Dean Clifford - A Tale of Two Gurus

[Jeffrey]

all those threatening recordings he supposedly made

We don't have to add the "supposedly" and "allegedly" since the recordings are still up on YouTube.

[JamesVincent]

Still alledged until he is found guilty.

[arayder]

It's kind of hard to maintain your image as the great all knowing guru when your silly sorry pathetic ass is parked in the local hoosegow and for all your posturing and promises all your magic documents have been thrown back in you face and outright laughed at, and your claims that the courts are going to run in terror of you seems to ring real hollow even with the dim and faithful. . .

Dean seems to have run through the promise-conflict-failure-dismissal cycle of freeman gurus a little faster than usual. The next string of possible replacement gurus (the chief and the guy in Australia, etc.) to me seems a little weirder than the last.

We also are seeing several freeman woo "practitioners" who, having drunk fremanary's grape kool aide months and years ago, are now coming before the courts. Unknowingly these poor dupes only supply more nails for the movement's coffin every time they get laughed out of court.

So goes freemanary. . .

[Burnaby49]

It's kind of hard to maintain your image as the great all knowing guru when your silly sorry pathetic ass is parked in the local hoosegow and for all your posturing and promises all your magic documents have been thrown back in you face and outright laughed at, and your claims that the courts are going to run in terror of you seems to ring real hollow even with the dim and faithful. . .

Dean seems to have run through the promise-conflict-failure-dismissal cycle of freeman gurus a little faster than usual. The next string of possible replacement gurus (the chief and the guy in Australia, etc.) to me seems a little weirder than the last.

We also are seeing several freeman woo "practitioners" who, having drunk fremanary's grape kool aide months and years ago, are now coming before the courts. Unknowingly these poor dupes only supply more nails for the movement's coffin every time they get laughed out of court.

So goes freemanary. . .

I'd disagree about the Chief. I've met him, sat through one of his seminars, and had a number of discussions with him. Nothing notably weird about him, just a guy trying to make a buck and a name for himself. He seems to have throttled back significantly since the notaries hit him with the court injunction and his clients (Charles Norman Holmes, Bernie Yankson, David Lange, David Smith, and Simpson) got their asses whipped in court. His principal focus now seems to be to promote his music career. He bubbles ups with a comment on contracts now and then on his Facebook page but his heart doesn't really seem in it.

[notorial dissent]

I think all things considered that the Chief would be better served by concentrating on his music career, it is certainly less likely to get him an all expense paid vacation in the gray bar hotel as opposed to the alternative, and really he just doesn't have what it takes to be a guru and make a go of it.

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

Was watching a news segment on prison conditions in the US. I assume they're not as bad in Canada but it does make me wonder how much of the Dean propaganda is legit. I really don't believe he's in one of those ADMAX solitary cells with a slat they use to pass food to him. I think we've all reverse engineered that the prison guards keep him away from the general population so he won't try to give them Freeman legal advice which given how effective it is, is a justified move to protect the rest of the inmates. ...

The stereotypical issue in remand centres in Canada is overcrowding. Many facilities that are holding persons awaiting trial are at double, even triple capacity. This has led to cells designed for one person having two in bunkbeds, or even three with one on a mattress on the floor. Overcrowding has often led to detainees being confined in cells for very long parts of a day. 23 hours per day is not atypical.

The quite bizarre result is that the conditions in an actual prison are often vastly superior to those in pre-trial detention. This is one of the reasons Canadian courts have consistently rules that 'time in remand' is worth more than 'time in prison' when it comes to calculating a sentence.

It is also a reason why remand detainees plead guilty to get the hell out of there and into a better corrections facility.

The long and short of it, for most remand detainees solitary would offer at least some comforts - privacy, if nothing else.

This is a major failure of the Canadian justice and correctional apparatus. To be fair to the remand facility staff and their institutions, no one planned these facilities to hold persons for extended periods. The fact that people are in these places for years is evidence the system has malfunctioned. The time between arrest and charging, and trial, is too long. This is not a fault of the police, the Crown Prosecutors, or the remand facilities. This malfunction is due to the criminal justice system in Canada becoming excessively formal and concerned with theoretical rights, rather than social results for both the accused (and convicts - if found guilty), and for society.

