A large amount of material relevant to the BC Rail corruption trial, thought to have been lost due to purges of government computer systems, has been recovered, the Supreme Court of British Columbia has been told.
A lawyer representing the Speaker's Office informed Madam Justice Anne MacKenzie Tuesday that extensive searches of hard drives and e-mail servers had led to the recovery of many files belonging to MLAs.
Court was told in June that cabinet e-mails in 2002 and 2003 were unrecoverable because backup tapes weren't kept for more than 13 months. That material appears to still be lost.
But Frank Falzon, a lawyer for the Speaker's Office, said a special forensic data recovery team had been working on 20 backup tapes that held MLA e-mail records from April, 2003, to December, 2004.
“Happily, they have been able to restore 17 or those 20 backup tapes,” Mr. Falzon said.
He said MLA records for September, 2003, couldn't be recovered, but “the jury is still out” on the final disposition of two other backup tapes, for December, 2003, and July, 2004.
“In a worst-case scenario … we still have 17 of 20 backup tapes recoverable,” he said.
Mr. Falzon said restoring the backup tapes, which had been erased, has been a difficult and complex chore.
Court wasn't told why the MLA e-mail records could be recovered, while the cabinet records couldn't be.
Mr. Falzon said the government is doing everything it can to respond to an order issued by the court to produce records, for 2003 and 2004, which may be relevant to the case against Dave Basi, Bob Virk and Aneal Basi. The three former government employees are charged with fraud, breach of trust and money laundering concerning the 2003 sale of BC Rail to CN Rail.
Mr. Falzon said there are two boxes now sitting in the Speaker's Office containing 30,000 pages of records that can be copied and released to the court.
Judge MacKenzie said she is satisfied the process is being done as quickly as possible.
“I'm quite confident the applications for third-party records are being resolved as expeditiously as possible by government,” she said.
“I think that if there are any loose ends to be tied up they are on their way,” said Judge MacKenzie, who on Dec. 1 expects to hear a defence motion to have the case dismissed because of unreasonable delays.
Kevin McCullough, who is defending Mr. Virk, said it still hasn't been made clear just how much government material is recoverable and how much isn't.
“You need to know what is truly and finally recoverable … the defence needs to know,” he told Judge MacKenzie.
Outside court, Michael Bolton, who represents Dave Basi, said he is encouraged a lot of the MLA material the court initially had been told was lost has now been recovered.
But he said he still has concerns about gaps in the record.
“There's obviously a considerable body of material which we're going to be receiving,” he said. “The next issue is – what's not recoverable?”
On another matter, Judge MacKenzie ruled that John Esson, a lawyer representing Christy Clark, a former deputy premier, could get copies of pretrial transcripts. Defence lawyers had objected, saying Ms. Clark could be called as a witness, but Judge Mackenzie said Mr. Esson's request was reasonable.
She said, however, he must sign an undertaking assuring the court he will not show or discuss the contents of the transcripts with Ms. Clark, to ensure that her testimony is not tainted, should she be called as a witness.
