"So ya gonna vote for Romney ya effen little punk ..... well are ya?"

"So what's the problem little RBC man? Ate too much popcorn and fell asleep at the switch did we ..... well did we?"

RBC Dominion Securities and two of its employees fined $700,000 in Earl Jones Case

By Paul Delean
Tuesday, August 14, 2012

A screen grab of Earl Jones being interviewed by the SQ (Surete du Quebec) on July 27, 2009. Jones who passed himself off as a financial adviser, htough he was never licensed as one, was convicted of defrauding clients of millions of dollars in a Ponzi scheme. (Photograph by Quebec Police)

MONTREAL — RBC Dominion Securities and two employees of its Place Ville-Marie branch will pay $700,000 in fines for having “failed in their gatekeeper duty” and allowed Earl Jones to transact freely in RBC accounts from 2003 to 2008.

Jones was sentenced in 2010 to 11 years in jail for defrauding 158 clients of an estimated $50 million.

Royal Bank concluded a $17-million settlement with victims earlier this year.

In a decision dated Monday, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC), which oversees investment dealers, provided details of a settlement concluded with RBC Dominion Securities and employees Jean-Pierre Ménard and Serge Leclaire.

Ménard and Leclaire will pay fines of $100,000 apiece and RBC Dominion Securities will ante up $500,000. The two men also are suspended for six months.

They “admitted that they failed in their gatekeeper duty when they allowed Earl Jones to have numerous trading authorizations for numerous unrelated clients and did not question certain withdrawals from certain accounts for which Earl Jones had trading authorization,” IIROC said in a statement.

pdelean@montrealgazette.com

"I'm a Romney Girl" starring Miss Swiss Bank Account

Why Switzerland is no amused by Miss Swiss Bank Account (a.k.a. Romney Girl)

The country is chagrined that it continues to be thought of as the hideaway for ill-gotten gains. Why don't Americans pick on Delaware?

By Helena Bachmann/Geneva
Thursday, August 30, 2012

According to what passes for a biography, Heidi Svenda Bernasconi, a.k.a  “Miss Swiss Bank Account,” is originally from Ostermundigen, a town of 15,000 people in central Switzerland. The daughter of a cuckoo clock maker and a Nestle chocolate factory worker, she recently moved to Searchlight, Nevada, joining a Swiss expat community of retired yodelers and milkmaids.

With her braided blonde hair and a traditional Swiss costume, this sexier version of the quintessential Swiss mountain girl is a self-proclaimed “Romney Girl.” She reportedly met the presidential contender while she worked as a tax consultant at the UBS bank in Geneva, where the former head of Bain Capital frequently showed up unannounced and shouted, “Thank God for amnesty!”

Perhaps Miss Swiss Bank Account would have continued a life of anonymity, yodeling for Searchlight’s 539 residents and milking cows in the Nevada desert, if she hadn’t recorded her first single, “I’m a Romney Girl.”

And that’s when the trouble began.

Released last month, the video clip, which so far received over half a million hits on YouTube, exalts the virtues of a “taxless life” and boasts about Romney’s accounts in offshore tax shelters, including Switzerland.

If this story sounds unreal, that’s because it is. Although she has her own website – where she can be seen posing not only with Romney, but also with Newt Gingrich – Miss Swiss Bank Account is as fictional as Heidi herself.

The song, a parody of the 1990s hit “Barbie Girl,” is clearly intended as a tongue-in-cheek dig at Romney’s unwillingness to release his tax records and his now-closed bank account in Switzerland. Swiss authorities, however, are not amused.

“The clip gives the impression that having a bank account in Switzerland is dubious in itself, and its only aim is to hide money from the tax authorities,” Switzerland’s Foreign Ministry said soon after the video was released.

And Swiss Embassy officials in Washington complained about it to President Obama’s campaign staff. But the clip turned out to be the brainchild of the Agenda Project /Action Fund, an “organization dedicated to ensuring that public officials serve regular Americans,” according to its website, and not affiliated with the Obama campaign.

Still, it is easy to understand why the Swiss are annoyed by the clip’s not-so-subtle allusions to their country as a haven for tax evaders – especially since this is not the first American jab at Switzerland’s banks.

Throughout the campaign, Obama’s re-election team has run TV ads showing Romney singing “America the Beautiful” against the backdrop of the Swiss flag and a headline saying, “He had millions in a Swiss bank account.”

“Each misleading comment about our banks is harmful to our reputation,” Sindy Schmiegel, a spokesperson for the Swiss Bankers Association, an umbrella group representing the nation’s financial institutions tells TIME. “We make every effort to explain to everyone everywhere that we mange only taxed assets and have strict measures in place to prevent criminal activities.”

In fact, Switzerland’s reputation as a hiding place for ill-gotten gains is unjustified. Various laws make money laundering illegal and require that suspicious deposits be reported to the authorities. And numbered or anonymous bank accounts are a myth — all financial institutions in Switzerland must identify their customers and ensure that the funds come from legitimate sources.

But despite all the strictly enforced laws and regulations, Switzerland can’t shake off its longstanding reputation for “dirty” banking, even though the Swiss media often points out that thousands of “dummy” companies set up in Delaware are helping U.S. corporations evade taxes in their own country.

So how can the Swiss deal with the damage that the Romney Girl may or may not have inflicted on their country’s image?

The answer could lay in the geographic confusion. As a Geneva politician Manuel Tornare suggested last week in an interview with the Edipresse media group, “If you are a Swiss person in America, a lot of people will think you are from Sweden. Some of them will even tell you how beautiful Stockholm is.”

The Swedes may not like the sound of it, but to the Swiss, this solution may indeed be something to sing about.

Jeezus Harry and your point is .....?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Yes you can but is it wise?

Good Day Folks:

It seems every few months this topic comes up again as it undoubtedly will in the future. The answer always seems to reduce to, yes you can but is it wise, bearing in mind placing valour before discretion may not be the most judicious choice given there likely won't be a police officer on every corner to help you should you need one.

Oh for sure, you can visit Winnipeg's McLaren Hotel, "A friendly place to meet people!" on a Saturday night  to flash a big wad of cash and be well within your rights but is it wise? Or what about walking through one of the city's high crime areas alone late at night or early in the morning with a 24 of beer? No laws are being broken but is it wise?

Why needlessly tempt fate when discretion is the better part of valour?

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

Krista Ford apologizes for causing 'alarm' with a tweet
Thrusday, August 30, 2012

Krista Ford has apologized for some controversial online advice she provided to women about personal safety.

The morning after Ford tweeted that women shouldn’t “dress like a whore,” she posted a message saying she was sorry.