This malfunction has two major causes: (1) inadequate court and Crown resources, and (2) an aberrant, unjustified fixation in the post-Charter of Rights and Freedoms milieu on procedural fairness. Put another way, the courts have decided that it is more important that a trial is excruciatingly fair than it provides timely resolution of criminal jeopardy for detainees. No matter how long it takes to get a detainee into a courtroom.

I could editorialize further but that would be overkill. I will simply note I think it is terribly inappropriate that people languish in remand centres for years prior to their trials - but that is an inevitable consequence of Canada's escalating obsession with procedural justice over functional results for all justice system participants.

SMS Möwe

[Burnaby49]

I have to disagree, at least to a minor extent, with Mowe's statement;

I could editorialize further but that would be overkill. I will simply note I think it is terribly inappropriate that people languish in remand centres for years prior to their trials - but that is an inevitable consequence of Canada's escalating obsession with procedural justice over functional results for all justice system participants.

I could be wrong, I don't have Mowe's apparent depth of knowledge in this area, but I don't think that "Canada's escalating obsession with procedural justice" is the issue. I think it is the Supreme Court of Canada's obsession with the absolute total adherence to defendant's rights, as the SCC interprets that word according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that is driving the Canadian justice system to total dysfunction. The Charter became law in 1982. For at least two decades after that the SCC saw it as their prime mission (I'd call it obsession) to interpret the Charter to preserve the rights of Canadians as the SCC understood those rights. They chose the gold standard, an absolute "perfect world" protection of defendant's rights where no error (as defined by the SCC), no matter how minor, that might prejudice a defendant can be tolerated. Unfortunately that does not translate well to the real world. As a result Canadian courts are crippled by a huge body of Supreme Court Charter decisions which, if not followed rigidly, will result in acquittal. So the courts play it safe and defence lawyers, rather than argue the merits of their client's case, focus on finding Charter errors on the part of the police, the prosecution, and the court. So a trial that would take two weeks in the United States can take six months in Canada. This is not an exaggeration. I've seen six month murder trials where there are no significant complications. Half a year of court time for what, in a rational world, would be open and shut cases.

There is no easy fix for this. The various levels of government can't legislate the problem away because the Charter is the paramount law of Canada and it is the Supreme Court, not elected legislative bodies, that decide how the Charter is interpreted. I doubt that "Canada", as a general population group, has an escalating obsession with procedural justice. But that doesn't matter because "Canada" does not set the rules of the game. The Supreme Court does and the SCC is indifferent to how their decisions impact on the actual administration of justice in the real world.

[arayder]

I'd disagree about the Chief. I've met him, sat through one of his seminars, and had a number of discussions with him. Nothing notably weird about him, just a guy trying to make a buck and a name for himself. He seems to have throttled back significantly since the notaries hit him with the court injunction and his clients (Charles Norman Holmes, Bernie Yankson, David Lange, David Smith, and Simpson) got their asses whipped in court. His principal focus now seems to be to promote his music career. He bubbles ups with a comment on contracts now and then on his Facebook page but his heart doesn't really seem in it.

I defer to your judgement, Burnaby.

I laud you for the openness, patience and making the effort to sit through one of his seminars . . . to say nothing of your frequent court visits and reports on other cases.

Your contributions here are invaluable.

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

Just to clarify, Burnaby49 and I are saying the same thing. When I said "Canada" I meant "the court system in Canada". But he's right to lay this mess directly at the feet of the Supreme Court of Canada. They built this one from scratch.

The irony is that in the last few years there has been a parade of former Supreme Court of Canada judges who have said "gee, you know, criminal proceedings are getting so complex - you trial judges should really clamp down and triage out the flakey Charter applications you get." Uh... really? After the appellate courts generally order a re-trial anytime there is a minor disclosure issue? Or where an accused right to counsel is not exactly and scrupulously described under ever evolving guidelines?

