A judge known for separating truth from theatrics

In the legal circles of Manitoba's Parkland region, they still talk about the day Jeff Oliphant used a loaded gun to win an argument.

Long before Associate Chief Justice Oliphant was selected to chair the public inquiry into the cash payments accepted by former prime minister Brian Mulroney, he plied his trade as a defence lawyer in the small red-brick courthouse in the rural town of Dauphin. It was at that courthouse, in the early 1980s, that he represented a farm boy charged with criminal negligence after he accidentally fired a rifle at his younger brother and killed him during a walk home from a hunting trip.

Crown attorney Brian Wilford was insistent; he urged the judge to allow an RCMP firearms expert to demonstrate for the jury the sound of a rifle being unloaded, explaining that the accused should have known the gun was loaded. The request was granted, despite Mr. Oliphant's counter that it was being done only for dramatic effect.

After the police officer had repeatedly snapped back the bolt of the rifle, no one - except Mr. Oliphant - noticed that the rifle's chamber wasn't completely emptied.

"Where's the sixth shell?" Mr. Oliphant asked, before forcing the police officer to spit the final shell out of the rifle.

"That case was over right there," said Mr. Justice John Menzies, who at the time was Mr. Oliphant's junior on the file, and now also sits on Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench. "You could hear the gasps in the jury."

That ability to separate truth from theatrics has made Judge Oliphant one of the most admired judges in Manitoba since he was called to the Court of Queen's Bench in 1985 and later became associate chief justice in 1990. It will be one of his most valuable assets in his final judicial assignment, where the two principal witnesses, German-Canadian lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber and Mr. Mulroney, are more prone to histrionics than the most overheated Crown attorney.

Since Judge Oliphant's appointment was announced a few weeks ago, the inquiry has quietly begun to take shape.

Winnipeg defence lawyer Richard Wolson has been selected as the inquiry's lead counsel. Sites in Ottawa, such as the capital's former city hall building on Sussex Drive, are being scouted and an approximate start date of late August or early September is in the works.

But outside of Manitoba, Canada's law schools and the judiciary, the 64-year-old jurist at the centre of it all remains unknown. Who is Jeffrey Oliphant, the first judge in the history of the country with the primary task of assessing the ethics of a prime minister's conduct?

When asked for an interview, Judge Oliphant replied via e-mail that he was reticent to speak publicly since the federal court criticized Mr. Justice John Gomery for speaking to the media about former prime minister Jean Chrétien while chairing the inquiry into the Liberal sponsorship scandal.

However, in interviews with Judge Oliphant's colleagues and friends, a picture emerges of a man with an intense curiosity and a passion for making the law more transparent to the public. Those interviews also provide a clearer illustration of the past Progressive Conservative ties that prompted New Democratic MP Pat Martin to protest his appointment.

"Being a judge is Jeff's life, and he loves it," said Mr. Justice Nate Nurgitz, who also serves on Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench.

Judge Oliphant's law career started in 1967 with Johnston & Company, a Dauphin law firm on the same street - 3rd Avenue - as his childhood home. His return to the town of 9,000 from the University of Manitoba's law school made him the third generation of his family to take a prominent public role in Dauphin, which is about 320 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg.

Judge Oliphant's grandfather, who founded one of the town's largest general stores, Oliphant's Groceries and Hardware, was chief of the local volunteer fire department. His father, James Oliphant, served as a fire chief and town councillor before he had a heart attack on Aug. 14, 1959, while fighting a massive blaze at an industrial site. He died two weeks later. Judge Oliphant was 15 at the time.

Jeffrey Oliphant quickly etched out his own spot in Dauphin - in the courtroom.

"He was considered to be the star defence counsel for the area," said former member of Parliament David Kilgour, who was Dauphin's Crown attorney in the early 1970s.

Judge Oliphant was also moderately active in Progressive Conservative circles. Although he was repeatedly urged to run federally for the Tories, he declined.

"We always tried to encourage him to run. We tried everything under the sun to ask him to run," said Erv Tycholis, a local Tory who ran in the 1986 provincial election. "I think his love was the law."

A spokeswoman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper has told the media that Judge Oliphant has never met Mr. Mulroney.

