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Admissibility of evidence

Jul 18th, 2009 by

Back in 1956, as a law student in his final year, I had my first piece published and it was in the law school journal then called Legal Notes, now the UBC Law Review. My subject was illegally obtained evidence – should it or should it not be admissible? This is topical 53 years later in light of a decision just handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada.

The case I reviewed was Kuruma v. The King. The offence happened in Kenya during the days of that country seeking its independence from Britain. Because of the threat by the terrorist group, Mau Mau, it was unlawful for a Black to have any weapons. One day Mr. Kuruma was cycling along when he was jumped by several police constables and searched. They found several rounds of ammunition on his person and arrested him. Mr. Kuruma was tried, found guilty and sentenced to hang. He appealed, in part, on the ground that the evidence, having been unlawfully obtained, was therefore not admissible. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Court of last resort for the Empire, upheld his conviction. I don’t know whether or not Mr. Kuruma was hanged.

My research for the article showed that on this matter British and American jurisprudence differed absolutely. Many of the Supreme Court of the United States rulings involved drug offenses and one I especially remember was where, after apprehension, the accused swallowed a bag of dope. The police forced an emetic into his system, in the customary fashion,  then waited patiently for the result which turned out to be as they suspected. The US Supreme Court rejected the evidence on the grounds that it was illegally obtained thus inadmissible. Continue Reading »

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Rafe meets the Fraser Institute

Jul 13th, 2009 by

I was having lunch (on me as usual) with my editor last week and we were wondering aloud why the Campbell government would possibly intentionally destroy our rivers and BC Hydro, a power company that’s the envy of North America. I mentioned to Dave that I believed it was a matter of ideology based on Campbell and the right wing think tank Fraser Institute being joined at the hip as well as the pocket book. I recalled for him an interview I had done some 15 years or more ago with then Fraser Institute president Dr. Michael Walker.

Why not do an article on it? He asked.

Now my deep instinct is to refuse point blank suggestions of editors, program directors and that ilk but since I had made this point many times during the last election, as I preached mainly to the converted, I had to agree that the idea had merit.

Permit me, for a moment, to lay out the logical consequences of the Campbell Rivers Policy. Private companies are encouraged by Campbell to desecrate our rivers to produce power which BC Hydro is forced to buy. Because nearly all this private power can only be produced during the spring run-off when BC Hydro has full reservoirs and plenty of power, and because there is no way of storing this private power, Hydro must export it at ½ or less what it paid for it. This is the lunacy I can find only one explanation for – far right wing ideology. (Of course, bankrupting BC Hydro to force the public to sign over its dams to big corporations would make Milton Friedman proud – and may well be the ultimate point of this ridiculous buy high/sell low scheme)

Now I must say that I’ve always liked Mike Walker. I don’t really know why I said that except so often critics are accused of having personal grievances and in fact I don’t. So there.

Back in the early 90s the Fraser Institute had published an article, I believe by Dr. Walter Bloch who then worked for them, arguing that rivers and streams ought to all be placed in private hands because, as Dr. Walker later put it, the private owners would take good care of them because they owned them. On my show at Radio Station X, he repeated this theory that private ownership would ensure the best available use of the river or stream. Continue Reading »

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Posted in The Tyee | 2 Comments »

The EAO public meetings are a sham

Jul 13th, 2009 by

I write this in the eve of leaving for Castlegar thence Nelson for a big rally Wednesday the 15th. The People are up in arms about the Glacier-Houser project which was given a Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) “public hearing” 10 days ago.

Because the project itself – and all private rivers schemes – seem so preposterous, please bear with me as I lay out the bare bones.

Back in 2002 The Campbell government hatched an “Energy Plan” after meetings with industry. Amongst other things, this plan was for electricity to be developed by private companies only. BC Hydro was not to create any new power except by upgrading their own generators and Site “C” on the Peace River. Grandfathering Site “C” was interesting because it permitted government to say “either we do these private river projects or it’s Site “C”, knowing that the public did not like the latter at all. It was rather like saying “if you don’t like the paddle we’re about to smack your ass with you can have, instead, 80 lashes with a cat-o-nine tails on your bare back.

This policy was never put to the people. This immense change in how we get our power had no public information disseminated publicly and there were no public meetings. In short, British Columbians have had no say in this dramatic decision.

