Skakun Appeal in Hands of Justice Romilly
Prince George, B.C. – B.C Supreme Court Justice Selwyn Romilly has reserved decision in the appeal of Councillor Brian Skakun’s conviction that he had breached the Freedom of Informationand Protection of Privacy Act.
The conviction came about after the confidential Kitty Heller report, which examined complaints from some civic employees at the RCMP detachment in Prince George, was released to the CBC. The news outlet then published the report on its website.
According to Councillor Skakun’s lawyer, Jon Duncan, the Provincial Court Judge who heard the case, Kenneth Ball, showed an apprehension of bias. Duncan says during the 10 day trial, Judge Ball exercised "on going interference"with Defense, did not support his call for full disclosure of more documents from City Hall, made rapid decisions on submissions and that he ruled Councillor Skakun’s testimony as unreliable.
In short, Duncan says Judge Ball’s decision lacked detail to support the reasons for his decision, and he erred in ruling that Skakun was an Officer of the public body, therefore was bound by the rules of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Crown argued the definition of "Officer" must be taken in the broadest terms possible, and in fact, Skakun had taken an "oath of office." Judith Doulis said to exclude elected officials from the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act would create a huge hole through which all manner of private information could be passed along without consequence. She also noted the Defense had put forth a three pronged defense "I didn’t do it, but if I did do it, I had a right to do it as a whistle blower, and even if I did do it, the time had expired to lay a charge." She says the whistle blower defense never did fly as it wouldn’t pass the legal test to qualify as such "If not still born, it had a very, very low chance of survival."
The appeal took all day , which is half the time that had been booked for the matter.
Justice Romilly referred to the Skakun trial as a "mega trial for this kind of issue" and remarked he had never seen so much time set aside to deal with a summary conviction matter. Justice Romilly directed both sides to a judgement he wrote in 2007 which clearly outlines what avenues are open to him:
May allow the appeal where it is of the opinion that:
(i) the verdict should be set aside on the ground that it is unreasonable or cannot be supported by the evidence,
(ii) the judgment of the trial court should be set aside on the ground of a wrong decision on a question of law, or,
(iii) on any ground there was a miscarriage of justice;
Justice Romilly has not indicated when he might deliver his decision.
Comments
Still with this nonsense
I don’t find Brian Skakun appealing at all:P
You have got to be kidding. Give it up Brian. You lost. Move on.
What Brian you not happy with your shiny new Golden Whistle…. if it is not loud enough or not working ask if you can exchange it.
Brian you were right when this thing got started by bullies and you are right now. Keep up the good fight.
Guess whos name is in the media again.
Why wont he just go away.
Here is an interesting site which surveys the various meanings of “Public Officer” in the USA federal and state systems.
http://www.ncsl.org/legislatures-elections/ethicshome/50-state-definitions-of-public-official-officer.aspx
I agree with the notion that “public officers” are only those who are authorized to exercise some portion of the government’s sovereign powers”.
That would include the office of Mayor, City Manager, City Clerk, City Comptroller in the first instance, then perhaps the City Planner, City Engineer, and possibly one or two others.
In other words, those individuals who have a position which authorizes them to sign legal documents on behalf of the City.
I am not aware that any Councillor can do that, other than when they stand in for the Mayor in her absence.
Gus, not sure if you have noticed..but this is Canada :)
“Judith Doulis said to exclude elected officials from the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act would create a huge hole through which all manner of private information could be passed along without consequence.”
Yes, it would. They way to handle that is the change the law to fix it. Right now, it is broken.
Cases such as this do not come up too often, so the draftsmanship of the legislation does not get tested too often.
“Gus, not sure if you have noticed..but this is Canada :)”
You know P Val, I took out the comment I had in about just your type of reaction.
How much do you know about the English Common Law system? It is not a system of codefied law such as the Civil Law system based on the Napoleonic Code. It follows the doctrine of judicial precedent.
One can “inform” Canadian courts of decisions in other common law jurisdictions when it comes to matters which may explore as yet unexplored ground or vague use of language, as in this case.
In other words, the interpretation of “officer” seems inconclusive in BC and likely in Canada, at least in Duncan’s opinion. I am assuming that the man is not stupid and is arguing against a clear cut defintion which can be found in legislation.
