Talk:British Columbia Legislature raids

Contributors should re-edit their writing
Having no prior knowledge of this string of events, I can assure the contributors who wrote this article that I have only a slight understanding of what occurred having read this entry. This article suffers from a number of editorial problems, not the least of which is an assumption that a reader already has certain level of familiarity with the subject (which is probably not the case the further one goes from BC). I recommend that the contributors take a look at how other significant political and judicial scandals are covered in Wikipedia, and use those articles as a template. As it stands currently, this article is confusing and unfocused. Calarch78 (talk) 17:51, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this needs help. I wrote two sections way back when - scrupulously adding sources - but it is quite the task. So much has happened that it is very hard to get it all in - it doesn't help that I don't have a lot of experience. More experienced wiki editors would be so appreciated on this article! Moonbug (talk) 07:41, 12 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm gonan try and tackle some of this in the next few days; I agree that the article is written, almost necessarily at this point, from a BC perspective, and that has to change so that other Canadians and people in other countries can understand what all this was about....it will help when BC Rail Corruption Trial and BC Rail Scandal are split off, and the background to Operation Everywhichway is explained....I added some material to the now-too-long lede of BC Rail which needs amending and "moving down" that page, but it may help you (Calarch78) appreciate some further context to what this is all about....Lord knows it's hard enough for us to fully understand, much less put it all together such that it's easily understandable....a lot about it is not understandable, which is why the manifold controversies about it, and why it's difficult to write about; for anyone, not just Wikipedians.....Skookum1 (talk) 04:37, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

You kids need to grow up a bit. All the information on the raids in the Vancouver Sun article and it states who was searched and who was named in the warrants. I mean really, it was right there on the front page of Vancouver's leading newspaper! Keep up the good work Liberals and New Democrats...those of us on the right own the country now! - unsigned comment by IP address user 205.250.69.171 16 April 2006


 * Where did that come from? And the Vancouver Sun may indeed promote itself as the city's "leading newspaper", it's done anything but lead the way in coverage of this trial; more like play catch-up, and even then twist and obfuscate coverage....as for the right "owning the country right now", yeah, well, that's about to change...and you may own the newspapers, but thankfully you don't own certain smaller ones, and though you try and control blogspace with trolleries and distractions, you don't own it either (nor Wikipedia, though some of you have tried....).  And portraying those who want justice and due process in British Columbia are "leftists" is typical spin, and just not true; there are tons of conservative-minded voters/taxpayers horrified at what was done to BC Rail and how it was done - and some of them left the BC Liberal caucus, and cbeint, because of it.  I won't go on with further comment on your post, because of WP:SOAP, but if you don't have anything substantial to say - get a life.Skookum1 (talk) 04:37, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Current Events tag needed
Not sure what it is - "this article is about a current event" is its text, so could someone please put it in. A POV watch should be maintained closely here, and also someone on the lookout for violations of the publication ban(s).Skookum1 02:06, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Dave Basi puff-piece in External links
I just scanned it and it looks pretty much like a p.r. agency bio of Basi for public relations purposes; granted he's been a "man in black" in much regular media coverage. Maybe I didn't read it write and it's not a puff piece, just starts out like one; but if it belongs anywhere it should be on the David Basi page. If we started linking ALL news articles, bios and backgrounders on this case there'd be over 100 entries on just Dave Basi alone; unless the various media profiles of Mark Marissen and Erik Bornman should also be here. Myself, I think the Globe article was inserted here because of its handy title ("There is no substance to this case"), which certainly is the unofficial government position on the proceedings (since they can't have an official one, other than Oppal's ope as A-G, which is controversial to start with).Skookum1 19:31, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Article should be deleted
This is suposed to be an encyclopedia and not a scrapbook of breaking news summaries. The sources for almost all of this story are highly questionable. The media are notorious for its inaccuracy and blogs are pure opinion. Information from such sources is in no way encyclopedia-like. I'm not deleting this page because it looks like folks have put a lot of work into it, but this is really a story that should not be added to this site until after the trial. At that time we will have a more encyclopedic understanding of what took place. -unsigned comment by User:IWin4U 19:00, 26 December 2006


