Preamble

P.1   Is it Finally Time to Forget About Deleted Government Egaming Records?

You’re likely as tired hearing about Brad Mix’s deleted egaming emails as I am tired writing about them. This is a predictable and dangerous last-stage phase in the campaign to cover-up and forget corruption within the PEI government, and I suspect it’s something that we’ve all seen before.

Seemingly overnight, a demand is made for the “cone of silence,” reminiscent of the demand Agent 86 [Maxwell Smart] would make with the Chief whenever Max believed absolute secrecy was required, which was often. The Chief dreaded the cone, since it always malfunctioned, with the scene ending with smoke coming from somewhere and the Chief and Max yelling back and forth at each other.

The  model of the cone of silence demanded by the Special Committee on Government Records that came into being by the Agent of Motion 86 [Hon. Peter Bevan-Baker] is the deluxe version. It can put the Island under a permanent bubble, relegating the entire deleted-egaming records affair to the forgotten bins of forbidden PEI history.

This magical creation of SIF (Sudden Issue Fatigue) was seemingly choreographed and delivered with theatrical flair and precision, from start to finish. Or that’s how it appears to me from the record.

After promising “to go as far as we need to go,”  even boldly declaring that subpoenas would be issued if necessary (I know I’m not the only one who was thinking “Robert Ghiz” when subpoenas were mentioned), the Committee then gave itself an impossible task with a fixed 6-month deadline to deliver a “final message” from work over the summer. 

The evidence of what the Committee “didn’t do” out of what it “should – and could – have done”, of how it then mislead the House about what the Committee learned by saying nothing of the major revelations when it tabled its report delivers a shocking indictment of our entire system of government.

None of our current MLAs were apparently willing to act ethically and stand up for the truth against corruption on the deleted records issue. But they left a record of lies that I’m sure those MLAs now think were only ever going to be seen by a few people, then forgotten by most of them, and the record deletion issue now dead would remain dead and would never be mentioned again. 

To counter that deceptive false “victory” in defense of the truth, I am presenting this article containing a clear record of the lies and collusion with corruption by all MLAs on the Special Committee – 2 from each Party.

This is a long article; however, the full implications of the conclusion from the evidence is very important information for all Islanders and I consider one of the more important of my recent articles worth working through to get the big picture truth, but it is work.  I’ve tried to put additional headings to help break up and structure the content a little more with this article. 

P. 2  Did the Committee’s planned route to fail, fail?

To accomplish the gargantuan task of finally finding out “who deleted those emails?” work needed to be done over the summer, and the Committee got busy (1) scheduling 14 meetings, and (2) inviting witnesses who would not (or could not) tell the Committee what they would need to know in order for the Committee to take next steps in the investigation. With no apparent “strategy” to actually investigate the matter, it seemed to me that a decision had already been made that the message at the 6-month deadline date would be: “we tried, we failed, let’s move on.”  But if that was the plan, then things didn’t go as planned.

It appears the Committee may have gotten far more information from two key witnesses than they were expecting; two individuals who handed the Committee pretty much everything they needed to immediately take things to the next level in the investigation, if they wanted to, but they obviously didn’t want to, because they didn’t.

With the 6-month deadline looming, and the “sorry we failed” script apparently ready to be delivered, it’s as if all the amazing new information they learned from ITSS witnesses became a problem for the plan to “delete the file” on deleted files once and for all.

I am not speculating in saying that, because the message that was delivered was “we failed” when they succeeded, as I’ll explain in detail below, and that’s a Cover-up of major proportions in my books.

The new information presented called out the Committee to honour what it had previously said…something they may have believed they’d never have to do, and that’s where the Committee failed.  They discovered what they needed then covered that information up and did nothing with it which was a direct violation of the Special Legislative Committee’s mandate.

What that coverup accomplished was to give immunity to those who broke the law. It represents a betrayal of the public trust, and a serious violation of the duties those employees and MLAs have to act with honesty, openness and in the best interest of Islanders.

Rather than bringing in the most important witnesses who may have actually known something about the deleted records and may also have been willing to share that information [such as Brad Mix’s Assistant, the ONLY other person Mix said he had provided password access to his email archives], especially after the “big reveal” the Committee experienced on October 14, 2020 [Part 3] they got in people to talk about new ways to store records.

After that that most insightful day, rather than building on what they heard and zeroing in on getting all the details about the additional deleted records, they did nothing. They could, for example, have brought in Jonathan Coady, or Deputy Minister of Finance, Dan Campbell, or Marie Kemp with Risk Management, to explain why they buried and kept secret information about all those additional deleted egaming records, but they did no follow up at all, and simply jumped to the next scheduled meeting with new witnesses talking about matters totally unrelated to all the amazing new information learned from ITSS.

After the big reveal on October 14th, the Committee then chose: (1) to make two of its remaining few meetings “in camera” and private, with no transcript;  and (2) to invite only witnesses who would have absolutely nothing to say about anything relevant to deleted records or the Committee’s mandate.

In particular, the Committee invited two former government employees whose email accounts were deleted after they left government,  [Melissa MacEachern  and Chris LeClair) rather than the two individuals who were responsible for deleting those records without first backing them up, as required by law [e.g., Robert Ghiz and Neil Stewart]; along with witnesses that had no knowledge of, nor involvement in, the deleted records matter, but came to discuss record management issues and systems on a go-forward basis.

If you read to the end of this article – and watch all the video clips – I am confident that you will have no doubt that it was all a total “sleight-of-hand” performance by Hon. Peter Bevan-Baker and, at least in the end, all the members of the three Parties who were equally represented on the Committee, with two members from each Party.   

The Committee embraced  an almost impossible task in an impossible time frame: to make one concerted last-ditch effort  to either succeed or fail to get to the bottom of things. Once the 6-month clock ran out, the pre-scripted message would be delivered and that would be the end of it.

But things apparently didn’t go quite as planned – the Committee actually DID get to the bottom of the most important question: “Who deleted those emails?” AND as a major bonus had two honest, Senior ITSS employees reveal to them  that there were also missing records in email archives of other government employees – most named Defendants in the CMT lawsuit – who had also been involved in the egaming and financial transaction platform projects with CMT/FMT.

It seemed, however, that all the new information volunteered  by the ITSS witnesses [not uncovered by the insightful questions asked by Committee members] threw a monkey wrench in the “we failed, let’s move on” plan. It also appears a decision was made to proceed as planned anyways, and to just not mention anything about what the Committee seemingly learned accidentally [serious enough to possibly trigger criminal investigations and charges being laid] hoping that maybe no one would notice, or if they did, not be courageous enough to speak up as a lone voice to challenge the cone of silence.

The “disappointing event” needed to trigger the shut-down of interest and discussion in record deletion was delivered on cue when the House opened for the Fall sitting.  Sighing and exclaiming in mournful tones (to paraphrase): “We did our best, but unfortunately  we fell short and were unable to achieve our goals…now it’s  finally time to move on” when Bevan-Baker spoke to the Committee’s work and Report

Exasperated, most Islanders who were still paying attention immediately thought: “Couldn’t agree more!” and in came the crickets. 

It was a brilliant strategy that works almost every time. But not this time.

P. 3  The Unacceptable Cost of  Forgetting About Corruption

Turning a blind eye to misfeasance in government allows corruption to persist, and usually, worsen.  When the “corrupters” suffer no consequences and are protected by MLAs, they become emboldened by the security and protection they are afforded by the corrupt network embedded and intertwined within government, of which those individuals are a part.

