Gomery Inquiry

The judge holding an inquiry into a Canadian Federal government scandal called AdScam has issued a publication ban on the testimony of a former executive of a company called GroupAction.

Of course, in this Internet age, publication bans are completely ineffectual, and just as with the last attempt by the Canadian judiciary to squelch dissent or information freedom (the Bernardo trial), Gomery has completely failed at the task of blocking GroupAction's Brault's testimony. Bloggers in the US have picked up the trail and have claimed to publish the alleged testimony of this man. I of course, as a Candian, am bound by this publication ban and can't point in any way at, or link to, any testimony Brault may or may not have given. But I do find the reaction of Gomery telling.

He is, of course, furious at the leak onto the web. Is he raging at his judicial impotence? Perhaps. But I can hardly imagine that he would be surprised. When the Bernardo trial began in the nineties, the publication-banned testimony was leaked all over the then much-smaller Internet, too. For Gomery to be unaware that he was facing this tells me that the legal profession needs a good whack with a cluestick - you can't hide the truth anymore.