“I didn’t mean to cause such an alarm and I apologize if I did. I just want women to be safe,” Ford tweeted on Thursday morning.
 
Krista Ford, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's niece, was a high-profile member of a Toronto women's football team, the Toronto Triumph, part of the Lingerie Football League. (Facebook)

Hours before, the daughter of Toronto Councillor Doug Ford and the niece of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford had written the following message on Twitter: “Stay alert, walk tall, carry mace, take self-defence classes & don’t dress like a whore.”

The controversial tweet was posted shortly after Toronto police held a news conference to warn women in a downtown neighbourhood about a string of sexual assaults.

The tweet has since been removed.

Ford was a high-profile member of a Toronto women's football team, the Toronto Triumph, part of the Lingerie Football League. Ford quit the team.

Her advice to "carry mace" is also controversial, since mace is a prohibited and restricted weapon.

A similar comment from a Toronto police officer led to the creation of the Slut Walk, which has spread to cities across North America and Europe.

Const. Michael Sanguinetti said during a personal security conference at York University in January 2011 that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."

Sanguinetti later apologized for the comment.

Slut Walk Toronto responded to Ford's comments on Thursday.

In a statement it said, "What Krista said was problematic for many reasons, including placing the onus for preventing sexual assault on a potential victim, pointing to clothes as a reason or inciting factor of sexual assault (time and time again proven to be untrue), and shaming survivors with 'don't dress like a whore.'
When anyone says that 'dressing like a whore' makes someone liable to be raped, they're blaming existing survivors for their own victimization."

So you think an apostrophe was one of Jesus' 12 disciples ..... eh? Jeezus!

Good Day Readers:

This posting was inspired by an interview this morning with Kyle Weins on CBC Radio's Q hosted by Jian Ghomeshi.

Admittedly, Mr. Weins may be a tad anally fixated on the rules of grammar but he does make some valid points. Besides, his business acumen and successes to date cannot be ignored. Had to smile about his apostrophe comments. Have a friend who is always putting them where they don't belong and vice versa.

It seems in this age of instantaneous communication (texting/e-mail), people are becoming increasingly sloppy in their use of basic grammar/spelling or more correctly the lack thereof. Rightly or wrongly, what they sometimes may fail to appreciate is this is your fingerprint on which much may be judged especially if you're college/university educated and corresponding with a prospective employer or client. Which is more impressive a letter with well-turned words and phrases or something obviously "slammed" together and unproofed? Is not the former a sign of respect? Like a signature, grammar/spelling quietly speaks volumes.

Do you appreciate having to write the person back to ask, "Did you mean this or that" or the extra time spent trying to figure out what the hell they meant?

After several years lecturing at the university and college level (Economics/Business Administration), it soon became apparent one of the big challenges was teaching basic grammar 101. Don't know how many times we heard, "But professor I used spell check!" Perhaps so little darlings but you still must be able to recognize the difference between two/to/too or their/there or than/then ..... and, yes, its and it's.

Our favourite story? The young single parent with a daughter who insisted on using "weather" when what she meant was "whether." Well, after about the third time correcting her written assignments couldn't stand it any longer so felt compelled to draw a little sun, a cloud and rain drops explaining this is "weather" you mean the other one.

After class she complained it was content that was important not grammar/spelling. After duly noting if she observed her young daughter misspelling a word our using obviously improper grammar that stuck out like a sore thumb, would she not feel the need to correct her? End of conversation. It seemed the young lady doth protest too much, methinks.

And one other thing while still at it. Please oh please no more of those 23 sentence paragraphs - six to seven sentences maximum thank you very much. Not only are the optics much, much better but studies have shown readers absorb more information when it's broken down into smaller bits and pieces. Further, stop continually using the same noun, adjective, verb or adverb over and over and over again.

The Two Little Golden Rules:

(1) If you cannot explain a situation in one page you probably don't understand it, therefore, 22-pages isn't going to help

(2) Whatever you write, it should make sense to anyone totally unfamiliar with the situation

End of lecture glad I said it. Amen! Time to get back to work.

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

Why language isn't computer code
Tuesday, July 31, 2012 R.L.G. | New York

On July 20th, Kyle Wiens, who runs two technology companies, wrote a blog post for Harvard Business Review titled, "I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here's Why."  The nub:

If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.

The jokes don't quite work. (
If you think "Apostrophe" belongs among James, Peter and John, your problems are bigger than grammar. The substitution of "apostrophe" for "apostle" is so silly I misunderstood the joke the first time round.) But the sentiment is sensible enough:

Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're.

You won't be hired at The Economist, either, if you can't tell a semicolon from a colon or a colon from a colonoscope. Mr Wiens goes on to say that "In the same vein, programmers who pay attention to how they construct written language also tend to pay a lot more attention to how they code." This is plausible. "Detail-oriented" may be a stable and global personality trait: people with it will not only write prose and code painstakingly, but will not bounce cheques, leave home without their keys or sign the restaurant bill before inspecting it. Such people are valuable in many jobs.

There are also direct analogies between natural language and computer code. Well-written code is light on the computer's memory, and runs smoothly; well-written prose is easy on the reader's working memory, and reads easily. Badly written code will cause errors in execution; badly written prose can cause errors in interpretation. Some people will never learn to write. Some will never learn to code.

But Mr Wiens goes too far on one point. (And not when he says he has a "zero tolerance approach," which most professional editors would change to "zero-tolerance approach")  He says "at its core, code is prose."

No, it isn't.

He appeals to authority: "according to Stanford programming legend Donald Knuth [programmers] are 'essayists who work with traditional aesthetic and literary forms.'" I'm not qualified to judge Mr Knuth's status as a legendary programmer, but I am qualified to say that he was either being poetic here, or talking out of his colon. Show me a block of code in picaresque, tragedy or folktale.

Or let me appeal to authority myself:

Although formal and natural languages have many features in common—tokens, structure, syntax, and semantics—there are many differences:

ambiguity: Natural languages are full of ambiguity, which people deal with by using contextual clues and other information. Formal languages are designed to be nearly or completely unambiguous, which means that any statement has exactly one meaning, regardless of context

redundancy: In order to make up for ambiguity and reduce misunderstandings, natural languages employ lots of redundancy. As a result, they are often verbose. Formal languages are less redundant and more concise

literalness: Natural languages are full of idiom and metaphor. If I say, "The other shoe fell," there is probably no shoe and nothing falling. Formal languages mean exactly what they say

A hippy linguist railing against sticklers and their "proper grammar"? No, this is from Allen Downey, Jeffrey Elkner and Chris Meyers' book "How To Think Like A Computer Scientist: Learning with Python"

The disanalogies between computer code and language are as important as the analogies. A single missing character or bit of puntuation will cause a computer program to run improperly, while the "c" omitted from "punctuation" back there probably only caused you to slow down for a fraction of a second, if you noticed it at all. The literalness of computers is the source of human nightmares; if they ever decide that the world will be better off without humans, computers will wipe us out without shedding a tear. The difference between human communication and computer code is also behind much real-world confusion and irritation. Decades of brilliant research and billions of dollars spent has given us computers that can handle human language only as well as the flawed Siri, when the average five-year-old, with no formal training at all, can understand language Siri couldn't dream of parsing.

