Sunday, October 14, 2012

The Douglas Inquiry a taxpayer train derailment in the making?

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post, "Time's up Canadian Judicial Council!"

Clare,

You are exactly right. And take it one step farther; they posted reams of unproven exhibits on their site to show transparency to the public before the hearings began. But now they ignore the public when it comes to posting important affidavit material that accuses their committee of bias. So much for transparency!

And remember that they ignored the public when many asked why Pratte resigned. He was supposed to be serving "in the public interest," right? We're not telling you why he quit - BUT WE'RE NOT HIDING ANYTHING! NOPE! WE PROMISE! NOTHING TO SEE HERE! MOVE ON!"

I know your general position is that Lori Douglas should not serve as a Justice any longer. But it's beyond her now; isn't the most important consideration coming out of this mess is the fact that the judges are terrible at regulating themselves? And we thought the Law Societies were bad!

Three Chief Justices can't administer a public hearing without being totally derailed; plus all three Counsel (Galati, Block and Pratte) filed for judicial reviews.

It's outrageous, appalling and we're paying for it!

Dear Anonymous:

Thank you very much for your insightful comments.

You too are exactly right and your reference to a derailment is spot on - is the Inquiry a train wreck waiting to happen?

On the subject of transparency, perhaps what you've described is "selective transparency" when it best suits the Canadian Judicial Council.

Your assessment in capital letters is reminiscent of the media happening upon a crime scene and being told by the police, "Move along folks there's nothing to see here."

Again, you're spot on about judges being terrible at self-regulation. As for Law Societies, perhaps there's a very good reason they're called "Flaw Societies" and "The world's most powerful trade union."

Regarding financial accountability, there is none. What is the budged for the Inquiry ..... is there even one? How much has been spent to date ..... and on and on it goes.

As you've correctly appointed out, there are at least two applications for judicial review pending before The Federal Court of Canada Mr. Galati and Ms Block's. We say two instead of three because it remains to be seen whether Rocco Galati will be successful in forcing the Inquiry to make public Guy Pratte's resignation letter while preventing him from summarily leaving as Independent Counsel. Which brings us to the next interesting question. Assuming Mr. Galati is unsuccessful, will recently appointed replacement Suzanne Cote pursue the Pratte FCC application or simply let it die on the docket? Her decision will speak volumes.

We hope someone will step forward to file a fourth Federal Court application for a judicial review. As outlined in our e-mail to Mr. Sabourin, the CJC's decision not to publish the aforementioned material on www.cjc.com is discriminatory and not in the public interest vis-a-vis the alternative media.

Take the worst possible scenario for The Council - 4 applications for judicial review filed with the Federal Court. Will it batch them back-to-back-to-back-to-back or given scheduling issues force it to consider each separately with God only knows how much time between each in which case the train will be derailed for some time at what taxpayer expense?

Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk  

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