George family member demands federal inquiry

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Now that the courts are done with the OPP officer who fired the shots that killed his brother, Pierre George wants some answers.

Acting Sgt. Kenneth Deane was convicted of criminal negligence causing the death of Dudley George at a confrontation at Ipperwash Provincial Park in September of 1995.

Minutes after the Supreme Court of Canada rejected Deane?s final appeal, Pierre George called on the Prime Minister to call a federal public inquiry.

"Jean Chretien should call a federal public inquiry out of respect. Both my parents served this country in World War II. They kept this country free. You know how they say, 'If you love freedom, thank a vet.' Well, this country's not free if you can't even protest. I think my parents should be shown at least the respect of an inquiry and [Ontario Premier] Mike Harris won't do it, so the Prime Minister should," he said.

George sat in the back of the Supreme Court of Canada courtroom on the morning of Jan. 26 as Deane's last legal hope to clear his name was extinguished by Canada's highest court. As he emerged from the court to speak to the press, Pierre George was clearly fighting to contain his emotions.

"I can at least go home feeling somewhat good about making this journey to watch this bit of court," he said.

Pierre George was the only one of Dudley's siblings to make the trip to Ottawa. He is estranged from his brothers and sisters who have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Ontario premier and other high ranking police and government officials. He believes there are many people not named in the family's wrongful death lawsuit who should be held accountable for the events on the evening of his brother's death.

"To me, too much time is spent on the premier. What's the best they're going to get him on? Good luck, man. The biggest thing I talk about in withdrawing that lawsuit is, I don't know where [his brother] Sam and his lawyers think they're going to get any justice when the justice system can't even jail the guy who killed his brother for one hour," he said. "Me and my sister Carolyn, we spent around 16 hours in jail on a bogus attempted murder."

Pierre and Carolyn drove their fatally wounded brother to a hospital 50 kilometres away in a car with a flat tire while police monitored their progress without helping. When they arrived at the hospital, they were arrested and charged with attempted murder. The charges were dropped shortly afterwards.

Deane had already completed his sentence of 180 hours of community service when the Supreme Court heard his appeal. He remained on the job at the London OPP detachment while his appeals were heard. After the final appeal failed, Deane was charged by the OPP under the province's Police Services Act. A police officer convicted of a criminal offense is automatically charged under the Code of Conduct provisions of the act. The most severe penalty the adjudicator can impose is dismissal. Deane remains on the job, filling an administrative role at OPP headquarters in Orillia, Ont., pending the outcome of that process.

The criminal portion of the legal action spawned by the shooting may have ended, but Pierre George doesn't want anyone to forget that trial judge Hugh Fraser found that Deane and two other OPP officers lied to the court during the trial. Fraser said they 'concocted ex post facto (after the fact)' a story of seeing a muzzle flash in order to justify and avoid prosecution for the shooting of an unarmed man.

"I've often wondered, too, what about them other two officers that were lying in the courtroom, eh? The ones that supported Deane in what he did? Stuff like that should be brought up, too. It was a cover-up. What's that say for the police force once again? Nothing happened as far as perjury. In the courtroom, they got caught lying in there and nothing's happened to them under the Police Services Act. There's a lot of questions that need to be answered," he said.

Frustrated by Premier Hrris' refusal to call an inquiry, and suspecting that Harris was covering up government actions that may have caused the death of Dudley George, activists in Ontario urged former Indian Affairs minister Jane Stewart to call a federal inquiry but she refused, saying it was a provincial matter. Even when an Osgoode Hall law school professor wrote a paper saying the minister did have the authority to call an inquiry, she refused to do so.

Pierre George wants to go right to the top, especially now that the prime minister has spoken out about human rights concerns in China.

"He was mildly blasting China's human rights. So, why don't you call an inquiry over here?" he said.

He thinks the prime minister should be willing to call the inquiry because he has a personal connection with the situation. Chretien warned there would be trouble at Camp Ipperwash when he was Indian Affairs minister in 1972. The future prime minister also wrote that the Department of National Defence had a 'moral responsibility' to settle the land question at Ipperwash.

"It should be a full federal inquiry," George said. "The government has a fiduciary duty. The burial grounds should never have been sold."