Last month, I told you I expected to have my day in court in the early part of January. As I also mentioned, the delays and stalling tactics used by the RCMP are very frustrating. Well, they have done it again! After waiting months to get through a clogged justice system to finally have an opportunity to have a Judge review the warrantless search and seizure, the RCMP and Crown were able to once again circumvent justice, and add further delay.
How is this possible? It is a result of the procedural realities of the so-called justice system. Because I was not charged with anything when we filed our motions seeking this hearing, the matter would be set down for a date and heard by a Queens Bench Judge. This date was given to us in mid-October, and we waited very patiently for the date to arrive. Now, you also have to understand the procedures dealing with seized items. An item can only be detained for up to 90 days, unless a charge is laid. If no charge is laid within 90 days, the RMCP and Crown are required to apply to the Court for an extension on the initial 90 day time period. It was at this hearing for the "battery card" raids of last year that the RCMP lost their application for the extension, and the Judge was so infuriated at the conduct of the RCMP that he threw the entire case out.
It seems readily apparent to me in my case that the main objective of the RCMP at this point is to keep this away from a Judge for as long as possible, and cause as much embarrasment and financial harm to me as they can in the meantime. The seizure occurred on September 24, 1997. The 90 day detention period would have expired on December 24th, at which time they would HAVE to apply for the extension and therefore appear before a Judge, or return the seized goods. Rather than take that risk, they chose instead to secretly charge me 48 hours before the expiry of that 90 day period. I say secretly, because they never served myself, the company or even the attorneys with any notice of that charge being filed. It wasn't until 2 days before the January 7th hearing date that my lawyers were informed by the Crown Attorney that I had been charged.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, we were to appear before a Queens Bench Judge, since I was not charged with anything when the hearing was scheduled. Now that charges were filed, it in essence short-circuits my hearing in front of the Queens Bench Judge. The reason for this is simply procedurally, in that once you are charged, these issues have to be dealt with by the Provincial Court Judge who will hear the trial, rather than the higher Queens Bench Judge. The idea behind this is to prevent people from attempting to avoid trials by simply asking a higher court to throw the case out before it goes to trial. And as far as court dates go, we are essentially starting from scratch again, and will be facing many months of delays before we can get before a trial judge. So you can see how this tactic was highly effective on their part.
However, the justice system does have a mechanism to deal with this types of apparently malicious behaviour. It is called "Abuse of Process". Upon hearing of the course of action the RCMP and Crown chose to take, the lawyers immediately filed motions for Abuse of Process against the members of the RCMP for their conduct. So rather than waiting for the Provincial Court Judge, we will be able to have a hearing before a Queens Bench Judge. If the Judge agrees that the RCMP have acted maliciously, we will ask that he order a stay of proceedings, the immediate return of all items seized, as well as an order of costs. I am hoping that by the time you are reading this, we will get before a Judge and have this matter dealt with.
In the meantime, the RCMP seem to be continuing their tactics of harrassment and intimidation. In the two weeks since the cancelled hearing, the RCMP have attended to the business premises on 3 different occasions. On the first, it was apparently to serve us with the charges. What seems peculiar is that this didn't happen until the day AFTER we were to have our hearing. So, we were NEVER actually served with notice of the charges until after the hearing date. Does this sound a bit dirty to you? And what seems even more unusual is that the charge was filed on December 22nd, yet the first appearance date is not until January 28th.
The second time they came to the business, it was to serve me personally with the charges, since they are not only prosecuting the business, but myself as well. I was not there, as is often the case, and rather than leaving it at my known place of business with my employee, they chose to leave and attempt to serve me in person.
And, so they returned a third time. I expected that they would return unannounced, and rather than have them continue to drop in time and time again under the guise of serving me, I instructed my employee to tell them that if they were so concerned to serve me, they could do it at the Abuse of Process hearing, since I'm sure I would see them there. But they were interested in alot more than my whereabouts. "We noticed you have no Canadian satellite dishes here! Why is that? You only have RCA and Sony dishes here. " In what I would call an unprofessional and underhanded manner, these two officers threatened my employee with charges in an attempt to persuade him to make a statement to the officer regarding our business operations! "Even if I tell you that YOU sold a US system to an RCMP member a week after the seizure in September ?" Not even then, was the answer.
When told they would not receive such a statement, they insisted and persisted, and eventually produced a statement form, and started filling it out. It was only after the employee absolutely refused to give any information, even so basic as his name, that the officers finally realized they were not going to be successful, and prepared to leave. "...I hope you know what you're getting yourself into here..." was one of the last things said by the officers. The second last was reading him his Charter Rights. Yes, that's right folks, it was only AFTER attempting to elicit statements, that the Charter was ever thought about by these officers.
After leaving the business, it appears that the frustrated officers decided to inform the media of the charges, and attempt to emberrass and humiliate me in the public eye. A reporter from the Winnipeg Sun called within a couple of hours of the officers leaving the store, asking me about the charges. I simply told them that the RCMP are dead wrong, and I know I will prevail. As well, I outlined the malicious behaviour and dirty tactics being used.
Knowing that there was going to be a writeup of some sort in the next days paper, and remembering that any publicity is good publicity, I decided it might be a good time to buy a little bit of ad space in the Winnipeg Sun. Just to correct any sort of "spin" put on the situation by either the RCMP or the reporter. So I purchased a full page ad, which just happened to appear two pages away from the article.
Rather than giving my own personal opinion, I simply chose some succinct and compelling quotations from various authorities. The first was from the RCMP, stating their position that the reception and decoding of any signal other than ExpressVu and Star Choice was illegal. The next quote was from Keith Spicer, former chairman of the CRTC, who compared blocking foreign broadcasts as tantamount to communism, and stating that Canada would never do such a thing. The last three quotes were taken from some of the landmark decisions which we have seen in the last 12 months, which were highly favourable in support of the industry.
I simply wanted to let the public judge for themselves what the state of the law is, and who is telling them the truth. The result was an unbelievable barrage of support, from other media outlets and citizens, praising us for our courage to stand up and fight. But best of all, the retail phones have started to ring a little bit again. And that's the best thing I could have hoped for. Things have been slow since the RCMP began their tyrade against this industry last September. So slow, in fact, that we have sold only one single system all season, about a week after the press conference. Hmmmm, can you figure out to who?
Dean