B.C.’s latest solicitor general:
Gary Begg
What better candidate for a cop-stooge job
than a proven cop stooge who’s also an ex-cop?
December 11, 2024
(Travel and other commitments delayed this response to news from late November.)
Solicitor general Gary Begg opposes independent investigation
of police sexual misconduct including rape. And unless premier
David Eby finds the guts to overrule the cop lobbyists on the SG
ministry’s payroll, Begg will continue to oppose independent
investigation of police sexual misconduct including rape.
As usual, there’s not a peep of protest from B.C.’s “official” activists. Their role model for salaried social justice phonies, poverty pimp premier David Eby, has just set up another obstacle to police accountability. He’s Gary Begg, B.C.’s newest solicitor general.
Begg brings all the qualifications necessary for a cop-stooge position. His apparent IQ (maybe about average for the B.C. legislature) makes him easy prey for party enforcers and the ex-cops who hold senior positions in “his” ministry. Moreover he’s already demonstrated willingness to follow cop-influenced orders by taking part in two all-party legislative committees on police issues. Like all leg committees on this subject, they show every indication of being directed by police interests.
This is an aspect of B.C. politics beyond the comprehension of journalists like Postmedia’s Vaughn Palmer, the grande dame of B.C. media’s befuddled old ladies. Most committee members consist of MLAs unimpressive even by B.C. standards. They get a considerable pay boost for taking part, far more than most of them could earn in a real job. Compliance with unanimous decisions qualifies them for further remunerative appointments and, for government MLAs, possible cabinet promotion.
Reading Hansard transcripts of committee proceedings challenges any notion that committee members write the reports and make the recommendations attributed to them. The MLAs appear far too ignorant, inarticulate and disorganized for such a task. Moreover their consistently unanimous decisions—often deeply troubling decisions—strongly suggest orders from above.
Begg and nine other over-paid flunkies signed off on
this report, but did they write it? Did they even read it?
Did 10 MLAs actually recommend that children oversee
investigations into police misconduct?
In unanimous decisions over the years, committee members have repeatedly blocked citizen input; rigged the process to exclude participation; used an absurd rationale to reject citizens’ written submissions; appointed police complaint commissioner Stan Lowe, Canada’s most outspoken advocate of lethal police violence; reappointed and, on his retirement, thanked Lowe despite alarming evidence of his OPCC/cop cover-ups; welcomed ex-cop, corrupt deputy commissioner and serial liar Rollie Woods; refused to impose transparency and accountability on B.C.’s secretive and unaccountable Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner; and rejected calls for independent investigation of cop sexual misconduct including rape.
Begg took part in the last two committees. The ex-cop joined his fellow committee members in brushing off calls for OPCC transparency and accountability, and for independent investigation of cop sexual misconduct including rape.
Begg and his collaborators did so by signing off on reports that appeared to be written by others, probably bureaucratic hacks working under orders from the SG ministry’s ex-cops.
The last report, however, was downright weird. Highly nebulous and thoroughly confused, its recommendations seem intended to evade genuine Police Act reform by manipulating and obfuscating identity politics. So the report contains lots of confused blather about woke issues and vaguely recommends different resolution procedures for different ethnic and identity groups, with some kind of undefined “oversight” by natives and even children.
That’s right, children. Did 10 committee members unanimously decide that? Or did 10 committee members sign off on the report without noticing that—in other words sign off on a report they didn’t even read, let alone write?
The report’s vagueness, not to mention weirdness, leaves lots of room for interpretation. Additionally strange, the report was the second in just a few years for the same avowed purpose: to overhaul B.C.’s Police Act.
Former SG Mike Farnworth supported the cop status quo
throughout his career. The legislative committees he formed
brought willing compliance from all three B.C. political parties.
Previous SG and career-long cop stooge Mike Farnworth struck one committee in June 2019, which issued its (probably ghost-written) recommendations the following November. Without acting on those recommendations, Farnworth struck another committee in June 2020. Another set of (probably ghost-written) recommendations came out in April 2022.
No explanation has been given for the largely redundant second exercise. No one in media has asked. None of B.C.’s salaried “official” activists in the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, Pivot Legal Society and native groups have spoken out.
