Justice Mulligan, Graham Partners and Community Legal Clinic successfully converted a clear case of bribery, conspiracy and fraud, initiated by Danilovs against YMCA, into an idiotic divorce-like family matter “Danilovs v Nikityuks”, to get precious and respectful YMCA off-hook. To accomplish that, Justice Mulligan had to implement and use his own definition of witness credibility, to ignore all documentary evidence, to twist the facts and testimonies, to ignore the most important of them, to close his eyes on obvious perjury and violations of Court procedure, and where all of that was not enough, to come up with a few “facts” himself. The result is his epic “decision”, in which all he wanted was just to send a message to all successful Canadian immigrants who consider family reunion. Justice Mulligan’s message is quite simple:
CANADA DOES NOT NEED YOUR PARENTS. DON’T BRING THEM HERE OR YOU WILL BE DESTROYED.
In 2003 Danilovs immigrated to Canada as high skilled professionals. Settled successfully without any help from settlement counselors, in 2005 they started immigration process for Nikityuks (Svetlana’s mother and stepfather). The reason why Nikityuks came to Canada were endless health issues, and only OHIP and robust Canadian health system could help them to survive. In Russia, without adequate medical care, they both would die long time ago. Overall, in 2009-2011, being in Canada, Nikityuks went through approximately 10 major surgeries which all were successful and dramatically improved their quality of life compared to constant suffering and survival in Russia.
This could happen only because Pavel, being provider for the entire family, co-signed the Sponsorship Agreement with his wife back in 2004 and always kept his part of the agreement despite of all difficulties of market crash in 2008 and subsequent recession: Nikityuks always were well taken care of and did not even notice that there was some kind of financial crisis somewhere far in the World.
During 2009-2011, three years, Danilovs and Nikityuks were living together as a fully functional family and never had any serious issue or disagreement. They helped each other a lot and had shared budget and finances, as a lot of healthy families do. It’s actually deep in Russian culture to live together with elderly parents and help them. During those 3 years, and Nikityuks admit that on multiple occasions including Court testimony, they never expressed even a slightest interest in family financial affairs, budget or how much Danilovs pay for water. Off course it was Pavel and Svetlana who controlled all family finances. Who else would do it? Nikityuks “did not come here to be financiers”, as they put it, and could not even memorize an ATM pin, always asked Svetlana to withdraw cash for them. But bills don’t pay themselves, someone got to do it for them.
In 2011 settlement counselor YMCA Yana Skybin, who pretended to be Svetlana’s friend and in 2009-2010 gained family trust, had figured out at some point that Nikityuks sold significant family property before they came to Canada. It was interesting, and she begun to poison parents’ minds with the idea of separation from the family. “If I sponsored my mom, I would never live with her; in Canada people don’t live like that, you should be independent.” – she kept saying them on all possible occasions, and introduced them to her Russian speaking friends who thought the same. Nikityuks started to look for ways how to live “independently” and with those friends’ help had found out that the social housing seemed to be one of the options.
Danilovs explained them many times that Canada is not the Soviet Union where everyone lived in a social housing, that Canadian social housing is not an option for them because it’s for people who cannot afford to pay full rent, and that Nikityuks are not even close to that category: they always were supported from all possible angles, provided with shelter, new car, food, clothes, lots of entertainment (even cable Russian TV!), free cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, translation and other services, and full financial freedom with immediate access to about $30,000 due to Danilovs’ perfect credit history. All credit card balances were always paid by Danilovs. Nikityuks did not hesitate to use those credit cards and, being sponsored, even used to send $100+ gifts to relatives and friends in Russia almost every month.
Even if by some reason Nikityuks would become eligible, at that time there were still 4 year waiting lists for social housing, now even more.
Obsessed with the idea and warmed up by Skybin, Nikityuks kept insisting on separation and in summer 2011 told Svetlana that Yana Skybin knows the way to avoid waiting lists, but a little “cooperation” required. Since April 2011, through the entire summer and fall, Danilovs could not understand what kind of “cooperation” they were constantly talking about and why Nikityuks were getting upset and “miserable” when Danilovs did not understand.