With the confidence of knowing that not only does “government have my back” – but that both opposition parties have it as well –  there’s little left to put the brakes on more illicit activity happening with even more brashness, which we’re actually now seeing with the frenzied manoeuvring by the King Government to get a single-event sports betting gambling website up and running asap.

We need to ask ourselves if we’re willing to lay down and accept the implications of allowing such a system of secrecy, cover-up, and lack of accountability to continue to operate within government. When a Special Committee set up to investigate evidence of crimes and corruption discovers evidence, then does nothing, that represents a moral and political crisis for government and a significant threat to democracy.

Corruption that was first kept secret, then discovered and made known publicly from efforts by Paul Maines and me through FOI requests, that then resulted in a scathing assessment of illegal and secretive government behaviour by the former Information Commissioner, then got picked up with passion by the leader of the Official Opposition who got an all-party legislative “special” committee struck to deal with this issue in a targeted way, then for that committee to never get the issue resolved in a satisfactory way when everything the Committee required to resolve it was provided to the Committee by expert witnesses represents sufficient grounds to completely lose faith in the moral integrity and legitimacy of government.

We can not be content to ignore corruption within our government. We need to find a way to compel our politicians to hold those responsible for misfeasance within government (technical word for “corruption”) accountable for their actions. They can not be left to carry on doing the same job at the same salary with the same power to make decisions that are illegal and self-serving.

What possible motivation would someone inclined to take advantage of a system knowing it doesn’t punish offenders have to not carry on doing what they have been doing when getting caught doesn’t cost anything?

P. 4  There’s more to do, and more to discover, and I think we’re getting close!

The “let’s all forget about it” social amnesia stage in the long-term strategy to cover-up and erase all the misfeasance and lies surrounding deleted egaming records is something I expected.

I hoped for the best, of course, but planned for the worse, not holding out a lot of hope that any MLA would want to name people and pursue lines of questioning suggesting illegal and/or criminal behaviour. I hoped things might be different this time with this particular Committee, but like I said, I planned for the worse and let’s just say that my planning time wasn’t wasted.

I thought I could get a boost in my work  “piggy-backing” on some of the work of the Committee, but having chosen to do none, that left a lot more for me.

The only thing required to put the entire deleted records issue back on the front burner in a big way is some “breaking news” significant enough to make people first gasp, and then grasp what’s really going on with the big-picture cover-up and accommodation of corruption by all the parties – the annoying and complicated who deleted what-when game (as it must sound to most) is but the tip of the iceberg bobbing on the stormy seas that locates the real story still hidden below in the murky depths: an insider club running and corrupting our government.

Hopefully, such breaking news is not that long in coming. The story continues to be written as we move closer to some finality, both with my investigation, several active and outstanding FOI requests, numerous Information Commissioner Reviews still underway and hopefully nearing release as Orders, and legal actions to boot….all currently in play, a number of such events  are nearing completion and public release with providing additional insights and more pieces needed to complete the puzzle after very lengthy waiting periods.

For now (as public interest and government discussion has shut down completely, with expectations it will persist permanently) I’ll relish in the fact that  the “finish line” isn’t actually that far away. But I’m not quite there yet.

P. 5  It Ain’t Over til the FOIPP Lady Sings  

Islanders sense  (correctly, I believe) that there never really was  any intention with the Special Committee on Records Committee members to put anyone in jail for a crime, despite all the promises, money and effort spent assuring us the goal was to take things as far as possible and leave no stone unturned getting there.

Turning over stones would have meant bringing in law enforcement to undertake a proper criminal investigation once sufficient evidence was found warranting such action. But that stone was left stationary.

There wasn’t even any mention of such legal action being a possible course of action, nor recommendations to government in the final report. It’s very disturbing that a Legislative Committee would apparently have no interest in the pursuit of justice by advancing matters through the legal processes to have matters settled properly before a Judge or jury.

When Sidney MacEwan [District 7 Morell-Donagh and government House Leader; also representing the PC Government with MLA Cory Deagle, District 3 Montague-Kilmuir and government whip on the committee] told the media back in November, 2017: “We’re [PC Caucus] not going to stop,” he was, of course, an MLA in the Official Opposition. What he really should have said was: “We’re not going to stop…until we become government. Then we’re going to “full-stop” and maybe even put things in reverse.”  That would have been more accurate.

The Records Committee afforded Sidney MacEwan  [Government] and Peter Bevan-Baker [Official Opposition] a perfect opportunity to show true collaboration and do what was promised in the House…to  “keep going” and not stop until a resolution of this serious matter was reached.  Yet, when that opportunity afforded itself, a decision was clearly and collectively made to stop, however, which is sadly evident by (1) the joint failure to pursue the matter any further, and (2) misrepresentation and cover-up of what the Committee actually learned, followed by (3) blanket silence, with all parties now quietly covering-up the cover up of the cover-up.

There remains, however, an avenue for further action, which I’ve taken and will explain in my conclusion. That course of action was actually outlined in detail for the Committee’s benefit, by ITSS officials, but was not acted upon. The Committee chose to shelve the “deleted egaming records” book as now being concluded. It was given an entirely false conclusion, however, one could paraphrase as follows: “We tried hard to get to the bottom of things, but unfortunately failed.  We are not the first to have tried hard and failed, but I think it’s now time for us all to say that we should be the last, and move on.”  

I’ve picked up where the Committee left off  as I continue my now  2 1/2 year-long campaign to get copies of Brad Mix’s egaming and financial transaction platform project records. I provide the details of what is likely my last card to play in  the final section of this article, a strategy involving 8 FOI requests designed to get the Brad Mix records that were segregated in a separate set of archived emails for a five-year period that remains intact – however a number of accounts have yet-to-be disclosed numbers of missing emails in “gaps”.

P. 6  This Article is about the COVER-UP of Deleted Records and MLA Integrity

My main focus with this article is on the lack of will within our government and legislative Assembly to deal with corruption in government, and with that in mind, to reveal in particular how members of the Special Committee on Government Records:

1. Failed to act on information about Brad Mix being responsible for his intentionally-deleted 2 years of records; and,
2. Failed to follow up on the major revelation of additional missing email records in a number of additional government employee email archives, or even make the details of that revelation public, or provide the names of the government employees and/or politicians they discovered had missing records.

Credible information that should have resulted in decisive action by the Committee was received from two Senior Information Technology Shared Services officials appearing before the Committee on October 14, 2020, . There was no action, no recommendations for action, and a cover-up and “forgetting” of what was revealed.

Now that Motion 2 has passed, the question is whether the government will honour it and halt plans to launch a new e-gambling platform until at least such time as the provincial consultations on gambling are held, as called for in the Motion.

This largely secret digital platform initiative became known from an Executive Council Order that was passed on December 23, 2020, authorizing the PEI Lotteries Commission to build a PEI gambling site.  That initiative is in anticipation of Federal legislation that will soon become law giving provinces the power to regulate online gambling and issue licenses to companies to offer online gambling. The law will also open Canada up to global gaming giants like DraftKings (based in the US), legal and regulated companies currently generating $40 Billion revenue annually.

