Court hears missing BC Rail emails may exist

Anger flared Thursday over missing emails that may be connected to a high-profile B.C. government corruption case.

A defence lawyer demanded the B.C. Supreme Court judge hearing the six-year-old case order the government to turn over all email correspondence from the premier's office and several cabinet ministers related to the 2003 sale of Crown-owned BC Rail.

Kevin McCullough, who represents accused former cabinet aide Bobby Virk, attacked the process used up to now to uncover government documents after word that key emails may have been ordered destroyed as recently as last May during the election campaign.

NDP justice critic Leonard Krog said he wants a special prosecutor to open an obstruction of justice investigation to look into what he claims is a government coverup.

Like a 'baby gnawing'

McCullough told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Bennett there were no teeth in the disclosure-request process, which he contends has led to haphazard compliance.

"That was like a baby gnawing," he said. "I want a lion's gnawing. I want a court order."

Michael Bolton, who represents co-accused Dave Basi, said outside court he is troubled that a private contractor got the go-ahead in May to destroy the emails.

"That was a disturbing piece of knowledge, a very shocking thing to learn about at this stage, when it's pretty obvious these are being sought," Bolton said.

"The relevance of these to this litigation has been crystal clear for a long period of time."

Disturbing developments

Krog said Thursday's developments were very disturbing.

"It's pretty clear this government is arrogant enough to think it can get away with covering this matter up."

Krog said he has written to the assistant deputy attorney general for criminal justice to ask that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate potential obstruction of justice.

Virk, assistant to then-transportation minister Judith Reid, and Basi, assistant to former finance minister Gary Collins, are charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting illegal benefits connected to the $1-billion sale to CN Rail.

Basi's cousin, a former government official, is charged with money-laundering and breach of trust.

The allegations

It's alleged the two cabinet aides accepted money and gifts in exchange for leaking information about the sale process to CN competitor OmniTrax, based in Denver, Colo.

But the two men's lawyers claim anything they did was at the behest of others interested in keeping OmniTrax in the bidding process, though CN was the favoured buyer.

Their lawyers have sought material to bolster that position almost since police raided the men's offices in the B.C. legislature in December 2003.

Lately, they've been zeroing in on the emails of about two dozen Liberal government MLAs, as well as those involving Premier Gordon Campbell and ministers connected to the deal.

The government's lawyer, George Copley, previously claimed those emails from 2001 to 2004, including backup copies, had been purged from the communications system.

Last month, Copley told the judge that the backup tapes were routinely destroyed after 13 months.

But an affidavit by Rosemarie Hayes, who runs the government's messaging service, suggested the premier's and ministers' emails had existed up to last May, when someone told the private contractor who held them that they were no longer needed.

Hayes' affidavit was one of 15 from government officials, including Campbell's chief of staff Martyn Brown and Brown's deputy Lara Dauphinee, who tried to explain what happened to the emails.

Hayes' affidavit appeared to contradict Copley's previous statement and her own June affidavit.

Copley also told Bennett on Thursday that some of the emails involving three of the 33 people covered by the defence request may still exist after all.

Bolton said he can't rule out that other emails covered in the application might also still exist somewhere but doubts all the correspondence survived.

"It appears to be pretty compelling that a complete picture of the emails is no longer available, that some have been destroyed." Bennett said she would rule Monday on the relevance of the emails, which if found relevant would trigger another set of hearings on their submission.