From: Robin Mathews
Subject: Amanda Korody/John Nuttall/RCMP
Date: February 26, 2017 at 9:59:40 PM PST
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This communication is being sent also to The Public Prosecution Service of Canada and The Civilian Review and Complaints Commission for the RCMP.
It is written as an Open Letter. Its contents are, I believe, important to Canadians, with special relevance to British Columbians in whose province the bold, expensive, complex, and possibly criminal entrapment of persons was undertaken by an apparently elaborate organization within the RCMP in order to create a false Islamic Terrorist Action.
The letter written to me in response to mine on the subject – to the Prime Minister and the Attorney General and Minister of Justice of Canada and to the Attorney General and Minister of Justice of British Columbia purports to be a response driven by the copy of my letter received by the Honourable Suzanne Anton, B.C.’s Justice Minister. Ms. Anton didn’t write the letter of reply, but sent it for reply, it would seem, to an irrelevant office – the Criminal Justice Branch – which could excuse itself, and does, as irrelevant to the matter … and then refers me to the Public Prosecution Office which would probably write me that it, too, is irrelevant to the matter … and suggest I direct my correspondence to another office…. The letter also suggests I might wish to make a complaint to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP – an office in fact controlled by the RCMP but posing as a wholly independent body. Since the Commission often uses RCMP officers to investigate complaints against the RCMP … nothing more need be said. Nonetheless, I have already complained formally to that organization. It has not acknowledged my complaint.
Neither the Prime Minister nor the federal Minister of Justice/Attorney General nor their offices have acknowledged my letter.
Since the reply to me from the B.C. Ministry of Justice, Criminal Justice Branch (at the behest of Suzanne Anton) is the only reply I have received, I conclude it was the agreed upon respondent to my letter. The letter addressed to me is, quite simply, a sham, intended – I believe – to prevent the matter from going any farther. It may be, moreover, a disguised attempt to defend improper, probably criminal RCMP behaviour. It is a remarkable, confusing, and misleading letter. AND it is sent anonymously. Its anonymous nature assures that no person can be confronted because of the strange inadequacy of the letter … because … no one, apparently, wrote it. The letter takes pains to convey unclearly the idea that Ms. Anton has been wrongly approached on the subject of the Korody/Nuttall entrapment by the RCMP, as if she is only vaguely connected to issues involving the RCMP. The letter seems to suggest she is the wrong person to approach on the many matters involving individual freedom and public safety raised by the alleged RCMP entrapment. But contracts in the Western provinces of Canada with the RCMP are effected by the Attorneys General. And the RCMP in those provinces is answerable to the Attorneys General. On her legislative site, moreover, Ms. Anton is declared to be “responsible for justice issues for the government of British Columbia, and must ensure that the administration of public affairs is in accordance with the law”. The RCMP is a public body engaged in affairs of concern to the public – and responsible to the Attorney General. Ms. Anton has, in fact, power to act forcibly in the Korody/Nuttall matter as, perhaps, the most relevant responder. But …her behaviour, in relation to the RCMP, though not acceptable, is not – historically – unusual.
As will become clear, the RCMP in apparent cooperation with B.C. Liberal forces has given strong hints over some years that it may have acted and may act improperly and perhaps criminally.
Moreover, governments in Ottawa have used the RCMP for apparently grossly improper purposes. The RCMP did the major investigations upon which the thirty-one criminal charges were laid against senator Mike Duffy. At his trial in 2015 not one of the thirty-one charges could hold up in fair trial.
Crying out for Public Inquiry, the sham case against Mike Duffy has been carefully avoided by the new Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau.