The single-event sports betting world is apparently the “crack cocaine” of online gambling just like the VLTs in the material world.  No one knew anything about the PC Government’s decision to launch a PEI gambling enterprise, and no one – not even addiction services – were apparently consulted. Common sense would say it is foolish for government to proceed based solely on the seriousness of the issue of gambling addiction and the fact that no consultations have been held. As well, the PC government is currently in the process of updating its gaming strategy which should happen before any new schemes are pursued.

But here’s the thing: that federal Bill is going to become law very soon – within weeks likely – and there is going to be a mad scramble for existing and new (TorStar is getting into the business) gaming companies vying for new clients with massive marketing campaigns and incentives. It’s all about getting that enormous pool of potential players to press the “Open an Account”  button.  Province-wide consultations will likely signal the end of the Insider Club’s pipe dream of getting their paws on revenue from a made-in-PEI online casino.

Having said that, it is already clear that there are people behind this initiative who have been planning for this opportunity for a very long time, and will not want to put it on pause for one minute to hold public consultations. There will be ZERO interest in the backroom to sit back watching new company after company entering the newly-opened Canadian online gambling market gobble up more and more of the pool of potential Canadian clients opening accounts on their gambling sites.

If consultations are given the go, I suspect that by the time “launch date” comes around, gambling Canadians will have already found a home with the much more professional gaming sites vying for their attention and decision to sign up.  The narrative being presented is that PEI is only providing a safe gambling alternative for Islanders, but that’s not what’s going on at all, which I will discuss in my next article.

P. 7   Preparing the  Room for the “Defunct” Record Committee Autopsy

This article presents the anatomy of not just an initial  cover-up of deleted records [that remained secret for a very long time], but a more clinical autopsy of the second more brash cover-up of the initial cover-up by the Special Committee on Government Records.  That’s where  the initial cover-up was finally brought into the light of day and given some focus and attention, then promptly sent back into the night, with a decision to make no mention of the important information that the members of the Committee had obtained from ITSS, deciding to take no further action (nor make any  recommendations to Government) to address the most significant issues, all of which will be explained below.

This should not be the last word on the matter, and it won’t be. The final section of this article outlines actions that I have taken that pick up where the Special Committee left off with a further attempt to obtain Brad Mix records and learning what the extent of the missing records in each of the additional government employees, all of which I now have enough information to request in FOIPPs, which I’ve done, thanks to the testimony of two exemplary public servants from ITSS, John Brennan and Ed Malone.

This post-mortem on the Special Committee on Government Records amounts to an autopsy on a now defunct legislative body. It cuts through the outer layers to the barebones facts and methodically details the process:

1. The initial cover-up [Part 1];

2. The “little reveal” of that cover-up [Part2];

3. The “big reveal” of that cover-up [Part 3]; 

4. The cover-up of the cover-up [Part 4];  

5. New FOI requests to “reconstruct” Brad Mix’s Records [Part 5]

6. The “Really Big” Reveal that’s about to Happen [Summary].

The first cover-up happened in the dark, entirely in secret.  I first discovered that cover-up in July, 2019, in confidential correspondence that I had received from the former Information Commissioner, Karen Rose, who was undertaking a review of my Brad Mix FOI request at the time. It was a full year later before the Commissioner’s Order containing this information captured the attention of the media and MLAs.

The second cover-up takes on a more disturbing significance in that it happened in broad daylight, but was somehow still managed to be kept under the radar of public awareness.  The members of the Committee’s words are all recorded verbatim in  written transcripts. They’re captured in videos from 12 meetings [ two were “in camera” meetings for which no transcripts exist] now archived to  collect digital dust, if there is such a thing.

P. 8  The Committee’s Very Focussed Mandate, and Not So Focussed Outcome

A good way to begin the journey retracing this recent cover-up of a cover-up is to listen to Hon. Peter Bevan-Baker speaking to Motion 86.  His evident passion is likely what convinced the Liberal MLAs to support Motion 86, and together the Greens and Liberals were able to pass the Motion, despite an  vigorous and ridiculous attempt by the PC government to vote down the Motion, with all PC MLAs voting against it, however, falling short, not having a majority at the time.

Motion 86 gave the Special Standing Committee a very precise mandate that was designed by Bevan-Baker, as is made clear in this clip, so he knew what he was telling and selling to the public when he spoke. That mandate was primarily to investigate the matter of Brad Mix’s records (like no Committee has ever investigated any issue before) to finally answer that infamous question: “who deleted the missing emails?” 

Now contrast those words with Bevan-Baker’s comments 6 months later when the Special Committee on Records tabled its Final Report in the Legislative Assembly on November 27, 2020. 

Bevan-Baker claimed that the Committee’s failure wasn’t from a lack of trying, but it was. It was entirely from a lack of trying. Of that you will be convinced if you read to the end and watch all the video clips.

Knowing that I had a ton of information to contribute – as did Paul Maines – as the two applicants in the Brad Mix FOIs leading to the Order, it certainly isn’t easy to hear Bevan-Baker say that all the relevant witnesses were consulted, when neither Maines nor I were ever contacted by the Committee.

The Committee had been provided with everything it needed to take the next logical steps in the investigation. Despite Bevan-Baker’s strong initial promise that he and the committee were willing to go “wherever the investigation leads us,”  he and his fellow Committee members decided to go nowhere.

In the end, they did absolutely nothing, not even bothering to make any recommendations to government in the final report for follow-up on what had discovered about (1) Brad Mix being responsible for the intentional deletion of 2 years of his emails; and (2) and new information about  missing records in a number of other email accounts of government officials who (coincidentally) were involved in the egaming affair, a number being named Defendants in the CMT lawsuit.

Bevan-Baker neglected to mention anything at all about the two most important discoveries that the Committee had made from the insightful testimony of two ITSS Senior Officials:  (1) that Brad Mix was the person responsible for the deletion of his own 2 years of email records; and (2) there were unspecified “gaps” in other email archives belonging to other government officials and senior bureaucrats.  He went so far as to state that the Committee had been unsuccessful in its efforts to find out who deleted the emails. That is simply not true. 

P.9   This Article’s Main Target Audience is PC MLAs

I am hoping PC MLAs will read and reflect on where they fit into this picture showing how a very important matter quietly was given a pass and swept under the rug.  I know it’s sometimes hard to see the forest for the trees, so I’ve taken some aerial’s of the forest which reveals the unethical nature of what happened hoping at least some MLAs will have something of an “illumination of conscience.”

If there is not a willingness to push to ensure that government employees or elected officials who break the law and deceive Islanders who they are duty bound to serve, we shouldn’t be too surprised when we continue to get more and more of the same. Nothing changes, despite all the promises of progress with data and record management systems, because the problem isn’t one of record management, but malfeasance and record “mismanagement”.

That’s because the problem isn’t with technology, the problem is turning a blind eye to misfeasance in Government which allows it to thrive and enrich a select group of people getting all kinds of preferential information, investment opportunities, ideas for new business schemes, approvals of land purchases at Executive Council, easy access to low-interest loans, access to influence changes in laws and regulations…and anything else you can think of that those holding the puppet strings on our politicians might need to keep running PEI.

Prior to being named Deputy Minister of Finance in May 2019, Dan Campbell  – a nephew to Judge Gordon Campbell – served as the Secretary to Treasury Board for a period of five years beginning in 2014 when he joined the Province from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA). Dan had previously worked with the Province on a secondment basis as a senior policy advisor on fiscal and economic relations within Executive Council Office before assuming the role of Director, Strategic Initiatives within the Department of Innovation and Advanced Learning

The Deputy Minister responsible for not instructing ITSS to reconstruct Brad Mix’s records and kept knowledge of that secret was Deputy Minister of EGTC in 2015 [Dan Campbell]. He was appointed Deputy-Minister of Finance by Premier King in May, 2019 immediately after the election.