Nor has anyone asked why no action has been taken on either set of recommendations, except for a couple of Police Act tweaks.
No political party asks questions because they’re all complicit. That includes the B.C. Conservatives’ former Liberals (like Con leader John Rustad, who helped appoint lethal force advocate Stan Lowe as police complaint commissioner). Former Prince George-area B.C. Liberal MLAs have been up to their nostrils in shit emanating from the Prince George RCMP sexual misconduct allegations. Now-retired Green Party MLA Adam Olsen made big money as Farnworth’s indigenous puppet on three committees. On one committee Olsen lavished praise on Lowe, despite the OPCC boss’ apparent contempt for natives.
Also complicit are B.C.’s salaried “official” activists. Pivot took part in the OPCC/Vancouver police cover-up of constable Taylor Robinson’s gratuitous assault on a disabled indigenous woman. Native groups have said nothing about this and little about the Prince George allegations.
B.C.’s courtier journalists generally avoid asking critical questions of anyone in power and, anyway, no one in B.C. media knows anything about police accountability. That ignorance comes out repeatedly in a Vancouver Postmedia story that’s all the more disappointing from a reporter who sometimes rises above his employer’s standards.1
This story fails to understand Begg’s yes-boss participation
in legislative committees or the irrelevance of a new B.C.
police force to reforming police. No one in B.C. media
understands police accountability.
The Postmedia article devotes much attention to Olsen, maybe because of his ethnic status. But Olsen expressed zero insight and actually called for yet another legislative committee.
Postmedia also relied on B.C. media’s supposed expert on all things policing, ex-cop and ludicrous ex-SG Kash Heed. Heed shifted the topic to the possibility of B.C. replacing RCMP services with regional or provincial police. Somehow that would bring “significant police reform.”2
It sure as hell wouldn’t reform accountability. This is the province that refuses to impose transparency and accountability on the OPCC, and to end the practice of having cops investigate each other over allegations of cop sexual misconduct including rape.
Postmedia quotes Heed talking about Begg: “He understands policing here in the province. He understands the complexities involved in reforming policing in British Columbia.”
If Begg understands policing in B.C., he understands that the OPCC is long overdue for transparency and accountability, and that the problem has been demonstrated by at least four OPCC cover-ups that have accidentally come to light. Begg would also understand ramifications of the Myles Gray outrage, including the near-impossibility of firing cops and the newly transpired revelations of the weaknesses inherent in Police Act investigations.
Begg would also understand the need to give B.C.’s Independent Investigations Office jurisdiction over allegations of cop sexual misconduct including rape.
Begg doesn’t necessarily understand any of that. The ex-cop isn’t terribly bright. But if he does understand any of that, he obviously opposes reform. The information was presented to him on two legislative committees where he had the chance to speak out. Instead he chose career-enhancing obedience.
Although there’s no smoking gun evidence, cop lobbyists must be directing B.C. politicians, likely through the ex-cops in the SG bureaucracy. There’s no other explanation for all those inexplicable, sometimes weird and always unanimous legislative committee recommendations, not to mention successive governments’ reluctance to ever reform the Police Act.
Begg signed off on the last two committees’ bogus recommendations. That shows B.C.’s newest solicitor general is, like his predecessors, a faithful servant of police interests.
1Vancouver Postmedia/Sun/Province further demonstrated its commitment to ditz journalism by hiring Katie Derosa. Her gullible, vacuous work has long been obvious to readers of the Times Colonist.
2The prospect of replacing the RCMP, backed by the NDP for Surrey and recommended province-wide in a probably ghost-written legislative committee report, might be intended to strengthen NDP union support.
B.C. labour lost out when federal legislation finally allowed RCMP officers to form a union in 2019. The Mounties’ National Police Federation has Ottawa headquarters and central Canadian leadership. B.C. labour could gain a lot by claiming the B.C. share of membership and dues. Another tempting target would be the B.C. share of RCMP civilian workers, now represented by Ottawa’s Public Service Alliance of Canada.
There’s no discounting the importance of union growth to NDP power. That must surely be a factor in Eby’s multi-billion-dollar expansion of B.C. Housing which, through its housing society contractors, would provide B.C. labour’s greatest source of growth.
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