 * That's crap, and by your sig ID I'm interpolating that you're a lawyer ("I win for you") with no apparent other experience in Wiki, at least none so much that you've warranted people corresponding with you on your talk page. A lot of the edits to this page appear to have been made from Ottawa and Toronto, and given the context of some edit/inline comments and statements on this talk page it's pretty clear that someone's pet law firms, or p.r. firms, have been vetting this article to suit their view of the case.  But now hear this, IWin4U - articles on current events and trials underway are common in Wikipedia; the pretext that there should be no article here until the case is over is horsetwaddle, and smacks of the same kind of "keep everything under wraps" that the whole affair smacks of in the first place, whether it's the government, the Liberal Party, CN, or the government-appointed courts who sealed the evidence.  In fact, the obscurantist nature of what's been going on so far is one of the main news stories attached to the case/scandal, and the full context of the case remains under wraps because the courts and the principals want it that way.  Not because the public, who have a right to know everything about why the Ledge was raided by RCMP, wants it that way, but because it's convenient for "the establishment" to prevent a full public inquiry into what's going on in the Liberal regime and party back-rooms.  Mark Marissen's appointment as Dion's campaign head makes this point all the more important, given the impending federal election campaign.  Let's be blunt: the political fallout from this case, if fully investigated publicly, could be much larger than the Sponsorship Scandal, for both the BC Liberals and federal Liberals.  That's why, as a current event, it is in the public interest and the common interest of BC Wikipedians to keep this page and others like it factual and up-to-date.  NOT to imply that maybe it should be deleted or otherwise muzzled until the case is over.  What do we do if Oppal's shooting his mouth off winds up in a mistrial, or the Mounties' apparent lying to a judge to get warrants to tap privileged phonelines results in the same?  Because then all evidence, and the whole story, is silenced and the evidence quashed along with the proceedings.  Then what do we do for an article?  Well, write about the miscarriage of justice by the Attorney-General and RCMP, for one thing; we might also write about the p.r. drones and lawyers who regularly twisted and manipulated this article, and in one case even raised the spectre of libel chill (see history for inline comments by 216.13.88.86), even though to my knowledge no Wikipedia editor or Wikipedia has ever been sued for posting opinion and/or news.  Now, IWin4U, because of your curious request to delete or otherwise de-emph this article, I'm very curious as to your point-of-origin and will try and track down your IP address.....and I'd sure be amused if it turned out to be from a terminal in a Liberal-affiliated lawfirm, or even in Liberal Party HQ.  If that's libellious, sue me - I could use the publicity and have about 10 reporters and innumerable bloggers as friends.  And granted, it's "shoot a Liberal in the foot season", especially for Liberals.Skookum1 20:55, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

POV template
I removed this template because of the heavily-neutered content of this page on the one hand, and outright POV claims such as:
 * ''During this time rampant speculation and conspiracy theories thrived as political observers and online commentators attempted to determine why these searches took place. There are some who have used this situation for their own political advantage by slandering individuals and organizations not targeted in the police investigation.

...which I would just have removed if not for the ongoing edit war around this and other articles; this appears to have been added by the same crew of SPAs who've been patrolling/sabotaging Erik Bornmann and Mark Marissen. This article is going to need POV watch big-time, especially once the trial begins in a few weeks...Skookum1 07:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

References April 2007
The references flag was removed. I have added it back. Skookum1 was concerned that this was "a hostile edit" because the article does have references. The warning asks people to improve the article by adding sources. I think it is a valid concern. The article on the judge hearing the case is a stub and has 2 references. In comparison, this article has 6 "external links": 1 (Yahoo) of which is dead, 1 (CBC Who's Who) that is 3 years out of date, and 2 to railways (OmniTrax, BC Rail sale news release) that can serve as background but are not focused on the trial. None of the dates or "direct quotes" have explicit footnotes which should be a concern for an article about an ongoing politically-sensitive criminal trial. So I hope the request for references is viewed as a neutral request to improve the article's quality. Canuckle 22:48, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Name of scandal re move/rename
This edit caught my eye, and while it's syntactically correct in an absolute sense the title "BC Legislature Raids" had evolved somewhat by consensus as for a working title for an article on this scandal; Basi-Virk Affair redirects here, and others; I created the Ledgegate redirect and see that Tieleman's been using Railgate so I'll create that redirect too. The big media has avoided these term s altogether because, like the cabinet and the RCMP, they wish the scandal would just go away. Not giving it a name ia a way to make it difficult to discuss, or shoved into oblivion behind the news about traffic, sick babies, pedophiles and crystal meth and high fashion and how to eat cheese properly; no need to investgate criminal wrong doing by ublic officials, and dubious behaviour by elected officials; they're good for the markts, don't turf 'em out, that's why this scandal hasn't got a name in the big papers or the networks (including the gutless CBC). But other than that rant, the point here is that the article is not about the raids but about the scandal, court case and evolving revelations of an organized (and illegal) coverup. Therefore, maybe the title of this age has to be reconsidered; and it can't be Basi-Virk Affair b ecause now it's about a lot more than them or their trial; I say we used a google couint for "ledgegate", "railgate" and other options and do it like a show of hands....and seaking of invisible, is it just me or are Mark Marissen, Erik Bornmann and Pilothouse Communications mentioned nowhere on this page. Are they at it again?????Skookum1 (talk) 03:30, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * How about Regina v. Dave Basi, Bobby Singh Virk and Aneal Basi? Canuckle (talk) 19:45, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, that would certainly be the article about the case, but not about the larger scandal growing around it and because of it; that's the point. BC Legislature Raids case would have also meant much the same thing as you're suggesting; but it's the what's-happened-since that's the real scandal, or the larger scale of the scandal; another name that kicked around in the Sun, come to think of it, maybe only quoting a blogsite though, was "Sale of BC Rail scandal".  The Basi-Virk case is the only one so far to hit the docket (and is, if you believe the editor of the Indo-Canadian Times, a fallguy case "using the brown guys to protect the white guys"; implications of the evidence are that other charges might be pending, or should be  Yes, the case itself should have an article; but the larger story is not to be contained by an article about the Basi²-Virk trial/case.Skookum1 (talk) 21:22, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

New moves/news in case
The latest round of procedural/evidentiary wrangling is recounted here in Tieleman's new column in the The Tyee. Makes me wonder how much of what he's talking about wasn't in the Vancouver Sun/Province/Victoria Times-Colonist. Anyway posting this here so someone else maybe will see to condense the factual bits out of the opinion, same with that long content post/addition that had to be taken out as it was "quoted without quotes" directly from Tieleman's column; some of the information deleted was still needed in this article, and should have been vetted/rewritten.Skookum1 (talk) 15:20, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

My contributions/two cents
First of all, I'm shocked that this article is rated of "low importance" given the fact that this is a major political event unfolding in British Columbia on the eve of an election.

I'm not ready to begin tackling the improvement of the references on of much of the article that was already posted when I started adding to it, as the points are largely related to aspects of the case I am unfamiliar with. (I only started following this trial over the last year and a half). I may attempt to improve these sections after I finish with the "recent" section.

There are several major timelines of the trial out there and after perfecting the "recent developments" section, I want to work on getting this article in shape chronologically and informatively. This is a complicated case that has been going on for more than five years. As a result there is a LOT of information and a lot of players involved.

I think it is vital to have a fair, NPOV article on this case so that British Columbians are able to use the evidence to draw their own conclusions.

I've made sure to include a variety of sources for my additions, and I will continue to add sources as I go. (Some contentions are supported by more sources than I link to, I just need to continue to dig and arrange, dig and arrange.Moonbug (talk) 01:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I've changed the rating to "high" which it's deserved for a long time; this is important nationally, although you wouldn't know it from the way the national media have looked the other way and found other things to cover instead of addressing it s they should have been ("floating feet" get more ratings, supposedly, as do gang wars and junkie-documentaries). The number one issue heading into the next election is crime, according to polls on http://billtieleman.blogspot.com, but as far as crime goes it's hard to beat a $1 billion sale of public assets that is allegedly tainted from top to bottom and start to finish (that's not my assertion, it's Paul Nettleton's, who got booted out of the Liberal caucus for criticizing the sale of certain BC Hydro operations to Accenture).  I won't POVize too much here, just to comment that since the integration of the various Canadian provincial WikiProjects into WP:Canada, there's been a tendency to force "national importance" ratings of "mid" and "low" on what would be provincially "high" and "mid"; ditto with volcanoes, geography, history,education subprojects.  IMO the ratings should be based not on the national perspective, but on those of the subprojects, i.e. if there's a subproject present, that's the perspective the rating shoudl be derived from, not just if it's on the radar of the national mentality (official or otherwise).  Otherwise many things of importance in various regions and various fields get downplayed too much; there's a further way in some WPs to give ratings for each sub-project but our template's not set up like that (yet).Skookum1 (talk) 03:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not familiar with how the rating system works and who assigns the ratings. It did seem a little incredulous that this was rated low. As I noted on your talk I'm a wiki noob. I've done my level best in the past, but of course, I've had some of my articles butchered because I didn't quite "get" it. That's okay though, I guess. It is a learning experience. I've heard of Nettleton, I just haven't come across his name in the most recent coverage relating to this trial. As I dig through the coverage we'll see what comes up.  Moonbug (talk) 14:13, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Nettleton's claims
See this, which contains info that was in the major media but shuffled aside by intervening/wider world events. See my comments about same at Talk:Paul NettletonSkookum1 (talk) 03:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

ALR & Tsawwassen Treaty
I added some proposed rewording in "hide" mode which is here unhidden, pending fixing/expansion/citation, including a proposed section-heading change:

Agricultural Land Commission & Tsawwassen Treaty connections

 * ''Basi has also been charged for accepting $50,000 in connection with attempting to negotiate with the Agricultural Land Commissionon removal of land from the Agricultural Land Reserve to benefit a losing bidder in the process, OminTRAX.

I "hid" that because I wanted to be sure of the wording/circumstance; the Tsawwassen Treaty connection may only have been observed in blogspace, though I think it's covered in one of Tieleman's columns, maybe even in Palmer's.
 * I'm having trouble finding this specific reference but there is plenty more goo. Oh. My. I've never looked into the the 2006 and 2007 stories, but this stuff is very interesting. I've got to source this article more. There is plenty to go with, just from the majors, even. I've got to go now, but, I'll look more after work. Before that I'll add one more reference to the main body of the article. Moonbug (talk) 14:43, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
 * found reference. From Palmer. "The two aides whose offices were raided (and one other cited later) have been charged in connection with the sale of the assets of the government-owned BC Rail. As well, one of the aides has been charged in connection with an effort to remove farmland from the provincial agricultural reserve. The latter wasn't even mentioned at the time of the raid and little has been said about it during brief court appearances since." Vaughn Palmer, "Aides may have been acting to protect Liberal interests in BC Rail sale," Vancouver Sun, A03, November 4, 2006 - it was archived by BC Mary also, here: http://bctrialofbasi-virk.blogspot.com/2006/11/basi-virk-acted-to-protect-liberal_04.html however she only posted some of it. Moonbug (talk) 01:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Note though that according to the Sun, the alleged $50 000 ALR cash was for greasing the wheels for a 700 home development for Tony Young and Jim Duncan of Sunriver Estates, also known as Shamrock Hills Development Corp. --Not for anything related to Omnitrax. --- "Basi breach of trust case in court April 1," Vancouver Sun, Page A02, March 13, 2009 Moonbug (talk) 01:34, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I might be jumbling stories then, it's all so damned complicated; the treaty connection I'm pretty sure was in connection with the ALR thing, but somehow I was under the impression that it was linked to the Deltaport rail line/omniTRAX....maybe the only connection was the Basi/Virk/Young/Duncan connection....I'll consult and return.Skookum1 (talk) 01:50, 31 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I asked and this is the response I got:
 * ''So far as I know, Dave Basi is charged only with an A.L.R. offence in the Sooke area (not of "negotiating" but trying to influence the A.L.C. in that area. Nothing to do with Tsawwassen -- although, in my view, Campbell is running the age-old scam of buying off First Nations with pie-in-the-sky deals (the Tsaw. chief and friends got a free trip someplace as part of their inducement) ... and what Campbell really wanted was the land for an expansion of Deltaport. He knew damn well that by "giving" it to Tsawwassen F.N., they in turn would be forced to sell it on the open real estate market to pay their unaccustomed property taxes etc.  Please check what I'm saying because I haven't looked into it for a couple of years now.
 * So now we have three reasons for the ALC issue, and the Tsawassen thing is only a political-strategy linkage/speculation, not tangible fact...sorry to have raised it then, it falls in "conspiracy theory", so it's good I didn't add it to teh article as such. Gotta line up all my ducks before shooting them next time....Skookum1 (talk) 02:56, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No problem, this is a complicated case. That is why I am taking it one section at a time and reading every article I can find on that one aspect. I am almost ready to move on from the Kinsella section. There are also plenty of statements in this article which I know are verifiable, but are missing references. I think after the Kinsella section is done I'll work some more on sourcing statements in the preamble and other sections before moving to another section. Kinsella also needs his own article. His own noted lobbying is significant both to this case and understanding the British Columbia political scene in general. I can't even imagine starting on that at this point, however. Moonbug (talk) 04:14, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

[undent]See the section on splitting this article towards the bottom of WP:CANTALK page about my thoughts about whether or not Patrick Kinsella should be separate from Kinsella Affair - because of WP:BLP considerations - and the same applies to David Basi vs Basi-Virk Trial; just now I did a search of canoe.ca for "David Basi" and got a fair range/span of different presslinks - see here. I agree about keeping things one-item-at-a-time, which is one reason I've stayed away from expanding this for a while; the web of information is too vast, although as BC Mary wrote to me (in a final sentence of the quoted passage elsewhere) it's not that complicated - "if [she] can understand it, anybody can". But it is very vast in detail, and that's the deterrent to working on it, as there's so much ground to cover, especially considering the amount of material over 3-4 years....as you can see in the expansion to the lede, I covered a lot of ground, most of it can be cited from tyee and/or Tieleman but it's also mainstream press now, but I suspect to keep NPOV/NOR/NoSynth happy almost every phrase/fact/comment has to be cited....sorry I didn't provide them during that expansion....gotta go (for now)Skookum1 (talk) 14:56, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Indo-Canadian Times allegation
the editor of the Indo-Canadian Times made an allegation that the Basis and Virk were "brown guys taking the fall for their white bosses" (that's a paraphrase, I've forgotten his original wording); that's pretty much a conspiracy theory but among many notable ones that surfaced in the course of the case.Skookum1 (talk) 14:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