One of his best opportunities would have been in 1983, when then-Tory leader Joe Clark faced a leadership review in Winnipeg. Judge Oliphant stayed home. (It was at that convention that Mr. Schreiber helped pay for a plane to fly Quebec delegates to Winnipeg to vote against Mr. Clark, which contributed to Mr. Clark receiving only 66.9 per cent support and his decision to call a leadership race, which Mr. Mulroney won.) Judge Oliphant's most public support at the time was for the local Tory candidate, pharmacist Brian White, who was swept to power along with Mr. Mulroney in the 1984 federal election. Mr. White, who didn't live in Dauphin, said in an interview that Judge Oliphant introduced him to locals during campaign stops. Mr. Oliphant's wife, Irene Oliphant, also acted as official agent for Mr. White in the 1984 election and worked in Mr. White's constituency office before her husband was appointed to the bench in 1985.

However, no one should equate the judge's support of Mr. White with support for Mr. Mulroney, Mr. White said. The former member of Parliament pointed out that, although he initially supported Mr. Mulroney's leadership bid, he frequently clashed with the prime minister while in office. The spat reached its peak in 1986, when Mr. Mulroney awarded a $1.4-billion jet maintenance contract to a Quebec company, even though Winnipeg's Bristol Aerospace Ltd. offered a lower bid.

"I tried to get a meeting with [Mr. Mulroney]for a year and a half and I couldn't. So we didn't get along very well together," Mr. White said. "I mean I was loyal to the party - but not at all costs. I had people back home that I was representing, too."

Other associates of Judge Oliphant also dismissed criticism of his appointment, arguing that anyone who says Judge Oliphant is unfit to chair the inquiry is essentially saying he's unfit to be a judge.

DeLloyd Guth, a law professor at the University of Manitoba, said Judge Oliphant should be assessed on his 23-year track record.

"And I don't think there's a glimmer of Jeff Oliphant's youthful, Conservative political ... allegiance in any of that work," said Prof. Guth, who, working with Judge Oliphant and others, helped design a judge-shadowing program for Manitoba law students.

Since joining the bench, Judge Oliphant has tackled cases from contract disputes to some of Winnipeg's most high-profile murders. Several lawyers and judges say a highlight is his stick-handling of the 1999 manslaughter trial of Sheri Lamirande and Norman Guimond, two would-be robbers who were part of heist that ended with the fatal shooting of a grocery-store clerk.

The trial was rife with potential for a mistrial - including an incident where a grieving family member was accused of assaulting a defence lawyer - but the judge and the jury's guilty verdict made it out unscathed.

As associate chief justice of the Court of Queen's Bench, he has not shied away from the courtroom. Rather than assigning controversial, divisive cases to someone else, he appears to be drawn to them.

In 2004, he issued a highly publicized summary judgment, without hearing from witnesses, stating that a Manitoba law that required women to pay for abortions performed outside of public hospitals was a Charter violation. (The judgment was overturned by the Manitoba Court of Appeal, not because it disagreed with Judge Oliphant's Charter interpretation, but because it felt the issue required more rigorous exploration in a trial.) Until a few weeks ago, when the judge received the offer to chair the inquiry, he was set to cut his workload - what's known as supernumerary status - and resettle in Victoria.

That means that, when he hears this inquiry, he will be immune from all the political, promotional considerations that can loom over a judge's head.

"If he sees a rogue, he'll call him a rogue. He has no qualms with telling people when he thinks they've stepped out of line. I don't think it matters who it is," said Judge Menzies, of Manitoba's Court of Queen's Bench.

Numerous judges also trumpeted Judge Oliphant's efforts to bring their tradecraft out of judges' chambers and into public view.

As chairman of the Canadian Judicial Council's committee on public information, he has helped to develop programs for high school and university students.

He has also issued firm support for placing cameras in courtrooms, a topic that has long divided the judiciary.

A voracious reader of biographies, history books and political thrillers, he often has five books on the go at one time.

When defending his stand on court transparency he is fond of paraphrasing United States founding father Alexander Hamilton - explaining that, unlike the branches of government that wield the power of the purse and the power of the sword, the courts must preserve the power of public trust.