Coffee Break: Public inquiry lumbers along at a snail's pace

Claude McIntosh
Local News - Wednesday, February 07, 2007 Updated @ 10:15:59 AM

While soaking up the riveting suspense of that multi-million dollar, lumbering, bumpy taxi ride called the Cornwall Public Inquiry the other day, the name Robert Monfils came to mind.

Robert Monfils?

He was an interesting Quebec Junior Hockey League referee who had the delightful ability to have a game slip in and out of his control, especially when it involved the Royals.

He could turn a 90-minute hockey game into a midnight marathon.

In some ways, His Honour Judge Normand Glaude, the inquiry wagon master by way of Sudbury, is, at times, running the big show in Monfils fashion.

Don't get me wrong.

The commish is an honourable, capable and much respected jurist.

They are among the reasons he was handpicked by the attorney general of this great province to grab the inquiry reins.

But enter last Thursday's one-sided verbal sparring match between witness David Silmser and lawyer Dominic Lamb, who represents Rev. Charles MacDonald, the priest Silmser accused of sexually abusing him as a youngster, as an example of things getting out of hand.

Lamb had barely introduced himself when D.S. went on the offensive, even suggesting the barrister wasn't a very good lawyer.

For his part, Lamb was . . . well, meek as a lamb.

His questioning was pretty passive.

One would have to scour the annals of public inquiries to uncover a more hostile reaction from a witness.

His honour finally blew the whistle for a timeout, but it was too little too late.

The witness soon fled the stand - and the building - bringing the day's proceedings to a halt with ample time still on the clock.

On Monday afternoon, the mellow Lamb picked up where he left off the week before with the same line of questioning, but this time his honour was quick with the whistle and an offside call.

The witness was dispatched to a side room - out of earshot - while the judge and lawyer debated the line of questioning and where it was going.

Minutes later the witness was brought back, told that Messr. Lamb had been given some homework and the day was over . . . again with more time on the clock.

Then on Tuesday, David Sherriff-Scott, the highly acclaimed Ottawa attorney representing the Alexandria-Cornwall Diocese and cream of the crop, took on a similar line of questioning (pinpointing the witness's sometimes fuzzy recollection of dates and places).

But a funny thing happened after the witness was again sent to the sideroom and the lawyers debated the line of questioning.

His honour gave Sherriff-Scott the green light to continue. And the inquiry, at about $5,000 an hour, lumbers along.