The understanding of "language as code" (or "code as prose") is behind some of the more wrong-headed forms of language sticklerism. Using "its" for "it's" is a mistake that annoys sensible readers. But it doesn't cause their brains to crash in the same way that using "whiel" for "while" will cause a program to malfunction.

Believing that such errors are equivalent and that writing "crashes" on a single glitch, though, leads to an obsessive focus on rules over style and content. This probably leads further to worrying overly about non-rules ("that"/"which" or split infinitives, say). If language-as-code is taken too literally, the idea of optional rules, levels of formality, dialects, idiolects, variation, natural change over time and sheer fun will not compute. All the rules must be obeyed all the time. Of course different programmers have different styles (and there are a few "optional rules" in computer languages), but style is not syntax: programmers are not free to play with the rules as Joyce or Faulkner did.

There are kinds of writing—legal writing and technical documentation, say—where the importance of eliminating all ambiguity makes prose almost like computer code. Mr Wiens may be right to hire only people who write like programmers. But most of us know computer wizards who can't write competently (they're too busy coding), and good writers who couldn't program "Hello, world!" (they're too busy writing on the tools the coders built for them). Fundamentally, good writers are empathetic, human and stylish. Good coders are literal, formal and algorithmic. To take the coding-as-prose analogy too far is to misunderstand the essence of both. 

The self-rep!

Dear CyberSmokeBlog:

Regarding your article about Appeal Court Judge Martin Freedman apparently retiring because of the 75-year mandatory age limit to return to his former BigLaw firm, he's still listed on the courts website

http://www.manitobacourts.mb.ca/ca/ca_judges.html.

If he has left or is leaving I'd say 10 years is a fairly respectable stint on the Bench, though I note he's the exception for not having been promoted from a lower court.

I have a problem though with these people going back to being barristers. We really do need a complete separation between Bar and Bench. The appointments are for "life." That's a commitment that should cut both ways. How would you feel if as a self-represented person in front of Judge Freedman you lost to a party represented by counsel from his old law firm and then he goes back there? Do they actually believe that's OK?

Oh, and a reminder. Guy Pratte wasn't the first one to quite the Douglas Inquiry. That distinction goes to Ontario Chief Justice Warren Winkler before it actually got under way.

Chris Budgell
Vancouver

Dear Mr. Budgell:

Thank you very much for contacting CyberSmokeBlog.

We're quietly confident our information is accurate. While both sources requested anonymity one should be well-positioned. Besides, if you check Martin Freedman received his Bachelor's Degree in 1958 some 54 years ago which would make him awfully close to 75 if he's not already there. Once a formal announcement is made you'll likely see his name removed from the Manitoba Courts website to be replaced by Vic Toews? Perish the thought!

As for a separation of Bar and Bench completely agree, however, reality strongly suggests, the two are "as thick as thieves."

Regarding your example of a possible conflict of interest, that situation should be easily circumvented. Any Justice or Judge worth their weight in salt should self-declare from the get go and if necessary recuse. Otherwise, they could be leaving themself wide open to a possible challenge in the Manitoba Court of Appeal. By the way, earlier this year that's exactly what happened - should have stepped aside "Your Honour!"

Earlier this year we attended a Hearing before Justice Shane Perlmutter a recent Thompson Dorfman Sweatman graduate.

A group opposed to the Harper government's plan to de-monopolize the Canadian Wheat Board had applied for an emergency injunction to force a judicial review. At the time the Conservatives were moving at breakneck speed to bulldoze the CWB. He immediately began by declaring while at TDS the firm had the Canadian Wheat Board as a client but he was never directly involved with any of these files. No one objected.

Yes, Chief Justice Warran Winkler who headed the Canadian Judicial Council's Selection Committee which appointed "Pratte the Cat" did, in fact, resign. As we recall, at the time he cited a heavy workload.

Keep up the great work you're doing on the west coast keeping the judiciary honest!

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

Nutcracker Hillary and Corkscrew Bill

Good Day Readers:

With the Republican National Convention currently underway and the Democrats to follow shortly, ever noticed the proliferation of political paraphernalia that inevitably occurs?

Well, the Liberals will be holding theirs come next April but so far we've seen nothing. Why aren't candidates here busy marketing gadgets so they will not have to be so dependent on taxpayer contributions to cover campaign expenses? Have we got some neat ideas for Justin Trudeau!

It just seems American politicians are so much more entrepreneurial than their Canadian counterparts.

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

Martin Freedman on the move?

Good Day Readers:

We have spent part of the day chasing down rumours Manitoba Court of Appeal Judge Martin Freedman has reached the mandatory retirement age of 75 and will be leaving the bench to re-join his former BigLaw firm Aikins McCauley. A formal announcement is not expected until sometime after the Labour Day weekend.

For Douglas Inquiry aficionados, you may recall he testified last month regarding his involvement as Head of the Judicial Appointments Committee that was responsible for recommending to The Office of the Commissioner for Judicial Affairs Canada, and ultimately the Federal Minister of Justice, that Lori Douglas be appointed to the Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench.

Will this pave the way for the appointment of Vic Toews to the Manitoba Court of Appeal as has been heavily rumoured?

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

"Hello Sweetheart, could you bring me a new file and some more of that great 'wheelchair' pot on your next visit?"

Ottawa seeks to stop cellphone use in prisons
Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Criminals who run their operations from behind bars using mobile devices could soon be left searching for cell service.
The federal government is asking companies how to stop prisoners from making calls on smuggled cellular and smart phones, tablets and other wireless devices.

Such devices are banned in jails — but evidently, that hasn't stopped prisoners from getting hold of them.

"Though this prohibition is rigidly enforced, upon occasion, mobile devices are recovered by correctional officers from inmates within an institution," says a notice posted Tuesday on a government contracts website.

"It is, therefore, of significant importance for [the Correctional Service of Canada] to develop an effective and sustainable method of preventing the use of mobile devices by inmates in support of its public safety mandate. To that end, CSC seeks a solution to impede the use of contraband mobile devices within the confines of correctional institutions across Canada."

