Naming names a perilous game JOHN IBBITSON Tuesday, May 29, 2001 Conservative MPP Garry Guzzo plans to stand in the Ontario Legislature today and ask the Mike Harris government a question that will test the limits of public tolerance for parliamentary immunity. Mr. Guzzo, the member for Ottawa West-Nepean, has announced that he will ask Solicitor-General David Turnbull and Attorney-General David Young why they will not appoint a commission of inquiry into police handling of an alleged pedophile ring in Cornwall, an industrial city in the southeast corner of Ontario. Then he plans to name the names of up to four prominent individuals who he thinks may be involved in the alleged ring, even though they have never been charged with a crime. This is ugly, ugly, ugly. Mr. Guzzo, a former family-court judge who has often displayed a passionate determination to do what he thinks is right, fears that local justice officials may have shielded prominent citizens by covering up their involvement in the alleged ring. Three separate police investigations into allegations of abuse came up with nothing until Project Truth, launched by the Ontario Provincial Police in 1997, led to charges against a dozen men. Mr. Guzzo suspects that at least four others may be involved. He wants an inquiry and, since he can't get one, he says he will name names in the House. If Mr. Guzzo named those names in Cornwall, or on a soapbox in High Park, he could be vulnerable to a defamation suit. But as long as he says what he says in the legislature, he is immune. You can say almost anything in a provincial or federal Parliament, short of dishonouring another member. CBC Radio measurably complicated the issue yesterday by naming Eugene LaRocque, Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Alexandria-Cornwall, as one of those Mr. Guzzo planned to finger in the House. A CBC spokeswoman said her organization obtained the bishop's name through court documents and had decided to reveal that name based on "the facts as we know them, including that the name would be raised publicly and imminently in the legislature." With his name all over the airwaves, Bishop LaRocque spent much of yesterday giving interviews protesting his innocence. He "categorically" denies any wrongdoing, he told The Globe and Mail. "I took a vow of chastity," he said, "and with God's grace I have upheld it." This column names Bishop LaRocque purely to provide him with an opportunity to respond to the allegations made against him. "We are in uncharted waters here," Mr. Young observed to reporters. Three attorneys-general have turned down Mr. Guzzo's demand for a public inquiry because three attorneys-general believe such an inquiry would interfere with criminal prosecutions under way. Such inquiries in the past have even led to charges being dismissed because the accused could no longer be assured a fair trial. Mr. Young urged Mr. Guzzo to reconsider his imminent action. But the member for Ottawa West-Nepean profoundly believes that deep evils went uninvestigated or underinvestigated in Cornwall, that the powerful were protected, and that even now guilty parties may walk free. If the government will not intervene in Cornwall, by launching an inquiry, then he will blast names into the ether all by himself, cloaked in the blanket of parliamentary immunity. And if he is wrong? Then he'll resign, he says. But not until after he has fouled the reputations of four citizens. Not until after he has violated, with impunity, their right to due process, none having been charged with a criminal offence. Not until after he has abused, in the eyes of many, the rights of parliamentarians, raising questions of whether we should reconsider those rights. Think again, Mr. Guzzo. The harm you do will far surpass the good.
