Vancouver Courier
for May 10, 1998

There has grown up in recent years a pernicious practice amongst police to "name" people they are investigating. Somehow they see this as their duty but it's clearly wrong and it isn't made any better by their target later being convicted.

We've always had suspects (who traditionally have not been named until charged), accused persons (whom most of the community considers guilty and to hell with presumptions to the contrary), the convicted and the innocent. We're now slowly but surely adding the category of "named suspect" which usually comes out as "we're talking to him, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, get my drift?"

In the Nanaimo Commonwealth Holdings case there were four nudge nudgers, two of whom, namely former premier Dave Barrett and former NDP eminence grise Bob Williams, are very well known.

Let's give Special Prosecutor, Jack Taggart, - whom I must say I have long admired as a lawyer and a judge - the benefit of the doubt and assume that because there's been so much media attention to Messrs Barrett and Williams he felt obliged to give reasons for not charging them. I don't believe in the Crown telling who they haven't charged and why. For one thing, where do you stop? But Mr Taggart thinks otherwise. Fair enough.

In his explanation Mr Taggart recounts that Bob Williams, in 1976, resigned the seat he had just won in the Legislature to make way for NDP leader Dave Barrett who'd been defeated. In exchange, Mr Williams became a consultant to the Nanaimo Commonwealth Holding Society at $80,000 (at least $150,000 in today's money). Mr Taggart found that this was not selling a seat because there was nothing to sell, it being the electorate who decides who wins.

Dear, oh, dear! Where has Mr Taggart been? Vancouver East is the safest NDP seat in the nation. The NDP could run a fencepost with hair and win that one. But even if that were not true, Mr Barrett in standing aside and giving the NDP nomination to Mr Williams sold his "interest" in that seat, a very salable commodity. I learned about that in Property I in First Year Law but then senior lawyers are sometimes inclined to forget basics.

The next question, which Mr Taggart did not address, is whether or not the sale was fraudulent.

Consider. There was no real job - Williams collected the money and cannot to this day remember doing anything. Nor can anyone else. More importantly, this is quite unlike the occasional practice of a parliamentarian stepping down in favour of a Prime Minister who wishes to regain a seat. The retiree in that case can usually expect a patronage job in return but it's a real job which must be performed and invariably is one which implements government policy.

The crucial point which Mr Taggart did not address, publicly at any rate, is this - Williams' job was not a routine patronage appointment nor was it a job in the NDP caucus or the party. It wasn't something found for him in the private sector. He was paid out of funds belonging to a society.

Directors of societies like Dave Stupich, his partner and his daughter, have a fiduciary duty to members of that society to only spend money in their interest. Williams, Barrett and Stupich were all close political pals - was paying off Williams a breach of that duty? Key question!

It may be that technically it was not. Mr Taggart might have felt that because NCHS had as its principal aim to further the ends of the New Democratic Party that, by some stretch, that could include dishing out money to Bob Williams to do nothing. I find it hard to believe that under our Societies Act we permit political payoffs but perhaps we do. The point is, however, that Mr Taggart doesn't say this. I say that once having decided at all to give an explanation, Mr Taggart owed the public a full explanation. This must particularly be so in light of the actions of the RCMP who, after 10 years investigation, recommended charges. Surely they deserve more than an off hand, one liner dismissal of their efforts.

Moreover, concerning the other two "suspects", Mr Taggart simply said it wasn't in the "public interest" to charge them. That's not good enough. If Mr Taggart had chosen to remain silent on this matter I could not criticize him. Indeed I think that would have been the best course. But having chosen to comment, surely he must give his reasons in full.

This has been a long case and to a man like Jack Taggart, who is well past retirement age, must have been a very heavy burden. The community owes him its gratitude. Thankfully, at long last, charges have been laid and will be heard.

It's a pity, though, that at the end of the day two men who profited mightily from a society which nicked the poor will not have their actions judged too.