Basi-Virk legal bill forgiveness did not require Cabinet approval, says Bond

Justice Minister and Solicitor General Shirley Bond stuck to her guns Wednesday, saying the controversial decision to forgive $6 million in legal bills owed by two senior Liberal aides did not require Cabinet approval.

Bond said she does not accept independent MLA John van Dongen’s assertion that the government illegally forgave legal debts racked up by David Basi and Bob Virk, who in October, 2010 pleaded guilty to to breach of trust in the BC Rail bidding scandal.

Van Dongen told the Legislature Tuesday that court documents he obtained show the government codified its financial support to the two aides as “loans” and “debts” and as such only Cabinet had the power to forgive repayment of debts over $100,000.

Van Dongen, who has almost single-handedly taken on the government over the fallout from the Basi-Virk affair, said the government of Premier Christy Clark is playing fast and loose with cabinet rules.

Van Dongen, a former Liberal MLA and minister, was a member of the caucus in 2010 when the government announced Basi and Virk were pleading guilty and the province was forgiving their legal bills. At the time Gordon Campbell was premier and Mike de Jong was the attorney general.

“I was told by an attorney general and an premier that this was all OK and that we as a government and a caucus should be supporting it,” van Dongen said. “I was being expected to support something that I did not believe was legitimate. Not only was I not told the truth about it, I am saying the transaction to write off the $6 million was done in an illegal manner. The government did not comply with its own law.”

But Bond said the decision to amend the Basi and Virk indemnity agreements to not require repayment upon their guilty pleas was made by two senior civil servants, then-deputy attorney general David Loukidelis and deputy finance minister Graham Whitmarsh.

The deputies concluded that there was little likelihood of collecting the money from Basi and Virk, and their decision was made independent of political pressure or involvement by the Liberal government, she said. The decision was then relayed to the Liberal caucus.

“There was no legal basis on which to submit the decision to Cabinet,” Bond said. “The indemnity was altered based on the analysis of the deputy attorney general.”

In 2011, after public outrage erupted over the debt forgiveness, the government changed the rules and now won’t forgive legal debts owed by employees and aides who plead guilty or are convicted of criminal offences.

The change was among the recommendations of an independent review of the province’s legal indemnity policy by Stephen Toope, the president of the University of B.C. and former dean of McGill University’s faculty of law.