Judges and lawyers involved in my case, lied in court and or in writing, with the self regulators of judges and lawyers protecting the lies and liars. It behooves me to understand how lying lawyers, judges and their self regulators can live with themselves.
WHERE DO YOU GO WHEN JUSTICE IGNORES YOU? by Norm Zigarlick, May 3, 2024
Stories of political injustice
At the intersection of justice and politics, there is no safe crosswalk for ordinary citizens. If you find yourself there, the odds are high you will be run over by one or the other.
Our Busted Trust working group began life as a cabin owners association in a Saskatchewan Regional Park. What started as a simple and reasonable request for elected representation – because we live in a democracy and we paid taxes without the accompanying privilege of voting for representatives – ultimately led to us being sued so often we should have been on a first name basis with the federal judge who heard five of the seven applications for which we were respondents.
As self-representing litigants with limited financial resources and zero training in matters of the law, we faced a steep learning curve to survive the government-funded agency who initiated all the court applications. We did well: four cases finished with neutral bar decisions in which nobody won much of anything; one was discontinued and two were dismissed.
Along the way, we successfully launched requests for Judicial Conduct Reviews with the Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) and filed ethics complaints with the Law Society of Saskatchewan. Those actions solved nothing. The CJC is about as transparent as a canvas tarp: while the other side sees all the submissions, we see only our own and the CJC’s response, but not the Judges’ response or Saskatchewan’s Chief Justice’s presentation.
A shocking revelation in the CJC’s response denying a full review of our third and fourth requests was, “perjury is addressed at the discretion of the Judge”. Really? The CJC’s handbook for self-representing litigants stresses the seriousness of perjuring oneself in three separate locations; how can perjury possibly be dismissed as discretionary?
Lies (and secrets which are just another way to lie) are vital tools for the legal judicial industry serving the status quo; judges and lawyers need to lie (and keep secrets) to protect the rich, and protect their lying asses and their even more dishonest self regulators.
The Law Society told us of their lawyers, “We expect correction not perfection”. While their response did not address the lawyer’s support of perjured statements, it provided a road map for the government agency/Applicant to seek an appeal of a 14-month-old decision in the guise of asking for clarification of the Judge’s intent. So yes, we were taken to court again. The judge dismissed the application on January 11, 2024, with her Fiat reading, “I find I have no legal basis or evidentiary basis upon which I can grant the applicant the relief they are seeking”.
The serial Applicant we faced was an Authority, an Other Legislated Entity, defined by both the Saskatchewan government and the CRA as a “public body performing a function of government”. It was created by, and wholly responsible to, the Government of Saskatchewan and significantly funded by them as well. It took us some time to realize we were not brilliant legal scholars; we were never supposed to flat out lose in the Summary Writ of Possession actions filed against us.
The wrongdoing we found, and expected government to correct, made us a political risk that needed to be kept too busy to continue our research, to be financially disabled and to be intimidated into silence.
WHAT DID WE LEARN?
If the financial reporting for the Government of Saskatchewan can be trusted, it appears they spend about $25 million per year on outside legal services. This amount is above and beyond the budget for their whole flock of in-house lawyers.
A King’s Bench Judge earns about $380,000 per year and a Provincial Court Judge earns about $305,000 per year.
This we know, ALL judges are lawyers. They are appointed to the bench through a process that is in large part political. Alberta’s current Minister for Energy and Minerals, Brian Jean, makes no bones about it saying Conservatives need to be elected so they could appoint more judges that would reflect their ideologies. Minister Jean is a lawyer who is on one hand being honest while on the other revealing that Canada does not have an independent justice system. Minister Jean is also a former Member of Parliament as well as former leader of the Wildrose Party before joining forces with former-political-opponent-now-teammate Alberta Premier, Danielle Smith.
We know judges have a difficult and demanding job, but it is one they applied for. We know they do not work every day of the year because if they did, there would be no point in owning a cabin at the lake, and we know some do.
The Province of Saskatchewan has a population of about one million one hundred thousand people (about the same as the Edmonton area). The potential to snag a chunk of the $25,000,000 available in government’s legal out-sourcing is a prime motivator for lawyers to be nice to government. So is a Bench job that pays over a $1000 a day with a pension at the end.
That’s a structure that makes it nearly impossible for an ordinary citizen to win a civil case against Government.
One side has unlimited funds with no personal risk while the other is out of pocket facing great personal risk. No small law firm is anxious to tackle a civil case against the government on a contingency basis. They know they will be out spent, and deliberate delays will make any payday a long, long way off.
To be fair, there are times when judges who confront the government do get treated badly. In the 2021-to-2023-time frame there were four Saskatchewan Queen’s Bench judges who were the subject to Judicial Conduct Reviews through the Canadian Judicial Council. Our group was responsible for initiating two of those, and in both cases, the judges showed unusual favour to the Applicant/Government Agency. The other two review cases involved judges Mitchell and Scherman who had ruled against the Government of Saskatchewan, and they faced substantial negative media coverage. There was zero media coverage on our judges, Goebel and Zuk.
HOW DID JUDGES FAVOR THE APPLICANT EVEN THOUGH WE WON?
The first case against us was discontinued by Madam Justice Zerr on matters of procedure. No evidence was heard.
Every subsequent case included significant perjury in the submissions of the Applicant. It was so blatant that we filed an ethics complaint against the Applicant’s lawyer for assisting perjury. A complaint was filed with the RCMP on this same matter; 18 months later, there has been no response.
In the last two cases the judge ruled on the admissibility of a submission sworn to support the Applicant saying, “I disregard in its entirety” the affidavit noting instances of double hearsay. Had she allowed them, would she have addressed the multiple sworn, false statements included? We’ll never know.