The notice gives no indication about the extent of the problem in Canadian prisons. The Correctional Service could not immediately provide any statistics about the number of mobile devices that have been confiscated in jails.

However, a written government response to a recent report by the House of Commons public safety committee sheds some light on the issue.

"Despite current efforts, cellphones continue to serve as a conduit for inmates to engage in criminal activities, both inside and outside penitentiary walls," says the government's letter to the committee's chair, Conservative MP Kevin Sorenson, dated August 8.

The letter lists some ways jails try to keep out mobile devices, such as searches of inmates and visitors, X-ray baggage scanners and metal detectors.

"While detection and prevention tools are useful, each has limitations and despite continued efforts to detect and seize these devices, rendering these devices ineffective may prove to be the most effective means of disrupting these criminal activities," it says.

One avenue being explored is signal-jamming technology, which is banned in Canada because it can block emergency calls. Both the government's letter and the notice posted Tuesday indicate an openness to signal-jamming tools, provided they don't interfere with 911 calls.

Companies have also been asked if technology exists that would allow corrections officers to power off prisoners' phones or to make them ring so guards can find them more easily.

Smuggled cellphones are a hot commodity in American prisons. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation says authorities confiscated 2,800 mobile devices in California jails alone in 2008 and the problem is only getting worse.

Prisoners were found to be using the devices to intimidate and threaten witnesses, send offensive photos to victims, orchestrate crimes, co-ordinate escapes, bribe prison guards and order retaliation against other inmates, the two-year-old FBI report says.

The FBI cited one instance in which a correctional officer reported earning more than $100,000 by charging prisoners $100 to $400 per device. Prisoners were found to be charging each other up to US$50 for each call, the report adds.

"At one time, drugs and tobacco served as the contraband of choice by prisoners," the FBI says. "Now, wireless phones are becoming popular."

"Fore!"

A harbinger of what was to come?

Hi Clare,

Just read your quiz piece. Nicely done. Good questions can always trump answers (even good ones).

Yesterday, after receiving the Canadian Judicial Council notice of Guy Pratte's resignation, I mailed a link to Ms Blatchford (National Post veteran reporter Christie Blatchford) and actually got a thank you reply.

http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/Pratte-a-porter.html

This is a bit long but worth reading. I subsequently discovered that it is referred to in Guy Pratte's bio at Borden Ladner Gervais (www.blg.com). If we accept the highly laudatory profile, then his resignation might signal a very serious dynamic within the legal/judicial realm perhaps of seismic proportions. Now I wonder where BLG fits in the rarified world of the senior law firms?

Chris Budgell

Hi Chris,

Thank you very much for the e-mail. Never mind about the nice quiz but did you pass it ..... well did you?

Indeed, good questions can sometimes trump answers just look at the House of Commons where it's called "Question Period" not "Answer Period." Usually, the question reveals much more than the meandering, vague  reply you'll get from a government Member of Parliament.

Ah yes, Ms Blatchford. Had occasion to meet her at the Douglas Inquiry where I often sat next to here in the  gallery's front row. Was somewhat taken aback when she mentioned she was aware of CyberSmokeBlog - liked it's writing style and format. For the project you're spearheading, about which CSB will have more to say shortly, she'd be a good person with whom to keep in touch. Just tell her Clare sent you ..... that will guarantee you get your foot in the door - that or stepped on!

Our fondest memory was how she often went to the Tim Hortons on the main floor during breaks in the Douglas Inquiry - always offered to bring us back a coffee.

The article in The Canadian Lawyer was perhaps a harbinger of what was to come with Guy Pratte's resignation. The real test will arrive say three years down the road after the Inquiry has completed its work and the dust has had time to settle. Will the CJC have done anything significant to re-invent itself or will it still be same old, same old different pile?

And yes, we're going to miss Team Independent Counsel who affectionately came to know as "Pratte the Cat" and "Crain the Pain." Will be interesting to see who their replacements are - we'll just have to come up with some new names.

Thank you for the link to the Canadian Lawyer Magazine. Its articles are always very well-researched and written.

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

Pratte -a-porter
Written by Richard Cleroux
Issue Date: July 2008

It may have been Sigmund Freud who described us as little more than the grown adults of the children we once were.

That may apply to Guy Pratte, one of the best civil litigators in the country, the lawyer all politicians and bureaucrats want when they are called up before a Royal commission. He defended Jean Chrétien’s right-hand man Jean Pelletier at the Gomery sponsorship scandal inquiry in 2005, and lately he’s been at the side of former prime minister Brian Mulroney before the Commons ethics committee and, soon, before a commission of inquiry.

Peel him back and what you find inside Guy Pratte inevitably goes back to a particular Royal commission in the summer of 1975 in a crowded room in the law building of Montreal’s McGill University. The inquiry was set up by then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau to investigate business practices at Air Canada that had strayed beyond its Crown corporation mandate. The chairman and chief executive officer of the airline was Pratte’s father, Yves Pratte, one of Quebec’s top business lawyers. That inquiry destroyed Yves Pratte, who was made the fall guy. He was never the same afterwards and it marked young Guy forever.

As CEO, the senior Pratte had tried to modernize the Crown-owned airline. Air Canada indulged in a little vertical integration — buying into the Sunset Crest resort in Barbados to help fill seats going south — against Crown corporation regulations, and making side deals with travel agencies — McGregor Travel in Montreal — also against the rules. Today those moves would pass unnoticed and even be great for business, but back then it was enough to warrant a public inquiry.

It attracted some of the best lawyers in Canada, including Jack Campbell, Richard Mongeau, and Yves Fortier. Trudeau appointed Justice Willard “Bud” Estey as commission head, but in the end it was Yves Pratte’s head they got. “My father was fired,” says his son. “I saw the letter from the guy in Saskatchewan” (likely Otto Lang, then transport minister). It was a shock to the young Pratte. His father was like a god to him. He didn’t believe such a thing could ever happen. “After that, I remember my father leaving the house in Montreal in the morning with a little serviette [briefcase] with a CV looking for a job.”

Despite his experience, the elder Pratte couldn’t find a job. His son recalls: “People would say ‘Oh no, we don’t want him; he’s tainted goods. He’s been fired from Air Canada.’ I don’t think he ever really recovered from that. It was a hurt that was always there because he had loved Air Canada, and although he was a lawyer, he would have gladly left law forever for the business world.”

Trudeau took pity on him, it was said, and in 1977 appointed Yves Pratte to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Ironically, the PM appointed Estey to the SCC bench the same day. The court was an honour, “but my dad wasn’t happy,” recalls the son. He stayed only two years, then left Ottawa and went back to Montreal. He died nine years later at age 63.

