Speaker behind staff ouster
Investigation led to suspension of two legislature staffers
VICTORIA An RCMP investigation into the senior staff at B.C.’s legislature started in the office of Speaker Darryl Plecas, who began conducting his own quasi-police probe into concerns he had personally identified almost 10 months ago.
Plecas, the MLA for Abbotsford South, continued to refuse interview requests Wednesday and has not made himself available to speak about what has turned into an unprecedented parliamentary crisis at the legislature.
However, his new political assistant, Alan Mullen, told media that he was hired in January in part to address concerns Plecas had about clerk of the legislature Craig James and sergeant-at-arms Gary Lenz.
“I was brought in for a number of different reasons,” said Mullen, a former correctional manager at the Kent Institution in Agassiz, who is a friend of Plecas. “Including this.”
Mullen said Plecas had “ongoing concerns” that included the clerk and sergeant-at-arms, though he refused to provide detail.
The specific allegations against James and Lenz remain unknown. No charges have been laid or tested in court, and neither man has been arrested. Charges may never come.
In 2012, eight employees of the health ministry were under government investigation for misuse of public health data. No charges were ever laid and in his December 2017 report, B.C. ombudsman Jay Chalke found that none of the researchers deserved to be fired.
James was effectively the legislature’s CEO, responsible for an almost $80-million budget, and Lenz was in charge of security and preventing terror attacks against the building.
They are the two senior-most non-partisan officials inside the legislature, and their jobs are supposed to be protected from political interference. Their suspension Tuesday was unprecedented in B.C. The Speaker’s informal investigation culminated in his office presenting the RCMP and Victoria police with information in late August, said Mullen.
“As the months went on, we gathered more information,” he said.
The RCMP began investigating in September, and two Vancouver lawyers were named as special prosecutors on Oct. 1.
The public didn’t know about the almost 10-month process until Tuesday, when MLAs voted unanimously to place James and Lenz on paid administrative leave and Mullen had the two men escorted from the building by police in the middle of their work day in front of stunned MLAs, staff and media.
James has worked in the building for almost 30 years. Lenz is a former RCMP officer and Canadian security official, who had a high security clearance level. James has said neither man has been told what they are accused of doing.
The investigation by Plecas is the latest controversy surrounding his role as Speaker. He was ejected from the B.C. Liberal party last summer after accepting an offer from the Greens and NDP to become Speaker under their powersharing agreement.
The Liberals accused Plecas of being less than forthright with them about his intentions to take the job, no-showing meetings and hiding out in the chamber alone until the last minute to avoid the repercussions of turning on his party. Plecas now sits as an independent.
Plecas is also expected to be targeted for a recall campaign by unhappy Liberals in his riding.
Vancouver lawyer David Butcher, one of the special prosecutors in the case, urged public patience Wednesday.
“I think you just have to wait for the process to unfold and that requires careful and thorough investigation by the police and careful and thorough analysis of their investigation,” he told Postmedia News.
Butcher was also special prosecutor on the so-called quick wins scandal under the previous Liberal government that took almost four years for RCMP to investigate and concluded with minor charges to low-ranking political operatives.
It remains unclear how much information the house leaders of B.C.’s three political parties — the Greens, NDP and Liberals — were given by Plecas before they instructed their MLAs to vote in favour of suspending Lenz and James on Tuesday. Mullen said Plecas presented his case to them, and it was MLAs who were ultimately responsible for suspending the two longtime legislative officials.
“The accumulation of the information gathered, he presented to the house leaders,” said Mullen. “They looked at the information, they had their discussions, they felt it was appropriate to make that motion, which they did.”
MLAs should have been the ones raising questions about the veracity of evidence against the top officials, said Simon Fraser University criminologist Rob Gordon. If not, they were nothing more than “sheep” in voting without understanding the implications, he said.
“The cone of silence that’s been dropped on this has been outrageous and totally inappropriate,” said Gordon.
“If it is the case that the two subjects are still none the wiser ... then what’s been going on is egregious.”
Gordon said he’s dealt with Lenz during his policing career and found him to be “a man of immense integrity.”
“Their reputations get destroyed by this kind of stuff,” said Gordon. “Even though they may subsequently be found to be innocent parties that have been wronged severely, it’s very painful for everybody concerned. They will simply always be looked at sideways, that’s the tragedy of it.”
There are legitimate public concerns about how the process was handled and the damage that was done to the reputations of Lenz and James without any actual charges being laid, said Victoria lawyer Michael Mulligan.
“I think there’s good reason to be concerned about that,” he said.
“You can wind up destroying someone’s reputation when they may not even have been charged with anything.”