The extradition hearing form Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. CFO Meng Wanzhou resumed this morning but was quickly put on pause after revelations of a witness speaking about her testimony while outside of court.
On Thursday morning, Crown counsel John Gibb-Carsley told B.C. Supreme Court Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes that Nicole Goodman - the Canada Border Services Agency passenger operations chief at Vancouver International Airport - approached a member of the Canadian Department of Justice about concerns she had about defence questioning on Wednesday.
According to Gibb-Carsley, the DOJ staff member did not respond or engage Goodman on her question (which concerned whether defence questioning touched on some privileged information), since witnesses are not supposed to discuss their testimonies outside of court - especially since Goodman's cross-examination by Meng lawyer Mona Duckett was supposed to continue this morning. In order to address the issue, the Crown actively brought up the breach of procedure with Meng's defence, the court and a legal amici ("friend of the court," or a senior law official not officially linked to the court that can adjudicate certain matters).
As a result of the breach, Holmes excused herself from the court this morning while the legal amici spoke to Goodman, reminding her that a) she is not to speak about her testimony with anyone outside of court during her time on the stand and b) it is not her role to decide what information is or isn't privileged during the court proceedings.
Later, Holmes also made an exception so that Goodman could speak to the amici - and only the amici - about her concerns outside of the court.
Once the hearing resumed, Goodman remained under heavy fire from Duckett's questions. The defence attorney asked if the fact that Goodman felt some questions on Wednesday raising Goodman's concerns on attorney-client privilege caused her to misrepresent facts or mislead the court in her answers.
Duckett's questions were immediately challenged by Crown attorney Diba Majzub, who said Goodman's response to the open-ended question could have delved into real areas of concern for violating privilege - including how the CBSA official and the DOJ prepared for the hearing and the testimonies. Holmes thus asked Duckett to focus her questions, and an off-camera session may be needed if the questioning veers into actual privileged sections.
The defence lawyer then focused her accusations on Goodman's Will Say - a document prepared by the witness to outline what he or she will discuss in court. Duckett said the discrepancies in Goodman's Will Say and the testimonies of other officers indicate that Goodman may have altered her testimonies on the stand to include descriptions of CBSA officer Scott Kirkland "going white" when he realized he mistakenly gave Meng's device passcodes to the RCMP (which is against proper procedures).
Goodman denied those accusations.
"The way I understood it is that the Will Say is not everything," she said. "Not every conversation I had was to be included; I would be able to add to it during testimony."
Duckett, in turn, questioned if Goodman really knew for a fact that Kirkland passing the passwords to the RCMP was an accident.
"Did you investigate the facts?" Duckett asked Goodman. "Did you ask [fellow CBSA officer Sowmith] Katragadda? That would be important, wouldn't you say, since he was the officer carrying out [Meng's] inspections?"
"I don't know if he was around the piece of paper with the passcodes on it," Goodman said.
"You didn't know because you didn't ask," Duckett fired back.
The hearing will resume Friday to wrap up the questioning of Goodman.
Also on Thursday, both the Crown and the defence has proposed new court dates to Holmes for the new year, saying that more hearings are likely necessary after the Meng team is expected to file a fourth branch to its abuse-of-process argument on Dec. 14. The Crown is also expected to file a secondary supplemental record of the case (ROC) outlining the facts of Meng's arrest on that date, and both it and the fourth branch filing are expected to "spur further litigation," said Crown lawyer John Gibb-Carsley.
The proposed new dates - currently being considered by the court - would take up six weeks (March 15 to April 1, then April 26 to May 14) for both sides to argue the merits of their positions. Holmes countered by saying part of the argument could take place in the originally scheduled week of Feb. 15, but the defence said one-month-and-a-half is too short a period to prepare a full argument based on what litigation the fourth branch will bring next week.