Looking historically, the best authorities on the October Crisis of 1970 in Quebec – with its imposition of the War Measures Act – are convinced that Pierre Trudeau and his small cabinet committee on Security and Intelligence employed the RCMP to engage in criminal acts to achieve Liberal political ends at the time. RCMP criminal acts were, in fact, the galvanizing force in the creation of the Quebec Keable Commission, the parallel McDonald Royal Commission Inquiry Into Certain Actions of the RCMP (1977-1981), and the the Jean-Francois Duchaine (Quebec) Inquiry. Indeed, the McDonald Commission – created by Order-in-Council (meaning ‘avoiding parliament’) – worked to prevent the effectiveness of the Keable Commission – confronting it in Court more than once in order to curtail its ability to discover RCMP wrong-doing. David Cargill McDonald, chief of three Commissioners was, at a point in the 1960s, head of the Liberal Association of Alberta. Top RCMP officers were alarmed when others in the force began to be confronted in civilian court with charges of serious criminality. They knew the Keable Commission would be unrelenting. And so they proposed a federal Commission. One may conclude that Trudeau’s willingness to create the McDonald Commission stemmed from his desire to protect RCMP officers he had led into criminal acts. He may also have foreseen a situation in which many fingers would be pointed at him. John Starnes, Trudeau’s appointee as director general of Intelligence and Security within the RCMP (1969), expressed anger to confidants at the attack on RCMP officers, saying they only ever acted on orders from the highest sources.
British Columbia’s history is depressing.
In the 1995-97 so-called Gustafsen Lake Standoff the role, behaviour, conduct, and misuse of power by RCMP actors is judged by many who were present, or observing, or later researching to have been summed up by the RCMP officer caught on a training film at the site claiming that “we” (the RCMP) “are specialists in smear and disinformation”.
Attorney General at the time was Ujjal Dosanjh. He asked in the Canadian army for support. Many thoughtful British Columbians believe the Gustafsen Lake operation was one of the most barbarous criminal actions taken in modern Canadian history against indigenous people by the RCMP backed by Canadian armed forces.
Until his recent death one of the most pilloried of indigenous leaders, Wolverine, joined with many others to call for a full and impartial Public Inquiry into the incidents at Gustafsen Lake … and the aftermath court cases and convictions. No B.C. Liberal Attorney General has ever supported that just and reasonable request.
A major actor in the Gustafsen Lake matter was Sgt. Peter Montague, the official RCMP press spokesman who supported the banning of press representatives in the area and who fed “information” to the outside world. He is alleged to have faked a crisis and gained a CBC broadcast into the area on illegitimate grounds. The Republic (Vol 2, No. 46) reports that in an inquiry following Gustafsen Lake, Peter Montague “blurted out that he was in charge of smear campaigns and that Gustafsen Lake Indians were his target.”
Snap from Warrior Publications
A wealth of information is gathered about “the Standoff” in the book by John Boncore Hill (“Splitting the Sky”) and Sandra Bruderer: From Attica to Gustafsen Lake, 2001.
Following hard upon Gustafsen Lake came the attack upon premier Glen Clark for what proved to be – in the 136 day trial – baseless accusations of wrong-doing. A chief investigator in the case – recorded in the court proceedings as (a) close to the Liberal Party, (b) to major personalities in the Party, and (c) to have been asked twice by Gordon Campbell, Liberal leader, to run for office, was Sergeant Peter Montague of the RCMP. Clark’s lawyer, David Gibbons asked the judge, Justice Elizabeth Bennett, on more than one occasion to close the trial – there being no cause of action in the accusations brought against Clark. Justice Bennett refused … and at the close of the trial declared there was no basis for the accusations against Clark. She alone can say why she permitted the trial to continue for 136 days, during which the press and media of British Columbia (though not all of it) ravaged decency and the character of Glen Clark in a fashion only worthy of a fascist state. (See the book by Judi Tyabji, Daggers Unsheathed:The Political Assassination of Glen Clark, Heritage House, 2002.)
