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	Inquiry Should Wrap on Time: Counsel By Michael Peeling Standard-Freeholder January 5, 2009 http://www.standard-freeholder.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1372734 With only 19 days remaining for scheduled testimony, and about a dozen witnesses waiting to take the stand, commission counsel for the Cornwall Public Inquiry feels confident the lawyers can plow through to completion by the Ministry of the Attorney Generalordered deadline of Jan. 30. "Certainly," responded commission counsel Pierre Dumais when asked if staff could keep to the schedule. "If we feel we can't, then we'll sit for longer days. It's very feasible we'll be able to finish now that we have the witness we expected to take the longest, (Crown attorney) Murray MacDonald, done." Dumais said there won't be any more witnesses who take as long to question as retired Ontario Provincial Police Det. Insp. Pat Hall, a case manager for Project Truth -- a long-term investigation which started in 1997 into allegations of sexual abuse of youths by prominentmembersof theS, D&Gcommunity. Hall was on the stand for several days. DON JOHNSON NEXT ON STAND The next person scheduled to take the stand is Don Johnson, Murray MacDonald's predecessor as Crown Attorney for S, D & G. He will begin testifying on Tuesday when the Cornwall Public Inquiry, which is looking at how public institutions such as the Ministry of the Attorney General responded to allegations of sexual abuse, starts up again after a two-week hiatus. Dumais expects Johnson to be off the stand by Wednesday. Dumais says the remaining witnesses, all of whom are with or formerly of the Ministry of the Attorney General, won't take as long to testify as witnesses from other institutions because the lawyers will be asking questions about how the prosecutions of alleged abusers were dealt with. "There were not many prosecutions," Dumais said. "That explains why they won't take long to question." Of the cases prosecuted as a result of Project Truth, only Jean-Luc Leblanc, a former Newington, Ont., bus driver, was convicted. He pled guilty in 2001 to 13 counts of sexually abusing children. Project Truth led to the OPP laying 115 charges against 15 men. Assistant Crown attorney Alain Godin is due to take the stand after Johnson. Godin was brought in from Fort Frances, Ont., to help prosecute Rev. Paul Lapierre, who was convicted on sexual abuse charges in Quebec in 2004. He was sentenced to one year in jail. Another assistant Crown attorney, Kurt Flanagan of Brockville, will also testify about his involvement in the prosecution of Marcel Lalonde, a Cornwall teacher who had been charged with allegedly sexually abusing seven children between 1971 and 1983. Lalonde was convicted in 2001 of sexually assaulting several of his students at Bishop Macdonell School, but was found not guilty of six other charges. One other charge was stayed. A tentative schedule for the inquiry's second week in January has Cosette Chaffe of the Victim Witness Assistance program sitting for the inquiry. Ontario Court Justice Peter Griffiths, the first person to hold the post of regional Crown attorney in eastern Ontario, is scheduled to follow Chaffe. Crown prosecutor Shelley Hallett will later take the stand to discuss her handling of the case against Jacques Leduc. He was charged for the alleged sexual abuse of three teenagers. The charges against him were stayed after Leduc's lawyers successfully argued Hallett had intentionally withheld knowledge of a conversation between retired Cornwall police officer Perry Dunlop and an alleged victim's mother. Barrie Crown attorney Lorne McConnery will testify about his role in the stay of proceedings against Rev. Charles McDonald, who faced 13 charges of sexual abuse until they were stayed in 2002. Crown Attorney Lidia Narozniak will answer questions about her involvement in the Leduc case after it returned to provincial court from Superior Court. Cornwall-based Superior Court Justice Robert Pelletier is the last witness confirmed to take the stand. Pelletier will discuss his work as former Crown attorney in L'Orignal, Ont. (north of Cornwall near Hawkesbury), on the Rev. Charles MacDonald preliminary proceedings. Finally, Dumais says two people who are likely, but not certain, to take the stand are Crown prosecutors Claudette Breault and Lynn Robinson. The Cornwall Public Inquiry resumes on Tuesday at 9:30 a. m. with testimony from local lawyer Don Johnson. All inquiry testimony is supposed to wrap up on Jan. 30. Commissioner Normand Glaude will hear final submissions from inquiry lawyers and other parties before writing his final report from Feb. 23 to 27.
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