“Maybe it’s a total coincidence,” says Pratte, “but today I find myself representing people who are embroiled with public inquiries, parliamentary or otherwise.” And Pratte, a partner with Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, doesn’t think highly of them — abhors them, in fact. Thirty-three years later, he hasn’t forgotten what one inquiry did to his father. “Those public inquiries are very, very crude instruments,” he says. “I’ve seen first-hand the harm they can do to people’s reputations.”

Pratte does not like what inquiries stand for, how they are run, or the lack of basic human and legal respect he believes they have for individuals caught in their glare. “I think we fail to see how hurtful these things can be for people in the public eye,” says Pratte. “I have never understood why we require of our politicians a degree of sainthood that we are not prepared to live by ourselves, when in our offices and in our circles of friends we live in ways not much different from them. If we continue to ask for sainthood of our politicians it’s going to end up a pretty tight circle. Which is not to say you want to tolerate everything. It’s a question of measure and balance, and of tolerance. I may disagree with a lot of these people but generally they warrant a measure of respect.”

There must be a balance between what Canadians want from commissions and protection for the reputations of people who appear before them. It bothers Pratte that commissions are not subject to the same rules as a court of law simply because in a commission report there is no penal or civil judgment. “It doesn’t make sense,” he says, “that somebody before small claims court for a $10,000 judgment has more right to procedural rigour than somebody before a commission where their reputation can be ruined forever.”

Parliamentary committees can be even more damaging, he notes. He knows. “I went twice with Mr. Pelletier and once with Mr. Mulroney,” he says. What happened to his clients at the Commons ethics committee hearings soured him forever on politics. “At a parliamentary committee there are absolutely no rules. Zero rules. At least at inquiry commissions some rules of fairness apply. Parliamentary immunity means things are said that never would be said if MPs were subject to defamatory libel.”

He remembers New Democrat MP Pat Martin saying to Mulroney: “I won’t call you a liar, but I don’t want anyone here to think that I believe you.” Pratte says, “That sort of thing would never be tolerated in a court of law. Never, never, never!” Mulroney fumed at the insult and his son Ben, the television host, had to be restrained in the audience. “Parliamentary committees play with peoples’ reputations sometimes in a very dangerous and damaging way,” says Pratte. “I understand they have work to do, and it is a political forum. I suppose there is a political advantage to be gained from getting a big headline the next morning.

“I’ve said it many times in the Mulroney affair. It should resemble an ordinary court.” Pratte says. “We should at least try to respect the basic principles of fairness. I wanted to present myself in politics several times, but my experience as much with Mr. Pelletier as Mr. Mulroney left me discouraged by the performance of certain, but not all, MPs and the lack of concern with which they threw out any sort of accusation.”

He’s at the top of his game now, and although it had always been assumed he would go into law — call it the family profession: his father and grandfather were both on the Supreme Court, his great-grandfather was on the Quebec Court of Appeal, and an uncle in Federal Court — Pratte says he really wanted to teach. But his marks at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, the private college for Montreal’s elite, were rather disappointing. Like many young Canadians, a hockey career was in his heart. “He’ll never tell you this, but Pratte’s greatest ambition was to be a goalie in the NHL. But that went out the window when his school team lost a game 34-0,” laughs George Hunter, a colleague at BLG’s Ottawa office.

So off Pratte went to the University of Western Ontario, where he fell in love with philosophy — philosophy of law in particular. He won a gold medal, which helped get him into the University of Toronto. It wasn’t until halfway through his master’s program that he even thought about becoming a lawyer, but only to make getting a job teaching philosophy of law easier. That led him to the joint civil and common law program at Sherbrooke and Dalhousie universities, not bad for a philosopher. He began his legal career in 1984. Today, Pratte splits his time between the litigation departments of BLG’s Ottawa and Montreal offices, earning the respect of many colleagues.

It was noted Ottawa lawyer David Scott who originally recruited Pratte away from Blake Cassels & Graydon LLP to Scott & Aylen, which later merged with BLG. “He’s a very important lawyer in this law firm,” notes Scott. Everyone’s offices at BLG in Ottawa are the same size, but Pratte sits on the firm’s prestigious 11th floor, two doors away from Scott. By way of praise, Scott pretends he’s jealous about Pratte’s performance at the Gomery inquiry. “Gomery is a source of irritation around here,” he says. Political commentator “Ian MacDonald wrote a column that Pratte was the best lawyer at the inquiry. Well I was one of those other lawyers,” cracks Scott. “So what am I supposed to do? Sit still and take that? Should I phone Ian and say, ‘You’re absolutely right?’ Look — Pratte is a wonderful lawyer, provided he’s not being compared with me,” says the senior partner.

“Guy has all the qualities of intelligence and good balanced judgment and persuasiveness that make him an excellent litigator,” says Blakes’ Neil Finkelstein, who as counsel for the Gomery commission went head-to-head with Pratte.

Interesting cases started coming early in his career, and Pratte talks about them the way a parent waxes on about raising his kids. In 1986, he represented Chateau-Gai Wines Ltd., after some other Ontario wines had shown traces of chemical residue. “My job was to make sure we got exculpated,” Pratte recalls. It was — what else? — a commission of inquiry, his first. Pratte pleaded well and cleared the firm of wrongdoing.

Justice John Osler said: “Mr. Pratte, this is the best commercial I’ve ever heard for Chateau-Gai Wines.”

In 1987, he represented René Fontaine, a Franco-Ontarian cabinet minister from Hearst, Ontario, at — what else? — a public inquiry. Fontaine owned shares in a near-worthless mine while he was Ontario mines minister.

Definitely a no-no. Attorney general Ian Scott needed a French-speaking lawyer for Fontaine, so he called his friend Don Brown who sent Pratte. “I was only a two-year lawyer,” he remembers. “I did not have the legal skills but I had the linguistic skills. That’s why I was picked. It was my first big media case.” This time, Pratte lost — Fontaine had to resign — but the young lawyer had met a lot of influential Ontario politicians, most of them Liberals.

And it also gave the transplanted Quebecker his first taste of Franco-Ontarian life: “One time we went into a McDonald’s up north and I was astounded to hear everybody speaking French; it was just like in Quebec.”

And now he works easily in both jurisdictions. The batonnier of the Quebec Bar Association, Gérald Tremblay, says Pratte is “just as at ease in Ontario as in Quebec waters.”

Also in 1987, women’s rights champion Margaret Tomaine tried to leave her Ontario women teachers’ union to join the male teachers’ union, effectively making it gender-neutral. Pratte went to a hearing for her. It ultimately went all the way to the Human Rights Commission, and today all Ontario teachers belong to non-gender-specific unions. In 1991, he scored big with Franco-Ontarians. The Ontario government had put the French-language public school board in Ottawa-Carleton under trusteeship. Pratte challenged the trusteeship, and lost, but when he attempted to get the funding formula changed, he won. He was a hero in French-speaking Ottawa.