IMPORTANT. The behaviour of the RCMP in the Glen Clark matter- giving the appearance of creating a criminal case on an almost wholly false gathering of so-called “evidentiary material” appears to have become a mode of procedure for that body. Much discussion was in play at the time about apparent irregularities in RCMP investigation techniques. I asked the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP to review the RCMP practices in the matter. Soon after, RCMP officers closed the review – an action subsequently described by the Commission as “improper”. In their note to me the officers reported they had gathered twenty-eight volumes of evidentiary material to present to the prosecution. After 136 days of trial, the material was judged to be without merit. In 2015 – apparently the same kind of investigation was conducted in the Senator Mike Duffy affair. Enough, we were led to believe, was unearthed to support thirty-one criminal charges against the senator. At the end of a two month trial not one of the thirty-one criminal charges based on RCMP “evidentiary material” could stand up in court. Are we witnessing a new means of destroying political enemies in Canada…?
Both the Glen Clark case and the Mike Duffy case require full-scale Public Inquiries if Canadian democracy is to be protected. The failure to establish Inquiries casts the integrity of the relevant attorneys general into question.
In British Columbia in 2003 – in relation to what is called The BC Rail Scandal (the corrupt transfer of BC Rail from public ownership to the CNR now headquartered in Texas) the Attorney General and Minister of Justice for B.C., Geoff Plant appointed a Special Crown Prosecutor, William Bernardino, in flagrant violation of the legislation covering the appointment of Special Crown Prosecutors. Bernardino worked until 2010 in the position, helping the RCMP fashion the charges against three Sikh civil servants: Dave Basi, Bob Virk, and Aneal Basi. And he conducted the trial against them. The illegitimate appointment of William Bernardino was based upon his seven years as partner and colleague of Attorney General Plant and his eleven years as partner and colleague of the Deputy Attorney General, Allan Seckel. Gordon Campbell was so pleased with Allan Seckel that, in 2009, he raised him to the highest civil service position in government: head of the BC Public Service.
At the time of the Attorney Generalship of Mike de Jong (2009 -10), presently Minister of Finance, I wrote to the Attorney General reporting the illegitimate appointment of the Special Crown Prosecutor which – in effect – made the whole trial and pre-trial conducted by Bernardino utterly illegitimate. The Attorney General refused to reply to me, though I wrote him twice, formally. Instead, I received a letter from the Assistant Deputy Attorney General informing me that no action could be taken because the matter was sub judice,
It wasn’t. Willam Bernardino was acting (illegitimately) as Special Crown Prosecutor in the case against Basi, Virk, and Basi. But NOTHING relating to his illegitimate appointment was being adjudicated. I responded with that information to the Assistant Deputy Attorney General … receiving no response whatever.
When the BC Rail Scandal trial against Basi, Virk, and Basi came to a dramatic end with the BC government offering to pay the six million dollars of the costs facing the accused if they would agree to immediate termination of the trial, British Columbians wanted to know who could “buy off” the accused with that huge sum drawn from the taxpayers of B.C. The situation in court had reached the point at which more than two dozen people, many of whom were believed to have been major in the dark dealings leading to the loss of BC Rail by British Columbians, were lined up to face cross-examination by Defence lawyers. The first two were made to look like incompetent human beings who could hardly remember their own names. Their exposure was devastating…and another two dozen were to follow – any one of whom could make an accidental statement that would blow the trial sky-high.
Astounding as it may seem, the prosecution was in very, very deep trouble … and was willing to pay six million dollars (as well as dropping all serious charges against the accused) to get out of court … quickly. That all happened.
British Columbians wanted to know whose signature was on the order to pay six million dollars to the accused. No one would tell. Gordon Campbell stepped down as leader. Christie Clark became premier with Shirley Bond on her arm as Attorney General. The Auditor General of B.C. also wanted to know who had permitted six million dollars of taxpayers’ money to be used – in effect – to buy off the accused in the case so it could be shut down.
While professing cooperation in every way, Shirley Bond, chief law officer of the Crown, B.C. Attorney General, did everything she could, with Christie Clark, to deny the Auditor General and the people of British Columbia information they had every right to possess. The information was never given up by Shirley Bond or Christie Clark. Ms. Bond was acting in opposition to every value the Attorney General of British Columbia is expected to possess.
