Victoria Lawyer Michael Mulligan on CFAX 1070 – Legally Speaking – discussing the evidence of an RCMP Agent who admitted to killing two people under oath.

During a Victoria drug trafficking trial, an RCMP agent admitted to killing two unrelated people. The RCMP agent, Matthew Holland, has a criminal record for offences including manslaughter, but has not been arrested or charged with respect to the two people additional people he testified that he killed.

Mr. Holland testified that one of the people he killed picked him up hitchhiking. He testified that he beat the man severely, dragged him from his car, and left him for dead somewhere along the Malahat. He testified that he did this twenty years ago.

He also admitted to beating, stomping on, and leaving a man, apparently dead, behind a bar in Courtenay.

Because Mr. Holland’s admissions occurred in court they could not be used against him in a prosecution for the offences he admitted to. Independent evidence would be required.

The decision by the RCMP to employ someone like Mr. Holland raises important questions about the need for civilian oversight of the RCMP. Mr. Holland was paid more than $100,000 by the RCMP to work for them and purchase cocaine as part of a drug investigation and has not been arrested for the crimes he has admitted committing.

Listen to the show here.

Read the transcript of Mr. Holland’s admissions here.

Legally Speaking is live on CFAX 1070 Thursdays at 2:00pm.

Victoria Lawyer Michael Mulligan on CHEK News proposing an alternative to a 30% ICBC rate hike: adding a deductible for drivers who cause accidents. Requiring divers who cause an accident to pay a deductible, such as that which applies if you make a claim for a broken window, would save ICBC money directly and encourage safe driving without requiring substantially increased premiums for drivers who don’t cause accidents.

Victoria Lawyer Michael Mulligan comments in a story by April Lawrence on CHECK news:

Nobody was answering at the Chemainus home where Harold Backer has been ordered to stay while awaiting trial on fraud charges.

The home belongs to his mother, who told CHEK News by phone she is glad to have her son home to help her.

When asked where he disappeared to for a year and a half, she said she couldn’t tell.

Early Monday evening a scruffy and gaunt looking Backer walked out of the Victoria courthouse after more than two weeks in custody.

He was granted $50,000 bail, and was picked up by his son, refusing to answer any questions, including where he was or why he turned himself in.

It was that act, of coming forward to police, that one criminal lawyer says is likely the reason the 54-year-old was released.

“Where you have an individual who has no previous record, who turns himself in, those would be important considerations for a judge in deciding whether a person needs to be held in custody before they’ve had a trial,” said Michael Mulligan, a criminal lawyer with Mulligan, Tam Pearson in Victoria.

Backer has to abide by 14 conditions while out on bail — they include staying at the home in Chemainus and following a curfew from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., he has to report to a bail supervisor once a week, he can’t trade any securities or work as an investment advisor and he had to surrender all travel documents including his passport.

Mulligan says for the most part, Canada’s bail system of conditions and supervision is effective.

“If you kept everyone in jail waiting for their trial that’s going to make the presumption of innocence pretty hollow sounding for someone who’s alleged to have committed an offense,” said Mulligan.

The former Olympian is being represented by a criminal lawyer from Vancouver who isn’t commenting on the case for now.

Backer is facing two charges of fraud over $5000 dollars, and is also the subject of a civil suit.

One of the alleged victims tells CHEK News the images of Backer emerging from the courthouse show he is “suffering”.

Harold Backer will return to court June 5.

Victoria Lawyer Michael Mulligan on CFAX 1070 – Legally Speaking – discussing the legal implications of Christy Clark making false claims that the NDP hacked into the BC Liberal web page.

John Horgan categorically denied the allegation and advised that he had consulted a lawyer concerning a possible civil actions for slander.

The episode is discussed in the context of former premier Vader Zalm being successful sued for $60,000 by  Ted Hughes for false claims made a book written by Vander Zalm.

While MLAs cannot be sued for making defamatory statements in the legislature they enjoy no such privilege for statements made elsewhere. False statements that damage someones reputation are actionable. Repeating the statements can aggravate damages, while retracting them and apologizing can mitigate the damages.

Independent MLA Vicki Huntington later advised that the BC Liberal web site had no password protection and that private donor information was accessible by simply clicking on a link.

Christy Clark has now apologized for her false claim of NDP hacking and promised to improve security on the web page.