It’s cases like these that have colleagues like Ronald Caza, a noted Franco-Ontarian lawyer with Heenan Blaikie LLP, commenting: “Pratte is a lawyer who believes very, very strongly that lawyers have an obligation to be the very best they can be both for the client and for the profession.”

After those notable cases, a political career loomed. He was close to the Liberals and became a constitutional adviser to Jean Chrétien. In 1993, Chrétien wanted Pratte to run as a Liberal, but party organizers had chosen Matane, a riding far from Ottawa. “I decided not to do it because of my legal career,” recalls Pratte. In 1994, the Liberals wanted him again, this time for Ottawa East. “I did think about it, but it didn’t work out,” he says.

Politics was on the backburner and the focus was back on law, even if some cases turned into a circus. In 2005, Pratte represented the CRTC in the famous CHOI censorship case. The CRTC argued radio host Jeff Fillion had been making racist, sexist, and xenophobic remarks on the popular Quebec City station. Ratings were going through the roof. The CRTC had no power to impose fines, only pull the station’s licence. It was a tough case.

CHOI hired flashy Quebec lawyer Guy Bertrand, French cuffs and all. Bertrand made an unusual move. He showed up at the Gomery inquiry — taking place elsewhere in Ottawa and where Pratte was representing Pelletier in the hearing room — and began making his case for CHOI in the corridor outside. It had nothing to do with the Gomery ad-scam inquiry, but Bertrand soon had an angry crowd on his side. It was legal showbiz — Quebec style. Pratte did not take the bait. He stayed inside and waited for the actual CRTC hearing to make his case. He won, even after appeals.

Pratte is understandably reluctant to discuss one of his most high-profile situations, representing Pelletier before Gomery, because a case arising out of the commission report is still before the courts.

On January 12, 2005, Pratte first accused Gomery of not conducting his commission properly and being biased. Almost a year later, after the report came out, Pratte filed an application in Federal Court to set aside the portions about Pelletier, charging again that Gomery did not handle the commission properly, that there were appearances of bias, and that the evidence did not warrant the conclusion. The case was finally heard in Federal Court in February. A ruling is expected this summer.

His successes have been many but not all have drawn unanimous praise.

Pratte represented the Canadian Medical Association in the famous Chaoulli v. Quebec (Attorney General) case. That 2005 Supreme Court decision dealt a hard blow to public health care, opening the door to privatized medicine. “We weren’t against public health,” says Pratte, “but, as we say, it has to work; otherwise give it up.” Pratte uttered a now-famous line on the steps of the Supreme Court after the decision: “Health care delayed is health care denied.” He admits saying it, but says someone else on the CMA legal team dreamed it up.

Quebec judges remember Pratte for representing Justice Jean-Guy Boilard, who recused himself during a big biker trial after the Canadian Judicial Council scolded him publicly for his testy behaviour in court. The Quebec attorney general said Boilard couldn’t just recuse himself and ordered him back to work. The trial had already cost millions and the government didn’t want to start over. Tremblay remembers the case. It took all 26 members of the Canadian Judicial Council, gathered on a Sunday afternoon, to make the precedent-setting decision that the CJC has jurisdiction over the conduct, but not the judicial decisions, of judges, which have to be appealed through the courts. They reversed the AG’s decision 26-0 in Boilard’s favour.  “That was a good one,” recalls Tremblay. “It went right to the basis of law.”

As a litigator, Pratte is also dedicated to pro bono work and spearheaded the creation of a pro bono program in Montreal. He also gives seminars to judges. “For me, teaching is advocacy,” he says. “At the end of my career I would like it for some university to allow me to teach law pro bono. I find it invigorating to be with students.” Tremblay marvels that, after only a few years with his Quebec bar, Pratte is already giving comparative law courses to civil law practitioners. “That’s not easy.”

In Ottawa he is active with the National Arts Centre and with Opera Lyra, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the two cultural institutions. The NAC connection came about when he represented the centre in a weird case with Ottawa Senators hockey star Alexei Yashin. Yashin had given a $1-million donation to the NAC and obtained a tax receipt. It was later discovered that, as part of the deal, the NAC had to hire his mother for 10 years at $85,000 a year with little clear stipulation about what she would be doing. It was an illegal tax receipt, recalls Pratte. The donation was returned and Mrs. Yashin was fired — nobody ever went to court.

Pratte admits he is a driven when it comes to law, but he’s never figured out why. “I’ll ask myself why until I die,” he laughs. “The only thing is that I inherited from my father a sense of satisfaction in doing one’s best, and that is paramount and will always be for me and whether one gets accolades or not, is not important.”

Another BLG colleague, Peter K. Doody, who represented Chrétien at the Gomery inquiry, also describes Pratte as driven. “He wants to master every one of his cases,” says Doody. “He wants to get it absolutely right every time, and leave nothing undone. And he expects the same energy and commitment from those who work with him. He’s very intense. When he joined the Quebec bar in 2002, he had to pass the transfer exam, which is very difficult. Eighty per cent fail. Pratte studied all the time, every spare second he had, and he passed. Once he decides something, he doesn’t give up. Sheer commitment.”

He does take a break now and then and Pratte’s idea of a good time is running marathons or going on a long bike ride with his 23-year-old son, Michel, who is studying business at the London School of Economics. So far, the son’s shown no interest in law. Pratte has been married to his wife Mary, a noted expert on peonies, for 31 years. “I have this theory that if a hard-working, dedicated, hard-nosed lawyer has a lovely wife, there must be some redeeming feature in that guy,” says David Scott. “She’s a sweetheart and she looks after him.”

He may have been discouraged about politics, but it has not discouraged him from fighting for politicians.

What politics has lost, the law has won. In the hearing room he is nothing sort of fearsome, defending clients with every ounce of energy. Could it be because of, as he says, what he’s seen, or is it rather a boy still fighting a battle he was too young to fight so long ago?

MayRod meets 'Spike!'

"Jeezus did you hear the latest about MayRod and 'Spike?'"

Good Day Readers:

Ever notice how when celebrities get into trouble one of their first actions is to start shutting down their Facebook Pages. Well, its happened again. MayRod (Maygan Sensenberger-Rod Zimmer) Canada's latest "Water Cooler Couple" have done just that.

Privacy settings for her photographs once open for all to see have now been revised so they are no longer accessible to the public. Hell, the Page for her wedding has even been completely pulled down.

