Who’s trying to run a steamroller over our justice system and end our traditional family values?
Here’s my list: the human rights tribunals (a sleepover for lib-leaning feminists). The lawyer who came up with house arrests. Lawyers who spend half their life in judges’ chambers making deals. Lawyers who are adept worshippers of the Golden Calf. Judges who think they’ve been elevated to co-God status.
Over the preceding decades, you’ve had big-L Liberals and small-l liberals picking the members of our judiciaries from lawyers vying with each other as to who could out-liberal a liberal. There were a few exceptions, but it would be like finding vegetarians at a cattlemen’s convention.
We end up with judges who are busy making up laws instead of interpreting them. Recently, Ontario Chief Justice Roy McMurtry rushed into court to rule that a five-year old boy can have three legal parents! (Three? It’s tough enough trying to get your kid to obey two parents.)
How could McMurtry, who had never even been a practising lawyer at the time, get the top job in the judiciary in Ontario? Aww, let me see, Roy’s little red (Liberal) phone book – even if he was a Progressive Conservative.
I began to worry recently about the quality of lawyers that courts have to draw judges from when I read an article in the National Post that reported 56-year-old Quebec lawyer Gino Boggia was fined $4,000 and put on probation for three years for making death threats and slashing the tires of 73 cars outside a club in LaSalle in 2004. The judge said Boggia had an exaggerated and illogical animosity toward the victim, a man he had been friends with before a row over a game of bocce saw his club membership revoked. Boggia slashed the tires of the cars parked outside and left notes on each windshield in which he pretended to be the man’s drug dealer. If the man didn’t pay his debt, the note said, the local funeral home would be getting more business. (Good grief! Is he still practising law?)
Another amusing court case was noted in the National Post by Arthur Drache. In a recent tax appeal, the Tax Court’s Chief Justice of Canada, Donald Bowman, ruled that two young brothers in Ontario could spend upwards of $52 million gambling over a four-year period and not be considered professional gamblers, because they were unbusiness like and didn’t keep any records.
The Ottawa brothers, Brian and Terry Leblanc, also rented a house in Aylmer, Que. (across from Ottawa), to play both the Ontario and Quebec lotteries. They wagered on a variety of government-run sports lotteries and Brian, the younger brother, said it was not unusual for them to bet $200,000-$300,000 a week. They did not play every week, but estimated they may have spent $10 million-$13 million a year. Brian also estimated that 95 per cent of the bets were lost! It’s hard to confirm the accuracy of their figures because they kept no records.
The losing tickets were kept in the basement of their house in Aylmer to establish where the money came from. The winning tickets were kept upstairs in their home in Ottawa in jars and boxes until there was a theft that prompted them to buy a safe. At one point, they had to sue the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation to force it to check green garbage bags full of their tickets. The case was settled out of court.
The brothers estimated they netted, after losses, in the four years in question: $875,874, $755,271, $418,178 (a bad year), and $715,221.
They spent their time playing lottery games or watching sports on TV. They also played ping pong and golf and sat around the house drinking beer and eating pizza. They lived very modestly and didn’t blow their money on luxury items.
The brothers argued that lottery winnings are always tax exempt and could never be considered income from business, regardless of the volume of tickets purchased. The CCRA argued that their wagering could be considered a business, because it was organized with the object of making a profit.
Bowman ruled their gambling activities were of a personal nature and capital gains are not taxable. Had the brothers been more organized – “more businesslike” – they might have lost the case, but they kept no books and had a whale of a good time gambling. You might even say they landed the jackpot.
Congratulations to Brian and Terry, those funloving amateur gamblers who beat the lawyers and the system.
The big loser, however, is a further-discredited legal system that has lost its way. And its common sense.
