Well when you have lost the Star , things look bad . Now the CBC is busy covering , but it is a plausible story as Trudeau does appear to spend most of his time away from Ottawant .
Trudeau 'welcomes' ethics probe of alleged PMO interference in SNC-Lavalin case
- Thread starter Danbones
- Start date
YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The LIE-beral values that motivated the adscam ROBBERY LIVES ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Privy Council Clerk Michael Wernick wants us to believe that he made a threatening phone call to Wilson-Raybould out of the blue on his own initiative- and without getting any instructions from the prime minister - even though the Clerk IS SUPPOSED TO BE NON PARTISAN and thus NOT INVOLVED with LIE-beral party infighting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And yet Wernick wants us to believe he WAS BEING NON PARTISAN while he telephoned and badgered a LIE-beral Justice Minister who had ALREADY told the PM - in the presence of Wernick- that the LIE-beral solution to the Lavalin corruption trial was ILLEGAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And Wilson-Raybould considered the Wernick phone call so politically and legally charged with menace that she took the extreme step of recording it - probably illegally - for her future defense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And Wernick now wants us to believe that he FORGOT to tell the prime minister about his unsuccessful call to Wilson-Raybould because “it was a holiday!!!!!!!!!
And the LIE-beral spin on the Lavalin mess indicates LIE-berals actually expect us to believe the recording of the Wernick phone call proves that nothing illegal took place!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is some discussion among LIE- berals that they might be better off under a new leader and I say that is NONSENSE! There were ELEVEN SENIOR LIE-berals allegedly harassing JWR over Lavalin! This is a scandal for the ENTIRE LIE-beral party to carry!!!!!!!!!!!
You can put lipstick on a LIE-beral pig but it REMAINS A PIG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In other ABSURD news, LIE-berals are CLAIMING that then prime minister Brian Mulroney interfered in the David Milgaard retrial in the same fashion that LIE-berals are accused of interfering with Lavalin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LIE-berals are becoming TRULY FRANTIC if they think that defense - trying to distract from THEIR real sins by ALLEGING that the FAKE sins of others are just as bad- will actually protect or exonerate them in any way!!!!!!!!!
Milgaard had been tried and convicted of murder - based quite largely on circumstantial evidence - news media of the time even mused on the shaky case and Milgaard always maintained his innocence!
At one point Milgaards mother met with Mulroney and it was reported they ONLY discussed her sons living conditions in the jail- and as an accused rapist and white male he would have been in some danger from other inmates!
Yet Mulroney writes in his memoirs that he “ordered his justice minister to reopen the Milgaard case!!!!!!!!!!
Kim Campbell was justice minister for Mulroney and she DENIES ever having received such an order about a retrial of Milgaard!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It appears - in spite of LIE-beral Fake News- that probably Milgaard got his retrial HONESTLY due to legitimate questions about the SHAKY evidence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Despite the discrepancies between the memories of Campbell and Mulroney.........
we should ask” HOW does a LEGITIMATE RETRIAL of an accused killer - involving careful and FULL RE-examination of evidence - IN PUBLIC - in front of any news media reporter who cares to sit in on the retrial...................................
compare to the DELIBERATE LIE-beral intention of HIDING evidence of Lavalin bribery and legal wrong doing by issuing a “get out of jail free card” to Lavalin - so they can AVOID A PUBLIC TRIAL - for the sake of saving votes for the LIE-beral party???????????
Especially since Lavalin execs have ALREADY ADMITTED they are guilty and now LIE-berals and Lavalin execs are simply haggling over the severity of the punishment to be levied!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Journalists at our national broadcasting corporation- CBC - or “Communist Broadcasting Corporation” as some Cdn are coming to call it..........
Are now so worried about the election fate of Justin Trudope that CBC talking heads have carefully crafted a LIE-beral supporting narrative worthy of Soviet era Pravda at it propaganda spewing best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CBC has just dismissed Wilson-Raybould and Philpot and the entire Lavalin mess as a carefully crafted POWER GRAB designed to put “poor” Justin out and put JWR and Philpot into supreme power in the LIE-beral party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Its TOO BAD that CBC has not yet devised any clever explanation for the ACTUAL BRIBERY that Lavalin performed- both on behalf of LIE-berals and on behalf of company PROFITS during various contract bidding processes!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And how sad that CBC has NOT SEEN FIT to comment on the testimony from the Charbonneau Inquiry during which a witness under oath said “MULTIPLE engineering companies were engaged in the same kind of bribery as Lavalin”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yet nobody other than Lavalin was ever investigated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In light of that bit of testimony.......which CBC Fake News purveyor would now like to scoff at JWR claims that there is MUCH MORE to the Lavalin story that has yet to be heard????????????????????
And in other news- desperate LIE-berals- frantic to change the news away from their Lavalin Scandal- are now telling us that Cdns do not want the new NAFTA Agreement ratified because the Yankees still have tariffs on various Cdn industries!
And yet LIE-berals have done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to resolve the Cdn national security issues and GROSS LIE-beral immigration loopholes that are VEXING Yankees so greatly......................and which are the MOTIVATION for the tariffs!!!
LIE-berals state that Lavalin scandal was “all about saving jobs”! Well yes- but what other Cdn govt can claim - as LIE-berals can - that their focus was on saving jobs that are supported by CORRUPTION!!!!
Toronto Red Star media whores- apparently seeking to mitigate some of the damage from Lavalin, ask us if Lavalin “represents a failure of governance or a failure of journalism”??????????????
And of course it is BOTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LIE-beral policy is based on personal greed and lust for power at any price!!!!!
Even staunch LIE-beral supporter Peter Newman tells us this in his book “When the Gods Changed”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And BAD JOURNALISM with deliberate CBC censorship of views hostile to LIE-berals UNFAIRLY aided LIE-berals in gaining that power in the 2015 election!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The election of our idiot Boy Justin was a triumph of greed over costly experience!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh dont worry!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Toronto Red Star newspaper is just trying to avoid becoming an irrelevant laughing stock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just as soon as LIE-berals elect new leaders - meaning ones with NO VISIBLE CONNECTION to either Wynne-bag or Our idiot Boy Justin.......
then Red Star will go right back to mindlessly promoting vile LIE-beral values!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And no doubt the Red Star editors are PISSED that Our idiot Boy apparently has not yet handed out any of the $600 million dollar media fund that was supposed to go to Cdn news media outlets he TRUSTED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SNC-Lavalin scandal embodies the failure of Justin Trudeau’s government
http://globalnews.ca/news/5118093/justin-trudeau-snc-lavalin-scandal/
A Deluge of Failure
http://globalnews.ca/news/5118093/justin-trudeau-snc-lavalin-scandal/
A Deluge of Failure
CBC has already established they are willing to twist the law
related to "fair use" of political commentary and deny critics
of LIE-beral policy any air time -during elections - and we are
close enough now to the critical October election!!!!!!!!!!
If the ink was dry on this revelation a month ago, it would have been announced openly (or leaked by Trudeau's inner circle) more than a month ago.
Forgive me if I don't give much weight to what the liberals claim at this point after the shenanigans last several months:
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-heres-what-the-liberals-are-asking-you-to-believe-about-the-snc-lavalin-saga
In order to believe Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s version of his dispute with his former attorney general, you have to accept that an astonishing series of missteps, misunderstandings and lost opportunities were entirely innocent.
You have to believe that when Jody Wilson-Raybould told Trudeau in September that she had made up her mind and would not interfere with the decision to proceed with a prosecution against SNC-Lavalin, he either didn’t grasp what she was saying, or didn’t accept how serious she was.
You have to trust that none of the numerous complaints she made over the ensuing weeks, warning that the pressure being exerted was inappropriate and had to stop, made it through to Trudeau.
You have to consider it wholly believable that Gerald Butts, the political whizz-kid and guru considered the brains behind the throne, likewise missed or misinterpreted the signals, and didn’t alert his boss that they had a real problem.
You have to find nothing odd in the fact none of the supposedly highly-skilled and politically adept people surrounding Trudeau appreciated the severity of the warning Wilson-Raybould was making: that if Trudeau used his office to muscle a subordinate to interfere in the independence of the public prosecutor, he was racing headlong towards a cliff and was taking his government with him.
Even though Wilson-Raybould says she has “documented evidence” to the contrary, you have to believe that the Prime Minister’s Office never received the formal explanation — known as a Section 13 — outlining the reasoning for going ahead with the Lavalin prosecution, and that, in all the months of back-and-forth among ministers, their staff and the PMO, no one took the time to acquaint Trudeau with the contents of that report.
If you want to agree with complaints that the whole affair has been overblown, you need to accept at face value the apparent inability of Michael Wernick, supposedly among the top minds in the civil service, to understand why Wilson-Raybould refused to use the “tools” she had at her disposal to halt the prosecution of SNC, even after she made crystal clear in their 17-minute phone conversation that using those tools would inevitably explode in the face of the government. And you need to take seriously Wernick’s claim that he didn’t pass on the message to Trudeau, despite specifically telling Wilson-Raybould he had to “report back,” because everyone left town the next day on a holiday.
This is the same Wernick, remember, who opened the conversation by warning that time was of the essence, that Trudeau was eager to find a solution, and had earlier testified that if she had concerns, the minister could have contacted Trudeau any time, at any hour, because he was always available.
It’s a lot to accept. But there’s even more to digest. For instance, how is it that neither Butts nor Trudeau realized something was badly amiss when Jane Philpott told them Wilson-Raybould might feel that shuffling her out of her job was punishment for refusing to cave to Trudeau’s demands? And how could they be shocked when Wilson-Raybould demurred from accepting a transfer to Indigenous Services, a post she’d made known she could never accept?
Is it really feasible that no one in the Liberal hierarchy foresaw that imposing limits on Wilson-Raybould’s ability to testify before the Justice committee would strike a negative chord with Canadians, or that letting Liberal MPs peremptorily shut down the committee in the wake of her testimony would only make things worse?
There are Liberals out there who insist they can buy the whole package, that accept Trudeau’s bland assurances over the minister’s detailed evidence. Somehow they can listen to the Wernick phone call and not see what’s going on: a minister being strong-armed by a powerful messenger armed with warnings that the boss is “going to find a way to get it done, one way or another.” They argue that Trudeau would never act in such a threatening manner, that it’s out of character.
But the truth is, it’s entirely in character, and the proof has been there all along, in multiple examples of Trudeau’s response to situations that try his patience. Such as when he elbowed his way across the Commons to berate a member of the opposition. Or the moment in Edmonton when he sarcastically suggested a woman use the term “peoplekind” rather than “mankind.” Or his determination to block students from summer jobs unless organizations employing them signed a statement attesting to support Liberal values.
Or his snarky response just last week to an inconvenient intruder at a Liberal fundraiser who tried to draw attention to the ongoing health problems at Grassy Narrows, a First Nations community long troubled by mercury poisoning.
Over more than three years of working closely with Trudeau, Wilson-Raybould has had plenty of time to learn what lies beneath the pleasant image the prime minister works so hard to project. “I am not under any illusion how the prime minister … gets things that he wants,” she tells Wernick in their recorded phone call.
“I am having … thoughts of the Saturday Night Massacre here, Michael,” she confesses, alluding to Richard Nixon’s desperate effort to save himself from Watergate by taking a buzz saw to his justice department. “I am waiting for the … other shoe to drop.”
The shoe dropped a few weeks later, when she was ousted from her job, then resigned to make clear her differences with Trudeau. The prime minister’s version of her departure is that it resulted from an “erosion of trust” of which he was entirely unaware, in spite of the events of the previous three months, the warnings she issued, the stark alert issued to Wernick and the concerns raised by Philpott.
Maybe it’s possible that the prime minister really was caught off guard, that his aides and advisers failed to bring the danger to his attention. But if that’s the case, you have to ask yourself whether a government that could make so many errors in judgment, could miss so many signs of trouble, could press ahead with a bad idea even when one of its senior members is waving her arms and shouting “stop!” — you have to ask yourself whether a government so clumsy, myopic and accident prone has any business running the country.
Sunny Ways....
This is such a stinking mess. If you're not backing Justin & the Justin Committee Justinites full bore, then the Liberal scandal machine will have the media friendly's paint you as a "Troublemaker" & "Not a Team Player" & "Doesn't Play Well With Others" and so on in the media. After seeing the legal beating that Vice-Admiral Mark Norman is taking on the road to bankruptcy to protect his name, no wonder Jody Wilson/Raybould is as guarded as she as she tiptoes through the minefield of the Justin Committee before they shut her down.
http://www.straight.com/news/1222106/martyn-brown-taking-liberal-ludicrous-batshit-crazy
Nothing demonstrates Liberal-ludicrous better than Justin Trudeau’s provocation, escalation, and justification of his SNC-Lavalin scandal. It will forever stand as the ultimate testament to the more vulgar phrase that best describes his party’s collective conduct in that matter.
Namely, “batshit crazy.”
The etymology of that term is unclear. More about that in a bit.
What is clear is that Trudeau seems determined to make his party the ultimate poster child for both descriptors by booting Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott out of the Liberal caucus at its meeting on Wednesday (April 3).
I have seen a number of elected members kicked out of caucus in my time. Usually for acts of wrongdoing. But never have I witnessed someone turfed from their own party for doing the right thing and for refusing to do something patently wrong.
This might be a first in the Commonwealth: two MPs being ejected from a governing party caucus for refusing to do or support activities that might even turn out to be criminal in their inappropriate application and/or means of execution. Turfing Canada’s first Indigenous attorney general from her office—she believes, for defending the tenet of prosecutorial independence from the prime minister’s relentless assaults—was nuts enough. But forcing Puglaas and Philpott (P&P) to leave the Liberal caucus suggests a whole new level of batshit crazy......(The rest of this article is at the LINK above)
Wilson-Raybould should not be allowed to remain in caucus.
She says she doesn't think she should be removed from caucus for doing her job. But that isn't really why she is facing expulsion. She is being removed because she has proven to be unworthy of her fellow MPs trust. That she has a personal and long established feud with the PM is more than obvious what she fails to take into consideration is the real harm she is doing to the government and her fellow colleagues. From a purely party point of view she is a loose canon and her disloyalty to it demands her removal.
This entire SNC Lavalin scandal has been blown out of proportion by the media, both sides in the HOC and those most directly involved in the affair who have for their own reasons prolonged any resolution. Come election time it will be relegated to the back pages where it should have been long ago were it not for the intransigence of it's two main protagonists.
Mulroney memoirs tell different story about interference with AG on Milgaard case
Canadian Press
Published:
March 31, 2019
Updated:
March 31, 2019 6:04 PM EDT
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney speaks at a conference put on by the University of Ottawa Professional Development Institute and the Canada School of Public Service in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 5, 2019. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)
OTTAWA — Jody Wilson-Raybould approvingly points to Brian Mulroney as a prime minister who knew better than to politically interfere with the judgment of his attorney general when it comes to criminal prosecutions.
But the former justice minister evidently didn’t read Mulroney’s memoirs, in which the former Conservative leader proudly recounts how he ordered his attorney general to refer a controversial murder case to the Supreme Court of Canada.
That attorney general was Kim Campbell who, according to Mulroney, did as she was told in the case of David Milgaard, who was wrongly imprisoned for 23 years for a murder he did not commit. She went on to become prime minister.
Mulroney’s memoirs flatly contradict the version of events cited by Campbell in her own memoirs and repeated by Wilson-Raybould in a written submission last week to the House of Commons justice committee. The submission was intended to bolster her contention that she faced inappropriate pressure last fall from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his top aides and others to stop the criminal prosecution of Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.
As part of her submission, Wilson-Raybould included transcripts of text messages she exchanged with her chief of staff, Jessica Prince, following a Dec. 18 meeting with Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, and principal secretary Gerald Butts.
Story continues below
View this document on Scribd
Prince relates that the duo tried to persuade her that Wilson-Raybould should seek advice from a retired Supreme Court justice as to whether she could review a decision by the director of public prosecutions, who had refused to negotiate a remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin rather than pursue prosecution on bribery charges related to contracts in Libya. Prince says she repeatedly told Telford and Butts that would amount to “interference.”
In the course of that discussion, Prince says Butts raised the Milgaard case.
“Gerry told some story about how Mulroney met with David Milgaard’s mom, walked into the cab(inet) room and told Kim Campbell she had to fix it. She gave him all these AG reasons why she couldn’t interfere but then she ultimately did what Mulroney wanted and was right,” Prince says.
After asking for more details about the reference to Milgaard, Wilson-Raybould then asks Prince to send her Campbell’s cell phone number, commenting “Good grief — this is absurd.”
FUREY: Wilson-Raybould’s credibility skyrockets with damning audio
Wrongfully convicted man’s case sat on Wilson-Raybould’s desk for months
LEDREW: PM can salvage some honour, but first, drop the arrogance
Wilson-Raybould met with Campbell the following day at a Vancouver coffee shop.
“Needless to say, she categorically denied what Mr. Butts had said and was quite offended and outraged by the comments. She adamantly denied the characterization not only of her as the attorney general but of her former boss, Prime Minister Mulroney,” Wilson-Raybould wrote in her submission.
“She further reflected — as she did in her memoirs (1996) — that Brian Mulroney ’was much too good a lawyer to intervene improperly in the matter. He never breathed a word about the Milgaard case to his AG, nor did anyone in his office ever attempt to influence her handling of the case.”’
Wilson-Raybould did not mention that Campbell also wrote in her memoirs that Mulroney had “blindsided” her by meeting with Milgaard’s mother, Joyce, in 1991. She wrote that she was assured the two discussed only Milgaard’s living conditions in prison and not his application for a review of his conviction for the 1969 rape and murder of a Saskatoon nursing student, which Campbell had rejected.
David Milgaard with his mother Joyce at the 14th annual Gemini Awards in this file photo taken in November 1999. (Todd Gillis/Postmedia Network files)
Nevertheless, Campbell termed it an “inappropriate intervention” and suggested it was politically motivated. She wrote that Mulroney’s chief of staff, Hugh Segal, told the British Columbia Conservative caucus that the prime minister’s meeting with Joyce Milgaard was “brilliant” and the kind of thing he needed to do more to burnish his image in the run-up to the 1993 election.
Nor did Wilson-Raybould mention, or appear aware of the fact, that Mulroney completely contradicted Campbell’s version of events in his own memoirs, published in 2007.
He recounted how he was “disturbed” by the way in which Campbell had “brushed off” Joyce Milgaard, having told her during a public encounter: “Madam, if you wish to have your son’s case dealt with fairly, please do not approach me.” He was “privately furious with her” for rejecting Milgaard’s application for a review of his case.
Mulroney provided a condensed transcript of his meeting in Winnipeg with Joyce Milgaard, during which he said he was “extremely prudent” in his choice of words because he knew they were being recorded. At one point, he told her that Campbell is going to look at “new information that’s come in” and that he’s going to be talking to her when he gets back to Ottawa about her son’s case.
When he got back, Mulroney wrote, he had Campbell summoned to his parliamentary office where, “because of the sensitivity of the matter, I met with her alone.”
“’The matter has been reviewed by the department and I have conveyed our decision,’ she told me.
“’Kim,’ I answered, ’that is not acceptable to me. The law provides for a reference to the Supreme Court and it is my intention to ensure that this case is in fact referred to the Supreme Court.’
“My tone was firm and my words unequivocal. She understood and changed her tack quickly.
“’Prime Minister,’ she answered, ’If this is the case, may I make the announcement myself?”’
The top court ultimately recommended Milgaard’s conviction be set aside. Campbell ordered a new trial but the government of Saskatchewan refused to do so, issued a stay of proceedings and freed Milgaard in 1992. Five years later, DNA evidence from the victim’s clothes cleared Milgaard and led to the arrest and eventual conviction of serial rapist Larry Fisher.
In a series of posts Sunday on Twitter, Campbell insisted Mulroney’s version of events is not true and defended her handling of the case.
“I didn’t read Mr. Mulroney’s memoirs. Guess I should have!” she tweeted.
“While Mr. Mulroney apparently insists he did something he didn’t in the Milgaard case, I should point out that this was not a prosecutorial decision but an application for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy (And I acutally did get advice from a retired SCC justice).”
Butts and the top public servant, Michael Wernick, have testified that no improper pressure was exerted on Wilson-Raybould over the SNC-Lavalin case. They have maintained they only wanted her to get a second opinion on the advisability of overriding the public prosecutor’s decision, as allowed by law.
Wilson-Raybould’s written submission, released Friday, supplements her nearly four hours of oral testimony last month. She believes she was moved out of her dual role as justice minister and attorney general to Veterans affairs in a mid-January cabinet shuffle as punishment for refusing to intervene in the SNC case. She resigned from cabinet a month later.
http://torontosun.com/news/national...y-about-interference-with-ag-on-milgaard-case
Canadian Press
Published:
March 31, 2019
Updated:
March 31, 2019 6:04 PM EDT
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney speaks at a conference put on by the University of Ottawa Professional Development Institute and the Canada School of Public Service in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 5, 2019. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)
OTTAWA — Jody Wilson-Raybould approvingly points to Brian Mulroney as a prime minister who knew better than to politically interfere with the judgment of his attorney general when it comes to criminal prosecutions.
But the former justice minister evidently didn’t read Mulroney’s memoirs, in which the former Conservative leader proudly recounts how he ordered his attorney general to refer a controversial murder case to the Supreme Court of Canada.
That attorney general was Kim Campbell who, according to Mulroney, did as she was told in the case of David Milgaard, who was wrongly imprisoned for 23 years for a murder he did not commit. She went on to become prime minister.
Mulroney’s memoirs flatly contradict the version of events cited by Campbell in her own memoirs and repeated by Wilson-Raybould in a written submission last week to the House of Commons justice committee. The submission was intended to bolster her contention that she faced inappropriate pressure last fall from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his top aides and others to stop the criminal prosecution of Montreal engineering giant SNC-Lavalin.
As part of her submission, Wilson-Raybould included transcripts of text messages she exchanged with her chief of staff, Jessica Prince, following a Dec. 18 meeting with Trudeau’s chief of staff, Katie Telford, and principal secretary Gerald Butts.
Story continues below
View this document on Scribd
Prince relates that the duo tried to persuade her that Wilson-Raybould should seek advice from a retired Supreme Court justice as to whether she could review a decision by the director of public prosecutions, who had refused to negotiate a remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin rather than pursue prosecution on bribery charges related to contracts in Libya. Prince says she repeatedly told Telford and Butts that would amount to “interference.”
In the course of that discussion, Prince says Butts raised the Milgaard case.
“Gerry told some story about how Mulroney met with David Milgaard’s mom, walked into the cab(inet) room and told Kim Campbell she had to fix it. She gave him all these AG reasons why she couldn’t interfere but then she ultimately did what Mulroney wanted and was right,” Prince says.
After asking for more details about the reference to Milgaard, Wilson-Raybould then asks Prince to send her Campbell’s cell phone number, commenting “Good grief — this is absurd.”
FUREY: Wilson-Raybould’s credibility skyrockets with damning audio
Wrongfully convicted man’s case sat on Wilson-Raybould’s desk for months
LEDREW: PM can salvage some honour, but first, drop the arrogance
Wilson-Raybould met with Campbell the following day at a Vancouver coffee shop.
“Needless to say, she categorically denied what Mr. Butts had said and was quite offended and outraged by the comments. She adamantly denied the characterization not only of her as the attorney general but of her former boss, Prime Minister Mulroney,” Wilson-Raybould wrote in her submission.
“She further reflected — as she did in her memoirs (1996) — that Brian Mulroney ’was much too good a lawyer to intervene improperly in the matter. He never breathed a word about the Milgaard case to his AG, nor did anyone in his office ever attempt to influence her handling of the case.”’
Wilson-Raybould did not mention that Campbell also wrote in her memoirs that Mulroney had “blindsided” her by meeting with Milgaard’s mother, Joyce, in 1991. She wrote that she was assured the two discussed only Milgaard’s living conditions in prison and not his application for a review of his conviction for the 1969 rape and murder of a Saskatoon nursing student, which Campbell had rejected.
