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Remember the case of the pothole poet, Meadowvale senior citizen Antonio Batista, who wrote the ode of non-appreciation to Ward 9 Councillor Pat Saito which got him convicted of uttering a death threat?
The paperwork for the appeal is well underway, according to the office of Clayton Ruby, whose defence of not-guilty-by-reason-of-satire didn't make much of an impression on Mr. Justice J.J. Keaney.
Baptista received a suspended sentence and was placed on probation for a year, subject to several conditions including not contacting Saito.
The factums have been filed and a trial date should be known within a few weeks. After that, the lawyers get together in a Toronto court and argue the merits of their case.
Ruby is also handling the appeal of the amendments to the Dog Owners' Liability Act. His 60-page factum was filed at the end of February after a couple of extensions. That means the same courtesy will likely be extended to the crown, meaning their filing is not expected until the end of June. Hearing dates aren't likely until late fall, by which time the Rambo trial may already be over.
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After Conservative Party of Canada President Don Plett gave his keynote speech at the recent meeting of the Mississauga South federal association and disappointed many by not specifying a nomination date, speculation about a possible "star" candidate waiting in the wings ramped up significantly.
Mississauga South university student William Norman, originally from the City, speculated at his www.theliberalbag.blogspot.com/ site that Effie Triantafilopoulous might be in line for an appointment.
To which Effie replied in an email: "I have not been approached by the party nor am I pursuing it. Just idle speculation."
After the principled stand she took on the party hijacking of the open provincial nomination process when Tim Peterson crossed the floor and her tenacity in refusing to back down to the series of imperial dictates of the party which followed, Triantafilopoulos could hardly be receptive to an appointment.
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One wonders if Wajid Khan and Bonnie Crombie, the respective candidates for the Conservative and the Liberal parties in the next (one hesitates to say upcoming) federal election in Mississauga-Streetsville will declare a truce on certain topics on the platform.
Khan, of course, won't want to talk about the Election Finance Act charges that prompted him to become an independent for a while until he entered a guilty charge and paid a fine.
Yesterday, Crombie's spouse Brian — who was the co-chair of the highly-successful Mississauga summit late last year — was named as one of four senior officers at Mississauga's Biovail Corp. who are the subject of serious allegations of misrepresentation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission.
Crombie is the former chief financial officer at Biovail who has long worked with its founder Eugene Melnyk.
The charges have not been proven, of course, and Crombie and Melnyk have both declared their innocence and vowed to fight the charges.
Nonetheless, the timing for a political spouse simply could not be worse.