And now, in the position of Attorney General and Minister of Justice for British Columbia is Suzanne Anton. In reply to my letter to her requesting investigation of prima facie illegal acts by the RCMP, she had an anonymous writer send me a letter containing what I believe to be deliberately misleading information. My letter was straightforward and reasonable. I requested full investigation of the matters set down plainly by Justice Catherine Bruce that point clearly to the strong possibility of improper action by members of the RCMP. Investigation would lead to charges being laid or not laid. And then “the conduct and supervision of any criminal prosecution would fall to the Criminal Justice Branch”.
I urged “that a Public Commission of Inquiry be struck to review ALL the offices, All the directions, All the positions held in the Force, and ALL the activities of the RCMP in Canada with a view to a major reconstruction of the Force, making it fully and completely responsible to ALL of parliament through on-going and revolving parliamentary committees with unimpeded powers to summon, to question, to receive information from RCMP members, and to report regularly and fully to Canadians.
I claim that Suzanne Anton is deliberately refusing to fulfill her obligations as Attorney General and Minister of Justice. She has spawned an anonymous letter to me to prevent any identifiable person from being held responsible for statements made there, in fact, on behalf of Suzanne Anton who – for reasons of her own – does not want to take responsibility for the statements. Unless significant public action is taken concerning the calculated entrapment of John Nuttall and Amanda Korody by the RCMP – then Canadians may believe the dark and ugly treatment those two were subjected to has the full support of the last and present Prime Ministers of Canada and the federal Minister of Justice under Stephen Harper and now under Justin Trudeau. With the continuing willingness in British Columbia of Attorneys General to support any vicious irregularity engaged in by the RCMP (only some of that history has been repeated here) British Columbians may expect to witness (and perhaps suffer from) an unbridled RCMP engaging in criminal activity in flagrant contradiction of the expectations British Columbians and all other Canadians have of their so-called “National Police Force”.
That is the picture in relation to what is almost certainly gross behaviour of the RCMP in pursuit of an insane project to create a terrorist action out of thin air.
But the apparent knitting together of politicians in power and the RCMP is damaging on a much larger and much less evident landscape than dealt with above. Just for instance: in the thick of the BC Rail Scandal trial evidence was produced that pointed to what many suspected: active Breach of Trust by a designated section of a major Ministry to weaken, to undercut, to block sustainability, to sell off profitable fragments so that BC Rail could be claimed to be a negative asset, losing more and more money … and so ripe for dumping. I asked the top RCMP officer to investigate the evidence readily available … and he refused to do so. By the same token, right now, the budget making of the Christie Clark government may well contain what will be exposed in coming years as criminal deceptions, discreditable and dishonest accounting practices, sleight-of-hand buryings of what ordinary British Columbians would call “debts” but are kept off the balance sheet by naming them different names that, in effect, hide secret contracts (with Independent Power Producers, for instance) that are skyrocketing “obligations”, future requirements to pay gigantic sums – but kept off what British Columbians would think have absolutely to be reported and absolutely to appear on the balance sheets as DEBT. In addition “forecasting” of power needs in the future (falsely) suggests revenue that will never appear to manage multiple forms of indebtedness – though only some part of future indebtedness is reported.
The game of doing what ordinary British Columbians would call “faking the books” goes on all the time in B.C. and with particular intensity with regard to anything that is done in, around, or through BC Hydro (which many informed observers believe is a more sophisticated way than happened with BC Rail to bundle it for “dumping” to, probably, out-of-country sale and a painful, long-term knee-capping of British Columbians and the B.C. economy. Why would the government in power do that? you ask. The answer is another question: Why did Gordon Campbell and his circle destroy a profitable railroad that was contributing wealth and stability to the BC economy and dump it in the lap of (now U.S.) CN Rail? When you answer that question, you will have the answer to the on-going, planned, heart-breaking wreckage of BC Hydro.
