A match made in heaven!

The Public Eye (Truth To Power - www.accesstoinfo.blogspot.com; vicpopuli1@gmail.com) has left a new comment on your post, "Thank you Mr. Populi!"

Clare,

I'm surprised at you. Obviously, you've never seen the movie Natural Born Killers, which I would recommend you do post-haste as it is arguably one of the finest films of the '90s. (Some of us would go further and contend it is the finest movie ever made. But that is a discussion for another day.)

I don't want to go too far in eliminating the mystery here - after all, that's another incentive for one and all to go see the movie. Suffice it to say that the odd kinship (and pragmatic alliance of interests) that develops between the two odious film characters depicted in the screenshot is more than a little reminiscent of that which appeared over time to ferment between Lionel Chartrand and the Manitoba Metis Federation.
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Dear Mr. Populi:

Thank you very much for writing. We're struggling to keep up with your vast knowledge of cinematography and old television shows, however, we did find a trailer for Natural Born Killers.
Lionel Chartrand and the MMF leadership are meant for and deserve each other. After preparing a Statement of Defence as an unrepresented Defendant (April 2005), we talked with Winnipeg lawyer Regan Thatcher who, after perusing Murray Trachtenberg's (www.ptlaw.mb.ca; mtrachtenberg@ptlaw.mb.ca) Statement of Claim smiled, glanced up and said, "This looks like Murray's retirement project." Little did he know at the time how close to the truth he would come.

Mr. Thatcher advised he could not take the case because of a possible conflict of interest involving a Manitoba Legal Aid lawyer with whom he sometimes worked on certain cases. We later discovered back in mid-December of 2004, Lionel Chartrand had been offered a retainer agreement by President Chartrand probably drafted by none other than, yes folks, Murray Trachtenberg. It called for a $2,500 monthly payment in return for providing legal advice to the MMF regarding Metis gathering rights. In a subsequent e-mail exchange with Lionel Chartrand he confirmed he'd entered into a personal Services contract but had not yet received any payment.

Recall, in the early days of the Metis National Council's lawsuit against Yvon Dumont, prosecuted by the same Murray Trachtenberg, it was none other than Regan Thatcher who represented Mr. Dumont. We have reasonable grounds for believing he was assisted by none other than Lionel Chartrand. However, not being the lawyer of record his name would not have appeared on any official documents filed with the Court.

From a highly respected, very well plugged-in member of Manitoba's Metis community we subsequently learned David Chartrand initially had no idea how deeply Lionel Chartrand had been involved in lobbying for then writing the election finance reform petition which appeared on CyberSmokeSignals in January of 2004 and that the Federation is now claiming to be defamatory. When he eventually found out, Mr. L. Chartrand's monthly payments were reduced to occasional dribs and drabs. In the end, apparently he was owed something in the order of $30,000 but what was he going to do sue the MMF?

This is why we said at the outset the current MMF leadership and Lionel Chartrand are meant for and deserve each other.

Our correspondence, Mr. Populi, is increasingly starting to read like a movie review. This plot is not even a B-Grade. We give it an F+.

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk