A reader asks: With so many elements of Canada’s legal infrastructures failing its citizens, do you think there is hope for any real recourse for common citizens?
by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police
Dear ‘S’,
Thank you for your kind and supportive email.
At the moment there is no real access to justice for ordinary Canadians. It can be fairly said that never before in Canadian history have the people and the justice system been so far apart.
It could also be fairly said that the elites who crafted and run the system – both the lawyers and ex-lawyers now known as ‘judges’ – are completely divorced from the people.
The only question is what form the rebellion will take when it comes.
Increasingly I see a section of the population completely dismissing the justice system as irrelevant in any decision making process where they believe they have been wronged. There is also a realization that we have a class-based justice system where rule of law is scarcely remembered by the courts and not at all by the legal profession.
This is producing a dangerous undermining of the very foundations of Canadian society – and if not stopped will produce a society like many around the world, where the justice system is known as nothing but a corrupt and owned weapon of the upper-class elites.
by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police
Welcome to the Province of Ontario – where convicted pedophiles and proven thieves meet the ‘Good Character’ standard for licensing by the Law Society of Upper Canada.
Yet another convicted and jailed pedophile has been approved to continue as a licensed Ontario lawyer practicing in the area of ‘Family Law’.
Senior lawyer Martin Schulz will be allowed to continue to practice family law – despite being sentenced to 45 days in jail after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography. The Crown prosecutor dropped more serious charges as part of a plea bargain.
Schulz had hundreds of child sex photos and movies on his computer. Think of the ruined lives, the devastation, the pain of these little children – but the Law Society Tribunal decided about Schulz:
“We find no reasonable grounds for believing that a significant risk of harm to members of the public exists.”
September 14, 2016 Decision of Law Tribunal members Sabita Maraj, Susan T. McGrath (chair), Frederika ‘Freddy’ M. Rotter.
The tribunal found that Schulz could continue to practice family law with a restriction that he could not represent children and would not be alone with any person under the age of 18 years old.
As a spokesperson for the Law Society stated, a past criminal record – even for child sexual assault – doesn’t preclude someone from receiving a licence to practice law.
If that is the law society standard, then that is the standard. After all… lawyers alone regulate and set the standards for the legal profession.
The lesson for the Ontario public is this:
Your lawyer might have a criminal record. The Law Society won’t tell you… and you probably won’t know.
And, as was shown in the recent Toronto Star ‘Broken Trust’ investigation of the law society, your lawyer might be one of the hundreds of lawyers who in the past few years committed serious criminal offenses against their clients, but were never charged because the law society covered it up.
Law Society Tribunal members who approved licensing of pedophile Martin Schultz: (L-R) Sabita Maraj, Susan T. McGrath (chair), Frederika ‘Freddy’ M. Rotter.
What are the Law Society’s senior benchers and Tribunal thinking to allow convicted pedophiles and other persons with criminal records to practice as lawyers? Have they lost touch with reality? They have certainly lost touch with Canadians.
By continuing to license persons with criminal records, and by covering up hundreds of crimes and other acts of wrongdoing by lawyers – the Law Society of Upper Canada is seriously undermining the reputation of Ontario’s legal profession.
For more, watch the above video and read these past articles at DonaldBest.CA:
In 1985, my squad executed a search warrant at the home of a member of organized crime and discovered that Chinatown’s Luen Kung Lok Triad gang was receiving confidential Toronto Police Intelligence Bureau surveillance reports shortly after they were filed – sometimes within hours of the report creation.
In that case, corrupt Toronto Police personnel were making thousands of dollars a month providing outsiders with illegal access to police information, resources and investigative techniques.
I was one of four officers quietly inserted into 52 Plainclothes squad with secret orders from Chief Marks to put a stop to the corruption. We worked in a station of several hundred police officers who were not aware of our undercover mission.
We spent almost a year pretending to be corrupt – taking bribes, enjoying free meals, free booze and partying with organized crime while secretly recording everything for the big takedown.
We had to bring our own ‘girlfriends’ to the parties because otherwise it would look suspicious when we refused the gang offers of women. Our ‘girlfriends’ and ‘squad groupies’ were, of course, undercover female police officers playing the role. Although Julian Fantino (who went on to become Chief of Police and then Associate Minister of Defense) briefly covered the investigation in his biography ‘Duty’ – the project deserves it’s own book. I’ll put that on my do list.
Here is an October 26, 1988 Toronto Star report of one of the trials in that case. You’ll note that accused Wilson Wong named two Toronto Police “friends” at 52 Division (downtown) who “are no longer on the Metro force”. Yes, there is still lots to be told about Project Winky. (click photo for large)
Here we are thirty years later and the quest to illegally access and benefit from confidential police information continues.
