The search for potential evidence in the BC Rail corruption case is apparently taxing staff at the B.C. legislature in Victoria as they prepare for a new session that starts Monday.
A lawyer for Speaker Bill Barisoff told B.C. Supreme Court Judge Elizabeth Bennett the Speaker's staff have worked weekends and given up vacations to fulfil a defence request to unearth old MLA emails that may be related to the case.
Frank Falzon said via conference call from Victoria he's ready to turn over a batch of emails from 15 MLAs named in an earlier court order.
But he is balking at a new list of email searches requested by the defence, which he says are too broadly worded, will take hundreds more hours and which in some cases infringe on legislative privilege.
Former cabinet aides Bobby Virk and Dave Basi are charged with fraud and breach of trust related to the $1-billion sale of Crown-owned BC Rail to CN Rail in 2003.
Basi's cousin, former government communications officer Aneal Basi, is charged with money-laundering.
The ministerial assistants were charged in the wake of a Dec. 28, 2003 police raid on the legislature looking for evidence they had leaked information about the sale process to Pilothouse Communications, a lobby firm employed by CN competitor OmniTrax.
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Source: google.com
By: Steve Mertl
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