If the RCMP was what it should be in British Columbia, dependable and informed British Columbians could go to it and say: “We want to talk to a few of your specialists on Corporate Crime”. And after a time the rule of law could be introduced to BC Hydro. I do not believe it is operating there now. But with the RCMP (as it appears to me) tucked in the waistband of Christie Clark’s golfing jacket, there is nowhere for deeply concerned people to go to get some action to check the ever-deepening rot in BC Hydro. If I remember correctly, it was shortly after Christie Clark became premier that the RCMP was given a renewed twenty year contract to police B.C. [Emphasis added]
[Refer also to:
Wolverine, now 82, was too sick to provide comment to CBC News, but Azadi spoke on his behalf, saying he wants the following to come out of an inquiry:
“A conversation specifically about his jail time, and why they were persecuted for crimes when what they were doing was enacting their own tribal, traditional laws.
Additionally he says he wants the RCMP officially charged for treason.
“Lastly, maybe the most important thing … is a settlement of the land question, that is the question of unceded and unsurrendered territory.”
The standoff began when about 20 First Nations protesters occupied a piece of ranch land near 100-Mile House that they said was sacred and part of a larger tract of unceded territory.
In response the RCMP brought in 400 armed officers, backed by helicopters and armoured personnel carriers, blew up a supply pick-up truck with buried explosives, and fired thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Both sides exchanged gunfire and one person was injured but no one was killed in the confrontation.
Wolverine spent five years in jail for his role in the standoff.
At the time of verdict, defense lawyer Don Campbell called for a national inquiry into the RCMP’s actions, but both the provincial and federal governments refused.
Wolverine’s right-hand man in the protest, James Pitawanakwat, was sentenced to three years in prison, but when he was granted parole after one year, he fled to the United States.
Canada sought his extradition, but he was granted political asylum from a judge in Oregon.
Pitawanakwat spoke to CBC News from his home in Michigan and said he would like to return home, and hopes that a national inquiry could help.
“The reason I left Canada was because there was a … miscarriage of justice pertaining to the rule of law,” he said.
CBC News requested to speak with Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould. Her office acknowledged that they received Wolverine’s letter, but would not comment further. [Emphasis added]
In Pictures, The 1995 armed 31-day standoff over aboriginal title at B.C.’s Gustafsen Lake
Again, at the break of dawn:
Police line at Elsipogtog, as tear gassing of protestors began. Photo Ossie Michelin.
RCMP snipers in camo crawl around the Rexton blockade at the break of dawn.
Honourable Warrior of the Mi’kmaq, Suzane Patles:
“even the corporate monster is envious of what we have because we have all the love and support….”
2012 12 05: AER outside counsel, Glenn Solomon, smears Ernst, calling her a terrorist in his official court filing without providing any evidence (he couldn’t, there is “absolutely” none, as Justice Wittmann wrote eight months later). Ernst’s legal team pointed out this smear by Glenn Solomon to Justices Barbara Veldhuis and Niel C. Wittmann (case management judges in the lawsuit). Justice Wittmann did not punish Solomon, he punished Ernst by ordering her to pay Solomon’s costs even though her lawsuit is clearly for the public interest.
2012 05 09: RCMP spied on B.C. natives protesting pipeline plan, documents show
February 12, 2009: Following a CTV W5 National News segment of Ernst’s explosively contaminated well water and the ERCB’s (now AER, previously EUB) treatment of her, “undercover” Royal Canadian Mounted Police with Canada’s anti-terrorist squad arrive warrant-less at Jessica’s home in Rosebud to interrogate. EnCana, Alberta Environment and the ERCB had been served legal papers two months previously.
The banner at www.gwynmorgan.ca in 2013. The banner was removed after the blogger received a threatening letter from Gwyn Morgan’s lawyers at Bennett Jones. The website was discontinued a few years later.