And I won't even start on police search related questions.

It's a mess that won't be cleaned up anytime soon.

SMS Möwe

[arayder]

Just to clarify, Burnaby49 and I are saying the same thing. When I said "Canada" I meant "the court system in Canada". But he's right to lay this mess directly at the feet of the Supreme Court of Canada. They built this one from scratch.

The irony is that in the last few years there has been a parade of former Supreme Court of Canada judges who have said "gee, you know, criminal proceedings are getting so complex - you trial judges should really clamp down and triage out the flakey Charter applications you get." Uh... really? After the appellate courts generally order a re-trial anytime there is a minor disclosure issue? Or where an accused right to counsel is not exactly and scrupulously described under ever evolving guidelines?

And I won't even start on police search related questions.

It's a mess that won't be cleaned up anytime soon.

SMS Möwe

I point out the irony that this is the same court system Dean, Bobby and a raft of freeman gurus claim runs roughshod over the rights of Canadians.

[Bill Lumbergh]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with both of you.

The current remand crisis in Canada is almost entirely due to the complete and utter failure of our bail system. Our law of bail is simply not being followed. The over-reliance on sureties and absurd bail conditions imposed on accused mean that not only do people have a harder time getting bail, but once they get out the odds are they will be re-arrested on a breach. The Charter has little, if anything to do with this. In fact, it is precisely because people are not getting the reasonable bail they are entitled to that we have more people in jail awaiting trial than we do actual convicts.

After the appellate courts generally order a re-trial anytime there is a minor disclosure issue? Or where an accused right to counsel is not exactly and scrupulously described under ever evolving guidelines?

Disagree with this entirely. Ever since the SCC's ruling in Grant re excluding evidence under s.24(2), Charter applications are much more difficult than they were before. That is, while you may establish a Charter breach, the evidence you want excluded still goes in after the "balancing process" now employed by the courts. Minor Charter infractions won't get you anywhere (certainly will not get charges stayed) and in fact it's shocking just how liberal courts are willing to be when it comes to questionable police/state conduct. The Charter tolerates all kinds of prejudice folks, and I maintain that acquittals on "technicalities" are exceptional.

Charter applications have little bearing on the length of the trial proper. Most Charter issues are dealt with by pre-trial motions. There are many other factors that prolong trials... expert witnesses and complex testimony, and endless voir dires to determine admissibility of evidence. Nowadays courts will generally have charter applications "blended" with the trial, so that you don't have to hear the same evidence twice - the court simply rules on the charter motions at the end of trial. What the Charter has done is prolong the entire process, from arrest to trial.

[Hilfskreuzer Möwe]

Bill – thanks for your comments. I rarely am exposed to the bail process so your criticism there may be entirely valid. I'll keep an eye on that.

As for the rest of it, I think the three of us are describing the same beast, but from different perspectives. Burnaby49 is used to seeing tax evasion cases as criminal proceedings – and with those if the CRA has a well-documented basis to argue the taxpayer was playing games, then there isn’t much in the way of a defence, except for the accused to argue illegal search based on the different standards for evidence for a tax assessment vs. a criminal investigation.

Me, I’m noting the stress on procedural fairness rather than whether illegal conduct has occurred and warrants sanction. I completely agree that there are few acquittals on ‘technicalities’, and that post-Grant evidence from many questionable searches is being admitted – but that hasn’t slowed the s. 8 applications.

And in a lot of ways that’s understandable – if you’re caught in your own car with a kilo of cocaine there isn’t much of a defence that can be mounted except that the search that located the cocaine was illegal. My experience is that many trials of that kind are little more than a Charter application – if the evidence goes in, the accused pleads guilty. Is that efficient? Perhaps not, but supposedly it is fair.

