David Scott, RIP

— 03.28.2019 05:05 PM

I was very sorry to hear from a friend that he had passed away.

I can now tell you a story I have never told anyone. During the “Gomery Pyle” sponsorship inquiry, I was using this website to aggressively defend Jean Chretien – and highlight the shortcomings of a process that was clearly rigged against him.

I was not acting as a lawyer. I was acting as Chretien’s pit bull.

One morning, I got a call from David Scott. He was angry.

“What the Hell are you doing?” he said, before I could even say hello.

“I’m saying the things that you and your client can’t, but should, Mr. Scott,” I said.

There was a long, long pause.

He burst into laughter. “Very well, carry on,” he said. “But don’t fuck up my case, Kinsella!”

I said I wouldn’t.

RIP, to one of the finest lawyers this country has ever produced.


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Your morning #LavScam media roundup

— 03.27.2019 07:46 AM

It’s going great! Have a great stay in Ottawa, Mr. Donolo and Premier Clark!

  • John Ibbitson, Globe and Mail: “The core question in the SNC-Lavalin affair is whether Justin Trudeau and his advisers respect the rule of law. The answer appears to be that they have no respect for it at all, after an unnamed source, in an effort to smear former attorney-general Jody Wilson-Raybould, fed reporters a story about a dispute over choosing a judge for the Supreme Court. Even Liberals are furious over the leak to The Canadian Press and CTV, presumably from someone inside the Trudeau government.”
  • Penny Collenette, former Chretien PMO appointments director: “[Trudeau’s leak] involved extremely confidential information about applicants to the Supreme Court…Shockingly bad form.”
  • Paul Wells, Maclean’s: “It was immediately fashionable to wonder on social media how everyone would react if Stephen Harper had done [what Trudeau has done]. It’s germane to note that Stephen Harper never did. Because he had more class. Welcome to the Tet offensive of Charter rights: This was the week it became necessary to destroy the village of good government in order to save it.”
  • John Ibbitson, Globe: “How much longer will Justin Trudeau be able to keep his caucus and party together, after committing so many missteps? How much more political damage is he willing to sustain to prevent Ms. Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott, who also resigned from cabinet in protest, from talking about the cabinet shuffle that eventually led to their resignations? How much more damage to the integrity of this country’s legal system is this Prime Minister willing to inflict, in his efforts to discredit these enemies he used to call friends?”
  • Senator Percy Downe, former Chretien Chief of Staff: “Appalling behaviour.”
  • Hamilton Spectator editorial board: “Drip. Drip. Drip. It’s the sound of another day of incremental developments in the SNC-Lavalin mess. On Tuesday, the Liberals blocked an opposition attempt to hold another committee investigation into whether Jody Wilson-Raybould was subjected to unreasonable pressure to allow SNC-Lavalin to avoid criminal prosecution. Quelle surprise…”
  • David Akin, Global News: “Correspondence sent to me recently from rank-and-file Liberal volunteers and supporters from parts of the country where Liberal candidates should never worry about winning — think downtown Vancouver or Guelph, Ont., or downtown Toronto — describe feelings of confusion, anxiety, and anger. These are Liberals who, if they haven’t been already, will be asked to volunteer their time and money this year to get Liberal MPs re-elected. And many, disillusioned by the behaviour of their party leader, are wondering if they’ll say yes when that call for help comes.”
  • Campbell Clark, Globe: “[Shutting down an inquiry at the Ethics Committee] was another day when the Liberals seemed to be contradicting the thing they said a couple of days ago, or a couple of weeks ago. It’s spreading, too. Every day, Mr. Trudeau is asked if he’s preventing his former ministers from speaking and now his MPs have to struggle with it, too.”
  • Brian Lilley, Sun: “[Trudeau] has attacked the independence of the judiciary, having his office leak that he was at odds with Wilson-Raybould over the appointment of a Supreme Court judge, a man that has since had to admit that he withdrew his name from contention because his wife was dealing with breast cancer. That is how low the Liberals will go on this file. They would have known why Justice Glenn Joyal withdrew and yet they attacked him for their own partisan gain. Justin Trudeau wants you to still think he is all about Sunny Ways and positive politics, but his record says otherwise. What is the next low Trudeau will stoop to in order to keep Canadians from finding out the truth?”
  • Campbell Clark, Globe: “There must be a plan. You would think that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, his PMO and the Liberal Party of Canada have a strategy to put the SNC-Lavalin affair behind them. But it must be a very, very subtle plan that in its middle stages just looks like Liberals twisting themselves into pretzels…Liberal MPs [are still] rushing to stop Ms. Wilson-Raybould from testifying. The strategy seems designed to convince people there is something to hide. And with each new twist, Mr. Trudeau’s party seems to tangle themselves up more.”
  • Heather Scoffield, Toronto Star: “seven weeks of carnage in Canadian politics proves Trudeau’s choice to stare down the independence of the justice system for the benefit of a corporation was a bridge too far. Trump may well have changed the scope of what has become acceptable for Western democracies, but so far, even those Canadians who seek to justify the Liberals’ actions cling to the institutions — and the economic approach — that have stood the country well in the past.”
  • Toronto Star polls seat projection: “The current data projects 173 seats for the Tories in the House of Commons if an election were held immediately, with the Liberals nipping at their heels with 143 and the NDP and the Green Party far behind with 21 and one seats, respectively.”
  • Chris Selley, National Post: “In recent weeks, former deputy prime minister Sheila Copps’ Twitter account has operated as a sort of museum of partisan excess. On Monday evening, hours after Manitoba Chief Justice Glenn D. Joyal got dragged into the mess for no good reason — pending further excavations — she finally hit rock bottom…Whatever the disease, the symptoms are acute. Ideally, the utter shabbiness of the Liberals’ behaviour since the Lavalin story broke might help wake us from this never-ending paranoid fever dream that passes for election-year politics.”
  • Andrew Coyne, National Post: “Still, it’s of a piece with a determined push by Liberal partisans to shift the focus from the prime minister’s efforts to interfere with a criminal prosecution to the character and motives of his accusers — not only Wilson-Raybould but Jane Philpott, the former president of Treasury Board. Even respectable surrogates, never mind the seething mobs online, have been brazen enough to suggest the two women are besotted with their own celebrity, or are conspiring in some strange and baseless vendetta against the prime minister. Journalists — journalists! — compete to be the loudest in their calls for the prime minister to kick them out of caucus. They are tarnishing the party brand! They are tearing the government down! What’s their real agenda? Somehow it does not occur to anyone to ask: Is what they are saying true?”