As Deputy Minister of Finance, Dan Campbell is now responsible for the records within Hon. Darlene Compton’s Department of Finance.

Once again, in a recent FOI response dated AFTER both the Commissioner’s Order No. FI-20-007 and the Final Report of the Special Committee, Mr. Campbell withheld that information from the applicant, in breach of the FOIPP Act.  The matter is currently under review with the Information Commissioner; however, with no penalties or consequences  on the table, why would Dan Campbell bother to change the practice even when he knows the Commissioner will likely publish an Order in maybe a year saying that he shouldn’t have done that (again) and to immediately return my $5 fee.

Weighing “releasing damaging information about deleted records” in a risk/benefit analysis against “withholding information about deleted records and scoring big on an insider’s scheme” is a no-brainer when moral considerations are not on the table and the only “risk” factor you need to consider if you’re outed and found guilty is to return a $5 application fee. Again, no brainer.

Although long, what follows should provide any MLA open to the truth something of an “illumination of conscience”.  It matters where you stand. It matters that you don’t speak up against corruption.  Remaining silent is to allow the rot to spread within government which undermines its legitimacy and the basis for the trust Islanders placed in MLAs when they checked the box beside their names. It’s time to stand up for Islanders and the truth.

PART 1

“THE  COVER-UP”

***************

In early 2015, three people,  (1) Jonathan Coady, Q.C., a Defence Attorney with Stewart McKelvey law firm representing the PEI Government in the CMT lawsuit; (2) Dan Campbell, Deputy Minister of the Department of Innovation and Advanced Learning at the time [now EGTC] ; and (3) Marie Kemp, Supervisor of Risk Management and Insurance within the PEI government, together had knowledge of important egaming and financial hub project documents that were missing but apparently chose…

(1) to withhold information from the PEI Supreme Court concerning records that were materially-relevant, but had been deliberately destroyed, including records from 2 years of  emails belonging to Brad Mix and “gaps” with missing records in a number of other Defendant’s email archives, and;

(2) not to “reconstruct” Brad Mix’s email archive by instructing Information Technology Shared Services (ITSS) to retrieve copies of Brad Mix emails from the inboxes of a  number of other government employees, notwithstanding Jonathan Coady’s and Maria Kemp’s legal duty to disclose information about all materially-relevant documents that were once in the possession of government, including those no longer in the possession of government, as required under the PEI Rules of Civil Procedure, notwithstanding SWEARING under oath to have done so.

1.1   The Cover-up of Information About Missing Records Continues

Dan Campbell has continued to cover-up knowledge of missing government records in his current capacity as the Deputy Minister of Finance.  Mr. Campbell is responsible for the Department of Finance’s records, and the person communicating with FOI applicants, and signing off on FOI requests, as well as correspondence with the Information Commissioner with reviews of FOIs with the Department of Finance.

At no time did Mr. Campbell – or any other Deputy Minister within the PEI Government – disclose that records were missing for the time period of my search requests, as they were required to do by law, specifically, section 8.1 of the FOIPP Act. 

The legal obligation to disclose information about missing records to applicants at the very outset of a FOI request was strongly reiterated recently by the former Information Commissioner, Karen Rose.  In her Brad Mix Order issued last summer, she stated repeatedly that the disclosure of information about missing records by Departments should be the FIRST thing shared with applicants.

That Mr. Campbell and Ms. Erin McGrath-Gaudet, deputy minister of Economic Growth, Tourism and Culture (EGTC) were withholding important information from me (clearly to keep the missing records in numerous government employee emails archives covered up) is something I only became aware of after I obtained a copy of the letter that Cindy Harris, Secretary to Treasury Board, had provided to the Special Committee on Records containing the names of the individuals with emails missing from their archives.  I had submitted FOIs for two of them – Wes Sheridan and Cheryl Paynter –  for records within the same time periods as the ITSS archive and was never told about any missing records.

The first FOI was a submission to the Department of Finance in October, 2018. As luck would have it (or not) Dan Campbell had moved from being the Deputy Minister of EGTC and was now Secretary to Treasury Board.  Once again it was Dan Campbell signing the final response letter on my FOI saying “no records found”.

Notice in the last paragraph listing what the public body is obligated to disclose regarding the “search” parameters and what is supposed to be an explanation why records were not found when they should have been,  there is no mention of any missing records or “gaps” in Wesley Sheridan’s emails, again, something that Mr. Campbell was legally obligated to disclose to me as per Section 8.1 of the FOIPP Act:

The Commissioner has asked Mr. Campbell to explain his reasons for failing to inform the applicant about missing records on another more recent FOI request that I’ll not say more about here now, and also to provide an explanation as to why the records are missing. That review remains active, but will not likely produce an Order until  next Fall.

1.2  The PEI Rules of Civil Procedure on “Document Disclosure and Production”  

Section 30.02 (1) [Disclosure], and (30.02 (2) [Production for Inspection] of the Rules of Civil Procedure remove all ambiguity and confusion from what is entailed with  the scope of document discovery that is required in civil procedures such as the CMT lawsuit.  The Rule repeatedly notes that a record is one “….that IS or HAS BEEN in the possession, control or power of a party…”  Missing or deleted records need to be formally noted in disclosure documents as per the Rules:

When you consider the main facts it would appear the legal ramifications of this initial cover-up  for several new defendants discussed further on the article [the details of which  having only very recently been disclosed by ITSS personnel  appearing before the Standing Committee] would be enormous, and actions should have been taken already, unless misleading the court and breaking the rules is acceptable in our justice system and government these days.

There is much yet to be learned about those infamous “gaps” [which the official line from government is that “gaps” doesn’t necessarily mean missing records; however, Ed Malone said he had informed his superiors that it would be “difficult” to reconstruct Brad Mix’s emails from copies in the inboxes of other employees because of the MISSING RECORDS in the gaps.  More of an attempt to cover-up and forget by government rather than be open, honest and transparent with the facts.

Interrelated facts and circumstances surrounding this unique period of time when Mix first claimed to have discovered his records were missing (March, 2015) can not be overstated – context goes to intent, and as we learned from the senior ITSS officials, his 2 years of emails overlapping the gaming period were deleted intentionally.

A great deal transpired in the months leading up to that decision Brad Mix made in March, 2015 to contact ITSS about his missing records. Those successive events form the context within which Mix’s decision – along with the decision by those involved to do nothing, not disclose information to the Court 3 years later in its first Affidavit of Documents, not disclose information about missing records in FOI requests, and otherwise keep knowledge of missing and deleted records hidden and secret.

1.3  Related Events During 8 Key Months [October, 2014 – May, 2015] 

A number of things were happening with the egaming scandal simultaneously, and in an interconnected way that forms the framework for establishing the context to properly situate the deliberate destruction of egaming and financial transaction platform project emails. A timeline helps to grasp what may have contributed to the destruction of records:

October 24, 2014 – Former RCMP officer and Private Investigator, Bruce MacDonald, sends a letter to Wes Sheridan, then Minister of Finance under Robert Ghiz, along with an executive summary of his completed Investigative Report (over 2,000 pages with the attachments) which revealed that Minister Sheridan…

“…was in possession of sufficient knowledge to inform either Mr. Hasmi, Mr. Curran or Mr. Dowling of the legitimate business dealings of CMT and their representatives. Such information could and should have prevented the needless investigation by the PEI Securities Commission.”