I’d also suggest the Supreme Court of Canada has not done a particularly great job on clarifying what is or is not a reasonable search. For example, it’s pretty hard to reconcile that a search warrant for a “cute house” is ok (R. v. Plant, [1993] 3 SCR 281) with other cases that place a very high standard on the requirement for intrusion into a home. Given this mess of appellate principles, it’s often worthwhile for an accused to gamble on a Charter, s. 8 application on an otherwise ironclad case.

The access to counsel arguments under s. 10 get pretty surreal too.

When I have spoken to trial judges on this subject the response I get from them is that they have become exceptionally cautious when it comes to Charter applications. They are very risk averse to retrial, particularly where the trial is lengthy or involves a jury. Post-R. v. Sheppard, 2002 SCC 26 the safe course is to write, write, and write some more. Does this lead to overkill? Probably, but it’s better than a retrial, so the judiciary errs on the side of caution.

No argument on the issue of expert testimony. If you want a good giggle, I ran across this beastie while doing some research: Malton v. Attia, 2013 ABQB 642 (http://canlii.ca/t/g1pvp). A 221 paragraph decision to evaluate whether a trial judge in a civil court requires a lawyer expert to provide standard of care evidence for a lawyer, engaged in a mundane contract lawsuit, in the very same court as the judge who purportedly does not have the expertise to evaluate the conduct of the allegedly negligent lawyer. It’s enough to make one weep that the question was even argued.

My perspective is that a kind of synergy (of a bad kind) has occurred. The trial courts are extremely hesitant to compromise an accused person’s Charter rights. Want an adjournment? Pretty much automatic. New counsel? Ok – can’t deny that. Disclosure is allegedly inadequate? That’s another hearing.

In the jurisdiction with which I am most familiar the court system is badly stressed – it is critically low on resources. This means that an additional procedure often results in lengthy delay. The next interlocutory hearing is scheduled months away. Trials get split up over many months when they run over their scheduled time. I’ve seen scenarios where a trial has been split into five or six sessions that are scattered for over a year.

When you stir the procedural fairness elements of the Charter into a stressed institution the result is not pretty. The system tries to compensate with case management, pre-trial hearings to clarify issues, but when push comes to shove, if on day one of a trial the accused (especially a self-represented accused) wants to spring a new Charter argument, even without adequate notice? The Charter challenge still goes ahead – probably with one or more adjournments.

I perceive a huge gap between the trial and appeal courts on this issue. Appeal courts tend to enforce formality on what is sometimes a chaotic trial apparatus. This makes trial judges very cautious and so when something is iffy? Procedural fairness wins.

So again, I think we’re seeing the same critter – just expressing that in somewhat different ways and from somewhat different perspectives.

SMS Möwe

[Burnaby49]

I'd disagree about the Chief. I've met him, sat through one of his seminars, and had a number of discussions with him. Nothing notably weird about him, just a guy trying to make a buck and a name for himself. He seems to have throttled back significantly since the notaries hit him with the court injunction and his clients (Charles Norman Holmes, Bernie Yankson, David Lange, David Smith, and Simpson) got their asses whipped in court. His principal focus now seems to be to promote his music career. He bubbles ups with a comment on contracts now and then on his Facebook page but his heart doesn't really seem in it.

I defer to your judgement, Burnaby.

I laud you for the openness, patience and making the effort to sit through one of his seminars . . . to say nothing of your frequent court visits and reports on other cases.

Your contributions here are invaluable.

Hey, let's not make a Quatloosian martry of me yet (although a few more trials like Ream's and I may agree). The Chief's seminar was fun. As far as I could tell I (and maybe the Chief) was the only one there with a reasonable grasp of reality. The rest of the participants were all pursuing futile Freeman dreams and seeking for ways to do it. Your basic grass roots troops. One of the participants was David Smith whose own trial I attended later. I found their doomed world-view fascinating.

As for the trials, with the exclusion of Ream which was just sad, they were immensely entertaining. Yankson and Holmes were a great way to spend my time.