In August 2011 it was cleared that Nikityuks meant imitation of abuse in the family: just 2 days after expensive birthday gift from them, Skybin introduces them to her know-how; basically gives them step-by-step manual in the form of Brochure, even translates some sections of it to Russian. All what’s left for Nikityuks was to copy/paste from the brochure as much as they wanted. They did not hesitate to copy almost everything from that brochure, except sexual abuse.
Skybin gave them a month for this exercise during which they were supposed to collect as much “evidences” of “abuse” as they could, like audio recordings or pictures. Despite of all provocations (and being a former employee of a KGB-controlled institution in Russia, Valentin was very creative with those), they were not able to collect a thing because Danilovs always treated them with respect and patience. Valentin apparently even had an emergency phone arranged by Yana for him, and was supposed to make a scene and call 911 at the day when the social housing apartment was ready. He pulled out the phone but hesitated to call, so they just left and were not able even to get even a fake Police report. But that did not stop Skybin: during the next month she simply fabricated all missing “evidences”. For instance, a few days before she registered Nikityuks in Barrie Shelter for Women and Children(!) and despite the fact that they actually lived at home all the time till the very “escape”.
This is a well-known fraud scheme which has been addressed years ago by Courts in Toronto, but in Barrie this YMCA-owned network is still fully functional. YMCA has their own resources everywhere: in shelters to provide fake testimonies about people “living in shelter” when they actually don’t; in social housing – fake “social workers” without licenses, who provide fake testimonies that they “witnessed tears and sadness in their eyes”; in Community Legal Clinic – dirty “lawyers” who had trouble with the authorities before, not allowed to practice law in all other provinces, and who has exceptional talent to fabricate ridiculous “counterclaims” from thin air in a matter of minutes, in case if the family of YMCA “clients” is not on-board. Sort of like “they told me that the house was bought on my name as a surprise, but 3 years later I checked and it turned out not to be true“. How you can argue with this level of absurd? And guess what? Honorable Justice Mulligan believes that this idiotic statement is true. Does he, really?
By the way, usually families are totally on board. Skybin admitted at the oral examination that she did this no-waiting-list-social-housing-trick “a number” of times. Skybin even tried to engage Svetlana in her scheme just a few days before pulling the trigger, probably even counted on some “gratitude”, but Svetlana rejected. The family, including Danilovs’ daughter and her husband, was totally against this scam, and that is not what Skybin expected; in her domain it happened first time, – all her friends used her services a lot and never complained. They call her “professor”. Not Moriarty but close. The same friends later were called by YMCA to witness on the Trial to support Skybin and were caught on lies, but even obvious perjury did not impress Justice Mulligan, he just doesn’t hear anything contradicting his made-up mind.
Danilovs were disguised with what Nikityuks were planning to do and told them that it’s the same as stealing from a homeless person. Having full scale Skybin’s and YMCA’s blessing, guidance and support, Nikityuks decided to go with the plan on their own, hoping that the family would come to their senses and play along eventually.
Now it’s clear that when Danilovs initiated a law suit against YMCA, they had no chance because YMCA’s well-established networking in Barrie and Orillia provides protection at all possible levels, from shelter workers to apparently judges. Danilovs could not even find a good lawyer because almost every Barrie lawyer has a conflict of interest with YMCA! Nikityuks’ with their stinky claims could not find a lawyer either (tried 5 or 6, no luck), but finally YMCA dug up this Erik Bornmann guy from Orillia Community Legal Clinic for them, who did not have a choice but to take the case, because being banned from practicing law almost everywhere, he had to gain some score, and this “elderly abuse” case was like a Klondike of 21st century for him, securing his salary at least for 5 years, paid by taxpayers by the way.
Hundreds of thousands people are waiting for a social housing in long waiting lists, many years living in shelters. When people like Nikityuks, with help of people like Yana Skybin and Erik Bornmann, are able to exploit this gap in the law, it’s just a horrible thing. Corruption was one of the reasons why Danilovs left Russia many years ago, they don’t make friends with people like Skybin who bring their Soviet Union bribery life style into democratic society. It is actually a big surprise that such famous and respectful organization like YMCA allowed to involve itself into this disgusting scheme.