful bid was a highway between Vancouver and Whistler that was too long, too dangerous and subject to road-blocking slides. The only way to overcome that massive obstacle would be to commit to IOC officials that the thoroughfare would be totally rebuilt in time to host an Olympic party. But where would the money come from?

Sell an asset... and sell it fast. BC Rail.

On 28 August, 2002, Vancouver makes the short list of four cities bidding on the 2010 Winter Olympics. The IOC cites the Sea to Sky Highway as a problem. The Vancouver Olympic bid committee has until 10 January, 2003 to submit a bid book, complete with the proposed plan to solve the one problem cited by the IOC. * 

On 13 May, 2003, Gordon Campbell broke an election promise and announced that BC Rail would be sold.

On 2 July, 2003, the IOC announced that Vancouver would host the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

On 25 November, 2003, Campbell announced that the government had accepted the bid from CN to purchase BC Rail. (OK... a 990 year lease.) More than one of the other bidders complained that the deal had been rigged in favour of CN.

On 10 January, 2004, flush with money from the sale of BC Rail, the Campbell government releases a Capital Project Plan known as the Sea to Sky highway improvement project.

If you don't smell something there your nose isn't working.

Over to Laila Yule.

* Paragraph added as update.

Now that it's over, let's get started. BC Rail ain't near dead yet

The sudden termination of the BC Rail trial, convenient in that it comes just days before BC premier and convicted drunk driver Gordon Campbell addresses the citizens of British Columbia while they're washing up from supper on 27 October, doesn't mean it's all over.

As The Gazetteer points out, with the sham over and the judicial gag order ended, we can start asking questions again and we can start pointing at facts and timelines which were hitherto subject to a publication ban.

One of the mysteries of the whole BC Rail sale scandal was the sudden and unexpected departure of BC Rail point man and then BC Finance Minister, Gary Collins. There is speculation that Collins was about to be interviewed by the RCMP regarding certain cabinet documents. Indeed, Collins was to be next into the witness box when the defendants of the corruption trial suddenly changed their pleas to "guilty" and prevented the defence examination of Collins.

Convenient. And it remains just as mysterious. The question now centers around whether certain lawyers and deputy ministers were involved in an obstruction of justice and whether there was a violation of the Dhom Protocol, a court ordered procedure to allow police access to cabinet documents. If there was such a violation then the parties involved were in contempt of court.

A further question exists: Was Gary Collins warned in advance that he was to be questioned by the RCMP? And if so, who warned him?

Well it’s over now.  So where’s the investigation into obstruction of justice and other violations of the Criminal Code with respect to the Premier’s office handling of documents at the heart of the investigation?

What we really need to know is this.  Could Dobell have warned Gary Collins that he was about to be interviewed by the RCMP regarding key documents in the case?  After all he met him in cabinet at least once a week.  And doesn’t that constitute contempt of Justice Dohm’s order?  Or maybe even obstruction of justice?

Gary Collins was supposed to be next up.  Wouldn’t those be questions the defence might have wanted to ask?  How convenient for the Premier’s office that that won’t take place now.

Back to that 27 October, 7 pm address by Campbell on Global TV. You can make book that the BC Rail sale and the corruption which surrounded it won't be mentioned. This will be Campbell pleading for his political life over the fiasco created by the introduction of Harmonized Sales Tax. While that event has cut the residents of BC to the quick, it is nothing to compared to the waste laid to the province by a bunch of right-wing ideologues who regularly demonstrate that they hate all but the wealthiest of BC's citizens.

For a list you have to read Laila Yuile. And we should all read Laila Yuile.

The Savary Island mystery...

First... you get into The Gazetteer's Friday BC Rail post.

Then you get into the comments section of that post. You notice a smell. Then you realize that the smell is not the Savary Island septic tanks - it's coming from Belleville Street in Victoria.

RailGate - Game On!

NaPo : B.C. devalued rail in order to sell, court hears

"The B.C. government concocted a conspiracy to devalue a provincially owned railway in order to justify its sale, jurors at a political corruption trial heard yesterday."
Defence lawyer Kevin Mc-Cullough also made the startling suggestion that "the fix was in" to sell B.C. Rail to Canadian National Rail Co. and to spurn other bidders. He made the remarks as he cross-examined Crown witness Martyn Brown, who is chief of staff to B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell.

Campbell's chief of staff characterized the suggestion as "absurd", but luckily RossK at the Gazetteer has a very long memory.