November 13, 2014 – Robert Ghiz  announces his resignation as Premier of PEI.

November 14, 2014 – Bruce MacDonald releases his Investigative Report to the media and general public, exonerating CMT and refuting claims showing there was no factual basis for the pernicious rumour that Paul Maines had bilked an old woman dying of cancer out of her life’s savings.

February 21, 2015 – Wade MacLauchlan is appointed Leader of the Liberal Party and Premier of Prince Edward Island. Robert Ghiz officially resigns.

February 24, 2015 – Wade MacLauchlan removes Wes Sheridan as Cabinet Minister, and Sheridan resigns as an MLA the same day.

February 27, 2015 – The Globe and Mail publishes the results of its extensive investigation into the e-gaming scandal in PEI: “Small island, big bet: How PEI lost its online gambling gamble.”

March 4, 2015 – Premier MacLauchlan sends the controversial e-gaming file to the Auditor General for review providing no further comment but “it’s before the AG”.

March 17, 2015 – Brad Mix filed an incident report with ITSS because he discovered time periods of missing emails from his archive.

Early March 2015 –  PC Leader Rob Lantz sends a letter to Premier MacLauchlan demanding that he release all “e-gaming records.” He receives no response.

April 4, 2015 Counsel for the Defendants, Jonathan Coady, filed a defence and made the following comments to the Globe and Mail: “There is no legal merit to the claim and the defence is clear, detailed and provable.”

April 6, 2015 – Premier MacLauchlan launches an election campaign. The e-gaming scandal, concerns about government corruption, and a lack of openness, transparency, and accountability are prominent issues in the election campaign.

April 9, 2015 – CMT files a $25-Million lawsuit against government officials, including Chris LeClair, Robert Ghiz’s Chief of Staff. Jonathan Coady, legal counsel for the PEI government, files the government’s “Statement of Defense” just hours later, denying virtually all allegations.

April 13, 2015 – PC Leader Rob Lantz goes public about the letter he sent to Premier Wade MacLauchlan more than a month earlier demanding that he now release all “e-gaming records,” including thousands of e-gaming documents that had been “sealed” by the PEI Securities Commission;

April 13, 2015: Brad Mix sends an email seeking assistance to retrieve emails sent to Wes Sheridan, noting that ITSS had confirmed that he had missing emails in his email archive from June 12, 2010 to April 11, 2012, where the sent items no longer existed and were not retrievable. He stated: “I have checked a couple of times with ITSS and unfortunately they have not been able to help me. Is there any way to access emails I sent during the time period? Let me know when you can. Thanks, Brad.” [Note: ITSS needed the authorization of then Deputy Minister of EGTC at the time [Dan Campbell] who had legal control of Brad Mix’s records before ITSS could obtain them for Mix. That authorization was not granted and no request was made to ITSS to collect Mix’s records from the email archives of other employees.

May 4, 2015 – Provincial Election sees Wade MacLauchlan elected Premier with a Majority Liberal Government.

May 24, 2015 – Wade MacLauchlan appointed Brian Douglas (who was Deputy Minister of Agriculture at the time) as the Clerk of Executive Council;

May 29, 2015 – Brian Douglas signs an Employee Removal Form instructing ITSS to delete all Robert Ghiz’s files in his Network Drives and emails in his GroupWise email account.

1.4  The Overlapping Time period with “Non-disclosed” and “Deleted” Records

I believe that the events happening during that important Fall, 2014 to Spring, 2015 time period listed above need to be viewed within the context of the Investigative Report by Bruce MacDonald for CMT to be properly understood. Their report came with an awareness that CMT was not likely going away, and sure enough, the PEI government received formal notification in December, 2014 that legal action against the PEI Government and various government agents would be filed in the PEI Supreme Court when the notification period had expired.

It appears that RB Mac report served as the catalyst for a series of events happening over the span of the following 8 months. Behind many of those events was (in hindsight of course, having now obtained new information in FOI requests) a major disconnect between what the documents said, and what the government was saying.

Documents that would need to be (1) disclosed in the lawsuit, and (2) provided as responsive records in FOI requests were not disclosed in court, nor through the FOIPP process. The issue of “motive” and the impossible coincidence that so many of the Defendants experienced so many problems with missing records, like an infected cluster in an otherwise healthy hive of roughly 10,000 employees.

Although the time period that Ed Malone used to segregate the email archives of approximately 15 people into a separate environment was from January 1, 2010 to August 31, 2015, when he was asked specifically about “gaps” he identified the years being 2011 and 2012: the same period of time as egaming, and overlapping with the time period of Brad Mixes deleted records.

1.5  The PEI Government’s [First] Fraudulent Affidavit of Documents

Marie Kemp, Supervisor, Risk Management

I submitted the FOIPP request for Brad Mix records on October 28, 2018.  Marie M. Kemp – the Insurance Officer in Risk Management and Insurance for the Government of Prince Edward Island – signed  an Affidavit of Documents that she swore was accurate and complete one week later on November 5, 2018, commissioned and certified by Jonathon Coady, where she affirmed the following: 

“I, Marie M. Kemp, CIP, of Charlottetown, in the Province of Prince Edward Island MAKE OATH AND SAY … I have concluded a diligent search of the records of the Government and the Defendants, and I made appropriate enquiries of others to inform myself in order to make this affidavit …”

“I have listed in Schedule “C” those documents that were formerly in the possession, control or power of the Government and the Defendants, but are no longer in the possession, control or power of the Government. I have also stated in Schedule “C” when and how the Government and the Defendants lost possession or control of or power over them and their present location …”

PART 2: THE “LITTLE” REVEAL

[5 Brad Mix FOIs & Commissioner Rose’s Review]

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Before the big reveal [Part 3] there was a “little reveal” with  Mix’s deleted records. I say little not because the reveal was of little significance; in fact, it was the very same reveal that became widely known when Commissioner Rose published her Order FI-20-007 on June 9, 2020 a year later.  I had published articles about Brad Mix’s records having been confirmed to have been deliberately deleted, and it was mentioned in the media as well I believe, but it wasn’t taken up by anyone within government nor taken seriously by the opposition parties, so it didn’t gain any traction until the following June, 2020 when the Commissioner’s Order was released and given a much greater public profile.

2.1  Some Background If You’re Interested – Otherwise, Scroll

I’m not going to plough through the same ground by restating all the details on how (1)  I and Paul Maines independently filed FOI requests for Brad Mix records, then also independently sought reviews with the Information Commission, Karen Rose, when no records were produced; (2) combined 5 separate reviews [4 from Maines joined to the initial one from me] into one investigation and review, which ultimately (3) resulted in  an Order, which (4) gave rise to Motion 86 and (5) the establishment of the Special Committee on Records with a mandate that included reporting back to the Legislative Assembly within 6 months with recommendations.

