Lubicon Lake Indian Nation Little Buffalo Lake, AB 403-629-3945 FAX: 403-629-3939 Mailing address: 3536 - 106 Street Edmonton, AB T6J 1A4 403-436-5652 FAX: 403-437-0719 November 5, 1989 Enclosed for your information is a copy of an article on law firm earnings from Canadian Government contracts for the period from April 1, 1988, to March 31, 1989. The article is appropriately entitled "Pigging Out". The article lists twenty law firms across Canada with the highest Federal Government billings. Two of the law firms listed in the article, ranked fourth and sixth, are directly related to the Lubicon struggle. Fourth on the list of twenty is the law firm of J. Brian Malone, the Calgary lawyer who was appointed Federal Lubicon negotiator in October of 1987. According to the article Mr. Malone was paid more than $442,000 for the period from April of 1988 to March of 1989. It's not known how much Mr. Malone was paid for the period prior to April of 1988, nor how much he's been paid since March of 1989. However the amount of time which Mr. Malone has actually spent in negotiations with the Lubicon people is known. Since October of 1987 -- including the entire period covered by the article -- Mr. Malone has spent a total of some five weeks in negotiations with the Lubicon people. The rest of his time since October of 1987, if not in fact the five weeks spent in negotiations, Mr. Malone has spent working on various schemes to try and create the demonstrably false impression that lack of an equitable Lubicon settlement is the fault of everybody but the Federal Government. In addition to the staggering amount of tax payers money paid to pompous, posturing, clothes-mannequin Malone, an unknown but undoubtedly significant amount has also been paid to a forked tongue ex-TV journalist and oil company PR man named Ken Colby. Mr. Colby is the paid professional propagandist who has been working on contract to the Federal Government in tandem with Mr. Malone. Other notable members of the Federal Government's multi-million dollar Lubicon hit squad include an official of the Alberta Regional Office of Indian Affairs named Fred Jobin, an official of the Ottawa Headquarters Office of Indian Affairs named Bob Coulter and a senior Federal Justice Department lawyer named Ivan Whitehall. Fred Jobin is the number two man in the Alberta Regional Office of Indian Affairs. He's a Metis person whose surprisingly rapid upward mobility within the Indian Affairs bureaucracy is generally attributed to his willingness to use his aboriginal blood to promote his own advancement -- often at the expense of his aboriginal brothers and sisters. Backed with the full resources of the Regional Office and a blank cheque from Ottawa, Mr. Jobin has carried primary responsibility for organizing the so-called new Woodland Cree Band. Bob Coulter is the man primarily responsible for organizing Federal Government support services for Malone and Company. He's an ambitious but relatively junior Ottawa bureaucrat acting in a relatively senior capacity as the result of resignation and retirement of his normal bureaucratic superiors. Coulter has long since made clear, first as a sycophant to Roger Tasse and now to Brian Malone, that he's prepared to say or do anything in order to try and maintain his tenuous hold on being a supposed big shot. Ivan Whitehall's role in the group is that of senior legal advisor. His particular expertise is in the use of the judicial process to endlessly postpone or blunt the effect of a judicial determination of the issues, but he's also very good at novel legal interpretations intended to give the most outrageous Federal Government actions the superficial appearance of legitimacy. Mr. Whitehall has made a career out of using the law as a tool for denying aboriginal people in Canada their rights --going back at least to the retroactive caveat legislation when he intervened for the Federal Government on behalf of the Provincial Government. And then there's Bob Young. The sixth law firm on the list of twenty, with billings of over $410,000 for the period in question, is another Calgary law firm by the name of Walsh Young. Described in the article as "no stranger" to the list, and as a "standing agent" of the Federal Government, Walsh Young is the law firm of Bob Young. Bob Young is the Calgary lawyer hired and paid by the Federal Government to supposedly represent the so-called new Woodland Cree Band. One of Mr. Young's partners named Wilkins has publicly disputed the meaning of the figures quoted in the article, or that there's a conflict of interest involved in representing both the Federal Government and the Woodland Cree Band. Using the type of specious reasoning typically associated with unscrupulous people caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, Mr. Wilkins claims that the quoted billings don't mean that his firm "gets the sixth-most government work in Canada", since those billings include disbursements as well as fees, and that representing parties on both sides of the negotiating table doesn't represent a conflict of interest, since "the (Woodland Cree) approach was made to us directly because of (Walsh Young's) expertise in Indian law". In making his arguments Mr. Wilkins conveniently ignores and/or perhaps doesn't know certain relevant facts. First Mr. Wilkins ignores the fact that the article specifically uses gross billings -- fees and disbursements -- in all cases. Second Mr. Wilkins ignores the essential point that the Federal Government is indisputably a major client of Walsh Young, no matter exactly how major. Third Mr. Wilkins ignores the undeniable fact of a conflict in representing parties on both sides of the negotiating table -- even if really asked to do so by both parties. Fourth Mr. Wilkins ignores the obvious difficulties involved in balancing the interests of a major, multi-million dollar, year-in and year-out bread-and-butter client with those of a obviously transitory and indigent client -- whose bills are in fact being paid by the multi-million dollar client. And fifth Mr. Wilkins is mistaken about Walsh Young being approached "directly (by the Woodland Cree) because of (Walsh Young's) expertise in Indian law". Representatives of the so-called Woodland Cree Band were in fact introduced to Bob Young by Brian Malone and Fred Jobin, in Fred Jobin's Edmonton Indian Affairs office, the afternoon of April 17, 1989, after being flown from northern Alberta to Edmonton in a private plane which had been chartered by Messrs. Malone and Jobin. -------------------------------------------------------------- If you would like a copy of the quoted article contact CAR at the address below or look for: "Pigging Out - Our Annual Tally of Law Firm Earnings from Federal Government Contracts" in CANADIAN LAWYER, Oct. 1989, at your local library. For more information contact web:car by e-mail or in writing Aboriginal Rights Support Group Committee Against Racism P.O. Box 3085, Station B Calgary, Alberta T2M 4L6