Wait. Police lawyers write up officers' notes for them?

From a partial transcript of Ontario Ombudsman and former Special Investigation Unit Director Andre Marin's interview on CBC yesterday regarding how systemic obstruction from the police will affect the Sammy Yatim investigation: 

"The director of the SIU has written 82 times to the Chief of Toronto Police, reporting issues of evidence tampering on the scene, failure to notify the SIU of an incident, one police lawyer representing multiple officers, police lawyers writing the notes for the officers - you know the police lawyer wasn't on scene."

Although Mr. Marin was talking about the Toronto Police, his remarks made me remember the Robert Dziekanski incident. 

The four RCMP officers in the 2007 police-slaying of Dziekanski are on trial for perjury because they all had nearly identical but absurdly inaccurate "notes", as Paul Pritchard's video eventually revealed. 
They all maintained that Dziekanski came at them screaming and brandishing a stapler, that they had to wrestle him to the ground, that to varying degrees they feared for their lives. 
At the Braidwood Inquiry, Justice Thomas Braidwood played Pritchard's video frame by frame as they read from their prepared notes to the accompaniment of muffled laughter from spectators in the courtroom.

So were those "notes" the RCMP's version of "one police lawyer representing multiple officers, police lawyers writing the notes for the officers" ?
Is that why they were so similar, so resolutely CYA, and yet so preposterously wrong?
I know the officers were specifically asked if they were "coached" for their testimony - a charge they have all denied -  but did anyone think to ask junior RCMP Constable Bill Bentley at his perjury trial last month if he had any input into the writing of his notes at all?
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Aug 3 Update - relates only to Ontario
Andre Marin : Police-Involved Deaths : The Need for Reform

"The SIU's practices around delayed officer interviews also served to undermine the regulatory requirement that witness officers be segregated to insulate their evidence from outside influence. Given that witness officers were usually permitted to leave an incident scene and that long periods went by before they were interviewed, the potential for conscious or unconscious tailoring of evidence was substantially increased. This risk was also compounded by the fact that many officers spoke with counsel before writing their notes and before speaking with the SIU, and quite often, the same counsel represented all officers involved in an incident, increasing the chance of contamination of their recollection of events, since lawyers are bound by the rules of professional conduct to share information among clients in a joint retainer situation."

Ontario Ombudsman 2012-2013 Annual Report 

In April 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada heard an appeal of an Ontario Court of Appeal case dealing with the issue of police association lawyers vetting officers’ notes before submitting them to SIU ... The Ontario court ruled in 2011 that officers cannot have a lawyer vet their notes. The Supreme Court’s decision is pending. ... 

Later on in the report he notes : 

" ... officers refuse to answer questions about whether they consulted with a lawyer before writing their notes"

In March 2013 at a speech at Carleton University, Andre Marin again called for legislation to bolster the SIU and "prohibit police lawyers representing multiple officers and interfering with notes."
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Ontario Ombudsman and former SIU Director on Sammy Yatim investigation

Yesterday on CBC Metro Morning, Ontario Ombudsman and former Director of the Special Investigations Unit Andre Marin spoke about the SIU investigation into the Toronto Police shooting death of 18 year old Sammy Yatim on an empty streetcar and the systemic lack of police co-operation with the SIU.
Excerpted transcript : 

CBC : The Chief of Police has said that he and his officers will cooperate fully with the SIU. Yesterday Mike McCormick the head of the police union said that his offices always cooperate and collaborate with the SIU.  

Marin : The cooperation of the police with an SIU investigation is the exception and not the norm. When you hear the police say we always cooperate, it rings hollow. We've done in-depth investigations, two reports. The director of the SIU has written 82 times to the Chief of Toronto Police, reporting issues of evidence tampering on the scene, failure to notify the SIU of an incident, one police lawyer representing multiple officers, police lawyers writing the notes for the officers - you know the police lawyer wasn't on scene. That's not co-operation and all these 82 letters haven't been answered. Last year - we reported in an annual report we released a few weeks ago - last year the director wrote 19 letters all of which have not been answered. 

CBC : Does the fact that this is an incredibly public investigation, in part because this incident was caught not just on one but on multiple videos, change that? 

Marin : I think there's a greater degree of question. As well the incident depicted raises issues. But you know if I recall correctly during the G20 SIU investigation, Chief Blair was on your show promoting the fiction that the videotape of Adam Nobody had been tampered with until the director of the SIU called his bluff. Now is that co-operation or is that undermining the investigation? And the worst part here is - I don't oversee the Toronto Police Service; I do oversee the SIU, I oversee the provincial government. Provincial government committed to strengthening the role of the SIU to make sure the evidence they get is untampered and it's obtained readily and early because SIU's conclusion will only be as good as the evidence that it's gathered. The province agreed to bring change but then from documents we found changed their mind because of "vehement police opposition". And that's a direct quote from the ministry's correspondence. So you know it's all great to see these commitments of 180 degree change in direction in co-operation with the SIU, but the police have to stop playing cat-and-mouse games and the SIU needs to be able to do its job independently and without distractions.  

