TU THANH HA
From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009 12:00AM EST Last updated on Monday, Nov. 16, 2009 3:04AM EST
Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Julian Fantino has spent more than half a million dollars in public money prosecuting two officers who say that the disciplinary case they face is driven by the Commissioner's personal grudge against one of them.
Another $20,000 was added to the legal saga's bill yesterday after Ontario's highest court rejected Commissioner Fantino's bid to dismiss the adjudicator presiding over the disciplinary case.
Unless Commissioner Fantino successfully appeals yesterday's judgment, he will have to go back to the witness box at the disciplinary case and answer questions about whether he used that internal OPP process to wage a vendetta against one of his officers.
The allegations were made in the disciplinary hearing of two OPP internal affairs officers, Superintendent Ken MacDonald and Inspector Alison Jevons.
Already, prosecuting the case has cost more $500,000, according to documents that Supt. MacDonald obtained through freedom of information requests. The bill is assumed by the Ontario Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, an OPP spokesman said.
The commissioner's cross-examination at the disciplinary hearing was halted 13 months ago after Commissioner Fantino accused the adjudicator, Mr. Justice Leonard Montgomery, of bias and asked the courts to dismiss him.
But in a unanimous ruling yesterday, three judges of the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed the Commissioner's claim. "The events in this case fall far short of the type of conduct that would give rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias," wrote Mr. Justice Harry LaForme.
The court ordered the Commissioner to pay $20,000 in legal costs to the two officers.
"All my clients want to do is return to the hearing and clear their names," the officers' lawyer, Julian Falconer, said in an interview yesterday. "It's been over 13 months since [Mr. Fantino's] cross-examination was interrupted."
According to testimony at the disciplinary case, Commissioner Fantino wrongly suspected Supt. MacDonald of being behind a damaging leak of information to local municipal politicians in Caledon, Ont.
Mr. Falconer alleges in court filings that it was because of that incident, and because he was trying to appease the OPP police union, that Commissioner Fantino authorized charges against Supt. MacDonald and Insp. Jevons in an unrelated matter.
As internal-affairs investigators, Supt. MacDonald and Insp. Jevons had sided with a woman, Susan Cole, who complained that the force failed to act against her estranged husband, an OPP officer who bashed her car with a bat.
The union of OPP officers, the Ontario Provincial Police Association, then complained about the two internal affairs investigators who handled the Cole complaint. Commissioner Fantino concurred, filing disciplinary charges against the pair.
What led to yesterday's judgment began during hearings before Judge Montgomery, at the OPP headquarters in October, 2008. Commissioner Fantino was in the witness box, denying that prosecuting the two officers was a political retribution.
At one point, Judge Montgomery stopped the testimony and angrily suggested it sounded like someone had coached Commissioner Fantino about legal objections that took place in the absence of the witness.
Commissioner Fantino then went to court, seeking without success to remove Judge Montgomery.