No one has said there was no perjury. The Saskatchewan Law Society said the court did not address it because it was not relevant to the arguments. The Canadian Judicial Council advised us that perjury was addressed at the discretion of the presiding judge.
The House of Commons Standing Committee for Justice and Human Rights did not acknowledge receipt of our letter to them on this matter.
Here is what the Criminal Code says about perjury in Canada
131 (1) Subject to subsection (3), every one commits perjury who, with intent to mislead, makes before a person who is authorized by law to permit it to be made before him a false statement under oath or solemn affirmation, by affidavit, solemn declaration or deposition or orally, knowing that the statement is false.
It does not say addressing perjury depends upon the relevancy of perjury or the mood of the all-too-human judge.
We firmly believe that all perjury is relevant, at the very least it indicates questionable character and if it is not recognized, can be assumed to be true.
If the intention of the perjury was not to mislead the court, why include the false statements in your legal documents?
In our cases, perjured statements were made by the Applicant not by unrepresented Respondents.
We provided the court with documents advising that a petition circulated in our park community (ostensibly to combine three actions in order to save the Park Authority legal fees) had been altered after signatures were collected to indicate support for asking the court to remove us from the community.
We also presented documents (including FOIP materials) which confirmed that a letter from a government official had been altered and presented to the park community to give credibility to a highly contentious financial contract (a long-term lease) that was imposed without cabin owner input. A Deputy Minister from one of the oversight ministries confirmed that the letter, as presented, did not exist. She said, the Park Authority had “utilized” (forged?) another letter sent by ministry staff in response to a cabin owner’s concerns. In court submissions, counsel for the Applicant said the letter was written by a third party and they could not comment. A representative for the Park Authority said the letter was not written by anyone from the Park.
Further, in the six months the decision was held in reserve, the Applicant notified lease holders in the Park that if they did not sign the new lease as presented (and supported by a forged document) they might find themselves with no lease at all. The Judge accepted our documents to the court file but his decision did not acknowledge/address either the post-hearing/pre-decision, “interfering” lease demands of the Applicant or their use of a forged document to “sell” their imposed lease.
HOW CAN WE FIX THIS?
The interests of political parties and their power over judicial selections can only be fixed by changing the way governing is done, not by changing political parties.
The relationships between governments, lawyers and judges also need to be changed.
The justice system is supposed to be for the competent administration of justice, not a mechanism to lubricate bad politics.
Lawyers are wildly over-represented in the House of Commons; in 2015 11% of the Members of Parliament were lawyers; in 2019, 30% of Prime Minister Trudeau’s cabinet were lawyers.
I believe one way to fix the rot in Canada’s dishonest unjust legal-judicial industry, is to disallow lawyers in politics. The law is not necessary to solve disagreements, corruption and idiocy. And, absolute must, criminalize self regulation of judges and lawyers. We see clearly how self regulation only serves law-violators in the oil and gas industry, as corporate greed obliterates earth’s ability to sustain life. Want to be a politician? Fine. Want to be a lawyer. Fine. Both? No, not allowed.
There are about 136,000 lawyers in Canada. Our total population is just over 40 million.
Lawyers make up only .0034% of our general population but 11% of the population of the House of Commons and from time to time 30% of the cabinet. Why?
Because crime in politics is how the rich get richer. To be efficient at making money via crime, one needs to know the law. Crime pays. Well. Especially for lawyers, judges and politicians.
If lawyers are excellent legislators and can speak directly to the creation of laws, how is it there is a whole other stream of lawyers constantly challenging those same laws in court?
In our own situation as self-representing litigants, judges and senior members of government often advised us to get professional legal help. Why? We were very clear that we couldn’t afford it and in every case that has two lawyers, they either finish in a tie or one of them loses. How would that have improved our circumstances?
It is our experience that our justice system is not about individual justice it is about creating the impression of a fair and just society and selling the concept as reality.
We do have a suggestion that could be easily implemented and not threaten anyone’s right to vote. The Canadian Bar Association could simply instate regulations that prohibited any law firm or anyone practicing law from donating to any political party or candidate.And, prohibit law firms/lawyers (no exceptions~!) from hiring ex politicians (federal, provincial, municipal), e.g. those fallen from grace, punted out by voters, convicted of crimes/corruption, caught lying (e.g. Steve Harper, Jason Kenney, Ralph Klein, etc.). Too many dirty politicians end up working for law firms that largely serve the rich that make their money breaking the law. The trouble is, the legal industry self regulates, which means regulations are ineffective and meaningless, just fluff meant to con the public into believing there is a just and fair “justice” system. Watch the steady stream of convicted rapists (many cops or lawyers) get set free by judges expressing great care and concern for the criminals, not the victims. It’s ghastly, unfair, obviously unjust, and terribly cruel (which is the intent because the system serves the Patriarchy, not the people paying for it). An expensive circle jerk.
This would remove circumstances where law firms donating to a political Party put themselves in a favourable position to share the wealth as in Saskatchewan’s $25 million of outside legal spending. It would also eliminate situations where we see a lawyer donating cash to a Party one year and appointed to a $300,000 + Bench job the next.
In the movie A Few Good Men, there is a line “you can’t handle the truth”. In Canada, when facing a government-sponsored opponent we find ourselves in a situation where we are spending our own money to expose the truth while our opponent is also spending our money to hide the truth. It’s a terribly unbalanced system where we can’t afford the truth.
Refer also to:
2020: Judicial Hanky Panky Supreme: “these robed sages are in fact mere grubby politicians….”
2019: Supreme Court of Canada in the cover-up business too? Top Court signs pact to keep records of deliberations secret for at least 50 years; Reserves right to keep some secret forever
