Mme McLachlin had an option: She could Google the Wood Splitter - Alcyonenews

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Posted May 31, 2019

Mme McLachlin had an option:

She could Google the Wood Splitter

The May 17 Victoria Times-Colonist front page carries a stack of three pictures illuminating Mme Beverley McLachlin’s Report on the Plecas scandal. The bottom pictures a skookum 4-wheel trailer; the middle a blue WoodSplitter; and the top, 4 times as large, show an ax-and-muscle wood splitting scene. Garry Lenz, in immaculate black pants, gray jacket and red tie touching the tip of the ax-handle and looking at the camera triumphantly. Very quaint ...

The collage illuminates McLachlin’s “judgement”: James: Guilty; Lenz: Innocent; Plecas: neither.

Incidentally, the Splitter has wheels and is towable. The trailer is meant to carry other than the Splitter, but we are denied the amusement from knowing its purported cargo.

McLachlin was hired to dissipate the public ire raised by the the Plecas saga after the latter served its thinly veiled purpose of skewing the crucial Nanaimo by-election. Her task was to restore public “disengagement” so that politicians would enjoy “governing” us unfettered by the prospect of accountability. She could capitalize on her past at the apex of the justice system, to pronounce the Plecas scandal a “mere misdemeanor”, suggesting we, hoi polloi, better forget it and carry on pretending things are hunky dory, as we were in the pre-Plecas era.

NB: McLachlin’s report is dated May 3 and was released on May 17. It is labeled “Confidential” and is redacted, or “mutilated” if you will. This is what “they” allowed us to see, and that is what I review.

McLachlin starts with expounding the tenets of jurisprudence she applied to the task. First class, she said, she went all the way. “All the way” except for transparency. But this makes her investigation a train without a locomotive – it can only roll downhill. For unless seen done, justice likely would not be done, this being plain, simple and well kmown.

McLachlin was hired on the expectation that her pronouncements would be highly saleable and readily consumed without being examined. But she went too far on that and her Report is vulnerable, crying out for scrutiny.

Alerted by her proclamation of diligence I read the un-redacted part of the Report carefully and I have a host of concerns. A most prominent one is that she all but wiped out the possibility of a trial of the matter in open court. For all intents and purposes, she has issued absolution papers to Plecas and Lenz and a mild slap on the wrist to James. Hard to imagine a more “sympathetic Judge” which is how the media refer to biased judges.

Because of space concerns I will focus primarily on the Wood Splitter and Trailer (“WST”) issue, which is best known and exemplary of the whole Plecas event. As for the rest, I will take rainchecks.

Unimaginable as it is, James and Lenz decided to buy the WS&T. They sneaked the purchase past the Executive Committee in a $65,000 omnibus request for “Safety Equipment”, this in the Trojan Horse tradition of deception.

James, the Legislature’s $400K top Clerk, doubling as House “errand boy”, drove to Vancouver, charging mileage and time, to pick up WS&T and deliver them to his own home. A year later, after Plecas “sang”, the RCMP retrieved both pieces of equipment and took them to the Legislature grounds to Rust Into Pieces.

McLachlin’s rendition of the above reads:

“Mr. James and Mr. Lenz decided together to recommend the purchase of the wood splitter and trailer to the Executive Committee. The purpose was to keep the Legislative precinct secure in the case of a major calamity such as an earthquake which could entail prolonged power outages. In such circumstances, it was thought that staff guarding the precinct could split branches from trees on the precinct to burn for heat. The wood splitter and trailer were thought to be useful for this purpose.”

She spins the story and ignores the paramount aspect of this matter, the stupidity of it all. There is neither rhyme nor reason to James and Lenz, combining their brainpower to thus protect the House. They had been criss-crossing the Globe, on our Loonie, ostensibly in search of cutting-edge House Protection Technology and in their collective wisdom opted for the “splitting-edge” of a WoodSplitter. Brilliant ...

Upon being caught, these highly paid individuals invoke stupidity in their defense. And McLachlin finds it “not inappropriate”.

McLachlin states she gauged the accused against “Rule, Practice and Policy”. Did it not occur to her to ask particulars about the “Practice” of defending Legislatures against perils with WoodSplitters and Trailers? Why did McLachlin not Google “Performance reviews of WoodSplitters in guarding Parliaments”? Why was McLachlin remiss in invoking the classic Jurisprudence tenet brilliantly encapsulated in the “Passenger on the Clapham omnibus”?

McLachlin makes half a dozen “recommendations” to pacify the restless populace and render us into a manageable mass. But no matter how many things one may forbid, there will still be a myriad left to be exploited by the “clever”. Transparency is the panacea, but this she missed.

Power corrupts, indiscriminately. The higher in the power pyramid a magistrate is, the more prone she/he is to power corruption and the more this invites public vigilance. McLachlin had the “last word” in Canada for 17 years – now it shows ....

It is my conclusion that the empress has no clothes.

Tom Vee