If you are interested in knowing more about the systematic cover-up stretching back to the beginning of the Brad Mix affair (for me at least) with both the former (Liberal) Deputy Minister of the Department of Economic Growth, Tourism and Culture [David Keedwell] and the current (PC) Deputy Minister of EGTC, Erin McGrath-Gaudet you can read articles that I’ve previously published:

l had learned about Mix’s 2 years of deleted records from correspondence that Deputy Minister McGrath-Gaudet had submitted to Commissioner Rose on my Brad Mix review, which was copied to me, and for which I then had an opportunity to respond to, which I did:

 “Ms McGrath-Gaudet confirmed to the Committee that staff knew that there were gaps in Mr. Mix emails as early as February 2019, yet the Deputy Minister wrote back to the Commissioner on May 29, 2020: “As discussed earlier in this response, the Public Body has not been able to identify a particular reason for the results of the initial search.”

That claim was not true. The particular reason for the results of the initial search producing no records had been identified at least 3 months earlier: there were no records.

When McGrath was asked by a member of the Special Committee on Records why she had withheld information from the two applicants (me and Paul Maines) she said she was just relying on standard response letters that didn’t happen to contain a short paragraph pointing out that all the records had been destroyed, which would nullify everything else said in the letter about “business as usual” with the search for records on a go-forward basis. As reported by CBC reporter Kerry Campbell:

“McGrath-Gaudet said at the time she had just been appointed deputy minister, and was looking at what the usual standard responses were to applicants.  She said response forms are drafted by the province’s Access and Privacy Services Office and “it hadn’t occurred to me in that particular time that we should amend the form letter to disclose that.” She said responses to the information requests were already late, so “in the interest of meeting the timelines,” McGrath-Gaudet signed off on the department’s responses.  “I don’t have an excuse or an explanation as to why I failed in the first place on this,” McGrath-Gaudet told the committee.

Ms. McGrath-Gaudet’s reliance on the letter being a standard response that just hadn’t gotten updated since she was new to the job fails to address the issue – everything that was in the letter about things proceeding normally was a lie.  There was a very wilful and strategic effort over a long period of time to keep me and Paul Maines (and for a while the Information Commissioner) in the dark, and that point was certainly not missed by the Commissioner.  She comments throughout her Order on the “bend-over-backwards” efforts evident with the PEI Government to mislead and deceive me and Maines , including, for example, in paragraph 27:Ms. McGrath-Gaudet told Commissioner Rose in May 2019 that she wasn’t able to identify a particular reason for the search not producing any records, but knew the reason in February, 2019:

Everyone involved in multiple FOIPP requests for Brad Mix records over the years since early 2015 must surely have known that the records were missing, yet they conspired together to make sure that remained unknown to the public.

McGrath-Gaudet did a really terrible job trying to explain herself before the Committee; however, it appeared to me that the Committee Members had either not done enough homework to recognize all the misleading and patently false statements she made, or knew and didn’t want to challenge her or call out her lies during a live session being officially recorded for the record.  I’d write an article on McGrath-Gaudet’s appearance contrasting what she said with the truth if not for the fact that she’ll be telling her story under oath at a hearing I believe is now scheduled for May in the PEI Supreme Court.

The lawyer in the picture on the right will be asking her the questions.

2.2  The PEI Government’s [Second] Fraudulent Affidavit of Documents

Despite the “little reveal” that happened in early July, 2019 confirming that 2 years of  Brad Mix’s records had been deleted, the same senior government bureaucrats [Dan Campbell and Marie Kemp], and the same outside legal counsel [Jonathan Coady] continued to keep information about Brad Mix’s deleted records as well as  “gaps” and missing records in other government email archives for time periods overlapping with the egaming period when Mix’s records were deleted completely hidden from the Court.

A story that was to be Episode #24 in my 25-part series “Truth and No Consequences: The Justice Campbell Egaming Quiz Show,” that has yet to be written will be titled “Who Ordered the Code Red.”  It is all about the mysterious second or “Supplementary” Affidavit of Documents containing just 4 new documents that Jonathan Coady and Marie Kemp served to CMT lawyer, John MacDonald, just days before Judge Gordon Campbell issued his ruling dismissing entirely CMT’s lawsuit.

Coady and Kemp filed that Supplementary Affidavit AFTER Judge Campbell ruled he would not accept any new documents, and those incredibly important documents were never considered by Judge Campbell in his ruling.

Would they have made a difference? I believe so, but I’ll let you decide for yourself when I finally get around to finishing that series [I have been deliberately waiting for new information and events to unfold before writing those two “concluding” episodes in the series].

Despite the government [Department of EGTC] finally admitting that 2 years of Brad Mix’s records had  been deleted in July, 2019 in correspondence from Deputy Minister Erin McGrath-Gaudet, just a few months later, on September 19, 2019, less than a week before Judge Campbell’s ruling was issued, Marie Kemp swore yet again that all records that were “formerly in the possession, control or power….”  had been disclosed.  Yet, once again, there is neither any mention of Brad Mix’s 2 years of deleted records, despite being a key defendant in the legal action heading up the FMT project active during the period of time his records were deleted:

It is difficult to interpret the facts concerning the breach of the Rules of Civil Procedure by the PEI Government in any other way than that it was a sustained and intentional effort to keep secret critically-important, materially relevant documents and withhold those records from both the Plaintiff and PEI Supreme Court so as to deliberately frustrate the justice system. There have yet to be any legal consequences for either Jonathan Coady or Marie Kemp for this serious offence, nor has it ever been covered by the media.

Jonathan Coady was asked to answer to the very serious accusation by Chief Justice of the Appeal Court, Justice David Jenkins, during the Zoom Appeal Hearing, but decided to ask for a recess rather than answer. After returning, Justice Jenkins again prompted him to respond to the accusation of a breach of the rules of civil procedure and the failure to disclose, however, Coady did not answer and quickly launched down a different path. Justice Jenkins did not bring it up again, nor was it dealt with in the Courts written decision.

When Brad Mix was specifically asked whether he had disclosed all information about his records and relevant documents, Coady jumped in and said:

“Our view is that we provided all relevant disclosure under Rule 30.” 

PART 3: THE “BIG” REVEAL

***************

The big reveal happened when two highly competent senior bureaucrats with the Information Technology Shared Services Division (ITSS) [John Brennan and Ed Malone] appeared before the Special Committee on Records on October 14, 2020.  They provided the Committee with all the information it needed  to “reconstruct” a significant portion of the 2-years of Brad Mix emails, disclosed that it was only Brad Mix who could be held responsible for the intentional deletion of 2-years of his records, and most shockingly, that there were other key government employees with missing records in their email archives.

Malone and Brennan did more than simply answer questions. They took it upon themselves to volunteer additional information how it was possible to retrieve Brad Mix records from those other accounts.  Without being asked, when discussing “reconstructing” Mix’s records, that’s when Malone also took the opportunity to inform the Committee about the missing records in other government employees and/or Ministers archives:

Michele Beaton [Chair]: Thank you for that. One thing that we came across – there was a question from this committee, I believe, to you, John, or when you guys were in, if there was ever a request to reconstruct the emails that were missing. My understanding is that there was identified emails that were missing and that those belong to Brad Mix – correct?

Ed Malone: Yeah.

Beaton: At any point in time, were you requested to retrace – so foreseeably, it
might have been deleted out of that mailbox, but were you ever asked to go back to see if it was still in a recipient’s email?

Ed Malone: Yes, I was. I was requested from Mr. Mix through an email to ask to
perform that. My steps I took – because the email that he was requesting was not his, I identified the question to risk management and legal and I sought a decision from that. I referred Mr. Mix to legal and risk at that time. However, part of the work that was done – Mr. Mix was identifying another person that, I believe, the information was already provided. They asked the question: “Would we be able to do that, in terms of reconstruct?” My explanation at the time – it would be very difficult because the previous email or recipients also had missing email at the time.

