Claude Marleau has completed his testimony. A gruelling week but he more than held his own. His testimony was both instructive and informative. I will return to and blog on it over the next days.
There are several areas which I must draw to you attention but because of the language issue and lack of bilingual transcripts it will take a little more time and energy. But, it will get done – too important to miss and all part of understanding the problem and putting together the pieces of the puzzle 🙂
Hearings resume Monday 11 December 2006. Witnesses for the week have not yet been publicly confirmed but John MacDonald, “alleged” victim of Father Charles MacDonald is supposed to be scheduled. If that is fact without doubt Charlie and his legal team will spend the coming week trying to hatch some novel legal ploy to keep John off the stand and/or Charlie’s name out of the limelight and/or John’s testimony in camera.
Now a little more disturbing news about Justice Denis Power, the recused judge of Thursday past.
Justice Power did not, it seems, step down willingly. He was asked to reucse himself. He refused.
I don’t know that he was actually pried from the bench but the word is that it required a legal motion of some sort to get Power off!
And me yattering on about judge’s with a conscience!!
Imagine? Power wanted to take the bench – despite his prior dealings with a key player in the Cornwall scandal, lawyer and Church canon lawyer Jacques Leduc.
Perhaps the most alarming thing about this fiasco is that Justice Power is gone only because one of Father MacDonald’s “alleged” victims happened to hear that the Divisional court judge who would hear the diocesan application for stay and judicial review was Denis Power. The “alleged” victim knew that Power had represented Jacques Leduc in a 1995 civil action involving the diocese, Bishop Adolphe Proulx and others.
In other words, had the “alleged” victim not stumbled upon this information Justice Power would have had his way, heard the application for stay and we would have been none the wiser but stuck with his ruling .
More questions:
(1) Justices Colin McKinnon and Normand Glaude aside, how many judges with a serious conflict of interest have taken the bench to hear Cornwall-related motions, appeals, trials and/or pre-trials?
(2) Must we now police the judiciary because it is unwilling or incapable of policing itself?
(3) There is no cover-up?
This is all just too much….
Enough for now,
Sylvia
(cornwall@theinquiry.ca)
The government authorities have records on everything and so they could easily know about these repeated instances of judges who are tainted by their former involvement in this case as lawyers for one of the parties. Thank God that the victims are alert to this and catch some of the tainted judges before they can participate in a further cover up. What about the judge that takes over from justice Power? Is he really new to this case? It appears that we cannot trust the government to administer justice fairly. This is a conclusion which can be drawn from this Cornwall public inquiry but I doubt that it will be included in the official report of this inquiry.