April 20,2006
I just noticed the abuse that this article has taken and was wondering who some of the writers are so that I can slap them or mail them a grammar textbook. It is pretty clear to me that some of the people involved in this case are posting to this site and others related to these raids. The poster above me here has a pretty good point--all this information is on google and in the news already. You guys should have kept your noses clean and read the bible a bit...all the parts about corruption and what god will do to you in the afterlife for being jackasses here. And if you don't believe in God, check out "Karma" here on Wikipedia. Karma is walking around at your law firm, or at your political event and having people continuously talk behind your back. I put "BC Raids" in google and got all sorts of information on all the monkeys involved in this enjoyable piece of BC's history.

Back to work monkeys.

Darkfalz1


 * WP:Sofixit. And watch who you're calling monkeys...(I'm very decidedly a wiki-sasquatch).Skookum1 (talk) 01:16, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

BC Rail tax indemnity changed from 255 million to 365 million to 415 million to 505 million
It is a fact. Visiting BC Rail's webpage, their Annual Reports will confirm the change from 365 million to 415 million. Note BC Rail sale Annual Report did not disclose the tax indemnity. Also goodle search BC Rail tax indemnity http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=bc+rail+tax+indemnity&meta=&aq=f&oq=

Took several years, now made it into province's main newspaper yesterday. And it's even bigger 505 million. More than double what was debated in the Legislature. http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Rail+time+bomb+still+ticking+taxpayers/1517685/story.html Wow. Not no longer orginal research, in the newspapers finally.

Kinsella involved in entering the 415 million dollar ( now 505 million) BC Rail tax indemnity (refund) on the books at 255 million.

Wiki BC Rail tax indemnity fact The sale of BC Rail involved a 505 milion BC Rail tax indemnity. If CN is not refunded 505 million from the Federal Government, the Province will return this amount. Reduces the sale price of BC Rail from 1.05 to under 500 million. The BC Rail tax indemnity was taken off the Public Accounts in January 2005, before the May 2005 election, when it was reclasified a contingent liability. The BC Rail sale Annual Report was defective and did not cite the indemnity when it was disclosed at 255 million, and recorded these tax credits at zero bookvalue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.53.181.136 (talk) 21:50, 22 April 2009 (UTC)


 * The point is that new materials must be written in WP:NPOV fashion/style and also cited; I added the Vaughan Palmer citation and amended the figures in the original post; another editor not from BC and/or not familiar with the case or the politics surrounding it might have just deleted it because you had made it POV in tone and bolded an allegation, even, which is highly POV; which was sufficient reason to delete it, never mind it was ungrammatical but it was also uncited, which is another reason for immediate deletion, especially when WP:BLP is invoked (this is not a biography but still involves living persons). also, please start new sections/discussions at the bottom of talkpages, not at the top.Skookum1 (talk) 01:16, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Edit reason for change to 500. '''Award winning CanWest journalist. BC's top reporter.''' http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/viewfromtheledge/archive/2009/05/09/the-neverending-story-bc-rail-of-course.aspx

Quote" ''Once the Liberal promise-breakers got into the swing of the selling game, they became quite creative, particularly in the way they made use of the railway's estimated $2 billion worth of accumulated losses over the years. [Income Statement loses from special depreciations. BC Rail always ran an operating profit.]  Only CN, among four initial contenders for the BCR, was prepared to bid on the value of the losses and did so "aggressively."  The giant railway, with operations across the continent, figured it could realize savings of about a quarter of a billion dollars in taxes paid to the federal government as well as several Canadian provinces.  "We're quite good at pushing out the envelope," as the CN chief financial officer Claude Mongeau put it in a conference call to investors after the deal was announced.  But Mongeau and his colleagues were nobody's fools. In case the tax collectors didn't go for their envelope-pushing interpretation, they insisted that the province indemnify their company for every penny of the anticipated reductions in corporate and other taxes. The Liberals, desperately wanting to make the deal look as rich as possible and confident that there was little risk in making the indemnity, agreed.

''When the deal was announced in November 2003, it saw CN pay $750 million to "buy the business" (as CEO Hunter Harrison put it) and another $250 million for the putative value of tax credits. In return, the province supplied the indemnity, pegged to the "maximum present value" of the credits in the year in which they could be claimed (discounted future tax dollars into past dollars, plus a hefty annual escalator clause, lately reckoned at nine per cent.

The indemnity has grown dramatically since it was first recorded on the provincial books '''after the deal closed in July 2004. From $367 million for the 2005-05 financial year to $505 million''' for the year ended Mar. 31 2008. [BC Rail tax indemnity removed from the Province's Accounts, back on.]

