Thursday, September 24, 2015

Premier Christy Clark's July 30th, 2015 cabinet shuffle: Protects high profile Peter Fassbender for bungling, blame, of massive privacy breach

It must have been nearing the end of the 2015 Spring Session Question Period that Premier Christy Clark started to think about a Cabinet shuffle for the Fall Sitting.  That thought process was interrupted by a passed note from Deputy Premier Rich Coleman marked "MOST MOST SECRET".  Damn but she hated the GCPE sense of humour, the middle finger salute 'MOST', the most.  Why can't they just write: FOR PREMIER's EYES ONLY? 

The flurry of these wintry notes had been on the increase ever since December 18, 2014, her last Cabinet shuffle when she was forced to shift Advance Education Minister Amrik Virk to the Document Bomb Disposable Department because of leaked copies of his emails while at KPU.  Turned out that Virk HAD been the driving force as a Governor to circumvent the O.I.C. freeze on KPU hiring salaries.  As a former RCMP officer he should have known, better.

Virk's one line December Mandate from Premier Christy Clark has been simple: SHRED EVERYTHING

What does she get from the miscreant on April 30th????: 
HAVE LOST  HARD DRIVE.  EDUCATION. CONTAINS 3,000,000 STUDENT NAMES.  WHAT TO DO.

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Preparation are in the works for a Fall Sitting and now an expendable Amrik Virk is called upon by Premier Christy Clark to explain himself on what transpired in July but probably started in April's MOST MOST SECRET note.

If you've been following the stories in the BC Liberal Government Press Release there is No mention of Peter Fassbender, No mention of  Mike Bernier.  Same holds true for the Mainstream Press.

In July, a records review by education ministry staff triggered a search for the hard drives – each device smaller than an average shoe box 12 X 7 X 4. It was only when the other hard drive was located in late August – also unencrypted – that B.C. government officials realized just how significant the data loss was.

The ministry sent a team of 50 people to tear open hundreds of sealed boxes in a warehouse near Victoria, but when that effort failed to locate the missing hard drive, officials notified Mr. Virk and Elizabeth Denham, B.C.’s independent privacy commissioner, on Sept. 18.

And if you're as curious as we are about why the 50 people would have to TEAR open hundreds of sealed boxes in a warehouse near Victoria.... doesn't that show that HUNDREDS of sealed boxes haven't been properly documented for the database either?
September 22, 2015 Rob Shaw
...... The government doesn’t know if the hard drive has been stolen, misplaced or destroyed, said Virk.
But it leaves anyone currently aged 10 to 47 potentially at risk of having a copy of their name, birth date, gender, address, special needs status, grade point average and provincial exam score shared or accessed inappropriately.

As well, the drive contains potentially embarrassing data on why some students withdrew from school — such as substance abuse, mental health or family problems — and sensitive information about children in government care, including adoption status, intellectual disability programs, health and behavioural issues.......
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While education ministry staff were doing their frantic search for most of July, their illustrious leader, Education Minister Peter Fassbender, responsible for the lost hard drive, is PROMOTED on July 30th.

Typically any garbage that the BC Liberal Government wants to dump is done on a long weekend  July 30 was the evening before the start of a long weekend, BC Day.   Peter Fassbender is 'responsible' for Community, Sport and Cultural Development portfolio which was formerly held by Coralee Oakes.

 Christy Clark Cabinet  2011- Present


George Abbott, Education  Minister who dreamed up the External Hard drive Idea in 2011???

No!   2011 Yes but No!

How about the Health Minister who FIRED eight health Researchers?

You mean MacDiarmid?  appointed by micro manager Premier Gordon Campbell 

Yes



 From the Office of the Premier,
Christy Clark

Dear Mr. Mike Bernier (MLA),

I am pleased to announce your removal from the backbenches to the front row pew of accountable Ministers.   Your status of having no skeletons in your closet is an asset, at this time.  Your date of appointment to the Cabinet Caucus is July 30th, 2015.  Your portfolio is the Ministry of Education.

Congratulations, and to put your mind at ease I am asking you not to double the efforts of Peter Fassbender after his having lost sight of 3 million student records.