Speaking of trials I have great hopes for one I can't yet tell you about. A local Freeman type, who has been mentioned before in Quatloos, is up on criminal charges but there is a publication ban until the end of the eventual trial. I attended a preliminary hearing a while ago and the trial itself is scheduled for October. I plan to be there.

[Burnaby49]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with both of you.

The current remand crisis in Canada is almost entirely due to the complete and utter failure of our bail system. Our law of bail is simply not being followed. The over-reliance on sureties and absurd bail conditions imposed on accused mean that not only do people have a harder time getting bail, but once they get out the odds are they will be re-arrested on a breach. The Charter has little, if anything to do with this. In fact, it is precisely because people are not getting the reasonable bail they are entitled to that we have more people in jail awaiting trial than we do actual convicts.

I think you are disagreeing with an argument I did not make. I was not commenting on the current remand crisis, a topic about which I know next to nothing apart from what Bill and Mowe post here. My comments related to the (in my opinion excessive) burden that Charter rights, as defined by the Supreme Court of Canada, put on the lower court systems in general.

After the appellate courts generally order a re-trial anytime there is a minor disclosure issue? Or where an accused right to counsel is not exactly and scrupulously described under ever evolving guidelines?

Disagree with this entirely. Ever since the SCC's ruling in Grant re excluding evidence under s.24(2), Charter applications are much more difficult than they were before. That is, while you may establish a Charter breach, the evidence you want excluded still goes in after the "balancing process" now employed by the courts. Minor Charter infractions won't get you anywhere (certainly will not get charges stayed) and in fact it's shocking just how liberal courts are willing to be when it comes to questionable police/state conduct. The Charter tolerates all kinds of prejudice folks, and I maintain that acquittals on "technicalities" are exceptional.

Again, not my point. I'm not saying that Charter applications, including those for exclusion of evidence, succeed. I'm saying that defense lawyers now routinely make applications to exclude evidence on the chance, no matter how forlorn, that the courts will find a Charter breach somewhere in process from initial investigation to trial.

In fact it is the failure of so many Charter applications that shows how dysfunctional our court system has become. The applications are ill-founded but so what? Worth a shot when you don't otherwise have a case. I don't fault defense lawyers for this, they have a duty to defend their clients to the best of their abilities. I blame the Supreme Court of Canada's obsession with theoretical charter rights to the exclusion of any consideration of the practical application of the Supreme Court's massive body of Charter based decision, all of which have to be considered by lower courts.

Charter applications have little bearing on the length of the trial proper. Most Charter issues are dealt with by pre-trial motions. There are many other factors that prolong trials... expert witnesses and complex testimony, and endless voir dires to determine admissibility of evidence. Nowadays courts will generally have charter applications "blended" with the trial, so that you don't have to hear the same evidence twice - the court simply rules on the charter motions at the end of trial. What the Charter has done is prolong the entire process, from arrest to trial.

Bill is clearly highly knowledgeable and involved in Canadian court processes. I'm not a lawyer or experienced in actual court functioning so perhaps I'm missing a point here. As I see it, while Charter applications may not, in many or even most cases, significantly impact on the length of a trial, pre-trial motions are handled by the same court that conducts the trial. So I don't see a distinction between them as far as clogging the court system is concerned. Both take up court time. There is no question that criminal trials take, on average, much longer now than, say, thirty years ago, and as far as I can see that is the result of Charter issues.

As Mowe commented, my background is income tax, and I have written on this issue in relation to tax evasion cases. The Canada Revenue Agency's Special Investigations section, that handles evasion cases, is very thorough, they don't like losing in court. As a result a very high percentage of criminal tax evasion charges that result in a trial on the evidence end up with conviction. So virtually all tax evasion defenses now throw in pre-trial Charter arguments to exclude evidence. If it works the defendants walk, if not they often just plead guilty before trial. This has a huge impact on the administration of justice and the efficient functioning of the court system. The main issue in tax evasion trials is when an audit (an administrative function) became an investigation which triggers charter rights. This is extremely subjective and fact driven and the CRA makes an enormous effort the separate the two functions but the court often say that they have failed and exclude evidence. The hearings on this one point generally review all of the steps the CRA took from the start of the audit to the criminal charge and, since it requires extensive testimony and documentation, can take much longer than the trial itself. This all stems from one case, Jarvis (http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-cs ... 5/index.do), where the SCC set Charter rules for tax evasion evidence.