Another nine per cent atop last year's figure would boost the indemnity to about $550 million, more than half the value of Campbell's original such-a-deal for the railway, albeit in today's dollars." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Haida chieftain (talk • contribs) 21:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC)


 * This article is badly in need of updating/expansion/splitting - Railgate, HMTZ v. Basi, Virk & Basi (and the corresponding one on the ALR case, HMTQ v. Basi, Young & ??), bios on Kinsella, Basi and others. I know a lot of us are daunted by the sheer complexity of hte material; and the current title doesn't take in stuff like the deceptive pricing of the BC Rail deal, or the tainted bidding process etc (except indirectly).  I know a lot about all of it, but feel a little too POV to start on the splits/expansions - and kinda tired, too.  Any efforts you could make toward that would be great.  This is a huge scandal, with many different sides, adn teh fat lady ain't nowhere near singing yet.....Skookum1 (talk) 01:24, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

heaving a sigh of omg
This article needs so much work! What with disappearing emails and other wonders worthy of Houdini - the wiki-monkeys need to ensure that the average Joe can keep up with this story. I have some time off. Expect at least one more scrupulously referenced paragraph. Moonbug (talk) 08:18, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * An admirable cause....you're very brave...I've had this article in the back of my mind in recent weeks but have shied away from updating it, just because there's so much and also so many tangential angles and also a huge cast of characters. I'll say again that I think the story of the raids themselves might do better as a separate article from a Regina v. Basi trial article (which is the formal name for the Basi-Virk trial; there's also Regina v. Basi & Virk, which is a different case as I understand it...), with Railgate as a third article where "Sale of BC Rail" would redirect to.  The story of the trial and the battle over evidence and disclosure is a separate topic, though of course inextricable, from the Sale of BC Rail/Railgate scandal, likewise from the Patrick Kinsella Affair, and the raids themselves include a complicated series of events, including the Premier and cabinet's month's warning of the raids (!), and also what happened since to one of the officers involved in the raids; the BC Rail, CN Rail and other related corporate articles also need updating, as well as related bios.....  I know you know how complex this is and how much material there is to try and incorporate and integrate, I admire your willingness to do it and apologize I haven't kept better breast of it...I don't think I'd be able to be very NPOV, for one thing....btw it would seem the Erik Bornmann and Mark Marissen articles both need updating, though there were edit wars associated with those (and also this article) long ago....and Basi, Virk, Bains and others need articles created, and Justices Bennett and Dohm etc....it's almost like this group of topics needs its own wiki-taskforce....most CanPolitics wikipedians are in other provinces, there's only a few of us here and I know of at least one person who has to recuse himself from any related edits (for professional reasons).  It's all quite boggling, I'll assist where I can in terms of tweaks and suggesting cites and stuff, but I'll leave it to your wisdom and NPOV good taste to build the mainframe....Skookum1 (talk) 14:20, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Further comment - at least there are lots of sources for this series of events, which wssn't the case in the past for events like Oka, Gustafsen Lake, Charlottetown, the Solidarity Crisis, Shawinigate; some online sources are available for those but unlike Railgate the internet wasn't around while they were unfolding (well, with Shawinigate it was, but only in its infancy). Not sure what articles might exist about Adscam (the sponsorship scandal) and the Airbus Affair, but those are relatively simple in comparison to Railgate, huh? Railgate reminds me of a James Michener novel or a poitboler like Hotel, crossed with a multi-levelled version of the murder house in the game Clue....crossed with Monopoly.  The general subject matter of Category:Political scandals in Canada probably does warrant taskforce attention but they're all difficult, all complicated, all emotional and as with the constitutional crisis article from last fall all likely to eventually, if not immediately, lead to edit wars and battles over POV.....in this case it's quite doubtless that the Public Affairs Bureau (British Columbia) are monitoring this article and may kibbitz in edits, we'll see.....Skookum1 (talk) 14:34, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
 * While fixing the "Political scandals in Canada" link just now I happened to see the "introduction too long" notice....which leads me back to suggest that maybe we should look at breaking this article into at least there components; - the raids themselves, under this title, the trial, under Regina v. Basi]] (and other other trial articles, as there are actually three or four), and Railgate for all the ancillary material; remember, the sale of benefits charges related directly only to OmniTRAX, and there's more to the machinations of the Sale of BC Rail than just what the Basi Boys were involved in....Skookum1 (talk) 14:39, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Charles River Associates -> CRA International fairness report
This material is ancillary to the CN Rail/BC Rail matter and while partly an example of why that material should be a separate article (using the current Railgate redirect as its title), it's also material related, albeit indirectly, to this case. See Talk:CRA International.Skookum1 (talk) 13:36, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

The warrants
Not sure if this has been linked in teh article yet; this is the article in the Vancouver Sun giving links to the full texts of the warrants, including Bornmann's information to the police.Skookum1 (talk) 10:03, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