The government plan, if plan it can be called, gives private industry the right to dam or divert our rivers for power which power must be bought by BC Hydro. Because, for the most part, the private power comes during the spring run-off, BC Hydro cannot use it so it must be exported and here’s the rub – because of the “take or pay” contracts BC Hydro has been forced to enter with the private companies, they can only recover 1/3 to ½  on the foreign market. Under these circumstances Hydro will be bankrupted. “Buy high, sell low” is the Campbell business motto. We are in the early stages but already Hydro owes $31 BILLION to private owners which are all big, offshore corporations. Continue Reading »

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Cruelty to animals and humans

Jul 10th, 2009 by

Gadfrey Daniel! Someone wants the Calgary Stampede to stop tormenting animals. Surely we’re not going to stop a few people having a bit of fun by binding up a bull’s balls then jumping on him and hauling him to the ground, tying him up then taking a bow? I suppose it must also be the case that cowboys – cowgirls? Cowpersons? – must practice so bulls might, after time, actually enjoy having their testicles under wraps. I do wonder, however, whether any cowboy would do the same. Let someone push their testes into the pit of his stomach, push him into a ring to be jumped upon by daring cowpeople with ropes. When I think of this myself it somehow reminds me of days at St. George’s and receiving a cricket ball in the crotch, rolling around on the pitch with the master standing over me saying “up now, Mair, it’s only what your father did before you”.

Now circuses have caught the attention of animal lovers. For God’s sake, what on earth is wrong with capturing a lion or tiger or two, keeping them safe from the perils of the wild in a small cage, jumping into that cage and putting the whip to them? Those elephants surely become deliriously happy in the neat little paddocks in which they live. Interestingly, circuses only use Asian elephants because African ones can’t be trained – perhaps there’s a lesson there. Continue Reading »

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The battle has barely begun II

Jul 6th, 2009 by

Premier Campbell … if you think that the ravishing of our rivers for private power with private profits off public property will be tolerated because of the election result you are very mistaken indeed. As John Paul Jones said, “we’ve just begun to fight” – as the recent overflow meeting in Kaslo demonstrated.

You were fortunate, Premier, that the opposition ran such a bad campaign. They never understood the rivers issue and left that work to others outside the political process. You are also lucky that your disgraceful policy is so bad no one believes the consequences. What sane government, it’s asked, would give away billions of dollars to private companies to destroy BC Rivers, for power BC Hydro must buy but can’t use, bankrupting BC Hydro in the process? The answer is, of course, that no sane, decent, caring government would ever think of this idiocy let alone embrace it.

You also think you’ll continue to wipe out our salmon with your fish farm policy which has now become a certified conspiracy with the federal government. On both these issues you’ll face ever increasing anger from citizens. If these issues turn nasty – and all history tells us that’s likely – it will be on your head. You won’t debate these issues; nor will any of your MLAs because you know you’re dead wrong and that what you’re doing amounts to a crime against the environment that belongs to us all, not just General Electric and Marine Harvest. Continue Reading »

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Posted in Save Our Rivers | 4 Comments »

The battle has barely begun I

Jul 6th, 2009 by

Rally for Glacier Howser in Kaslo

Rally for Glacier Howser in Kaslo

You will remember learning a couple of weeks ago that Marine Harvest, the principal Norwegian fish farmer despoiling our waters and killing our fish, had filed their factum in their appeal against Alexandra’s Supreme Court Judgment and had not appealed the constitutional finding that only the federal government had jurisdiction over fish farms. There was much rejoicing but many, including me, smelled a rat. Well, a rat there indeed was.

I have been reliably informed that the provincial government has already made the necessary bureaucratic moves to transfer this file back to the tender mercies of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and that Marine Harvest abandoned the constitutional part of their appeal having been assured that nothing would change.

Both the provincial and federal governments, after the Liberals stole the last election with 22% of registered voters, have arrogantly assumed that the battle for our rivers and fish has ended. In fact, it has barely begun.

A death in the family prevented me from attending a meeting in Kaslo on June 23 however my colleague, film maker Damien Gillis was there and reports thusly:

“It was a watershed moment in the campaign to protect BC’s rivers from private river power projects as 1,100 citizens packed  the high school gym in Kaslo, (a town of just 1,000!) to speak out for their  rivers at one of three public comment meetings regarding the environmental assessment application for the largest proposed project in the Kootenays – a 125-megawatt, 5 river diversion referred to as the Glaceir/Howser project, in the spectacular Purcell Wilderness northeast of Kootenay Lake. Not a single one in 3 hours spoke for the project. Continue Reading »

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The next couple of years

Jul 3rd, 2009 by

It’s interesting to speculate on what government is going to look like for the next couple of years.

When the House sits we will, right off the get-go, see a budget that bears little relationship to the one brought down a short time ago to carry the Liberals to its electoral victory. It will be a “fudgit budget” like that of Glen Clark in front of his election budget in 1996. Will we see the same folks that fought Clark’s budget in the courts rise to protest this one as they did in former times?

