CAFE landlord seems to change testimony mid-trial, throwing a wrench in illegal pot-shop case

The saga of Toronto's tenacious chain of illegal pot shops took another unusual turn this week, as a property owner testifying under oath appeared to change his tune from a day earlier, the prosecutor was accused of shouting at him, and the defendant's own lawyer hinted he may have to recuse himself.

It was just the latest bizarre twist in the story of CAFE, the chain of sleek but unlicensed weed-peddling coffee parlours that have become infamous in Toronto for repeatedly flouting law enforcement attempts to shut them down.

The landowner, Ali Gillani, is on trial on four charges under Ontario's Cannabis Control Act alleging that he knowingly permitted a CAFE outlet to operate from his building at 104 Harbord St.

Gillani is the first of four CAFE landlords to go on trial, after bylaw officers slapped provincial charges on them between 2018 and last year. As he took the stand this week in his own defence, the proceedings took some interesting turns.

He told court on Wednesday that after he bought the building on Harbord Street near Spadina Avenue in October 2017, his property manager was approached by a potential commercial tenant about opening up "a normal caf that sells espresso, pastry, donuts, muffins."

He testified that he signed a lease with the tenant, a numbered company called 9956271 Canada Inc.

CAFE short for Cannabis and Fine Edibles publicly announced its opening at the property two-and-a-halfmonths later, on Dec. 29, 2017. Gillani said under oath that he only found out long after he variously mentioned July and November 2018 that the putative coffee shop was in fact dealing illegal bud from his building.

It led to charges against him piling up, each one with a potential penalty of up to $250,000 in fines and two years in jail.

Key to his defence under the provincial law is whether he took "reasonable measures" to get CAFE to stop, which Gillani said he did: sending a notice of lease default to the numbered company, calling the Landlord and Tenant Board and a bailiff (neither was willing to help, he said).

Officially, the CAFE premises were also ordered closed several times by law enforcement, meaning Gillani might be let off the hook since legally, no one was supposed to be in the building at all.

'I'm hearing something very different today'

It emerged in court on Thursday, however, that after the previous day's session concluded, prosecutors sent a number of corporate records to Gillani's lawyer showing that his client appeared to have a role with the very numbered company he had testified he was trying to evict from his building (CBC News also reached out to Gillani and his lawyer Wednesday afternoon about those same public documents).

Gillani had personally signed three corporate filings for the companyas far back as five months before it ever became his tenant, and it used the business address of his accounting firm on another official document, court heard Thursday. Gillani said this was because his accounting firm provides routine administrative services for corporations.

But under cross-examination, he appeared to change his tune about who was behind the CAFE outlet on Harbord. He said he had been mistaken and it was not operated by the numbered company after all that, in fact, while the company had signed a commercial lease with him to open a coffee shop, he agreed to let them back out of it just 10 days later, when it dawned on them how much it would actually cost to start up.

"Tell me what triggered your memory?" city prosecutor Gabriella Ruta asked the defendant.

Gillani replied that he spoke to his property manager during the court break between Wednesday and Thursday. "I had to go back and ask him the scenario of what happened, the basic facts," he said.

Witnesses are not supposed to discuss their cross-examination testimony with anyone while in the middle of it. The prosecutor's tone verged on livid.

"I'm just going tostop you right there. Is your evidence that while you were under cross-examination you spoke to other people about your evidence, prior to coming to court today?"

Gillani maintained that he hadn't.

Instead of the numbered company, Gillani on Thursday laidthe blame for the CAFE outlet squarely at the feet of a residential tenant who lived on the second floor of the building. He testified that the man, a small-project contractor and painter named Jeff Brodie, moved in in April 2018 but had somehow masterminded CAFE's arrival three months earlier, financed huge renovations to the building, and was the source of all his landlord woes.

He said CAFE was illegally occupying the building and essentially has been squatting for more than four years.

"He has our property under lockdown, and we just want to get it back," Gillani said.

"This information is entirely different than yesterday's," prosecutor Ruta interjected at one point.

During his testimony on Wednesday, Gillani had told courtBrodie was likely the person who alerted him in the first place to CAFE's illicit activities. He even said he relied on Brodie to help keep tabs on what CAFE was up to.

In a separate court case related to the property, Brodie testified he had "nothing to do with CAFE" and just lived in the same building.

Gillani began to offer an explanation for the apparent about-face.

"Mr. Gillani, please stop," Justice of the Peace Paula Konstantinidis interrupted.

"Quite frankly, I have very different notes in terms of what you said yesterday, in terms of tenancies, times, after you took possession of that particular building, and I'm hearing something very different today."

At one point, Ruta's tone with Gillani became so edgy that his lawyer accused her of yelling at him.

Lawyer hints at recusal

Then, suddenly, after a short break, Ruta and Gillani's lawyer Noel Gerry announced to the court that an issue had come up and the case would need to be adjourned.

"It's a complex issue," Gerry said. "I am going to need some time to absorb it, and to get legal advice."

He hinted to the justice that he might have to withdraw from the case.

Contacted on Friday by CBC News, Gerry said neither he nor his client had any comment.