1. British Columbia: Tabled on April 30, 2007. Appointed on January 30, 2007.
2. Saskatchewan: Report filed in June 2006. Appointed February 2006.
Chief Justice Derek Green's terms of reference weren't significantly different from those of any indemnity review appointed by any legislature in the country over the past umpteen decades.
The bit about financial administration in the House of Assembly was essentially spent before he got to it since the legislature's management committee, likely with heavy input from the Executive, hired all manner of staff and added all sorts of procedures. That should have made Green's job easier, rather than more difficult.
Green's terms of reference were also carefully constructed in such a way so that while it appeared he had the powers of a public inquiry, he actually didn't. That's not what the official news releases said, but then again claims in a government news release don't always match reality. That meant that essentially Green wasn't able to delve into questions his jurist-mind might have wanted answered - like who was responsible for the fiasco in the first place - but then again his terms of reference didn't allow him to go there anyway.
All that was left was a simple pay review of the type done countless times in the past, within 90 days.
Of course no one has ever explained why that review was ordered by the Crown, and not by the members of the legislature themselves. Perhaps it had something to do with the provisions of the legislation that would have given a commissioner appointed that way with all the powers of a public inquiry.
This is no reflection on Chief Justice Green.
Far from it.
The outcome of his report, the terms of reference, the manner in which he was appointed and now the inordinate delays in producing what ought to have been a simple result, appear to be related to unanswered questions about the constitutionally dubious origin of the whole appointment in the first place.
Let's not even get into the sometimes ham-fisted attempts at managing the fall-out from the fiasco itself.
Sometime soon we may know what Chief Justice Green has reported, but it is highly unlikely we will ever find out what caused one of the darkest stains in the history of our provincial legislature.
-srbp-
