Al Williamson collapsed at the dock and was carried to the hospital Friday after having been convicted of forgery in the "dear HAL" letter case. You'll recall perhaps that Williamson was charged with sending a letter to prime ministerial aid Hal Dornan in the name of Premier W.A.C. Bennett of British Columbia, asking for support of an application by US millionaire Harry Stonehill for landed immigrant status. Williamson admitted writing the letter without the expressed authorization of the Premier. His defense rested on the claim that he had a general authority, based on a special relationship with the Premier and strengthened by his faithful service to the Premier, to write the letter. Such relationships are very common in government. The point that bothers me with this case is that Premier Bennett, the one man who could have cleared up this whole matter, was never called to the stand. This seems to be a growing trend in our society. If your station in life is sufficiently high, you have a certain immunity. Why shouldn't premier Bennett clarify the picture by defining for the court, Williamson's authority. Why shouldn't Lyndon Johnson go to the stand and speak on the Bobby Baker case? Why shouldn’t Prime Minister Pearson be called on to give some answers in the recent Ottawa mess? Was it in all these cases that the investigators didn't want to embarrass the government? What do you tell your teenage son? "If you get far enough up in the government you don't have to answer for anything?" That phrase I used "don't embarrass the government" is the phrase I hate most in the English language. Possibly because of the nature and power of our own provincial government we have lost sight of the fact that any government is our SERVANT, not our MASTER. We vote our officials into office and we can blessed-well vote them out if we so desire, so let's stop mollycoddling them and insist that they abide by the same laws, rules and regulations that apply to every citizen.
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