"lede may be too long" - LOL
I could only laugh when I saw the "introduction may be too long" template....this is not a story that can be made short, or simple, is one thing for certain; how to come up with a better introduction, which is also understandable for those not familiar with the swampland of BC politics, is a good question.....this page has been in need of serious updating - and splitting - for a long time. BC Rail Scandal shoudl be split off, Regina v. Basi, Virk, Basi/Basi-Virk Trial also, and bios are needed, especially Dave Basi, Bill Berardino, Michael Bolton (lawyer). As for the lede being too long, this whole escapade has taken far too long to get only to a dead-end....but what a ride it's been.Skookum1 (talk) 10:03, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Issues
I wrote something nasty but I'll try to make it to the point. This article has a lot of problems, it should be possible to fix them, but the way it is going the neutrality seems to be seriously questionable. There just seems to be too much politics even in what is written on this talk page. PatrickDunfordNZ (talk) 06:57, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

This is a huge and ever growing story - this article needs an army of editors - and as I am not a professional - I can only do my best. This is a difficult topic for an inexperienced wiki folk like myself - so I would love some help. I don't necessarily have the time or the expertise to make this good on its own - however it is a significant event in B.C. history. The Parliament was raided. That is pretty huge. I will try to clean this up a bit but I'm just a joe schmoe. If you think this can be better please help make it so Moonbug (talk) 07:38, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * And actually Moonbug, it's not just a significant event in BC history - this is the only time - since Charles II or so - that police have raided a a legislative precinct anywhere in the British Empire/Commonwealth....Skookum1 (talk) 08:54, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I am in the same boat as Moonbug, the amount of material of this very important topic is too vast for any one editor to tackle, and it is also not the kind of subject by which haphazard additions are going to make anything useful; note my comments above, and on WP:CANTALK in various places (some archived) about the need to split off the trial(s), and the scandal around them, and the scandal about the sale, and the various bios, as separate articles; the title here was ad hoc somewhat, and in fact the preliminary hearings had not started yet when it was created, but it is only about the raids themselves, or should be only that; there is much more that's happened since - especially HMTQ v Basi, Virk, Basi, which the National Post dubbed the BC Rail Corruption Trial (they used caps), though BC Rail Scandal is larger than just the trial or the raids (and continues to grow). I have also, because of my busy role as a very vocal blogger (not on my own blog, I'm busy enough on others), avoided this article for semi-COI reasons and also because it is very difficult to report on a politically-flavoured trial without being POV; simply assemble the facts, the indictments they make speak for themselves, not editorializing needed....I've asked/suggested repeatedly that other editors come together, somehow, to work this up to snuff, but it's a difficult topic, difficult for non-BCers to understand whether they're in the rest of Canada or in the US or abroad.  What may sound POV to an "external editor" may in fact be straightforwardly factual - and generally is (simply by mentioning it, because of its import...).  This isn't the only BC political article to face this problem, though most other issues are much older, e.g. the Solidarity Crisis of 1983 or the Fantasy Gardens Scandal or BCRIC and the sources are not easily available for them (when Izzy Asper took over what became CanWest in 1993, one of teh first things he did "to save costs" was to ditch the digital archives, and hard-copy archives, of the Sun, Province and Times-Colonist (those remain available at the universities, the VPL and Vancouver Archives etc, but mostly only on fiche when not hard copy).  Bingogate, Casinogate and the Salmon War are other examples of either unwritten or underwritten articles in need of work, all of them political/POV minefields and also all very complicated.  To make it very brief, that's one thing this article can never be; even succinct and "sanitized" it is still incredibly complicated; we, as Canadians, were also prohibited, theoretically, from writing about it during the publication bann imposed by now-ACJ Anne Mackenzie, even though the material under the ban was already widely available (some of it simply in Hansard, in fact).  It's also very true in British Columbia that simply giving a straightforward account of facts will be construed, or complained about, by one side or t he other as being "POV" or "unfair".  Some facts are just plainly unfair to start with; we have to be very cautious not to remove something simply because it reports events/facts one side or the other does not want to be seen/known; editorializing any of that would be POV; simply reporting it, well, the facts are teh facts and speak for themselves.  This continues to be a news story, and an expanding one, in fact, despite having its origins before the Liberals came to power in 2001....it almost needs its own Wikiproject, even its own Wiki (in fact, it's occurred to me that a non-Wikipedia wiki be the instrument of a potential self-mandated public inquiry).  How to cover everything in a Wiki-OK form?  I dunno; and I do know that if I were to start working on it, we'd see SPAs coming out of the woodwork to argue and contest and wiki-lawyer to try and contain the flood of facts that, even now, the Crown is trying to get out of defence hands - and away from public eyes.  I'm not being POV in saying that, it's just matter-of-fact.....I'll leave off for now, other than to invite User:PatrickDunfordNZ to specify which bits he thinks are POV, so that we can amend, or explain them, or clarify and further cite them......If he'd like I can give him a veritable host of news copy, even mainstream news copy (though most of it is post facto after news-bloggers exposed the information the news copy was about), so that he may try to assemble more aspects to the events/issues than the article currently covers....he should also bear in mind that the mainstream media's unwillingness to cover the trial, and to mis-report on it more often than once, is one of the issues surrounding the case.....and many columnists, such as Vaughan Palmer and others, basically write op-ed pieces that are not appreciably different from op-ed blogs; on the Christy Clark article, there were attempts to remove whole chunks of information because only one journalist was cited and he was "NDP-affiliated"; but mainstream copy is reported without saying that IT is "BC Liberal-affiliated", so the issue of "when is a blog acceptable as a reliable/verifiable source" is part of the needs behind expanding this article and sourcing it properly; to only have the mainstream media as sources would be VERY pointedly POV.....given their known biases and demonstrable mis-coverage in many cases, or their foot-dragging in only covering something once it was exposed in blogspace (often without crediting the blogger, though in a couple of cases they were forced to publicly apologize/acknowledge them....).  An improtant related article, Erik Bornmann, was the target of protracted SPA/sock puppet activity, and IT, also needs substantial expansion, given what is now known....Dave Basi and Patrick Kinsella and Bruce Clark (lobbyist) articles also need doing, and are BLP minefields of the first order (Kinsella is a powerful Liberal Party organizer, federal and provincial, about whom it is difficult to say anything without being threatened by a libel suit).  So I'll leave it to you, PatrickDunsfordNZ, it may be that an outside set of eyes may be able to do this in a more POV fashion than any British Columbian can......if you'd like some links, let me know, though most are on the main blogs which are easy enough to find, or connected through them.....Skookum1 (talk) 08:36, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

