Alan Seckel, a lawyer, formerly a partner with Vancouver's notorious law firm, Fasken Martineau Dumoulin, first came to public prominence when Gordon Campbell was hunting for a new Deputy Attorney General after the reigning Deputy Attorney General, Gillian Wallace, was forced to resign as a result of a police investigation into the crimes of fraud, perjury and obstruction of justice carried out by staff lawyers involved in organized crime at the Ministry of the Attorney General while it was under the direction of Ms. Wallace.
Once a key player in the New Democratic regime of Premier Glen Clark, also forced to resign when he was the target of a police investigation, Ms. Wallace faded into obscurity after her resignation.
Police investigations of politicians are a common event in British Columbia, a jurisidciton with an international reputation as a centre of money laundering and other forms of corruption.
Seckel and Wallace had close ties to Canada's Chief Justice Bev McLachlin and British Columbia Chief Justices, Alan McEachern and Donald Brenner, all of whom were involved in the Water War Crimes.