Due process

Our Dear Premier, April 7th:

The other thing is my preference would be, quite frankly, not to discuss this matter at all because it is before the inquiry, but because of the importance to the patients, their families, and the issues, then I am certainly quite prepared to discuss them, as far as I can go.

Our Dear Premier, April 8th:

This is about letting this inquiry go its full process. We cannot usurp the authority of that commissioner down there and we cannot start to try and make decisions here in this House of Assembly as a result of this kind of questioning as to what people in the civil service have received subpoenas.

Our Dear Premier, April 9th:

Mr. Speaker, I cannot speak for those ministers in how they performed their job and what information they had at the time and why they made the decisions they made. They are the only people who can answer those questions. So you have to walk a very, very fine line here in me putting my interpretation or expressing opinions and expressing conclusions on other testimony that occurs before the inquiry.

Walk a very fine line.

Do not usurp the authority of the commissioner.

Don’t discuss the matter, it’s before the inquiry.

Let the inquiry go its full process.

That’s Danny’s line.

And that’s the line of the plants, on the interwebs and on the radio shows, who keep saying – one of them, you could actually hear her rustling the sheet of paper she was reading from – that we must not pre-judge what might be judicially determined in the cancer testing scandal; that, in fact, no one should even talk about it.

Of course we mustn’t. And shouldn’t.

Prejudgment is Our Dear Premier’s prerogative.