The Committee were not surprisingly somewhat taken aback by that sudden, startling revelation,. and asked a number of important questions which I’m going to break up into very short video clips, so their significance doesn’t get missed. There were 14 meetings of the Committee over the summer and fall of 2020, but there were really only 14 minutes of meat among all the potatoes.

Bevan-Baker on the “mechanics” of reconstructing Mix’s records

A really good question Bevan-Baker asked was, to paraphrase, “Why did ITSS not do what Mix had asked, e.g., go to the inboxes of a list of other employees to retrieve copies of what Mix had emailed to them?”

Was it because there are thousands of government employees and the job was technically too massive? No, it wasn’t that.

Malone clarified for Bevan-Baker’s benefit that the task would involve a “targeted” and limited list of names who were actually working with Brad Mix during the period of time in question, which would make the task relatively straightforward:

So it was then learned that such a targeted list had indeed been sent to ITSS by Deputy Minister Dan Campbell. It started with Brad Mix’s request, but was expanded to 15 other people involved in egaming, as a result of a request for documents by the Auditor General, Jane MacAdam.

Ms. MacAdam did not report anything about there being any “gaps” and missing government egaming records in other accounts, which she would presumably have been made aware of at the time. She did, however, indicate that there were likely other instances of missing egaming records, in fact,  in a number of different places in her report:

3.1  ITSS created an email “environment” – It didn’t conduct a search

Malone also clarified for the Committee that ITSS was not asked to conduct any searches of the email archives for those 15 candidates (some MLA, some senior bureaucrats). Nor was he asked –  or given authorization – to pull the Brad Mix emails out of those accounts as Mix had originally went to him to do.  He (and ITSS) were only asked to build an architecture to hold all of the emails from all of the names of the employees on the list, all captured for the same specified time period [2010 – 2015], then ITSS made that digital “environment” available to the Deputy Minister [Dan Campbell and others], and presumably the APSO worker in the Departments:

Did anyone from within the Department subsequently ask ITSS to do a search to retrieve whatever Brad Mix emails might still exist in other email accounts?  Was anyone asked to search those archives for Brad Mix emails in response to FOIPP requests? No. More of the cover-up.

Final response letters on  several Access Requests seeking Brad Mix records (for the relevant time period as the environment created by Malone) offered detailed information on the scope of the search undertaken in the course of the review by the Commissioner, e.g., who did the search, where records were sought, etc..  The inboxes of other employees are NEVER searched, notwithstanding what Deputy Minister McGrath-Gaudet told the members of the Special Committee:

That was a complete fabrication. Never once has that happened in all the FOIs I’ve submitted.

McGrath-Gaudet’s false claims made to the records committee

McGrath-Gaudet appeared before the Committee on November 6, 2020, almost a month after Brennan and Malone [October 14, 2020]. Her performance suggests she never reviewed the transcript of the ITSS officials testimony or watched the archived video.

Here’s what McGrath-Gaudet said about her less-than-helpful interaction with ITSS, and what they told her about reconstructing emails from Brad Mix (that Paul Maines and I had both asked Ms. McGrath-Gaudet to provide to the Commissioner, in questions we had submitted to the Commissioner for her to ask):

“I certainly had a number of conversations with ITSS to understand what steps had been taken to date to try to recover the records, what we knew about why we couldn’t access them, and if there were any additional steps that we could take to retrieve or rebuild that archive. I will say they were wonderful. They did walk me through some of the steps that had been taken to date. Unfortunately, they had told us at that point there was no other step that we could take easily that would recover those records, as I believe has been shared in the past.”

Again, that was not true. The only reason why ITSS had not reconstructed the Brad Mix archive back in 2015 is because Dan Campbell [who was in the position McGrath-Gaudet is in today], and the DMs from several other Departments with authority over government records within their departments, never asked ITSS to undertake this task:

This is key information that I want to now present from the official transcript regarding (1) what was possible to do and (2) the process that needed to be followed in order to do it:

John Brennan: (Indistinct) current environment – the environment that Ed
created back there still exists and is under the control of ITSS. The request would be – you would have to identify the individuals whose email accounts you’d want us to look at or grant access to someone to look at. And then, the current deputy of those departments who own the records would have to sign off and authorize that search for those individuals to do so. It could be – not knowing the individuals, but it could be one department or four departments, so you’d need four individual deputy ministers to authorize the search because the deputy holds the ownership of the records. From a process perspective, the request would have to come in, the request would have to be reviewed, and then the individual deputy ministers would have to authorize the search because of where those individuals fall in the departments.

Mr. MacEwen: Okay, thank you. So, that did not happen. On April 27th, 2015 – around that timeframe – the deputy minister at the time did not request that.

Ed Malone: No.

Mr. MacEwen: So, at that time, you said there was a document that would have been passed on to you that kind of outlined what they were looking for and I think you had said the scope had narrowed so you could be more specific. Where would that document be? Would the AG have that? Has that been published?

Ed Malone: The AG would have that. That’s part of the documents that I provided to the executive. I still have a copy of that also – an actual paper copy.

Mr. MacEwen: We would love to see that….I don’t know if that’s been made public or not, but it would be interesting to see what was requested at that time and then even how that scope was narrowed. I know, as a committee, I think – already guessing that we’ll be looking at going down that path to find out that nth degree – to make sure that we follow that path down to see what can possibly be done. I don’t know if a forensic audit of that situation would find that or not, but I think we’re comfortable enough to maybe send that request into government to get whoever needs to sign off to make that happen as well. (October 14, 2020, p. 159).”

No one in government was ever going to sign off on making anything happen for one simple reason:  The real cover-up and corruption which the Special” Committee on Records is covering-up is the massive lie which the former MacLauchlan government  – and now King Government – have presented to the PEI Supreme Court in their denial of a business relationship with Capital Market Technologies during – coincidentally – the same 2-year period records for numerous Defendants mysteriously went missing.

Thanks to the honesty and forthrightness of Ed Malone, the committee were informed that other government employees ALSO had gaps in their email archives.

Malone clarified that the “request by Mr. Mix via email ” involved the identification of “other candidates.” Bingo!  Who are those “candidates”? How many candidates were there?

Notice that Malone states that when he was asked if he could “reconstruct” all the emails in the inboxes of those other government officials, he said: “It would be very difficult BECAUSE the previous email or recipients also had missing email at the time.“

Listen to the clip again and notice that Malone never used the word “gap” – only “missing emails” and it sounds like there was a substantial absence of records, otherwise he would not have said it would be very difficult to reconstruct the records from other candidates’ inboxes.

This was clearly a “big reveal” and MLA Sidney MacEwan wanted to know more. One wonders with the way things turned out whether he wanted to know as much as Ed Malone was willing to volunteer, but I was keenly interested:

It was Malone’s mention of an email that was sent from the DM (Dan Campbell) to the person  he reported to at the time, the ITSS, Chief Operating Officer  for ITSS. He went on to say that a document was provided to him with all the details of what he was to do with the email archives by way of segregating and locating them together in one environment:       .