Vaughn Palmer: September 24, 2015
“It is deeply concerning to learn about another case of a major privacy breach involving unencrypted data,” said Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham. “Especially troubling, given that the education records on the external hard drive contained the personal information of more than three million students.”

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Ian Walker, UVic geography professor on coastal erosion and climate change: YVR landings require pontoons to splash down?

No mention in the Vancouver Sun newspaper on the status of Vancouver International Airport (YVR) if ..... it becomes flooded (kmz).

Boundary Bay Airport sunk, too.

Abbotsford will be high and dry.


Ian Walker, a geography professor whose specialties include coastal erosion and climate change, said areas such as Delta’s Roberts Bank and Boundary Bay, Vancouver’s Stanley Park, plus Wreck Beach and Point Grey bluffs are some of the region’s most vulnerable areas.

“We don’t really know if this is going to be the ‘monster’ that some researchers are calling it but all indications are it’s going to be really strong,” Walker said. “People living in low-lying coastal areas should be prepared for a great chance of floods and erosion.”  Vancouver Sun
 
Dikes coming to Metro Vancouver
pdf flood plain map
Dike Inventory Maps 

Monday, September 7, 2015

Robin Mathews: “The Mike Duffy Trial”. Is It A Gigantic Fraud From Start To Finish?

 "Unless you control your own economy, you cannot have your own culture and it is culture which finally determines the Canadian identity. - R. M."

“The Mike Duffy Trial”.  Is It A Gigantic Fraud From Start To Finish?   yes

by Robin Mathews, Sept. 2015

Journalists of the conventional press and media are asking questions. Questions.  Questions.  Will the Mike Duffy trial affect the October election?  Are Canadians paying attention?  Will they remember what has gone on, so far, in the trial when they vote?  Etcetera.  As usual the conventional press and media are asking the wrong questions….

Some of them, we may trust, are doing so deliberately, are employed to ask the wrong questions … deliberately.

They all should be asking and investigating…. They should be  challenging major actors, daily, on the key question:  is the whole operation a “fix”, a fraud, a scam, a gigantic, expensive make-believe construction?

Allied to that possibility … why has one of the (apparently) most important Canadian trials preceding the most important election in Canadian history been chopped into segments with weeks and months of hiatus between segments?  Did the lawyer for the Defence agree to that absurdity, or was it forced upon him by “the necessities [?] of Court scheduling”?

Why The Trial?

Let us consider a possible scenario for the Mike Duffy trial.  Nigel Wright with Stephen Harper and people in the PMO set about bribing Mike Duffy “to shut up, and pay up” some monies in order to disguise the fact that Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada were abusing and debasing the senate with every disreputable action possible, habitually.

Notice that Donald Savoie, expert on Public Administration and author, at Moncton University, pointed out on CBC (The Current, Aug 31, ’15) that “four hundred pages of emails” circulated among the principals involved in discussion of the proposed payment without any consultation with the Privy Council, Revenue Canada, or the Department of Justice. If that doesn’t suggest a conspiracy to undertake an unlawful act … then what would?

Mr. Duffy was to pretend that he had broken ranks by singly abusing senate procedures – to the surprise and moral horror of the PMO and Stephen Harper.  He was to show himself contrite and thereby front for the on-going abusive use of the senate by the Conservative government.

Remember major Conservative senators had criminal charges laid against them for work on the In-and-Out election scandal of 2006 – which happened eight years before the so-called Mike Duffy Scandal. The Conservative senate, it seems, was a cesspool of Conservative improper activity.

No Conservative reported the alleged acceptance of a bribe by Mike Duffy. The story broke in CTV news reporting.

At that point, we may theorize, the machinery of big time fraud “Banana Republic" Fraud went into action. To turn the attention of Canadians away from (1) Conservative Party and government corruption;  (2) to protect Stephen Harper and Nigel Wright (long-time soul mates and corrupt Party builders); (3) and to cover the flagrant Conservative misuse of the senate a Huge Diversion, a Dramatic Splash, a Public Circus, (whatever the financial cost) had to be staged.

Who Would Set Up The Fraudulent Trial?

The action required – and we may believe it may have gained – the corrupt cooperation of almost everyone involved in its production, a characteristic of Banana Republic Law.

The RCMP, it would seem, was corrupted to permit the investigation material of the Wright/Duffy relation to be perverted and misused.