David Milgaard with his mother Joyce at the 14th annual Gemini Awards in this file photo taken in November 1999. (Todd Gillis/Postmedia Network files)
Nevertheless, Campbell termed it an “inappropriate intervention” and suggested it was politically motivated. She wrote that Mulroney’s chief of staff, Hugh Segal, told the British Columbia Conservative caucus that the prime minister’s meeting with Joyce Milgaard was “brilliant” and the kind of thing he needed to do more to burnish his image in the run-up to the 1993 election.
Nor did Wilson-Raybould mention, or appear aware of the fact, that Mulroney completely contradicted Campbell’s version of events in his own memoirs, published in 2007.
He recounted how he was “disturbed” by the way in which Campbell had “brushed off” Joyce Milgaard, having told her during a public encounter: “Madam, if you wish to have your son’s case dealt with fairly, please do not approach me.” He was “privately furious with her” for rejecting Milgaard’s application for a review of his case.
Mulroney provided a condensed transcript of his meeting in Winnipeg with Joyce Milgaard, during which he said he was “extremely prudent” in his choice of words because he knew they were being recorded. At one point, he told her that Campbell is going to look at “new information that’s come in” and that he’s going to be talking to her when he gets back to Ottawa about her son’s case.
When he got back, Mulroney wrote, he had Campbell summoned to his parliamentary office where, “because of the sensitivity of the matter, I met with her alone.”
“’The matter has been reviewed by the department and I have conveyed our decision,’ she told me.
“’Kim,’ I answered, ’that is not acceptable to me. The law provides for a reference to the Supreme Court and it is my intention to ensure that this case is in fact referred to the Supreme Court.’
“My tone was firm and my words unequivocal. She understood and changed her tack quickly.
“’Prime Minister,’ she answered, ’If this is the case, may I make the announcement myself?”’
The top court ultimately recommended Milgaard’s conviction be set aside. Campbell ordered a new trial but the government of Saskatchewan refused to do so, issued a stay of proceedings and freed Milgaard in 1992. Five years later, DNA evidence from the victim’s clothes cleared Milgaard and led to the arrest and eventual conviction of serial rapist Larry Fisher.
In a series of posts Sunday on Twitter, Campbell insisted Mulroney’s version of events is not true and defended her handling of the case.
“I didn’t read Mr. Mulroney’s memoirs. Guess I should have!” she tweeted.
“While Mr. Mulroney apparently insists he did something he didn’t in the Milgaard case, I should point out that this was not a prosecutorial decision but an application for the Royal Prerogative of Mercy (And I acutally did get advice from a retired SCC justice).”
Butts and the top public servant, Michael Wernick, have testified that no improper pressure was exerted on Wilson-Raybould over the SNC-Lavalin case. They have maintained they only wanted her to get a second opinion on the advisability of overriding the public prosecutor’s decision, as allowed by law.
Wilson-Raybould’s written submission, released Friday, supplements her nearly four hours of oral testimony last month. She believes she was moved out of her dual role as justice minister and attorney general to Veterans affairs in a mid-January cabinet shuffle as punishment for refusing to intervene in the SNC case. She resigned from cabinet a month later.
http://torontosun.com/news/national...y-about-interference-with-ag-on-milgaard-case
So you think it ok that a criminal prosecution should be set aside for political purposes ?
But if she gets the boot she will sit as an independent or join another party where she can make life even more difficult for trudOWE.
No. The entire fiasco was mishandled from the beginning when it should have been left up to the courts to decide. Instead it became a political football that still hasn't reached the end zone due to the machinations of all involved. It has kept the Vice-Admiral Norman affair off the front pages where it rightly belongs and where when it finally does it will effectively reveal that all those involved in the SNC Lavalin scandal are also the same cast of characters who are trying to bring down a decent man who was just trying to do his job. Once that happens the complicity of the former AG in trying to bring about his downfall will be revealed.
If they want to hold the governments feet to the fire they will get more traction by joining another party . Independent members get very little floor time in question period .
What party would want her knowing now that she will use any means to see that her agenda and not that of the party will always prevail.