We will see the beginnings of serious civil disobedience over fish farms and erroneously so-called Run of Rivers projects. This will not be the usual “rent-a-crowd” but people from all walks of life and political persuasions standing up for the fish and rivers of our beautiful province. As usual, there will be sit-downs followed by the company getting injunctions with breaches of those injunctions going to jail. Except I believe that there won’t by just one or two but dozens. Continue Reading »

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Our 2009 visit to London

Jun 29th, 2009 by

A couple of weeks ago Wendy and I took off for London. I was bushed having campaigned, unsuccessfully all over the province against the erroneously so-called “run of rivers” policy. I hate to say it but we at Save Our Rivers will be proved right and we’ll see the end of our rivers, the end of BC Hydro and the end of sovereignty over both our energy and our water.

Sour grapes?

Not a bit of it; just a prediction of what will happen during the next four years. How sad it is that the environment movement was hit by the defections of David Suzuki and Tzeporah Berman. The long term cost to the environment is incalculable. What happens next is not hard to predict. The Bute Inlet project will bring civil disobedience as the company, with the help of the government, will get court orders which will be enforced against protesters. What a sorry pass we’ve reached when people trying to protect the environment from ravishment and save our wonderful public power system will be thwarted and jailed by those who put their own enrichment ahead of our environmental values and are able to abuse the legal system
to enforce their greed and help elect their accomplices.

London is in a strange economic situation these days. In the four blocks between our hotel and our tube station, 13 businesses large and small have gone bust since we here at New Years yet the signs in the real estate offices show a 2000 square food flat, with no view selling for just under 4 million POUNDS! The smallest of the 25 or so ads we looked at for flats was just under 1 million pounds! Unemployment is the highest in decades, money is tight yet there is a market for multi million pound apartments. Continue Reading »

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The Queen and the 2010 Olympics

Jun 28th, 2009 by

I see that the Monarchist League of Canada its Union Jack bloomers in a twist because the Queen won’t be opening the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Did it ever occur to the Monarchist League that if Canadians gave a fiddler’s fu… er,fart about the monarchy there would be no need for them?

When I grew up on the west side of Vancouver, the love of the monarchy was touching. When God save the King was played, even at home, one stood up. We sang the Maple Leaf forever, with special vigor when it talked of Wolfe coming and thrashing the hated French. Oh Canada then said “At Britain’s side, what e’er, unflinchingly we’ll stand”. In those days, Hockey on Saturday only featured the Toronto Maple Leafs, it being assumed that no red-blooded Anglophile would want to hear the gutless, treasonous frogs from Montreal. It was a great time for monarchists and their anglophile organizations like The Imperial Order of Daughters of the Empire (IODE). Continue Reading »

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Advice for the new Minister of Health

Jun 27th, 2009 by

It’s my fault, really. I should have taken young Kevin Falcon aside and given him the benefit of my wisdom, earned the hard way.

Back in 1976 I was a newly minted member of Bill Bennett’s first cabinet as Minister of Consumer Services. Early on, after a very long cabinet meeting, I did a long, rambling interview with Mike Grenby, then of the Vancouver Sun. I assumed that we were just in a sort of friendly chat about consumerism generally – it was, but not off the record with Mike. During the talk as I was waxing eloquent on my virtual non knowledge of the subject and I offered the off hand remark that it’s probably a good thing that consumers got a kick in the ass once in a while to sharpen their consumer awareness.

Well, it hit the fan with coast to coast coverage. “BC Consumer minister says consumers should get a ‘kick in the ass'”!

If I do say so myself I turned out to be a damned good minister but I never fully recovered from my remark, (Incidentally, Mike was just doing his job and I had no quarrel with him.)

When I became Health Minister in 1980, and got back to my office from the swearing-in ceremony, I was “scrummed” by the press. I think it was Allan Garr who asked me for my views on the Long Term Care program.

I had learned my lesson.

“Ladies and Gentlemen”, I said, “I’ve been in this job for 45 minutes and I will have no comments until I’ve read my briefing books and had a chance to talk things over with my predecessor, Bob McLelland”.

I should have told Mr. Falcon this story as it may have prevented him from commenting, with a couple of days as Health Minister, that he rather liked the idea of some private medical care and since has fallen all over his tongue trying to extricate himself.

I’m surprised that Mr. Falcon, in his years of cabinet experience, has not, if only through osmosis, learned that this is a very hot potato and, amongst other things, has serious constitutional implications.

I feel for Mr. Falcon – he’s a combative chap as I am. But perhaps I can leave him with this thought – in order to survive as a minister, it’s perhaps a good thing if he gets a good kick in the ass once in awhile.

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