I recently made a Quatloos post on this issue in respect to a hearing regarding evidence exclusion on a Charter application. Unfortunately I can't remember where I posted or what the case name was. The result in that case was that the evidence was admitted but after a very protracted hearing process that consumed major court resources. This is common and, as I wrote earlier, has no obvious solution.

Mowe reports the same thing from his little corner of the world

Me, I’m noting the stress on procedural fairness rather than whether illegal conduct has occurred and warrants sanction. I completely agree that there are few acquittals on ‘technicalities’, and that post-Grant evidence from many questionable searches is being admitted – but that hasn’t slowed the s. 8 applications.

And in a lot of ways that’s understandable – if you’re caught in your own car with a kilo of cocaine there isn’t much of a defence that can be mounted except that the search that located the cocaine was illegal. My experience is that many trials of that kind are little more than a Charter application – if the evidence goes in, the accused pleads guilty. Is that efficient? Perhaps not, but supposedly it is fair.

[notorial dissent]

Burnaby, you have been a very useful and informative BOTG source for us at these various trials, and we really do appreciate it. The ongoing comedy that is the current FOTL movement in Canada is truly something else, and I enjoy your descriptions. I think the main point, that the "followers" are basically the lost and bewildered looking for the dream, seems to pretty well sum it up. The rank and file seem to be the lost and bewildered who somehow missed out the reality and coping mechanisms and BS filters that the rest of the world acquired, and they keep searching for some guru, any guru, who will sell them what they want to hear. They are the ones I do feel sorry for, as they swallow this codswallop and then get fed to the grinder when it turns out to be just that, yet many of them just keep right on trying to find the right guru with the right magic words. This I just don't understand at all.

Looking forward to whatever the case is that you are following sounds like it will be entertaining.

[Bill Lumbergh]

Burnaby and Mowe, I thank you for your posts and I will attempt to answer you both.

My comments regarding the bail system were moreso aimed at Mowe, who accurately described the conditions of our remand jails but then linked it to the overall length of the criminal process in Canada. The point I wanted to make there was that the remand crisis in Canada has its roots in the bail system, not the Charter.

If anyone is interested, there have been two recent reports that I think accurately describe the deplorable state of the current system.
One is from the John Howard Society, which gives an Ontario-focused view, enitled "Reasonable Bail?": http://johnhoward.on.ca/pdfs/Reasonable ... 0final.pdf

The other is from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which paints a more national picture, "Set up to Fail": http://ccla.org/wordpress/wp-content/up ... -FINAL.pdf

I take your points, if I've understood them correctly, that the Charter (and SCC Charter decisions) has added an additional layer of complexity/delay to criminal proceedings. That is a fair criticism. From my perspective though, the protection of rights demands a thorough and fair examination of state action. And if that means, for instance, scrutinizing every step of a CRA investigation or a search warrant, or wiretap authorization then so be it. I suppose that's a value judgment on my part, but there you go.

I would agree that courts may give an accused the benefit of the doubt when it comes to Charter rights, but in most cases it is warranted and frankly, I would prefer that approach to the alternative. Is it just to force an unrepresented accused into a trial because she just scrounged up the money to hire a lawyer in the last week? Is it fair to force an accused to a trial with incomplete disclosure, simply to save the time and cost of holding a hearing? In my view, these are not trivial concerns that should be sacrificed in the name of expediency, (within reason of course).

