It hasn't been a very competent 2018 thus far for our justice system.

Just this week it was revealed that there was an (alleged) serial-killing Santa Claus operating in Toronto's gay village after months of the cops insisting that there wasn't one.  This came on the heels of an announcement that an attack on an 11-year old Muslim girl was actually a fabrication despite initial police reports to the contrary.

To compound matters for our put-upon police, it fell to my esteemed colleague Graeme Gordon to point out to them that the Santa Claus in question was not, in fact, employed by the Eaton's Centre but the Agincourt Mall in Scarborough instead.

So when the multi-year saga of the gas plant scandal finally sputtered to a halt last Friday, resulting in the conviction of David Livingston, an ex-Chief of staff to a Premier who hasn't been Premier for half a decade, the joyful exultations to the effect that the system works just as well (if not better) than any other had that distinct tone of cognitive dissonance being relieved.

True, the case almost did disintegrate under the weight of prosecutorial bumbling, as Christie Blatchford was forced to point out in her otherwise full-throated proclamation that the verdict proves "common sense" still carries the day.

Had it not been for the stalwart competence and testimony of bureaucrat Peter Wallace, quietly carrying out his due diligence in a most Canadian way while being careful not to make a fuss or bother anyone as he politely suggested to Livingston that deleting the emails was a pretty dumb idea, this trial would have merely been another Ghomeshi affair, another Duffy affair, another Sudbury by-election scandal.

Instead, David Livingston gets to join the tiny circle of mostly anonymous Canadian political lawbreakers who actually get a record.  But you keep trying, Canadian Justice System someday you might actually convict a Premier or a Prime Minister of wrongdoing!

Now of course some cynical person could have asked whether we should have had a trial at all if the central piece of evidence the emails themselves had already been destroyed.

But we have to help Canadians maintain the fiction that justice is being meted out fairly by our system (because it's OURS, dammit) and that it is ABSOLUTELY NOT a shield for powerful Liberal-connected public servants who have to be treated lightly because they are in the words of one Chuck Guite, who actually went to jail for about 5 minutes for his role in the sponsorship scandal "at war to save the country".  For these slightly overzealous but well intentioned patriots, we have to have these long, drawn-out and criminally expensive dog and pony shows every so often where the possibility of the whole thing embarrassingly crumbling to dust because of some legal screwup haunts the proceedings from start to finish.

If we don't have these trials often, and if we don't get convictions often, well, that's only because we are just a little closer to heaven than our neighbours to the south (unless of course you are a Conservative like Dean Del Mastro).

As such we cannot send a guy like Livingstone to jail even though he pretty clearly trampled over every rule in the book to protect his bosses.  That's why, even though his deputy Laura Miller's boyfriend was the guy who actually wiped the drives containing the emails, she luckily missed some crucial meetings Livingston had with Wallace and as a result gets to go home without a record.

But even Livingston, who after all this symbological wrangling ended up convicted of picky nothing burger charges like "illegal use of a computer" (and really, who among us hasn't used a computer in ways that SHOULD be illegal, am I right?  Eh?  Ehhhh?) will stay out of jail, if his lawyer, Brian Gover, has anything to say about it.  Livingston's "good character" which is obvious from his behaviour should be sufficient assurance of that.  And if anyone doubts the goodness of Livingston's character, just think if he hadn't deleted those emails, despite warnings not to, Tim Hudak might be Premier today!!!

So we shall go on, in this curious Canadian way, with our political trials resembling pantomime dinner theatre than the high drama of the Mueller investigation, and perhaps there is some poetic justice in that, if not actual justice.

Photo Credit: Toronto Star

Written by Josh Lieblein