Then there's Spike Wells. It seems Dirty Harry (Prince Harry) who's been masquerading as 'Spike' deleted his Facebook Page after getting caught cavorting naked with the ladies of Las Vegas - the bloody little randy!

When will they learn?

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

The two fishing buddies!

"It was a lot BIGGER than that you idiot!"

"Dog bites man never makes the newspaper. Man bites dog is news!"

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post, "Prickman explains defamation!"

"We're told Dr. McKee' ..... spent more than $7,000 to scrub the Internet of more than 100 vitriolic comments, many traced to a single computer (IP address) in Duluth."'

It seems the plaintiff stops short of claiming that single computer is the defendant's; although he leaves that impression in the article. Were it the defendant's computer, would he not be facing 100 amended charges?

The website http://www.medicaljustice.com/medical-malpractice-tort-reform-detail.asp?article-id=708180903 suggests a different scenario - The Barbara Streisand Effect - is responsible for the plaintiff's bad publicity.

Dear Anonymous:

Thank you very much for contacting CyberSmokeBlog. Our questions would be, "Exactly how much is more than 100 ..... 110, 120 ..... "more than" means different things to different folks. Also, "How many were not traced to a single computer IP address in Duluth?"

Another thank you for the link which is to a site called Medical Justice. Very well researched and written - highly recommended! Does an outstanding job explaining the ins and outs of doctors suing patients and vice versa.

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

"If I had a million dollars ....." screw the fancy, expensive ketchup!

Good Day Readers:

Occasionally it happens someone sends a link to a story that leaves one scratching their head. What follows is no exception. While we know nothing about the details of the case, it does sound a tad unusual and that's being somewhat charitable. A parallel account in the Guelph Mercury appeared August 15 plus we located "Commander" Steepe's website referenced in the Law Times article.

Leaving the minutiae regarding the allegations aside, CyberSmokeBlog emphasized the comments of Sheetal Rawalan an articling fellow with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association as being particularly germane.

Can you imagine the havoc a multi-millionaire could wreck on the Canadian judicial system if they set up a non-profit foundation dedicated to Charter challenges? It seems Sections 300 and 301 of the Criminal Code might be a good place to start.

Thank you Reader for the link.

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

Bayfield man faces rare criminal libel charge
Kendyl Sebesta
Monday, August 27, 2012

A Bayfield, Ontario man has been charged with two counts of criminal harassment and two counts of defamatory libel after allegedly spreading false information about several lawyers, members of the police, and justice officials in Guelph, Ontario.

Sheetal Rawal

Members of the Guelph Police Service’s Investigative Support Unit arrested Randolph Steepe, 60, August 9. The arrest followed a criminal harassment investigation against Steepe that began in May.

Guelph Police Sergeant. Douglas Pflug says the charges are part of “an ongoing child custody investigation involving Mr. Steepe,” but declined to comment further about the details of that investigation or Steepe’s family law matters.

According to a press release by Guelph police regarding the investigation, Steepe had “sent out copious amounts of false and vexatious documents” to numerous associates and family members of two unnamed people including their employers.

At the time of the investigation against him, Steepe was “acting on behalf of a friend in a legal proceeding against one of the victims,” states the release.

Several of the victims of Steepe’s alleged defamatory statements are the subject of a press release by an Internet-based group calling itself The Royal Legionaires Corps.

On its web site, the corps refers to itself as “a historic joint task force investigation of social service agencies, law enforcement, and a family court judge in Guelph, Ontario responsible for child abuse/protection.”

According to an online press release issued by the corps earlier this month, a “Commander Steepe” alleges a family judge, two police officers, local Family and Children’s Services staff, and three Guelph lawyers “fail[ed] to fully investigate and protect our children against known child abuse predators and those that protect them.”

One of the Guelph lawyers named in the press release, Gerald Punnett, says he has come into contact with Steepe in the past, adding it was “not a pleasant experience,” but declined to comment further.

According to the corps’ press release, it began its investigation into the lawyers and members of the justice system after it received “whistle blower evidence” of allegations of child-related charges against a corrugated packaging and recycling solutions company employee in Guelph.

The man’s identity is protected from publication under provincial child welfare legislation.

Criminal charges for defamatory libel are rare in Canada.

While provincial data on the number of cases involving criminal defamatory libel compared to civil libel aren’t often publicly available, and in some cases not recorded, Sheetal Rawal, an articling fellow at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, says the association has seen a number of cases involving criminal defamatory libel this year.

“It’s concerning to us in the sense that defamatory libel includes expressions or criticisms of public officials or government figures under the criminal code,” says Rawal. “We see that as particularly troubling for a democracy, where citizens should be allowed to have a meaningful discussion about those in power. It’s concerning when you have a tool that shuts down that expression.”

Under s. 301 of the Criminal Code, anyone who publishes a defamatory libel is guilty of an indictable offence and can be imprisoned for up to two years. In addition, under s. 300 of the Criminal Code, anyone who publishes a defamatory libel that they know to be false can be jailed for up to five years.

But, the line between what constitutes criminal libel and what constitutes the more commonly used civil libel is often blurred, and there’s doubt as to whether these criminal provisions are constitutional in the face of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, says Rawal.

“We believe ss. 300 and 301 of the Criminal Code are too broad,” says Rawal. “In fact, s. 301 of the Criminal Code has been found unconstitutional in four jurisdictions.” (emphasis ours)

Those jurisdictions include New Brunswick, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan. However, the issue has never made its way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

According to former Fredericton, New Brunswick chief of police Barry MacKnight, since 1988 there have been 12 complaints to the Fredericton Police Force under the Criminal Code criminal libel provisions. Four of those occurred between 1988 and 2006, while eight occurred between 2007 and 2012. Of the 12 complaints, 10 were concluded without charges, and two cases remain under investigation.

MacKnight provided the data in response to a request for information made by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in February. The information was requested as part of the association’s investigation into the arrest of New Brunswick blogger Charles LeBlanc.

LeBlanc had been arrested after posting comments on his blog about a city police officer. The provincial government ultimately released a statement in May saying it wouldn’t pursue the charges against LeBlanc, however, because it believed s. 301 of the Criminal Code was unconstitutional.

As for Ontario, while provincial data on the number of criminal defamatory libel charges are not readily available, this is not the first time family law matters have sparked controversy outside Ontario’s courts.

Activist group Canadians for Family Law Reform, an organization that describes itself as a watchdog over family court matters, picketed outside the Sarnia courthouse in February in protest against local family lawyers who they felt were creating added conflict between former spouses in order to cash in on cases languishing in the province’s court system.

As for Steepe, it also isn’t the first time he has raised eyebrows in Guelph.

