Fair Trial
From today’s Globe:
Said Mr. MacKay: “There is no question that if it is in fact now being circulated and is out publicly in the States or elsewhere, that this sole purpose of having the ban in place has just evaporated. There is no point. So once somebody has violated the ban there is no purpose in having it there.”
Uh…no. The point of the ban is so that the jury pool for the criminal trials won’t get contaminated. Just because a few self-righteous US bloggers who want to feel like big shots broke the ban, doesn’t mean the jury pool has been contaminated. Just because a few Conservative bloggers in Canada are breaking the law to compromise a fair trial, doesn’t mean the jury pool has been contaminated. They aren’t helping matters but how many Quebeckers do you think actively read English blogs? Given how small that number is, the ban still serves its purpose.
And from a purely political standpoint, it’s beyond me why Peter MacKay would want the ban lifted. Right now, there’s endless speculation (much of it exaggerated) floating around. Since the testimony will spread by word of mouth, anyone who’s ever played telephone knows it’s going to get wilder and further from the truth with each degree of separation from the source. Better for the Tories to let rumours spread and then have it all come out at once with a big bang.
And politics aside, it strikes me as odd that the same people who call this the worst scandal in the history of mankind (no, no, not the Prime Minister. The other people who are mad as hell over this) are actively trying to undermine the criminal process. Don’t they want the people who committed these crimes to be tried and made accountable for what they did?