Toronto Police yesterday charged a civilian employee with a total of 24 crimes involving illegal access to police databases, saying that the searches made by the accused, Erin Maranan 28 years old of Thornhill, Ontario, were not for “official police business”. (Toronto Star Toronto Police forensics clerk charged with illegally accessing files)
I only know what I’ve read in the news media, and the court has imposed a publication ban on the proceedings – but that doesn’t stop us from making some informed observations and analysis of the available information.
Much more to this case than presently being told
This case is possibly much more than a civilian employee looking up background on her lover or her husband’s mistress. Some indicators:
The accused worked as a clerk in the Forensic Identification Service. As such, she had access to special databases and information that are not even directly accessible to most police officers. She might even have had the ability to alter information. The duties of a forensic cleck include “processing, searching, comparing and identifying fingerprints for crime-scene identification and criminal record purposes, providing professional photographic and digital imaging services to all units, and maintaining section files.”
The accused is also charged with personation – pretending to be someone else to gain a benefit. I speculate that this involves logging into the system as another police employee, perhaps even as a police officer. As an alternative, she could have been accessing Identity Information and commiting fraud.
The accused is charged with perjury, although we don’t know under what circumstances. That is serious business – a straight indictable criminal offence with a sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
The accused is charged with 23 counts of Breach of Trust between February and September 2014. Whatever the circumstances, this means that her actions were planned, not spontaneous, and that she knew she was committing a series of criminal offences.
It is good to see the Professional Standards Unit of the Toronto Police taking this illegal access to confidential police data by an employee most seriously.
Former OPP Detective Jim Van Allen
This is a different response than taken by the Ontario Provincial Police when one of their senior Detective Sergeants illegally worked as a private investigator for clients that included suspects in the threatening of witnesses. In that disgusting case involving now-retired Detective Sergeant James (Jim) Van Allen, the OPP Professional Standards Unit covered up and whitewashed lawbreaking by their long-time colleague. (See Canadian police expertise, information and resources illegally sold to major law firms)
You can do something important in the fight against corruption.
At zero risk to yourself and to your family… YOU can nominate a candidate for the Allard Prize for International Integrity
by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police
After almost 40 years spent interacting with ordinary people, the police, the legal profession and the courts in one way or another, I truly believe that most people are good at their core.
Really evil people are a minority in our society, and, I firmly believe, are a minority in any society.
Most people have integrity. They know in their heart – they feel in their heart – what is right and wrong and they try to do the correct thing; but… only when integrity is an easy choice.
To do what is right when the pressure is on, when your employer or a powerful group wants you to compromise or ignore what you know is right… that takes more than integrity. It takes courage.
Courage: that is where most good people fail the test.
Most of us do not have that kind of courage. That is a hard truth and one of the reasons why groups of corrupt people can sway societal systems and exert influence totally out of proportion to their numbers and actual strength.
Yet, sometimes all it takes is one courageous person to stand firm and declare that they will not do this or that for their employer. They will not deliver false evidence or ignore the truth in the face of powerful government officials.
But such decisions carry a price.
Sometimes the price of integrity is relatively modest: Professor John Knox of the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill in Barbados was warned to stop testifying in a certain court case or he would be fired. Professor Knox testified and soon found himself unemployed – fired from the University. Then he was abducted from the family home at gunpoint and beaten severely… but at least he still lives.
Sometimes the price of integrity is high: Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky refused to ‘confess’ to crimes and to falsely implicate others. For his defiance, corrupt police imprisoned him and then beat him to death in his solitary confinement jail cell. As corrupt as the murderous police were, they were only the instruments of a larger corrupt cabal that extended high into the Russian government.
And lest my readers receive the impression that serious corruption only happens ‘over there’, I clearly state that in Canada and in the United States, just like everywhere else, integrity is sometimes rewarded – but most often is punished when ruling groups are exposed or threatened.
Integrity is easy. Courage is the hard part.
Please watch my latest video, and then do your part to fight corruption. You can nominate a candidate for the Allard Prize for International Integrity – one of the world’s most prestigious and richest prizes for anti-corruption and integrity.
“It is time to bring Canada’s legal profession into compliance with modern standards of independent oversight and external accountability.”
In a previous article, I told how Ontario’s Law Society of Upper Canada licensed a known pedophile to practice Child Protection Law – with predictable results. (You can read that article right here.)
What were the Law Society’s senior benchers thinking to do such a thing? Have they lost touch with reality? How did they suppose ordinary Canadians would perceive this? Did they not consider the welfare of the children who would be exposed to this pedophile lawyer?
