Peter O'Neil and Glenn Bohn, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, January 25, 2007
Perley Edmund Holmes, business manager of Ironworkers Local 97 in Burnaby, faces drug and conspiracy charges after U.S. Border Patrol officers seized cocaine valued at more than $4 million US in eastern Washington last Thursday night.

Holmes, a 50-year-old married man with eight children, is in Spokane County Jail.

According to a court affidavit filed by a special agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, border patrol officers responded to an electronic sensor on a road near the Curlew Border Patrol Station south of Grand Forks in B.C.'s southern Interior.

The officers followed tire tracks of a pickup truck to the driveway of a rural home, where the pickup apparently turned around. They then followed fresh tracks in snow left by two people.

The officers turned on their vehicle's bright "takedown" lights and "observed two individuals lying in the snow under some bushes," the affidavit states. A large backpack was beside each man. The officers ordered the two men to stay where they were. One -- the affidavit wasn't clear which one -- attempted to run north towards the Canadian border, less than a kilometre away, but was caught.

A U.S. Border Patrol Agency news release reported the seizure of more than 136 pounds -- 61.6 kilograms -- of cocaine in the two backpacks and the arrest of a "Canadian citizen attempting to smuggle the contraband across the border."

The agency didn't name the Canadian but the affidavit filed by the U.S. federal Justice Department in Spokane names Holmes and Case Hale Swinburne, of Okanogan County, Wash.

The criminal complaint is the first step towards a possible U.S. grand jury indictment on these recommended charges: possession with intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine, and conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine.

Dave Beatty, elected president of Ironworkers Local 97, said he and other officials were shocked by the arrest of Holmes.

"It was completely out of character for anybody who knows him," Beatty said Wednesday.

He said the union called in an independent auditor at its Burnaby office Monday to investigate union records.

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If Holmes is guilty of drug trafficking, then he should hang for it (OK, not literally, but should go to jail).

People in the BC building trades are hurt by this event, they know very well that some of the stain will rub off on construction unions in general.

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I want to know why so many babblers are convinced that none of the stain should rub off on the Liberals or on Dion. Perley Holmes has been a Liberal for years, why do they have immunity from any suggestion that he's typical of their crowd, while unions have to suck it up and take that very suggestion head on?

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From what I have learned, he was only nominally a federal Liberal and instead was very supportive of the BC NDP.

The Liberals, provincially or federally, won't have to wear any of this because, as has been shown numerous times here, they have the general support of the major corporate media monopolies that do their best to sanitize them as much as possible.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
The Liberals, provincially or federally, won't have to wear any of this because, as has been shown numerous times here, they have the general support of the major corporate media monopolies that do their best to sanitize them as much as possible.

It will more likely, as you note, try to smear his union, and unions generally, and the NDP, even though they have nothing to do with this situation.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Ah yes the Global CanWest corporate hate machine at work again.

. . . .

But alas, I await the usual smear crowd to show up making factless allegations and lies about how the whole Local 97 is corrupt and an example of how bad unions supposedly are, etc. The smear never ends.

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That's a rather paranoid response. I just looked at the article in the link. It mentions "union" once ... in the last paragraph. What page of the print edition did it appear on?

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Originally posted by DavidMR:
How some can call that unfair I'll be damned if I know!

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You will indeed.