Mulcair’s moment on the grassy knoll

Conspiracy theories are like lovers: They come in pairs. There’s the original plot — and then there’s the cover-up, often more elaborate and dastardly than the underlying crime.

Take the JFK assassination. Various conspiracist camps will bicker about whether the 35th U.S. president was killed by the Mafia, or Cubans, or henchmen hired by LBJ. The one thing they agree on? The Warren Commission was a sham, its report a pack of lies perpetuating the “official” lone-gunman thesis.

If you think about it, that second theory is even more outrageous. I’m not personally prone to paranoia, but even I sometimes wonder if Lee Harvey Oswald had some underworld help. Suggesting the commission was corrupt, though, seems crazy. Are we really to believe that chief justice Earl Warren, house minority leader Gerald Ford, former CIA director Allen Dulles and numerous other commission members, counsel and staff, would risk destroying their careers (and historical disgrace) by lending their names to a report that might someday be debunked as crooked? It makes no sense. All of which brings me to Thomas Mulcair. Like JFK-assassination buffs, the NDP leader has latched onto an alleged conspiracy going back decades. And with a conspiratorial flourish the late Earl Warren might recognize, he claims the coverup goes as high as Canada’s own Chief Justice.

This being Canada, the conspiracy in question doesn’t involve anything so lurid as a political assassination, of course. In fact, no one was even injured. Rather, the theory involves … allegations that legal counsel was improperly tendered in anticipation of the repatriation of the Canadian constitution.

The allegations originate with historian Frederic Bastien. His new book, La bataille de Londres, argues that Bora Laskin, who was Supreme Court chief justice during the repatriation period, provided discreet tips to Canadian and British officials about how to make sure the process was conducted in a manner that withstood constitutional scrutiny.

Speaking for myself (and, if I may presume to do so, for the rest of English Canada) I really don’ t care either way. Separation of powers has only the most margin- al presence in Canadian law. And from a practical point of view, it seems that if you’re going to take the trouble to repatriate a constitution, you might as well make sure you’re doing it properly. That’s the whole point of reference cases, after all.

And yet, notwithstanding my own blasé attitude, I am assured by the media that Bastien’s claims are seen as “explosive” in Quebec, where separatists always enjoy picking through the historical record for any sign that their province has been hard done by. The provincial assembly even passed a motion demanding the disclosure of 1980s-era Supreme Court documents pertaining to the alleged incident. Court officials agreed to the request, but last week announced that their archives contained no relevant materials.

And this is when Mr. Mulcair had his moment on the grassy knoll. “What they seem to have said from [the Supreme Court’s] cryptic, one-paragraph statement, is: ‘ We looked in our filing cabinet and we don’t have them,’ ” Mr. Mulcair told The Canadian Press. “It’s a clear indication that the Supreme Court had no intention of ever dealing with this issue seriously.” Now think about this for a moment. It is not Stephen Harper or some other rival politician that Mr. Mulcair is accusing of dishonestly withholding information in furtherance of a politically motivated cover-up. Rather, he has launched this accusation against the Supreme Court of Canada, our nation’s highest judicial body.

I’d like to know: Does Mr. Mulcair really think that Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and her fellow justices are engaged in an active conspiracy to lie about their Court’s possession of documents requested by a provincial legislature?

Or is Mr. Mulcair merely launching his accusation against the Court’s top administrator (who answers directly to Justice McLach-

Perhaps Mulcair would like to identify the administrator in question

lin)? According to Mr. Mulcair’s logic, it has got to be one or the other.

If the latter, then perhaps Mr. Mulcair would like to identify the administrator in question more specifically. The Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada is a fellow named Roger Bilodeau. He’s been in the position since 2009.

Personally, I think the Registrar-as-Umbrella-Man theory is a long shot. The bilingual Mr. Bilodeau is the sort of straight-arrow, Canadian legal-procedure nerd who writes books with titles such as Handbook of Best Practice for Registrars of Final/ Appellate, Regional and International Courts and Tribunals (yes, it is available on Amazon) — not the sort of thing Jack Ruby or Santo Trafficante kept on their bedside table.

Then again, maybe Mr. Mulcair has information the rest of us don’ t. I notice, for instance there actually is a website out there called “Registrar Roger Bilodeau covers up for the Freemasons.”

“In a telephone conversation with Roger the Registrar on October 31, 2012, Roger declined to answer whether or not he was a Freemason,” the website reports.

“So, there is a high probability [that] Roger the Registrar is a Freemason — because almost all people who are not Freemasons are quick to answer they are not Freemasons when the question arises.”

Note that precisely the same logic applies to those Supreme Court officials who were “quick to answer” that they couldn’ t find certain documents pertaining to the repatriation of a certain constitution. Ask yourself: Cui Bono? If you’re starting to hum the X-Files theme, you’re not alone. All of Canada is starting to wonder: Who knows what sort of anti- Quebec plots Mr. Bilodeau, Justice McLachlin and the Court’s other closet Freemasons get up to when the robes come off ?

I have no idea. But it ’s good to know that a figure as serious and influential as the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is on the case.

Thomas Mulcair