Councillor Debora Munoz denied Thursday a bitter break-up with Coun. Brian Skakun and her mayoral aspirations spurred her to reveal Skakun leaked a confidential city report.
Munoz was forced to dismiss the allegations levelled by Skakun's lawyer Jon Duncan as she wrapped up the second day of her testimony. The councillor is the star witness in the ongoing trial into whether Skakun gave the CBC a copy of a report by labour lawyer Kitty Heller into civilian complaints at the Prince George RCMP detachment.
In his cross examination, Duncan accused Munoz of deceiving then mayor Colin Kinsley and city manager Derek Bates during a meeting in Nov. 2008 in which she told the pair Skakun confessed to her three months earlier he was the source of the Heller report. He said Munoz falsely claimed Skakun was suicidal and that she feared for her safety, in part, because he told her he'd slashed another person's tires.
Judge Ken Ball reminded Duncan Munoz didn't claim Skakun was suicidal; in earlier testimony she said she was worried when he said he thought he wanted to die during his September confession but didn't think he wanted to kill himself. She denied she made up the tire-slashing story and said she genuinely feared for her safety.
She also refused to accept Duncan's suggestions she had a bitter break-up with Skakun, before the 2005 municipal election, spurred in part by the way she treated his son; that she resented his success in politics and the fact she wasn't invited to his wedding.
Duncan attempted a similar tack earlier in the day when he pressed Munoz on the details of Skakun's confession to her at work on Sept. 12, 2008.
She denied a series of questions including: they discussed how the Kitty Heller report was kept from council; that The Citizen was the only way the public would have known about the report; that Skakun thought Kinsley "was going to kill me"; that he said her "run for mayor looks good"; that the friendship of Kinsley and RCMP Supt. Dahl Chambers was in part responsible for the problems at the detachment; and that the friendship between Chambers and the city official in charge of the detachment, Rob Whitwham, a city official, was also to blame.
There was also some question as to when Munoz met with Kinsley and Bates in November. Munoz, in both conversations with RCMP Insp. Ray Noble and in her testimony, said she talked to Coun. Murry Krause on Nov. 7 and he arranged a meeting with the pair that day.
In prior testimony, city manager Bates said his notes put the meeting at Nov. 21.
The 2008 municipal election took place on Nov. 15. Munoz and Skakun were both re-elected.
In earlier testimony, she said that upcoming election, an ongoing investigation, worries voters would question her motives and fear of Skakun kept her for three months from saying he was the source of the Heller report leak.
Duncan also pressed Munoz repeatedly about the sequence of events that led to council's first look at the report by labour lawyer Kitty Heller at a closed session of council on May 12, 2008.
A Citizen article appeared on April 30 detailing portions of the report, including Heller's conclusion that Ann Bailey, then the city's top employee at the detachment, was in a conflict of interest due to her relationship with the city's top RCMP officer, Supt. Chambers.
Court heard that Skakun attempted to read portions of the report during a closed session of council on April 25. Kinsley silenced him and told him the comments were "defamatory."
Munoz testified that during the in-camera session May 12, council received 50 or so pages of documents, including the 30-page Heller report. Skakun left the closed session at 6:05 p.m., she said, and that portion of the meeting concluded at 6:18 p.m.
Duncan expressed some credulity that Munoz and the rest of council could have digested the contents of the Heller report in that span of time.
Munoz was also quizzed at length about her understanding of municipal politics and her role as councillor. She testified she never regarded Skakun as a competitor at the ballot box and denied she told him she aspired to be mayor of Prince George.
In later testimony, Whitwham, who was cited in the Heller report, testified about the impact of the leak on him personally and professionally.
He said it troubled him he couldn't defend Bailey in public due to confidentiality rules and that The Citizen repeatedly published the fact Heller singled him out for criticism for allowing the conflict of interest between Bailey and Chambers.
Heller wrote that Whitwham's handling of the conflict did not contravene the city's code of conduct but she did not condone it. Whitwham pointed out that the focus of her report was a complaint against him and complaints against Bailey by civilian employees at the detachment; Heller found all the complaints unfounded.
A separate RCMP investigation concluded Supt. Chambers harassed civilian employees at the detachment. He was disciplined internally and forced to write at least three letters of apology.
When asked by Duncan whether Whitwham was troubled by not being able to stand up for three civilian employees - Sheri McLean-Smith, Linda Thompson, and Ken Corrigan - whose concerns helped launch the Heller report, the city official said no.
He also testified that, when he attended the May 12, 2008 closed council session where elected officials received their first look at the Heller report, he spotted Skakun highlighting a document and thought "the knives were coming out."
Whitwham's testimony wrapped up the Crown's case. Duncan said he planned to introduce a no-evidence motion this morning.
