Attorney General Considers Launching Witchhunt

Tue, April 5, 2005
Feds bid to plug Gomery leaks
By Stephanie Rubec
Toronto Sun Press

CANADA'S attorney general is probing possible breaches of a publication ban set up to protect explosive testimony at the AdScam inquiry. Justice spokesman Patrick Charette said federal lawyers are looking into the Internet sites reproducing excerpts of Montreal ad exec Jean Brault's testimony and providing a link to a U.S. blog featuring more extensive coverage of the hearing.

"We have to decide what the best course of action is," Charette said, adding federal lawyers could charge Canadian bloggers and website owners with contempt of court or suggest AdScam Justice John Gomery issue warning letters.

Note that the Sun story say that, "CANADA'S attorney general is probing possible breaches ... "

Canada's Attorney General is the chief law officer of the Crown. He is better known as the Minister of Justice, the Honourable Irwin Cotler, PC, MP, Member of Parliament for Mount Royal. He is also a leading Liberal member of parliament. That political party has called in the police in a desperate attempt to spin itself as the victim in the sponsorship scandal. From CTV.

Earlier Monday, Liberal party lawyer Doug Mitchell told reporters that he has asked the RCMP to investigate the possibility his party was a victim of fraud in the sponsorship scandal.

"I have been directed by my clients to contact the RCMP to ask that they investigate the possibility that the party itself may have been the target of fraud or other harmful acts by certain individuals,'' Mitchell said.

"Using inappropriate means to gain undeserved benefit ... is, if proven to be true, criminal action, plain and simple.''

As such, Irwin Cotler is in a clear conflict of interest respecting this case. He has no business instructing Justice Department lawyers on matters pertaining to the publication ban. I hope the Sun has it wrong and that any investigation is being conducted by the Deputy Attorney General, who is a civil servant (although, given the corruption of the federal civil service by the Grits, it gives me cold confort to know a civil servant may have charge of instructing Justice Department lawyers.)

I had a link to the offending US web site featured on the CBC yesterday. In the CBC clip you could see the sailing ships on the site's masthead. Last night I removed the link even though I frequently visited that site before the Gomery testimony appeared on it. Given the threat of criminal prosecution, Canadians will have to find the U.S. blogsite on their own with no help from me.

Didn't dissident intellectuals in the old Soviet Union days make use of forbidden texts called Samizdat that they passed surreptitiously from hand to hand to avoid arrest by their political masters?