Also discussed on the show are reports that Esquimalt Mayor Barbara Desjardins plans to seek a nomination to run for the BC Liberals in the next provincial election and how the forthcoming report with respect to suspended Victoria Police Chief Elsner may impact her.

Michael Mulligan is a lawyer at Mulligan Tam Pearson in Victoria. Legally Speaking is live on CFAX 1070 Thursdays at 2:00pm.

Victoria Lawyer Michael Mulligan on CFAX 1070 – Legally Speaking – discussing how to improve Victoria Safe Consumption Sites immediately by utilizing the federal Special Access Program.

755 people died of drug overdoses in British Columbia from January to November 2016.

 One of the principle reasons for this large number of overdose deaths has been the increasing provenance of fentanyl: an opioid 100 times more powerful than heroin. Fentanyl is often substituted for, or added to, other illegal drugs.

 A single envelope of pure fentanyl is enough to produce thousands of pills and tens of thousands of dollars in profit. 1kg of fentanyl, which can be purchased online for less than $100,000, is enough to produce 1 million pills that can be sold for $20 each. 

It’s unrealistic to think we are going to prevent such a concentrated substance from entering the country when there is an enormous profit motive. Long experience has shown us that we are not able to do so even with much less concentrated drugs.

Fentanyl overdoses occur because the original substance, or pills that are produced from it, are of varying strength. Because the substance is so potent even a small variation in concentration can cause death. Because the substance is produced illegally it is not subject to any quality control and variations in the amount of the active ingredient is a certainty.

For people addicted to opioids such as heroin or fentanyl, their daily existence typically involves the commission of property offences, or the sale of their bodies, in a desperate effort to secure enough money to purchase more drugs and avoid the pain of withdrawal. The impact of these activities, along with the corruption and criminal organizations they foster, are the costs we all pay for of our failed efforts to solve this problem.

Safe consumption sites reduce the number of deaths by allowing antidotes to be administered more quickly once people overdose and by providing clean needles to reduce disease transmission. As currently operated, however, they are a half measure.

The premise of a safe consumption site is that people addicted to these substances bring their own drugs, of unknown strength, purchased with money often obtained by crime, to consume.

On September 19, 2016, the federal government reinstated a program that permits doctors to apply for special access to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade heroin to people who are severely addicted.

The Special Access Program requires an application to be made by a doctor, or other medical practitioner, for special permission to prescribe the drug where a patient has a serious or life-threatening condition, such as a serious opioid addiction, where other treatments have failed, are unsuitable, or are unavailable.

Permission to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade heroin can typically be obtained within 24 hours of submitting the application to do so. For people suffering from a chronic condition permission can be granted for up to six months at a time.

Currently Island Health staffs safe consumption sites in Victoria with a paramedic, tasked with resuscitating people once they inevitably overdose on illegally optioned drugs.

Island Health should also staff the consumption sites with a doctor to assess people and make applications, in suitable cases, for inclusion in the Special Access Program. Rather than administering naloxone to people overdosing on illegally obtained drugs, the currently assigned paramedic could help with the applications and monitor the use of the legally obtained, safer, pharmaceutical-grade heroin.

Operating safe consumption sites in this way would save lives and reduce the property crime caused by people attempting to obtain money to purchase dangerous drugs illegally.

Communities surrounding safe consumption sites, operated in this way, would not have to deal with a concentration of drug trafficking and property crime.

The profit motive to import and manufacture dangerous illegal drugs would be reduced as people provided with safer prescription drugs would no longer be buyers. 

It would also reduce the sex trade as this activity is also driven by people desperately trying to earn money to pucrases drugs illegally.

Once people who are severely addicted are stabilized, and no longer spending their days trying to obtain drugs illegally, there would be an opportunity to encourage and provide detox and drug treatment.

Finally, operating safe consumption sites in this way would be lawful. While the federal government has introduced legislation that will eventually make it easier to obtain permission to open a safe consumption sites where people consume illegally obtained drugs, this is not yet in place and the sites in Victoria enjoy no exemption from federal drug legislation. At least in theory, operating a safe consumption sites operating without such an exemption may amount to being a party to offences pursuant to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

Listen to the show:

Michael Mulligan is a lawyer at Mulligan Tam Pearson in Victoria. Legally Speaking is live on CFAX 1070 Thursdays at 2:00.