Bloomberg : CNR’s Purchase of BC Rail Was Rigged, Lawyer Alleges

Canadian National Railway Co.’s C$1 billion ($956 million) acquisition of government-owned BC Rail Ltd. in 2003 was rigged from the start, with British Columbia’s premier intent on handing over the operation to a former fundraiser, a lawyer said today at a trial.
“The fix was in for CNR to get the assets from the beginning,” said Kevin McCullough, a lawyer representing Bob Virk, who is accused of accepting bribes in exchange for information about the sale while working as assistant to the province’s transportation minister.
Virk, and David Basi, a former aide to British Columbia’s finance minister, are charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes for passing on secret information to one of the bidders for BC Rail in exchange for cash and favors.
Basi’s cousin, Aneal Basi, a former government communications officer, was charged with money laundering."

After six years of waiting for this to get to trial, you might need a wee refresher.

Meanwhile RossK fisks recent Canadian noosemedia coverage.

Post title rudely pillaged from RossK.

Was land development the real reason for privatizing BC Rail?

.
Laila Yuile follows the money.
.

Hats off to BC Mary at The Legislature Raids

She not only scoops Big Media on this one ; she drives it.

From Ian Mulgrew at the Vancouver Sun :
Drug dealer linked to legislature raid imprisoned
RCMP oddly silent about key victory against cocaine ring :

"The key figure in Project Every Which Way, the organized crime investigation that triggered the raid on the legislature half a decade ago, has been convicted and sentenced to nine years' imprisonment.
This significant event went apparently unreported until it appeared on citizen journalist Mary Mackie's blog [The Legislature Raids] and was brought to my attention Monday.
I was surprised no one in the federal prosecutor's office or the RCMP had issued a statement since this is the organized crime connection that led to the raid on legislature offices Dec. 28, 2003."

Does anyone still expect a Basi Virk trial anytime before Gordo retires?
Mary does. Vehemently.
She's been covering it almost daily ever since she noticed no one else was, save Tieleman and the Tyee, and she has been dogging media types to report this for months.

As she says in comments at The Gazetteer :

"Hard to believe that the guy whose activities had launched the raids on the BC legislature, had been on trial - in Victoria - and 3 months later, nobody had noticed?? I posted the details under a clear headline: Jasmohan Singh Bains sentenced to 9 years -- so that Google couldn't miss it. I thought it would be news. Real news.
But apart from my own wonderful commentors, it seemed that nobody noticed.

I was so sure that the Bains trial and evidence were important to the BC Rail issues, I kept mentioning it, wherever an opportunity presented itself. Such as during that crazy week in Victoria when Dave Basi was in Supreme Court on charges of A.L.R. bribery ... and he was in another Supreme Courtroom on matters relating to BC Rail -- and still NOTHING in the newspapers!

I kept talking to the CanWest journalists; I kept saying "Don't let this be like the Bains trial where nobody knows ..." But that's pretty much what happened ... nobody would have known about that either, except for Bill Tieleman's blog and mine.

Why was I so determined? Because I have never forgotten that press conference, the day after police raided the BC Legislature, when RCMP Staff Sgt John Ward explained it by talking about Organized Crime being a cancer at all levels of society. I figured he was talking over the heads of our leadership, telling us things he knew nobody else would willingly tell us. I still believe that. So, apparently, does Ian Mulgrew.

So one day a week or two ago, I was writing to Ian to compliment him on a column he had just written. I added, "I just wish you'd been assigned to the Basi Virk case, then we might've heard about the Bains trial ..."
Next thing I knew, Ian Mulgrew's story was in Vancouver Sun.
Ian -- alone of all the West Coast journalists -- not only realized the significance of the Bains trial, but barrelled right past his CanWest handlers and got his story into print."

Backgrounder :
The busted drug dealer here is Jasmohan Singh Bains, cousin to Dave Basi.
Basi was ministerial assistant to then BC Finance Minister Gary Collins.
Bob Virk was ministerial assistant to BC Transportation Minister Judith Reid.
An anonymous informant tipped off the RCMP that Basi was laundering money for Bains.
A subsequent RCMP wiretap on Bains led to both Liberal aides being charged with fraud, bribery, breach of trust, and accepting money in exchange for info on the sale of the Crown corporation BC Rail in November 2003.
Another cousin, government media analyst Aneal Basi, is accused of money laundering for allegedly accepting cheques and transferring funds to Basi from a partner at Pilothouse, the lobby firm for one of the US bidders for BC Rail.
Constable Ravinder Singh Dosanjh, now suspended from the Victoria police force, is charged with obstruction of justice in connection with this investigation.

And now, after six friggin years, there will be yet another one year delay in the trial while the Supreme Court decides whether defense lawyers may be shown the sensitive boondoggley government documents identifying the informant.
.
Good to know Mary will be on it.
.
Updated to include Mary's comment at The Gazetteer.
.
Cross-posted at Creekside