Or… was the Law Society of Upper Canada so completely embraced with a sense of entitlement and superiority that duty to the public trust simply never entered the equation? I suspect that was the case – and remains so today.
I’ve expanded upon that theme in my first ‘op-ed’ video production to call for independent oversight of Canada’s legal profession. In the video I contrast how Canadians impose independent oversight and external accountability upon the police (with good reason) – yet we continue to allow our legal profession to regulate itself in the face of mounting evidence that this arrangement is not working out – to put it mildly.
Now don’t get me wrong here… the vast majority of Canada’s lawyers and judges do their best every day to deliver the best justice they can within the rules, laws and system that we have. And thank g*d that they do, because we have all the examples we need in some other countries to see what an entirely corrupt system does to individuals.
To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill… Canada’s justice system is the worst – except for all the others.
And yet; increasingly, ordinary Canadians see that the power and authority (two entirely different concepts) conferred upon our lawyers and judges is too often abused or in the least, misapplied for reasons that range from overwhelmed, under-resourced courts to disturbing incidents of corruption and coverups at all levels.
Among the the rank and file of Canada’s legal profession, there has developed a distinct lack of courage to do the right thing.
Ordinary Canadians see a legal profession that once was the champion of Rule of Law now reduced to padding time dockets to meet Bay Street rents.
Canadian lawyers acknowledge that Ontario has a special problem
In the last two years as I expanded my advocacy for Self-Represented Litigants, I’ve spoken to many lawyers, Crown Attorneys and even a few judges/retired judges across Canada – right from Newfoundland through the Maritimes, into Quebec, onto the prairies and to our West Coast.
It is a fair comment to say that the general reputation of Ontario’s lawyers and the Law Society of Upper Canada is not exactly stellar in the eyes of many legal professionals outside of the province. In a phrase, the major Toronto law firms’ culture of ‘big money and big politics’ is viewed with disdain even in small Ontario communities.
But the systemic faults of the legal profession that are magnified in Big Law Ontario are not absent from other provinces.
Throughout Canada, lawyers are regulated, investigated and disciplined by the same people they went to law school with, the same people they work with and the same people they attend office parties and BBQs with.
Across Canada, when it comes to the legal profession, there is…
No independent oversight.
No independent investigations of lawyer misconduct.
No external accountability.
No transparency.
A growing legacy of scandals, cover-ups and whitewash means that it is time for independent investigations of lawyer misconduct in the short term – with the long term goal of bringing modern concepts of independent oversight to legal professionals who, like the police, have tremendous individual and group authority and power, with the attendant potential for abuse.
It is time to bring Canada’s legal profession into compliance with modern standards of independent oversight and external accountability.
by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police
Long before Crimestoppers started in the late 1970s, Toronto Police drug and organized crime squads had what were then called ‘fink funds’; cash provided to the squads to supposedly pay informants for information leading to major arrests.
As a young undercover operator in the early 1980’s I heard rumours that only a small portion of the ‘fink fund’ money was being used as intended. Who knows the truth? The old Staff Sergeants weren’t about to share those kinds of secrets with new guys like me.
Crimestoppers was supposed to stop the abuse, by providing structure and accountability for informant funds while enticing increasing numbers of citizens to anonymously solve crimes for cash rewards.
Paul Manning’s true story is a disturbing read of betrayal, police corruption, officer suicide and money. Big money from Crimestoppers.
The trick was to get the money away from the police Christmas parties and golf tournaments and into the hands of informants.
Toronto lawyers Gerald Ranking (Faskens) and Lorne Silver (Cassels Brock) lied to the court, fabricated evidence.
by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police
There remains just one small problem… everything Donald Best published is true.
A recent cutting-edge decision by the Ontario Court of Appeal clears the way for residents of Ontario to sue for Internet libel no matter where in the world the offending material is published.
If there was any doubt on the part of Toronto lawyers Gerald Ranking and Lorne Silver about their ability to sue me in Ontario, the decision in Goldhar v. Haaretz.com 2016 ONCA 515 should clear the way if they wish to launch a civil action concerning my articles about them as published here at DonaldBest.CA.
I, Donald Best, hereby declare that I write and publish this website in Ontario, Canada, where I am resident.
Some of my articles document how Messrs. Ranking and Silver, as Officers of the Court, fabricated a false ’Statement for the Record’ and lied to the court in writing and orally to convict me in absentia of ‘Contempt of Court’ in a civil case costs hearing I was unaware of while I was overseas.