More than two years ago, local press reported Steepe had commissioned Fergus, Ontario glass-blower Stephen Kitras to design a glass sculpture that would allegedly honour fallen Canadian soldiers during the Vancouver Olympic Games and would later reside at Rideau Hall. However, the sculpture was never part of the Olympic Games or on display at Rideau Hall.

Steepe did not respond to requests for comment. He is scheduled to appear in provincial court on September 28 in Guelph.

Like "Honest Lawyer" is "Independent Counsel" an oxymoron?

Good Day Readers:

We'd like to thank Ms Blatchford for being the inspiration for our quiz. Remember, like a university philosophy or public servant exam there are no correct answers only answers. Are you ready?

(1) If you had nude compromising pictures taken of you, or perhaps a sex tape (Heaven forbid!), do you think you should bear any responsibility for maintaining complete care, power and control of these images at all material times?

(2) Our legal system is based on an adversarial approach. By natural extension so too is a Canadian Judicial Council Public Inquiry. If you were in need of a defence lawyer who would you choose:

(a) A candidate who promised to present your case to a judge and jury in a completely impartial, neutral and independent way?

(b) The candidate who promised by the time they'd finished the judge and jury would believe you were the second coming of Mother Teresa?

(3) If you had to hire a Crown Prosecutor who would you select?

(a) The candidate who if convinced of guilt would do everything always acting within the precept of the law to secure a conviction?

(b) A candidate who would undertake to always present all evidence independently giving everything equal weight?

(4) Why do you think the CJC will not release the content of Mr. Pratte's resignation letter?

(5) Why do you think Mr. Pratte will not release the content of his resignation letter?

(6) Who do you think should be the next Independent Counsel?

Times up! How did you do?

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk

Christie Blatchford: Lawyer quits nude judge inquiry
Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Guy Pratte resigned from a Canadian Judicial Council hearing examining the conduct of a senior Manitoba judge (David Lipnowski for National Post)

In an astonishing development, lawyer Guy Pratte has resigned from a Canadian Judicial Council hearing examining the conduct of a senior Manitoba judge.

The abrupt move comes exactly a week after Mr. Pratte, who was the inquiry’s so-called “independent counsel,” sought to have inquiry decisions overturned by filing for judicial review at the Federal Court of Canada.

In that application, Mr. Pratte asked the high court to set aside aggressive questioning by the inquiry panel’s own counsel, George Macintosh, and for an order that he not grill any future witnesses.

Related

• Lawyer leading inquiry into Manitoba judge’s nude photos quits after disagreement over questions
• Christie Blatchford: Inquiry decisions in Winnipeg judge case could be overturned

It was a bold and unprecedented step Mr. Pratte took last week, the first time in the history of the CJC that an independent counsel has so challenged the decisions and authority of an inquiry panel.

Why he would, on the heels of taking that unusual move, suddenly resign remains unexplained.

The CJC released a statement Monday saying only that he had “tendered his resignation” and that the council had “accepted the resignation.” Asked in an email if he was able and willing to talk about it, Mr. Pratte replied, “Unfortunately not.”

And when Postmedia asked for a copy of his letter of resignation, CJC executive director Norman Sabourin replied that it was “a private document.”

Mr. Sabourin pointed out that Mr. Pratte offered his resignation letter not to the committee, but rather to the full CJC. He was appointed by the vice-chair of the judicial conduct committee of the CJC, Chief Justice Neil Wittmann of the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench, who also appointed the three judges on the hearing panel.

The panel of five — two lawyers round out the numbers — is hearing four allegations against Manitoba Associate Chief Justice Lori Douglas.

At the heart of that case is the allegation that in 2003, when she was a practising lawyer, she participated in the sexual harassment of a black man named Alex Chapman, whose divorce her husband, lawyer Jack King, was handling.

Judge Douglas, who hasn’t yet testified at the hearing, has denied knowing anything about what her husband was doing then — posting intimate and private pictures of her on an XXX-rated website and encouraging Mr. Chapman to join the couple in a threesome.

But Mr. King did testify late last month, as did Michael Sinclair, a former law partner of both Mr. King and Ms. Douglas, as she then was.

The sum of their evidence, uncontradicted when the hearing stopped, was that Ms. Douglas was completely in the dark about her husband’s activities.

It was, in short, evidence that could be considered favourable to the judge.

And it’s that issue — the duty of independent counsel, as Mr. Pratte saw it, to present all the evidence in the case, whether good or not for Judge Douglas — which has been at the heart of his ongoing battle with the panel.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Pratte has been wrestling for months with his duty as he sees it — as a prosecutor bound to marshal all the evidence for and against an accused person — and his duty as the panel saw it.

In May, he was so disturbed by a panel ruling — it would have limited him to presenting only the “strongest case possible” against Judge Douglas — that he threatened to quit.

The panel then confirmed that he was right, and that he ought to present all evidence, not just evidence that was unfavourable to the judge.

But with Mr. King and Mr. Sinclair, Mr. Macintosh for the first time rose to question witnesses at the direction of the panel, inquiry chair Catherine Fraser, the Alberta Chief Justice, said at the time, of the panel members, who purportedly had follow-up questions in need of clarification.

By this time, Mr. King and Mr. Sinclair, of course, had already been cross-examined by Mr. Pratte or his associate Kirsten Crain and by Rocco Galati, Mr. Chapman’s lawyer.

And Mr. Macintosh was withering in his questions, particularly of Mr. King, and sometimes sarcastic.

By day’s end, in fact, Judge Douglas’s lawyer, Sheila Block, was so incensed by what happened she asked the panel to recuse itself, or withdraw, on the grounds that it was biased against the judge.

Mr. Pratte stopped short of joining her in the demand that the hearing be stopped, but he formally objected to Mr. Macintosh’s unusually active role and said it violated the CJC’s own rules.

The next day, the panel refused to step down, and the hearing concluded as scheduled, with more witnesses — including Judge Douglas — slated to testify when the proceeding resumed.

But then Mr. Pratte last Monday filed his application for judicial review, and within hours, Ms. Block filed one of her own in Toronto.

She seeks a finding that the way the panel has conducted itself — by ordering Mr. Macintosh to cross-examine Mr. King and Mr. Sinclair in the way he did — “gives rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias” against the judge and renders the panel unable to continue.

It is difficult to imagine why Mr. Pratte’s resignation letter would be deemed a private document.

As independent counsel, Mr. Pratte didn’t work for the inquiry panel. His only “client,” in other words, was the public, “in accordance with the public interest,” which is the principle that guides lawyers who take on such tasks.

The CJC, its news release Monday said, is looking to appoint a new independent counsel “as soon as possible” so the hearings can continue.