Judge brought down federal minister
Conflict-of-interest case that he headed in 1986 ruined Sinclair Stevens’s career
William Dickens Parker, a retired Ontario Supreme Court judge who presided over one of Canada’s more engrossing political gong shows in the 1980s, died Sept. 5 at his residence in Burlington, at age 102.
In 1986, Parker headed the public inquiry into conflict-of-interest allegations against former federal cabinet minister Sinclair Stevens.
His bombshell report in December 1987 found that Stevens had violated federal conflict-of-interest guidelines on numerous occasions by mingling private interests and public duty. It effectively ruined Stevens’s career.
But the ousted cabinet minister launched an appeal and pursued it for almost two decades, eventually winning a Federal Court ruling that in 2004 overturned the Parker inquiry’s results.
In that decision, Federal Court Judge John O’Keefe said Parker exceeded his jurisdiction by imposing a definition of conflict of interest not in force on ministers at the time of Stevens’s actions, and that Parker had failed to act in accordance with principles of procedural fairness.
With his findings declared null and void, Parker had essentially turned the Seinfeldian trick of producing a report about nothing. But what a nothing it was.
Parker’s inquiry heard from a who’s who of corporate personalities from Magna International, Hyundai, Bay Street and beyond as it became the story of the summer in 1986.
It heard the bizarre tale of a scheme by Noreen Stevens, the minister’s wife, to engage the Vatican in producing so-called gold “Christ Coins” for redemption at the millennium.
And it introduced the country to Sinc Stevens’ faithful secretary Shirley Walker, a woman with a Boswellian talent for note-taking who produced diaries documenting the most mundane details of her boss’s life, leading inquiry lawyers to one bizarre get-rich scheme after another.
Cable TV coverage of the soap-opera-like proceedings, which lasted for eight months and heard from more than 90 witnesses, developed a faithful following across Canada. For his part, Stevens denounced the proceedings as McCarthyism.
Parker, a Second World War veteran who had been appointed to the bench by John Diefenbaker and once served as a Progressive Conservative riding executive in his Hamilton hometown, had been tapped by Brian Mulroney in hope of relieving the conflict-of-interest scandal raging around Stevens, and the attack led by the notorious Liberal “Rat Pack” of Sheila Copps, John Nunziata, Don Boudria and Brian Tobin.
At the time, Stevens had been responsible for regional economic de- velopment and foreign investment review. It was alleged that the same individuals and interests doing business with his government department were courted for investment in his private holdings.
When the dour, remote Parker was appointed, few could have imagined the summer’s worth of headlines that would follow. Or the judge’s eventual conclusions that Stevens had violated the federal conflict code 14 times and shown complete disregard for the standards expected of him.
Almost 18 years later, all of that was found to be of no force or effect. As Stevens’ lawyer said at the time, “the wheels of justice grind slowly.”
Parker was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1961.
In the late 1960s, he presided over a royal commission into allegations by Toronto’s then chief coroner, Mor- ton Shulman, that the Ontario government had interfered in more than a dozen coroner’s inquests.
He also heard a conspiracy trial of 11 dredging executives in 1978-79 that was, at the time, the longest jury trial in Canadian history.
He presided over a jury trial that in the 1980s acquitted Dr. Henry Morgentaler on abortion charges. In 1985, Parker was appointed chief justice.
His family said in his obituary that Parker, a widower, worked as a mediator until age 85, read voraciously and travelled widely, golfed for more than 60 years and was active in his church and legal circles.
In 2004, the same year his report on Stevens was tossed out, Parker was awarded the Legion of Honour by the government of France for his leadership and courage in helping liberate the country during the war.