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The Mounties always get their man ... off

Like the other three RCMP officers, Constable Bill Bentley stated Robert Dziekanski "grabbed a stapler and came at members screaming."

Paul Pritchard's video showed Dziekanski was backed up against a table with his hands up.

At his inquiry, Justice Braidwood called their nearly identical explanations "shameful", "patently unbelievable", and "deliberate misrepresentations of what happened for the purpose of justifying their actions".

Yesterday B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mark McEwan found Bentley not guilty of perjury :

"It is quite possible that the Pritchard video did not capture the gestures several witnesses observed that would be consistent with Mr. Bentley's note that Mr. Dziekanski 'came at' the police because it was taken from behind Mr. Dziekanski."

Possibly this video from yesterday failed to capture a few gestures also.
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Chris Hedges, socialism, and the NDP

Part 6 of a 7-part interview from the Real News Network with Chris Hedges, author and activist following 15 years as a foreign correspondent with The New York Times.

"To even call yourself a socialist in this country is to essentially remove yourself from the acceptable parameters of public discourse."

Certainly the NDP agrees with that statement - its delegates having voted 960 to 188 three months ago to expunge the word "socialism" from their constitution, presumably in the vain hope of dampening Steve's enthusiasm for flinging it about come 2015. 
Well, it's only a word, right?

Thought experiment.
We are starting society over from scratch - the laws that determine our relationship to each other, to food and energy and the production of same - the works.
Hands up everyone who agrees to give corporate shareholders control over the government, the law, food production and distribution, our jobs, the life and death of our very ecosystem to do with as they please. 

No? No takers for that system? Because that's what we are currently voting for over and over and over again, and the longer it persists, the more of it we're voting for and what's worse - we know it. 
And this is the moment in time when we so desperately political support for an alternative vision that the NDP has chosen to deny their own roots in hopes of being mistaken for the other parties. 
Because it's only a word, right?
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Royal Bank and iGATE : "Business as usual"

A LiveMint/Wall Street Journal article reported three weeks ago that Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Bank of Nova Scotia, Bank of Montreal and CIBC have temporarily halted their hiring of workers from outsourcing firms like iGate, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), and Infosys Ltd, while they wait for the public backlash to blow over   :

"The backlash against outsourcing jobs comes at a time when the unemployment rate in Canada stands at 7.2% and remains above the levels that were seen before the 2008 recession. The Canadian banking and financial services (BFS) outsourcing market is estimated to be worth more than $5 billion. "

The article also mentions that IT services provider CGI Group has signed $12 billion in outsourcing contracts with various Canadian corporations, and IBM - $7 billion.

"To be sure, the halt in outsourcing is expected to be temporary, with experts and IT service providers expecting outsourcing projects to resume after six-eight months. 

'After the RBC controversy, companies are waiting for things to die down. Banks are slowing down projects—they are keeping a low profile, while the tension over offshoring jobs blows over," said an executive from an outsourcing advisory firm who requested anonymity.'  "

You're shocked, I'm sure.

So how's poor old iGATE managing this difficult temporary tension in offshoring?

Aside from reporting "Strong Second Quarter Results; Profits Up 136% ", I mean.
July 17, 2013 :

On Wednesday, during a post-earnings conference call, iGate said it did not anticipate any impact on its business due to the immigration laws in Canada and it had not seen any pull-back from any of its Canadian clients after the government probe.

“It’s pretty much been business as usual since we got a clean bill after the audit,” said interim CEO Gerhard Watzinger, an iGate veteran. 

An RBC spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the bank had started shifting work away from iGate and said it would continue to work with iGate if it complied with RBC’s policies on outsourcing.
“IGate is a long-standing supplier and we will continue to work with them provided that they comply, like all our suppliers have to, with our supplier code of conduct,” the spokeswoman said in an emailed reply.

And here's a job posting from a search of the last 30 days at WowJobs iGATE Canada Jobs page :


Apparently the supposed temporary rollback of outsourcing jobs for a few months till the public backlash blows over isn't really all that after all. 
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It's a small small small Con world

Top Conservative party operative says she didn’t know of plan to cover Duffy expense tab, reads the headline. 

Nor did she speak to Nigel Wright or Senator Gerstein about it apparently.

That top party op is Pierre Poilievre's ex, Jenni Byrne - Conservative Party director of political operations, national Con campaign director during the 2011 election, and Steve's once and perhaps future director of issues management in the PMO.

But then when you read the article, it turns out to be the Con Party spokesy Fred DeLorey answering all the reporter's questions on Byrne's behalf by email. Nothing directly from Byrne and no follow-up questions.

Mr. DeLorey, you may recall, also initially denied that the Cons were behind the January robocall pushpoll in Saskatchewan regarding electoral riding redistricting, while Poilievre, who once founded a robocall company of his own, said they were done by Chase Research. Eventually Chase Research was outed for having done the calls on behalf of the Cons as an affiliate of RackNine, the company used by Pierre Poutine to make the election fraud robocalls in Guelph.

For her part, Jenni Byrne denied the Cons had anything to do with the Guelph robocall election fraud, issuing an email to say that the Cons ran "a clean and ethical campaign", notwithstanding they had to fire Patrick Muttart from their election war room after he sent Jenni Byrne's close friend SunNews CEO Kory Teneycke that bogus Iggy war photo.

