Judge in BC Rail trial steps down

The judge in charge of the BC Rail corruption trial has stepped down to take a new job with the B.C. Court of Appeal, but she says that does not mean the five-year-old case will be delayed.

Justice Elizabeth Bennett had been hearing pre-trial arguments in the case against former ministerial aides Dave Basi and Bobby Virk in B.C. Supreme Court for several years, when she was appointed to the provincial Court of Appeal in May.

There was some speculation that she might decide to stay to oversee the complex case. But on Monday, Bennett announced her decision to step down, saying since the case was still tied up in pre-trial arguments, she did not expect appointing a new justice would delay any trial.

Missing emails sought

The announcement comes on the same day the court was scheduled to hear what happened to thousands of high-level government emails possibly related to the $1-billion sale of the railway.

Bennett had ordered Premier Gordon Campbell, his senior staff and several former cabinet ministers to forward emails linked to the sale of the railway so she could review them before deciding if they were relevant to the corruption and breach-of-trust trial of former cabinet aidesBasi and Virk.

A report concerning the fate of the electronic messageshad been expected Monday from government lawyer George Copley.

Government lawyers originally told the court all copies of the emails had beendestroyedseveral years ago.

But according to an unconfirmed Globe and Mail newspaper articlepublishedin July, the government director in charge of managing the email delivery service filed an affidavit stating that during the May 2009 provincial election campaign, someone in authority asked that backup tapes of emails created before May 2004 be destroyed.

The charges of corruption and fraud against Basi and Virk stem from RCMP raids on the legislature in 2003. But the two aides have always maintained that whatever they did during the sale of BC Rail to CN Rail was on government orders.