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Bar Associations: Justin Trudeau’s office “demeaned” the judicial process – and acted in a manner that was “false, improper and appalling”

— 03.26.2019 08:37 PM

Justin Trudeau’s PMO has made history: so intent were they on smearing Jody Wilson-Raybould, the Liberal leader and his apparatchiks violated the confidentiality of the judicial appointment process – and they smeared a respected jurist who was tending to his wife. Who had breast cancer.

It got a reaction. One that none of his predecessors ever did.

Here’s the Canadian Bar Association’s reaction:

“There is a process to get informed input about the merits of the applicants. It rightly goes on behind closed doors. Keeping the deliberations confidential respects the privacy of applicants and guards against interference. Breaching confidentiality by releasing the names and commenting on the suitability of the other applicants after the appointment demeans the selection process and ultimately all those who hold the office of judge.”

And here is the Manitoba Bar Association:

“It is vital any deliberations leading up to any appointment remain confidential. The recent breaches of confidentiality…[are] highly disconcerting. It demeans the entire selection process…The Manitoba Bar Association is also deeply concerned about comments made about Chief Justice Joyal…[which were] entirely improper and indeed false…It is appalling.”

Justin Trudeau is uniting people, alright.

Against him.


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This morning’s #LavScam social media roundup

— 03.26.2019 08:53 AM


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