And sorry I just saw this line a-fresh:
 * ''There just seems to be too much politics even in what is written on this talk page

I think Moonbug would agree that there's too much politics in BC, period.Skookum1 (talk) 08:36, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Operation Everwhichway
Just occurred to me that this should either be a spin-off "prequel" article, or part of the introduction here in shorter form (if it's possible be short); it was the drug investigation that led to the warrants to search the Leg, based on wiretaps between Dave Basi and Jasmohan Singh Bains, the "Mr Big" of cocaine dealing on VAncouver Island in the wake of a rearragnement of BC's crimescape following murders in LA and outside Gotham Restaurant in Vancouver....this is just a vast subject, from the drug investigation down to current events/follow-ups/revelations about it, and is not an easy narrative to tell....or to keep from sounding POV....Skookum1 (talk) 08:52, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Core refs for PatrickDunsfordNZ
This link and this one will get you started on the basics, as I note you've so far only added sect-unref and refimprove tags.....the information on the page is as terse as possible; the basic facts can be round on those pages, though one dates from 2008, the other from 2009, and both from teh same online news-zine. The Globe and Mail had something similar in more recent times, but not as thorough, i.e the "A to Z" one; and even that is by no means complete. And the mainstream media by and large avoided covering this at all through most of the proceedings (even the CBC, from whose news director I heard "it's not news, it's not even at trial yet" and Chantal Hebert accused BC Mary of "making it all up"...for which I hope she's been trying out recipes for crow pie). I realize you may like to see individual citations for each sentence/fact......but for starters maybe fact templates could be added to particular items you want cited, and I'll see what I can do.....this is a full-time job, really, and none of us get paid for it, obvioiusly.....Skookum1 (talk) 09:04, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Further material for source-use
It's getting to be time for a major overhaul/revision of this article; new material on it surfaces every day:
 * This is from a Victoria online magazine (not a blog).
 * This is journalist-cum-lobbyist Brian Kieran's blog - as before, blogs are the source of information the Sun and Province won't print, even though they know about it...
 * This, on the other hand, is actually from the Sun
 * This is a bombshell, but unfortunately is in a comment on an unrelated article about the uprising in Egypt and can't be used
 * This is from the Focus Online article:
 * ''And there’s the sworn affidavit of George Copley that revealed that the Deputy to the Premier was provided with evidence and RCMP questions prior to RCMP interviews with two cabinet ministers, breaching the evidentiary protocol established by Chief Justice Dohm.
 * the affidavit may be online and easily citable, I'm waiting for a reply about that.

More to come....I'm hoping to not be the only (real Wikipedian) working on this article expansion, so I can't be accused of being on a vendetta here as I have been, repeatedly, by the SPA/COI contributor currently trying to control the Adrian Dix, Christy Clark and other articles...Skookum1 (talk)