Nigel Wright, many may believe, was “good to go” on a trial against Mike Duffy just as long as he – Nigel Wright – was not charged with paying a bribe but was corruptly protected.  [Why has Onex, Wright’s employer, posted him to England? What relation has Onex Corporation to the Conservative Party of Canada?]  The neglect of Nigel Wright in the charges set up the basic insanity of the trial: Mike Duffy accepted a bribe from Nigel Wright.  But Nigel Wright didn’t pay Mike Duffy a bribe! The charges, I suggest, could not have been laid as they have been -considering that insanity - if the Prosecution was not, somehow, also brought on board.

That agency seems also to have been highly selective, failing to lay any charges under the Parliament of Canada Act, an Act which would likely have brought more people under close inspection for the possibility of engaging in serious wrongful acts.

Next … it is reasonable to believe the judge on this ‘judge only’ trial is acting where a ‘judge and jury’ should be at work.  The choice of a ‘judge only’ is open to question.  A trial of significant and large public interest should be a trial by judge and jury.  If Canadian law doesn’t specify that, it should.  A judge can be ‘naturally sympathetic to power’, can be ‘won over’, may be bribed or coerced.

Those things are almost impossible to be the case with twelve, independently selected jurors.

In a ‘judge only’ trial the judge must be scrupulously attentive and independent and must not simply accept the story-line of the Prosecution, especially in what might be (among other things, as in this case) a Revenge Trial.  The major charge of a bribe accepted but a bribe not paid (where the payer is as evident as a signature on a cheque and his own public admission) should be openly questioned by the judge … and the case discontinued if no satisfactory answer is forthcoming.

That would mean, one must consider in this scenario, that the judge had, somehow, to be made part of the “fix”, the fraud, the scam, the gigantic, expensive make-believe construction.  He had to allow that a bribe can be alleged to have been accepted without being alleged to have been paid.  The judge, also, some might argue, had to accept that Nigel Wright - because only a witness in his court - would leave Scot free, untouched, and would return to normal life.

One sign that democratic rights and freedoms are collapsing in any country is given when wealth and power can take over the judicial system and employ all its personnel to create wholly manufactured, corrupt (apparently legitimate) court cases.  Such cases may be called Banana Republic cases.  The Mike Duffy trial was, some will believe, manufactured in Conservative Party back rooms and is being carried forward despite huge absurdities.

Stephen Harper’s On-Going Role

Day after day, Stephen Harper (an undeclared principal in the case) has stated publicly the judgement he wants from the trial: Duffy to be convicted; Nigel Wright to be freed completely (as a witness who is not facing charges).  In addition, by repeating over and over that the matter was between Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy only, the prime minister of Canada (not under oath) is, in fact, saying he believes witnesses (under oath) who testify otherwise are lying, and that documentary evidence is false.

The judge on the trial has had every reason and every right to silence the prime minister of Canada … and the judge has not done that.


A ‘Gilbert and Sullivan’ Production 

There is more.  As if writing a script for a Gilbert and Sullivan Comic Opera, Prosecution laid 31 charges against Mike Duffy!  Ridiculous!  Hilarious nuttiness!

It is as if Prosecution tried to bury “a bribe accepted but a bribe not paid” with a torrent of 30 other charges to overwhelm the sensibilities of Canadians.

By the scenario suggested above, Stephen Harper, Nigel Wright, the RCMP, the Prosecution, and the judge on the case would all be part of the “fix”, the fraud, the scam, the gigantic expensive make-believe construction.

Not clear in the suggested scenario is whether the Defence lawyer can be fitted into the arranged game.  He has, however – some will believe – made too little of Nigel Wright as principal in the case – as a person who offered a bribe (if, indeed, a bribe was accepted).

Banana Republic Operations in Canada 

Perhaps the first, major, trumped-up Banana Republic trial in recent Canadian history was that of premier Glen Clark of British Columbia (2002) over tin-pot allegations that he had given favours for a $10,000.00 veranda he had built on his modest East Vancouver home (and had paid for).  At least three times during the 136 day trial, Clark’s lawyer (now deceased) asked the judge (Elizabeth Bennett (BC Rail Trial Too)) to close the trial for lack of cause.  She refused each time – and on the last day declared Glen Clark was guilty of … nothing.  But he was destroyed politically and the way was open for the ten years of corrupt Gordon Campbell neo-liberal government in B.C. before, that is, Campbell was named by Stephen Harper as Canadian High Commissioner in London.

