[asia-apec 759] Van Sun: More heat on Chretien

[David Webster]

Last Updated: Tuesday 6 October 1998          TOP STORIES
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Inquiry into Mounties' APEC conduct under way
The Vancouver Sun

Southam Newspapers and Vancouver Sun

The chairman of the
 RCMP Public
Complaints Commission
investigating police
conduct at the APEC
summit said Monday
his panel has the
power to make the
prime minister appear
before it.

                  Gerald Morin said the
                  commission can also
                  make findings of
                  improper political
                  conduct if there is evidence of such.

                  - - -

                  OTTAWA -- As a hearing resumed in Vancouver Monday into
                  last November's controversial APEC pepper-spraying the
                  Reform party threatened to tie up the House of Commons
                  if Prime Minister Jean Chretien refuses to explain his
                  role in the events.

                  Chretien has said he will not testify even if the RCMP
                  public complaints commission calls him.

                  Reform said it will obstruct House business until
                  Chretien backs down.

                  "We can make it awfully rough around this place," said
                  John Reynolds (West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast). "We can
                  use every means at our disposal, such as not giving
                  unanimous consent to a lot of things that need to be
                  done in the House."

                  Reform's tactic comes at a time when Chretien is
                  increasingly seen as intolerant of dissent, particularly
                  within the Liberal caucus.

                  On Monday B.C. Liberal MP Ted McWhinney (Vancouver
                  Quadra) was kicked off the House foreign affairs
                  committee after saying last week that students involved
                  in the protest at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
                  forum should have their legal bills paid.

                  The committee was to vote on the request for funding
                  this week.

                  McWhinney, who represents the riding in and around UBC,
                  where the APEC protest took place, confirmed late Monday
                  he was dropped from the committee after his call for
                  student legal funding. He said the was nothing sinister
                  about that it but would not elaborate.

                  In Vancouver, Gerald Morin, chair of the RCMP complaints
                  commission, said the panel not only has the jurisdiction
                  to call politicians -- Chretien included -- but it can
                  also make findings of improper political conduct if it
                  finds such evidence.

                  The panel also said the commission will ask the federal
                  government to pay complainants' legal costs.

                  The decision to ask for legal funding on behalf of the
                  students is a reversal of a previous decision and adds
                  weight to a growing public demand that the government
                  assume financial responsibility for a hearing that has
                  quickly turned into what one lawyer called an
                  adversarial process.

                  The panel resumed Monday after last week's preliminaries
                  for the start of what was supposed to be a six-week
                  hearing.

                  The entire day was taken up with legal motions, mostly
                  from lawyers representing protesters, who wanted to set
                  ground rules for how the hearings will be conducted.

                  Morin said it is clear the commission not only has the
                  jurisdiction to investigate any political overtones to
                  police actions, but can also make findings of political
                  interference.

                  "We will go where the evidence of the witnesses takes
                  us," he said. "We know that these are grave matters that
                  strike at the heart of what we are, and consequently we
                  will conduct the hearing with the dignity it deserves."

                  Government lawyer Ivan Whitehall told the commission
                  that the RCMP and the federal government were merely
                  following routine security protocols when they made
                  arrangements for the APEC summit, and that there was no
                  other political intervention.

                  "It was simply the way major international events are
                  run," Whitehall said. "This is a case of how the
                  government of Canada dealt with a major international
                  event. We say totally appropriately. You may decide
                  otherwise. We'll see."

                  By the end of the day it was clear that the commission's
                  time frame of completing testimony within six weeks was
                  out the window. The hearing has developed into such a
                  complicated inquiry that Chris Considine, the panel's
                  lawyer, has said it may take upwards of six months to
                  conclude.

                  At least 120 witnesses, including students, police,
                  university officials and government officials are
                  expected to testify. Among those subpoenaed were two
                  officials in Chretien's office.

                  Craig Jones, a protester and vice-president of the B.C.
                  Civil Liberties Association was scheduled to begin
                  testimony Monday, but his appearance was put off because
                  of the raft of motions.

                  While the hearing was taken up mostly with dry legal
                  arguments, it was marked by outbursts by Sylvia Osberg,
                  a regular and vocal objector at municipal council
                  meetings and court houses. She was eventually ejected
                  from the room after the panel took at least one short
                  recess.

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Last Updated: Tuesday 6 October 1998             OPINION
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Today's Editorial:

APEC fallout bounces off Chretien - so far

                  Without all the evidence in, talk about the prime
                  minister resigning is premature. Unless Liberal MPs are
                  pressured by angry constituents, they are unlikely to
                  oppose their leader.

                  Vancouver Sun
                  One swallow does not a summer make, or a couple of
                  academics' views a groundswell.

                  But Wesley Pue, a history professor in the University of
                  B.C.'s law faculty, seconded by colleague Joel Bakan,
                  has boldly plunged into the proposition that if Prime
                  Minister Jean Chretien sacrificed the rule of law and
                  the civil rights of anti-Suharto protesters
                  pepper-sprayed by police at last November's Asia-Pacific
                  Economic Cooperation summit in Vancouver, "he's bound to
                  resign."

                  Is he?

                  As this paper has cautioned, speculation about "the
                  Pepper-Spray Scandal" is a harmless sport, but there are
                  all kinds of thumbs on the scales before the evidence
                  has been produced, let alone weighed. Documents have
                  been freely leaked, opinions aired, agendas admitted,
                  questions dodged.

                  But the RCMP complaint commission's hearing into the
                  matter, expected to last six weeks or more, seriously
                  began only yesterday. And what finally counts is sworn
                  evidence tested by cross-examination. The rule of law is
                  central to the issue; only application of the rule of
                  law can resolve it.

                  Allowing that a rush to judgment is premature, what if
                  the commission unearths convincing evidence that Mr.
                  Chretien, personally or by the proxy of his aides,
                  shamelessly toadied up to an Asian dictator and -- going
                  far beyond the requirements of security for a visiting
                  head of state -- abrogated the constitutional right of
                  Canadians to engage in peaceful protest? ("Peaceful"
                  requires a stretch of definition, in some individual
                  cases, like that of the student who declared he'd make a
                  citizen's or "symbolic" arrest of the then-president of
                  Indonesia.)

                  Suppose the commission scolds Mr. Chretien, even
                  asserting that he committed, in Professor Pue's words,
                  "a scandalous violation of the Constitution." What then?

                  Put aside parallels with certain current goings-on in
                  the United States. There are none. The two systems are
                  vastly different. Pragmatically, only the parliamentary
                  Liberal caucus could unhorse Mr. Chretien. And the
                  Liberal MPs probably would abandon Mr. Chretien only if
                  they returned, sweating, to Ottawa after weekends of
                  facing hordes of angry constituents demanding that their
                  boss had to go.

                  As another UBC professor, Philip Resnick, puts it: The
                  Teflon is beginning to chip off Jean Chretien. But at
                  this point his popularity in the polls is undiminished,
                  strongly suggesting that many Canadians -- not
                  universally fans of colourful campus radicalism -- see
                  the APEC issue as just an in-house intellectual brawl of
                  the political classes. They might collect many reasons
                  for getting rid of Mr. Chretien at the next election.
                  But not this one. Not yet, anyway.

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 \   /    "Long words Bother me."
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