The legislature clerk and sergeant-at-arms who were suspended and ushered from the building this week are asking to be returned to active duty.
In a letter from their lawyer to the three party house leaders, Craig James and Gary Lenz deny doing anything wrong and say they have been kept in the dark about the nature of the allegations against them.
Vancouver lawyer Mark D. Andrews writes that his clients were given no advance notice of the motion that passed in the legislature Tuesday, placing them on administrative leave with pay and benefits.
“Instead, immediately afterwards they were ejected from the legislature in what appears to have been a deliberately public and humiliating manner, on the basis of secret allegations,” the letter states.
The two officers have been suspended pending the results of a police investigation regarding their administrative duties.
Two special prosecutors have been appointed, but no charges have been laid and no details of the allegations have been released.
Neither the RCMP nor the B.C. Prosecution Service have commented on the nature of the investigation.
Andrews, a lawyer with Fasken, Martineau DuMoulin, says his clients are entitled to be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
“They are the most senior and long-serving and loyal servants of the legislative assembly whose reputations are in the process of being destroyed by these events,” the letter states.
Andrews says that, without any facts showing that James and Lenz are unable to carry out their duties pending the results of the investigation, his clients should be returned to active duty.
“So far as we and our clients are aware, there are no such facts,” he says. “The mere fact there is an investigation is not a sufficient basis to suspend them from their posts.”
Andrews writes that it was improper that the house leaders and MLAs apparently were given no information about the allegations before passing the motion to suspend the officers.
“With respect, the passage of this hasty and uninformed motion is undermining and needs to be reconsidered without delay in accordance with basic principles of fairness and proper procedure.”
The letter says the motion should be rescinded before the house adjourns next week. “Time is of the essence if some of the damage to our clients and to public respect for the workings of the legislative assembly is to be undone.”
Andrews stresses that his clients are not asking for the investigation to be stopped. They are willing to co-operate and want the probe to proceed quickly, he says.
He says the unfair decisions regarding his clients are repeating the mistakes of the Health Ministry firings that was the subject of an investigation by the Ombudsperson.
The letter asks for a response from the house leaders by the end of the day.