That case was created and heated (almost certainly) by Liberal Opposition forces in close collaboration with some RCMP and active conventional press and media people.  Needless to say, the arrangement of charges would have required prosecutorial work.

Briefly (as a further example) in the BC Rail Scandal case, 2007-2010, (which may be considered a direct sequel to the Glen Clark case) an illegitimate Special Crown Prosecutor laid charges (RCMP assisted) against three lower-level Sikh government employees.  That shifted attention away from the probably guilty powerful politicians and corporate actors in the BC Rail sell-out.

The judge refused to act on the illegitimate appointment of the Special Crown Prosecutor, as did the Attorney General, the Chief Justice, the Associate Chief Justice, and the Canadian Judicial Council (and the conventional press and media).  And so one may assume that the RCMP, the judges, and the reigning Liberal cabinet – as well as most conventional press and media were all corruptly involved.

But the Defence team was honest.

The accused in the BC Rail trial (as with the Mike Duffy case) were not ‘squeaky clean’, and so they were open to “overlord victimization”.  Nonetheless, the Defence shattered the carefully prepared scenario.  Charges against the accused in B.C. were heavily reduced to almost nothing, and the Gordon Campbell government paid the $6 million in costs of the accused … all their costs … in order to terminate the trial early and to get free of it before it blew up in their faces because of the work of the honest Defence team.

In B.C. the big criminals got away, the illegitimate Crown Prosecutor went untouched, the corrupt in the B.C. RCMP weren’t scratched. And both premiers involved – Gordon Campbell and Christie Clark - refused to tell (even the Auditor General) precisely which person in government okayed the $6 million payment to the accused. But the huge Banana Republic, fraudulent trial was exposed … and the accused somewhat exonerated (though not in any way by a perceptive and responsible conventional press and media).

In a much, much less publicly noticed Civil Case, I suggest, Banana Republic machinery was used in the heart-breaking economic destruction, psychological mangling, and massive injustice suffered by   Kelly Marie Richard and her two sons in their dental malpractice case in the Alberta courts (first decade of this century). The RCMP, lawyers, the courts, the CanadianJudicial Council, and IT forces, in my judgement, rallied to protect Big Capital in Canada against legitimate claims of damage done to ordinary Canadians.

The same in-court (Civil Case) hi-jinks, I am convinced, are taking place in the Jessica Ernst (fracking) case against Big Gas and Oil and the Government Regulator in Alberta.  The change of government from Conservative to NDP, mid-trial, in Alberta has not changed the Alberta Regulatory Structure or its chief personnel (from which much of the abuse of Jessica Ernst is alleged to have originated).  The new government seems unaware of the Jessica Ernst case against itself and its Regulatory body … and to be unaware of the possibility of Banana Republic conduct in the Court proceedings.

A characteristic of present-day political Opposition Parties appears to be their absolute determination to ignore some of the hugest and most threatening areas of public corruption.  When Big Capital and Big Government corruptly organize democratic institutions to assault and efface their enemies - victims of corruption fighting back, Opposition Parties look the other way.  They seem to do so especially when those victims of corruption are defenceless, alone, and relatively poor.  It is almost as if the Opposition Parties long for positions of power in which they, too, can enjoy the profits of corruption.

Nationally, I suggest, Canadians may well be watching an almost wholly corrupt, trumpery, Banana Republic trial being called “The Mike Duffy Trial”.  Looked at carefully, I suggest, the fraudulence of that trial will seem – to a growing number of Canadians - more and more and more evident. It is – among other things – a huge warning and wake-up call to Canadians.

And yet … not one Opposition Party, not one, has questioned the fraud all Canadians are probably facing in the trial.  That is a burden which ordinary Canadians are going to have to take onto their own shoulders … and begin action to bring about change. They may well start by placing the trial very high among matters they will act upon, in polling booths, across the country, in the coming October federal election.

Contact: Robin Mathews

October 7, 2015:
 Are you as depressed as I am about October 19??? - Robin Mathews