Wolves are not to tend to lambs, foxes are not to steward chicken coops and the Courts have registered their displeasure when they heard that public affairs were decided at the table of the SSILTC by Trustees with personal interest in the outcome.
Societies do not tolerate liars in their parliaments. This is mainly because lying, by definition, is done to take advantage of whom the liar disinform and when liars disinform a parliament they do it to serve interests at variance with the public interest.
Conflict of interest (“COI”) is such an anathema to fundamental principles of justice that it is confronted on first suspicion of it upcoming. There is no requirement of “guilt”; a reasonable suspicion that a person may consciously, subconsciously or unconsciously succumb to temptation which could result in judgement tinted by “conflict” suffices to disqualify that person from being in that situation. Gentle persons “recuse” themselves before they are denied or removed from positions of real or perceived conflict of interest.
On August 22, 2013, the SSI LTC illegally “empowered” the Staff to censor whoever may displease the Staff or the Trustees. It was placing the staff and themselves in a position of COI. The Staff went at it with abandon. For the whole of the ensuing year, they lived a censorship orgy, raping the law and propriety, and doing character defamation of targeted citizens. They kept stating that the Trustees were consenting to the censorship actions, for better deniability, if called to account. After I insinuated court action at the June 24, 2014 LTC, the Staff panicked and passed the censorship hatchet to the LTC at the July 24 LTC meeting.
It is not to say that having delegated the administration of the Trust Censorship Bylaw to Staff, absolved the Trustees from accounting for the one year long churlish conduct of the Staff. Nor am I about to discount the Staff complicity in the continuing censorship rampage. What I am doing is reflecting the ugly aspects of the LTC taking on to themselves the dirty work after the Staff realized that they had gone too far and rushed to wash their hands in a futile attempt of regaining innocence.
Having embedded censorship into the Trust system and then cheering on the Staff doing it, as if they were season-ticket holders in a Roman Arena cheering for the lion, the Trustees would not let the show end when the Staff walked out. Instead, they anointed themselves “Censors” and lowered themselves into doing what the staff feels ashamed to do. Now, the Trustees we elected “to make thing right” have assumed the facility to censor anyone who says what they do not want to be told, what they want to hide.
The purpose of this delegation is a call to you, the elected Trustees of SaltSpring to apologize to society for the mess you have made and to use the last hours of your term in office to rescind Bylaw 473 and its ugly tentacle which Hartley said is to be officially cited either as: "LTC Correspondence and LTC Submissions”, or as “a matter of the SSI LTC in the Rise and Report Session at the Regular Meeting of July 24, 2014"; have your pick ... Yes, she did!
It may be your last chance for atonement and it certainly is the best option you now have!
Tom Varzeliotis