The Paper Trail Thickens

When I started this blog, I chose the name how-to-leave-a-paper-trail.blogspot.com. I've been in a fight or two in the past, and I know how important it can be to get the facts on the record. But that's only half of it. Even more important is to get the other side to put down their "version" of the facts. In the last month, I've made some pretty good headway in that regard.

It started in January when I was about to go ahead with my examination of the University...that's called the "discovery" process of the trial. I had named the former VP John Corlett as the University's designate, as is my right under the Queen's Bench Rules. Corlett had been deeply involved in the proceedings to expel me, and had in the meantime left the university on not the best of terms. It may be a slight exaggeration to say that he was frog-marched to the sidewalk on his last day, but not by much. I was days away from examining Corlett when the University, desperate to prevent Corlett from spilling any embarrassing information,  pulled a "hail-mary" play on me...they filed a motion for Summary Judgement, which could delay the proceedings for as much as a year.

The motion has little chance of success, but in order to give it some meat they filed an affidavit by Colin Morrison in which he goes through the details of the Non-Academic Misconduct proceedings against me. It's hard for me to understand where they're going with this: my lawsuit has nothing to do with the misconduct hearings. I'm suing them for removing me from the practicum at Gordon Bell.

But the interesting thing is the documentation that Morrison included with his affidavit. I made huge efforts to get disclosure last year while I was fighting my way through the internal process, and in the end I got nothing but dribs and drabs. The Freedom of Information Act was a joke. The FIPPA investigators in the Ombudsman's office are patsies who were willing to give the University any excuse to withold disclosure, and in the end, after six months of appeals, FIPPA ended up releasing to me exactly the same documents that I had already wheedled out of the University on my own. But Morrison's latest Affidavit gives me a wealth of new material to work with. I hope to elaborate on this in the near future.

But that's just the beginnings. The whole affair with the criminal charges and the illegal incarceration has had the unexpected side effect of bringing all kinds of new information to light. In particular, their are three new documents that I am in the process of getting:

1.  The police report of the alleged home invasion on January 11th which was the impetus for the renewal of the trespassing order and the subsequent criminal charges.

2.  The transcript of my bail hearing. Normally these hearings are a mere formality, but in my case I insisted on disputing the bail conditions, even though the judge was willing to free me on my own recognisance. Everyone said I was crazy (call me Ernest!) but as a result, the Crown Attorney had to make quite a detailed submission in which he catalogued my sins before the judge. That's going to be an interesting transcript when I get ahold of it.

3. In the course of his arguments, the Crown revealed the astonishing fact that the University had already been to court to try and get a restraining order against me! They were turned down, but I'm dying to find out what grounds they argued in their submission to the Court. Just one more set of transcripts for me to get my hands on.

Why am I so excited about getting all these documents? Because in the end, I expect the University's case to collapse amongst its own lies. The more I get on paper, the closer I get to this goal. Shakespeare said it best when he wrote:

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive".

The University's case was built on lies from the get go, and their day of reckoning is coming.