Please don’t believe anything I say. Examine all the affidavits, exhibits, recordings and court transcripts posted on this website and make up your own mind.
I also published several articles describing how Gerald Ranking committed fraud upon the courts when he knowingly conspired with his clients to use a phoney non-entity to bring motions and appear before the courts, including before the Supreme Court of Canada. Read more
Fasken Martineau lawyer Gerald Ranking (left) illegally hired OPP Sergeant Jim Van Allen to perform an illegal investigation to benefit Ranking’s clients. The Criminal Code calls that ‘Bribery of a Peace Officer’
What Canada’s Governor General wasn’t told.
NOTICE: Poll closed after 24 hours. Analysis tomorrow!
by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police
On May 26, 2010, Ontario Provincial Police Detective Sergeant James ‘Jim’ Arthur Van Allen stood proudly as Governor General Michaëlle Jean invested him as a Member of the Order of Merit of the Police Forces.
What neither the Governor General nor her nominating committee knew though, was that during the selection period Detective Sergeant Van Allen actively violated Provincial and Federal laws. He illegally took money ‘on the side’ to work as an unlicensed private investigator for one of Canada’s largest law firms.
We now know that in 2009 and 2010 Van Allen was a Detective Sergeant in charge of the elite Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Criminal Profiling Unit when lawyer Gerald Ranking of Fasken, Martineau DuMoulin LLP illegally paid him $2,699.93 to illegally investigate me and provide the results for use in a civil dispute.
Evidence of Van Allen’s corrupt actions is public
The evidence is filed in Ontario courts. You can download the court documents via the links at the end of this article and make up your own mind. You can examine Van Allen’s invoices and read his deceptive sworn affidavit where Van Allen and the lawyers deliberately conceal his law breaking from the courts.
You can even listen to a secretly made telephone recording of Van Allen that, with the other evidence, proves Van Allen and his fellow senior OPP officers lied and concealed his law breaking.
Should Jim Van Allen do the honourable thing? (A 24 hour poll)
Only one police officer in history has been stripped of the Order of Merit. In 2010 the Governor General ousted RCMP Sergeant Warren S. Gherasim after the officer crashed his private auto while drinking and driving.
The rules of The Order state that members can resign voluntarily in writing. Termination is automatic when a person has been convicted of a criminal offense or has been subject to official / formal / serious sanction by the police service.
The Governor General can also terminate a person’s membership as His Excellency sees fit.
To my knowledge, Governor General David Johnston does not yet know about Jim Van Allen’s law breaking during the time when the officer was invested in the Order.
Now that everything is known, should Jim Van Allen resign from the Order of Merit of the Police Forces?
A group of young(ish) Toronto lawyers are telling some inconvenient truths on their new TheRedline.ca blog. Hopefully they will retain their mission when members of the Bay Street Boys Club start refusing to shake their hands in court. DB
Some excerpts from Allison Hines’ article ‘Thou Shalt Not Bring the Justice System into Disrepute’
Allison Hines, Toronto lawyer
I’m talking about the people who do not equate the words “justice system” with “justice”, for which I am one. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am proud to work in the justice system as a lawyer. I’m proud to have the opportunity to help marginalized people maneuver through the system, and to be someone who understands what it’s like to have distrust for the very thing that you’re hoping will allow you to access your rights…this time. I also acknowledge that even though the justice system isn’t perfect, it does provide protection and dignity to many.
However, I see too many flaws and too often. I see that our current system was born from and still imitates feudalism, where inequality and unchecked intergenerational privilege make a mockery of our constitutional rights. These flaws truncate individual rights proving the system to be illegitimate in the eyes of many. Put simply, the system betrays many of its own people. It disrespects the rights and dignity of those who have no meaningful say in how the law is created, maintained, or carried out.
(snip)
So, I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that instead of telling law students and lawyers not to bring the justice system into disrepute, I think we should be teaching them to question how we can bring the justice system into good standing, for all people, period. I know that what I have written here may seem very negative and critical. Hell, I’d even agree with that. However, I am saying these things because I am optimistic that things can change, but not without a critical view of how the system is working, or not working.
by Donald Best, former Sergeant, Detective, Toronto Police
In the next few days I’ll be establishing a separate page devoted to my current Application for a Federal Court Judicial Review of the decision of the Canadian Judicial Council regarding my complaint about the misconduct of Justice J. Bryan Shaughnessy on May 3, 2013.
(Whew! Sometimes it takes a run-on sentence to accurately describe a lawsuit.)
Meanwhile, my lawyer Paul Slansky has filed on my behalf a supporting affidavit sworn by me on April 27, 2016.