But back to the article. 
Commenters below it point out the obvious - the unlikelihood of the Con Party director of political operations knowing nothing about a PMO/Con Party plan to bribe a sitting senator causing them headaches for his silence. 
Three comments are the angry rebuttals of one commenter, William Donaldson.  
While he has every right to his defence of Ms Byrne, is this the same Bill Donaldson who was Pierre Poilievre's first campaign manager and Nepean-Carleton EDA president back in 2006 under Manager of Political Operations for Ontario, Jenni Byrne? [fourth link down marked DOC]

It's a small small small Con world. 
Pull on any Duffy/Senate/election fraud thread and the same names come up over and over again.
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Greg Rickford, Minister of Science and Technology

2011 : MP Greg Rickford - centre - proudly announces funding for fish lab at Experimental Lakes Area, calling it “Canada’s most innovative freshwater research centre.” The 58-lake globally renowned research facility in his Kenora riding was responsible for the research behind the Canada-US acid rain treaty, 

May 2012 : The DFO announces it is dumping ELA to save $2M per year, even though it will cost $50M to shut it down.

After months of hiding from his constituents and outraged scientists, Rickford emerged to explain: 

"Our mandate has moved to a smaller-scale research that reflects what priorities are today."

Exactly how small those Con priorities are Rickford doesn't say, but on March 20 this year, he voted along with all the other Cons against the following motion in the House of Commons :

That, in the opinion of the House:
(a) public science, basic research and the free and open exchange of scientific information are essential to evidence-based policy-making;
(b) federal government scientists must be enabled to discuss openly their findings with their colleagues and the public; and
(c) the federal government should maintain support for its basic scientific capacity across Canada, including immediately extending funding, until a new operator is found, to the world-renowned Experimental Lakes Area Research Facility to pursue its unique research program

How'd he do in his previous stint as ParlSec on Aboriginal Affairs?

Two months before 16-year-old Chelsea Edwards of Attawapiskat First Nation traveled to Geneva Switzerland in Feb 2012 to speak to the UN on behalf of students in her community whose school had closed 12 years earlier due to toxic contamination, Greg Rickford, then Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Aboriginal and Northern Development, stood in the House of Commons in Dec. 2011 and said : 

Mr. Speaker, the government works with First Nations to deliver real results for their priorities. We have invested heavily in First Nation schools, including in Attawapiskat, and in water and waste water infrastructure, health and housing, and we have done this all in full partnership with First Nations.

Sunday update : unmuzzledscience  : Greg Rickford? Really?

July 24 update : G&M : Time running out for ELA transfer deal
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#3 in a series on Steve's recent cabinet shuffle appointments. See also : 
Pierre Poilievre, Minister for Democratic Reform and
Dr. Kellie Leitch, Minister of Labour
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Dr. Kellie Leitch, Minister of Labour

A look at what we can expect from our new Minister of Labour.

So how many of you made it all the way through to Leitch at the Harper/Hudak/Ford TeaCon Trifecta BBQ?
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Pierre Poilievre, Minister for Democratic Reform

Who really thinks Skippy's appointment to Democratic Reform is about democratic reform? Ha!

Poilievre's appointment is about a coming battle over election reform and robocalls. It's been sixteen months since the Cons promised to bring in a bill addressing Mayrand's proposed reforms to prevent a repeat of last election's robocon fiasco.  The Cons have yet to consult Mayrand on it and he's been making public noises about their obstruction of his election fraud investigation as well.
Meanwhile the 2014 spring deadline past which reforms can't be implemented in time for the next election approaches...

Skippy's new job will be to attack Mayrand.
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Thursday July8th Update :
 Glen McGregor : Poilievre brings robocalls expertise to new job

2014 Update : You have to admit I called it.
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Bravo Zulu, Cpl. Kate

Leopard tank driver Cpl. Kate MacEachern broke a world record last year walking over 500 kilometers from her post at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick to her hometown of Antigonish, N.S. to raise $20,000 for injured veterans. In full battle dress with a 22 kilogram kit on her back, she did it on her annual holidays.
DefMin Airshow MacKay was so impressed he walked the last kilometer with her.  
                                                                                In June this year she asked for 20 extra days of unpaid leave in addition to her 25 days of holiday time to make a trek three times longer from Cape Breton to Ottawa to raise $100,000 for vets with post-traumatic stress disorder, which she suffered from herself after a serious spinal cord injury in a training exercise six years ago.

In a truly tone-deaf PR blunder, her request was refused on the grounds that two months was insufficient time to get permission from the deputy DND minister for the extra time off as well as DND funding she hadn't asked for.  So committed is Cpl. MacEachern to her personal mission, which she has called the Long Trek Home after the struggle vets go through after coming home, she has reluctantly quit her 25 year contract with the military after eight years - in what she has called a "gut-wrenching decision" - in order to be able to go ahead with her trek to Ottawa anyway.

I very much liked her sign, although she's not the first to use those words.
We all need inspiration to find the courage to speak up in our own shaky voices.  
Thank you, Cpl. Kate, for yours.
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