I would love it if the SCC simply came out with bright line rules such as "X is always an illegal search. Y is always legal". Mowe, you are absolutely right that the SCC to date has not established a clear definition of an illegal search. The problem is that bright-line rules rarely jive with the complex reality of criminal cases. What is reasonable in one case may not be reasonable in another and inevitably bright-line rules attract infinite bright-line exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions. The SCC attempts to formulate flexible principles that lower courts can apply to the various matters before them. The aforemetioned Grant case, for instance, does that with with the meaning of "detention" under s.9 of the Charter. Now, it's a fair criticism that this creates a healthy dose of uncertainty in the law and a temptation to "gamble" on a Charter application when the Crown has a strong case. I guess I am simply of the view that the protection of our rights makes that a gamble worth taking. At the very least I fail to see any reasonable alternative.

[Burnaby49]

Burnaby, you have been a very useful and informative BOTG source for us at these various trials, and we really do appreciate it. . . . .

Looking forward to whatever the case is that you are following sounds like it will be entertaining.

I'm in the happy situation of providing a public service just by pursuing a personal interest and writing up what happened. I too have great hopes for the October trial. In the hearing I attended I was the only one there "supporting" the defendant. However he didn't seem enthusiastic about my attendance. I suspect he hasn't told his Freeman buddies that he is currently being put through the criminal process. If so, once the publication ban is lifted, they can get the news about him here.

In addition we have a couple of Poriskyites up for preliminary inquiries here in Vancouver in January and February next year. I'll be checking those out too. The October case is to be held in the Richmond courthouse which is a touch awkward for me to get too but only because I'm spoiled by the ease with which Skytrain gets me to the Vancouver and New Westminster courts. Richmond courthouse requires a bus and two separate Skytrain lines plus a 15 minute walk at the end but it still takes under an hour from my house. The Poriskyites will be tried in the Vancouver Robson Square court which is a five minute walk from either the Granville or Burrard Skytrain Stations.

I've been very lucky with public transportation. For the last twenty years of my CRA employment the Skytrain I took to get to downtown Vancouver actually had its last stop in the building where I worked.

[JamesVincent]

I recently made a Quatloos post on this issue in respect to a hearing regarding evidence exclusion on a Charter application. Unfortunately I can't remember where I posted or what the case name was. The result in that case was that the evidence was admitted but after a very protracted hearing process that consumed major court resources. This is common and, as I wrote earlier, has no obvious solution.

It was in the Operation:Fable thread and the case involved the McCarties.
http://www.provincialcourt.bc.ca/judgme ... pc128.html

I remembered it from the posts from you and Mowe about the Charter issues and the point where an investigation starts to occur.

[Burnaby49]

I recently made a Quatloos post on this issue in respect to a hearing regarding evidence exclusion on a Charter application. Unfortunately I can't remember where I posted or what the case name was. The result in that case was that the evidence was admitted but after a very protracted hearing process that consumed major court resources. This is common and, as I wrote earlier, has no obvious solution.

It was in the Operation:Fable thread and the case involved the McCarties.
http://www.provincialcourt.bc.ca/judgme ... pc128.html

I remembered it from the posts from you and Mowe about the Charter issues and the point where an investigation starts to occur.

Thanks a lot. I'll put it in as part of my prior posting. My Quatloos postings mirror my real life. I can remember doing things but the details elude me.

[Burnaby49]

In a prior posting in this discussion I said;

I recently made a Quatloos post on this issue in respect to a hearing regarding evidence exclusion on a Charter application. Unfortunately I can't remember where I posted or what the case name was. The result in that case was that the evidence was admitted but after a very protracted hearing process that consumed major court resources. This is common and, as I wrote earlier, has no obvious solution.

James Vincent has very helpfully pointed out that it is here;

viewtopic.php?f=50&t=9390

and relates to the McCarty case;

http://www.provincialcourt.bc.ca/judgme ... pc128.html

This case has not yet gone to trial but the McCarty's now standard motion to get CRA evidence excluded from an eventual trial took a 21 day hearing. Probably longer than the trial will take assuming we get to it during my lifetime. I doubt the McCartys are finished with pre-trial motions, a Canlii search shows that they have clogged the British Columbia Provincial Court with a tidal wave of motions over the past two years.