An English court might cite judgments from countries that share the English common law tradition. These include other commonwealth states (for example Canada, Australia, or New Zealand) and, to some extent, the United States.
Of course, the USA being the USA, they are not as prone to consider precedents from other countries.
“It is controversial whether it is appropriate for a U.S. court to consider foreign law or precedents. The Supreme Court splits on this issue. In Atkins v. Virginia, for example, the majority cited the fact that the European Union forbid death penalty as part of their reasoning, while Chief Justice Rehnquist denounced the “Court’s decision to place weight on foreign laws.” The House of Representatives passed a nonbinding resolution criticizing the citing of foreign law and “reaffirming American independence.”
You might find the following words from the Autralian Law Post Graduate Network site interesting:
“No recent decision of any court outside this country is binding on an Australian court. This does not mean, however, that overseas case law has no part in the Australian legal system. The decisions of foreign courts are regularly cited in Australian courts.
“Citations from other common law jurisdictions can be extensive. A recent example is Hancock v Nominal Defendant [2002] 1 Qd R 578. In this case, the Queensland Court of Appeal upheld the award of damages against a negligent driver. In their decision, the judges referred to decisions from a number of foreign jurisdictions: England, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Scotland, the United States and Eire. One judge, Judge Byrne, cited no less than 60 US cases. Overall, the number of overseas precedents cited was far greater than the number of Australian ones.”
http://www.alpn.edu.au/node/66
Notice that the judges are identified as citing those cases presumably in their efforts to seek guidance for their own rulings.
Does that make it right though Gus? How many sentences are given based on prior cases.. way to many.. its just a way to speed up the courts and make the judges jobs easier. Each case should be judged on its own merit..not on what some other judge or judges did.
You have a very strange view of not only the law, P Val, but the very fundamental upon which voirtually all activities of societies throughout the world are based, whether it is over a very limited geographic region for isolated indigenous societies who have only their own, sometimes only verbal history, to fall back on, or modern society which is just into its first generation of web based research capabilites for the masses.
What is medicine, just as a for instance, but a study of what comes before and the application of the best knowledge we have from past experience, yes, to each individual case that a medical practitioner is diagnosing and treating. And, by the way, the knowledge that is gathered in that and virutally all other fields, is world knwowledge, not only Canadian knowledge.
“How many sentences are given based on prior cases.. way to many”
Sentencing is one thing. Remember, we are dealing with the judgement on the case, not the sentencing. The two are quite different.
There is the other principle of law that you must not forget. The law of equity.
If I steal $1,000 from a business and get one sentence without any mitigating circumstances being introduced, and another person does the same, why should one person get a different sentence than another?
Basically Gus I am sick and tired of the light sentences for crimes. The sentences come from the judgements. As for equality, there is none, the criminal has more rights than the victims.
If you see that as strange then so be it. I do appreciate your posts on 250 though.. always informative.
“Why wont he just go away.”
In HIS mind he may be still convinced that he was right in what he was doing. Let him go through the appeal process, something which is afforded him by the law. The media keeps reporting it and that’s why the spotlight is on the matter again!
Actually I am curious to fund out where he stepped out of line when whistle blowers have done us a lot of good to such a degree that it is even encouraged as a kind of service and duty to society. It all depends on the situation, of course.
Skakun isn’t a whistle blower, although he probably thinks he is.
Skakum is an attention mongering moron who seems to appeal to the lowest and dumbest citizens we have!!
Likens himself to a spendthrift, but wastes public monies like it’s dirty water, over petty nonsense.
Even if your heart was in the right place, you went about it in the wrong way and that’s what the judge found and I agree with him. You’re a loose canon that needs to go back to private life.
If he had taken the time to blank out the names, before he gave the report to the CBC, he would not have been in court. It is as simple as that.
So why would he not have done that? I do not think out of malice but more likely because he was unaware that it was against the law.
The rest, the fact that he took a document which was privileged, is an ethics matter within the City.
Interestingly the trial is public while the discussion at Council with respect to the ethics matter is not, to protect his privacy of all things. Sometimes the things we do really make no sense.
All the rhetoric aside, it is high time that someone exsposed the crap that goes on within the RCMP. Sure they do excellent work, but if someone points out the real bad apples, is it really a bad thing.
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