Blacklock's Reporter

Federal court managers in an ethics audit credit themselves with upholding “high standards” but omitted all reference to staff editing plaintiffs’ Wikipedia pages. André Bolduc, chief auditor at the Courts Administration Service, yesterday did not comment.

“The audit identified strong values and ethics practices,” wrote Bolduc. His Audit Of Values And Ethics concluded “employees must uphold high standards of values and ethics in their interactions with members of the public.”

The audit covered the period from 2014 to 2018. Blacklock’s in 2016 discovered an unidentified person at the Federal Court in Ottawa used a courthouse computer to edit its Wikipedia page. Blacklock’s then and now is a plaintiff in copyright actions against the Government of Canada.

The Courts Administration Service is exempt from the Access To Information Act and would not release details of the Wikipedia editing. “Disciplinary measures were taken against the employee,” Daniel Gosselin, then $267,700-a year chief courts administrator, said at the time.

Gosselin refused to name the employee who freelanced as a Wikipedia editor. “The measure taken took into consideration the employee’s wrongdoing,” wrote Gosselin.

Then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould in a letter to Blacklock’s said Court staff must operate “at arm’s length from the government,” and declined comment on the incident. Access To Information memos indicated Department of Justice staff were puzzled by the Wikipedia edits. “Who could have made the change?” wrote one staffer.

Court managers said their IP address was accessible by any of more than 620 employees and members of federal courts. Blacklock’s has never been able to confirm whether the Wikipedia editor was an employee or appointee directly involved in its litigation, now in its eighth year of case management.

Auditor Bolduc yesterday would not discuss the incident. “The audit found evidence the chief administrator, senior management and human resources places a high degree of emphasis on values and ethics and set a positive tone at the top,” wrote the auditor.

“An ethical framework ensures an organization’s corporate culture fosters ethical behaviour in its employees based on respect for democracy, respect for people, integrity, stewardship and excellence,” said the Audit Of Values. “It also contributes to maintaining public confidence and trust in the institutions of government.”

A Public Sector Values And Ethics Code mandates that all federal employees, including court clerks, “shall act at all times in a manner that will bear the closest public scrutiny, an obligation that is not fully discharged by simply acting within the law.” A 2017 Department of Justice memo Judicial Independence And The Courts stressed “courts must be independent.”

By Staff

The chime of the bells
of the Dormition Abbey
intertwines
with the Arabic music
from the passing BMW
and the brisk steps
of the orthodox Jews
in prayer shawls
rushing to the Wailing Wall.

It is here
where the grey street cat
on top of the overflowing garbage bin
looks at me,
wonders about my whereabouts.

It is here
where the baby girl
scoops rice from her bowl,
most of it ends up on the floor,
while her parents
enjoy a moment
at this restaurant.

It is here
where the young couple
sit on the bench
in a late night hour,
under the street light,
holding hands.

It is here
where every civilization builds
on the ruins of the past,
adding a chapter
to 4,000 years
of violent succession.

It is here
where conflicts
pretend to co-exist
in the unnamed space
between war and peace.

(Editor’s note: poet Shai Ben-Shalom, an Israeli-born biologist, examines current events in the Blacklock’s tradition each and every  Sunday)

Parliament claims ownership of every rock and iceberg in the Arctic, just as the Beijing Politburo claims every island in the South China Sea. True, Norwegians were the first to travel the Northwest Passage. And American submarines have secretly sailed through Arctic waters since 1958. And Russians have been planting flags at the North Pole since 1962 – but the idea is stuck fast. We pretend to own the Arctic, and the world pretends to care.

Unlike the People’s Daily, Canadians are capable of critical self-analysis of nationalistic land claims – which brings us to Lock, Stock and Icebergs, a fresh look at our stake in the unspoiled North. Author Adam Lajeunesse of the University of Waterloo in meticulous research points out how tenuous our Arctic “territorial integrity” is, and how haphazard Parliament has been in enforcing it.

Consider a case of murder.

In 1970 two U.S. Navy contractors working at an American weather research station on a polar ice flow called Fletcher’s Island quarreled over 15 gallons of homemade raisin wine. Researcher Mario Escamilla shot and killed his co-worker. The murder occurred 200 miles west of Ellesmere Island, in Canadian waters.

Canada’s foreign ministry learned of the shooting two weeks after the fact and produced this tepid memo uncovered by Lajeunesse: “Fortunately the press has not yet raised the question as to whether or not criminal jurisdiction in this case rests with Canadian or American authorities…It has been agreed that for the time being any inquiries from the press would be answered by indicating the Canadian government is aware of the case and that officials are examining all aspects of the question.”

The killer was tried and convicted in a Virginia court.  Escamillo’s lawyers argued prosecutors had no jurisdiction since the killing took place outside the U.S. The Department of External Affairs sent a milquetoast note explaining while it “continues to reserve its position on the question of jurisdiction,” Canada would not press the point. The result was “laughter in the courtroom,” a Canadian diplomat wrote: “Fortunately for Canada the Escamilla case was a relatively isolated incident.”

“What exactly did Canada have, or think it had?” writes Lajeunesse. “With regard to the Arctic lands, the answer was ‘everything’. All lands north of 60, east of Alaska and west of Greenland including every island of the Arctic Archipelago, discovered nor not, were considered Canadian. The justification for Canadian ownership over these lands varied over the decades but the essential fact remained: the government was intent on staking and maintaining its claim to the entire region. With regard to the Arctic waters, however, the question of ownership was far less certain.”

Reading Lajeunesse’s work recalls a snippet of dialogue from the 1981 film Gallipoli, in which a farm boy off to fight the Germans encounters a lone prospector in the fly-specked Great Australian Desert:

• PROSPECTOR: “Can’t see what it’s got do with us.”
• BOY: “If we can’t stop ‘em there, they could end up here.”
• PROSPECTOR (scanning the wasteland): “And they’re welcome to it.”

Lock, Stock and Icebergs notes our northern jingoism is now part of Canada’s cultural narrative. When the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea sailed the Northwest Passage in 1985 “in a perfectly friendly cooperative spirit,” critics howled. It was “part of the cronyism between Brian Mulroney and the Americans,” said then-Liberal leader Jean Chretien. The Montreal Gazette called it “a major flop by a spineless government” that was “enough to enrage even a lukewarm Canadian nationalist.”

Lajeunesse is an honest chronicler of our claim to an icy empire. “No country is actively challenging Canadian sovereignty,” he writes; “In large part, this tranquility is due to global indifference. Climate change and resource development have attracted global attention to the region, but few nations outside of the Arctic states themselves have had much vested interest in the area.”

By Holly Doan

Lock, Stock and Icebergs: A History of Canada’s Arctic Maritime Sovereignty, by Adam Lajeunesse; University of British Columbia Press; 420 pages; ISBN 9780-7748-31093; $34.95