MacEwan said he and the Committee would love to see that, however, no action was taken to obtain a copy of that letter, despite Malone indicating that he still had a personal (paper) copy of the document himself.  I figured that I’d ask for that key record, and any other documents related to the file belonging to Ed Malone from that time period:

3.2  The Letter to the Special Committee on Records

Cindy Harris, Treasury Board Secretary appointed by Premier King in May, 2019

Notwithstanding that totally unambiguous testimony, in the letter provided to the Committee by Cindy Harris there is yet another clear attempt to cover-up that “big reveal” with the following attempt to suggest that the testimony provided to the Committee concerning “gaps” must be interpreted in such a way as to leave it unclear whether there were actually any “missing records” in those gaps, or whether they were simply periods of inactivity.

Nor did the letter that Cindy Harris provided to the Committee contain all the information that Malone that indicated he would provide – for example, the “size” of the gaps in the email archives. Here is the letter, which, to my knowledge, is the first time it has been made available to the public for view.

ITSS had not established the  “from-to” timeframe dates for the gaps in the different email archives, however ITSS had provided some indicators for the extent of the gaps FOR EACH OF THE FIVE YEARS for EACH OF THE “CANDIDATES” in the email archive environment ITSS built with each person’s archives for the same 5-year period, e.g., January 1, 2010 to March 31, 2015.

For example, if the archive had a gap in 2012 for Cheryl Paynter, the ITSS information provided to his COO and Deputy Minister (Dan Campbell) would indicate both a “before” and “after” number showing the size difference to indicate the severity of the loss of data. No such information was provided to the Committee!

The letter states that Malone: “Indicated he could provide the names, length of the archives, any gaps in the archives, and possibly the size,” however all that information was not provided by Ms. Harris.  It appears that the GB designations with some archives represent the size of the archives; however, what Mr. Malone indicated he could provide was the size of the “gap” e.g., the size of the original archive and the size after the gap, which would require two numbers, not simply one, (e.g., original = 9gb; size after gap = 4gb).  There is a clear attempt to suggest that “gaps” don’t necessarily mean missing records in the note below the chart; however, Mr. Malone made it clear that there were missing records, not just days with no email activity.

Not only did Malone and Brennan  provide convincing evidence that it was only Brad Mix who had access to his accounts (other than ITSS), and that it would require consciously logging onto the system, putting in the password, and then going through a series of steps requiring forethought and intention to delete, or otherwise remove the records, but they also provided a clear roadmap to how it was possible to easily investigate all the other instances of deleted records.

In fact, everything the Committee said they would do and didn’t do I can now do thanks to the honest, forthright evidence provided by these two senior bureaucrats in our Government!

When you are dealing with a corrupt government where everyone “in the know” about the truth have decided to collaborate in hiding the willful destruction of important government business and activity in a clearly corrupt and illegal breach of the law, which is classified under the criminal code of Canada as misfeasance, it perhaps is not surprising that getting copies of those documents that were thankfully protected by ITSS, is taking this much time:  the cover up first had to be exposed and the map discovered showing a possible route to getting them at a maximum, or confirming they too were “deliberately deleted” in other employee email archives. If that doesn’t prompt a criminal investigation nothing will.

It may have taken 2 1/2 years, but as they say, “what comes around, goes around,” and I’m now back to square one; only now, I have with me all the evidence and information I need to identify those who were responsible for the initial cover-up of document deletion.

3. 3  The New “Gappers”: Connections to Egaming and FMT Projects

That a criminal investigation into the deletion of government records is entirely warranted should be obvious at this point, but especially when one considers that out of the thousands of possible government employees who Brad Mix could have been communicating with, it was apparently only those involved in one way or another with the egaming and financial hub projects who had the same problem with missing and  deleted emails.

(a) Gapper #1, Wes Sheridan: Named Defendant:

Sheridan was Ghiz’s right-hand man and the Minister of Finance during the entire time of the egaming scandal. It was his brainchild, and his maneuvering that set up the egaming project “outside the normal control of government” as the Auditor General put it, resulting in a host of illegal and unethical events. In it’s amended Statement of Claim, among the claims specifically made is a key one made against Chris LeClair and Wes Sheridan jointly, which I’ve previously written about:

Paragraph 126. In addition, Sheridan and LeClair put a proposal to Innovation PEI that recommended a “new company” that was purported by them to be better than the Simplex/CMT group.

(b) Gapper #2 Cheryl Paynter: Named Defendant: 

Paynter was the CEO of Innovation PEI [Brad Mix’s Supervisor]; signed the Memorandum of Understanding with CMT/FMT; and was a participant on a secret recruitment mission to Boston to meet with financial services companies during the time the MOU was in effect. She was also involved in the Chris LeClair/Keith Laslop affair which CMT is alleging was a breach of the exclusivity and confidentiality claims of the MOU.

(c) Gapper #3, Steve MacLean:  Named Defendant:

Steve MacLean  was the Clerk of the Executive Council and Secretary to the Cabinet at all material times in the CMT claim. He was allegedly involved with Allen Campbell in matters relating to the PEI Securities investigation against CMT and Paul Maines, and discussions with CMT’s lawyer Gary Jessop regarding the MOU, being mentioned specifically in  the following two paragraphs:

(d) Gapper #4, Allan Campbell was a Named Defendant:

You may recall hearing the name Allan Campbell in association with the three whistleblowers. This was another great moment in the national highlight with articles like the one on the right with catchy headlines appeared in the June 12, 2010 edition of the Globe and Mail.

Those three women were finally awarded an undisclosed out-of-court settlement for the breach of their personal information. At the time this incident happened relating to the PNP scandal, Allan Campbell was the Chief of Staff to Robert Ghiz from the time he took the position following Chris LeClair’s departure in October, 2011 to 2014.

Deleted Email Archive – Shauna Sullivan-Curley Recommended Ending Egaming 

From 1995 to 2013, Shauna served in various deputy minister positions with the Government of Prince Edward Island.  While a deputy minister, Shauna gave presentations on public service values and ethics at orientation sessions for new employees. In 2006 the Institute of Public Administration of Canada awarded her the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Excellence in Public Service. Shauna retired from the public service on December 31, 2013. On March 31, 2015 she was appointed to the part-time position of Ethics and Integrity Commissioner. She is currently serving a second five year term.

Ms. Sullivan-Curley was the Deputy-Minister of Justice at the time of the egaming scandal. She retired from the public service on December 31, 2013. On March 31, 2015 she was appointed to the part-time position of Ethics and Integrity Commissioner by (When appointed. MacLauchlan was only “elected” in the May 4, 2015 general provincial election) Premier, Wade MacLauchlan. 

You’ll notice that her entire email archive is gone, and beside her name we find the word “retired”.  I have some gaming records that mention her, and her important involvement in the gaming file, so it will be interesting to see if they are produced in the request I submitted.

Consider the following email exchange just prior to the big presentation in the Premier’s Office, in February, 2012. This is where the dream of being able to “regulate” online gambling in Canada died, although the efforts to get into gaming in no way ceased at that point, only intensified with a renewed focus and commitment to complete the work with CMT/FMT to get the Financial hub established and the SWIFT-based Global Transaction Platform up and running, and then attract corporate clients to locate in PEI, including  gaming companies.

Sullivan-Curley had solicited a legal opinion from lawyer Tom Isaac, an expert in Aboriginal law, and was given a very definitive legal opinion concerning the scheme Wes Sheridan was up to with McInnes Cooper law firm: it would be a crime.

The following email exchange  between Curley and Steven MacLean [Named Defendant]; Allen Campbell [Named Defendant] and Rory Beck, who I believe was, with Shauna Sullivan-Curley, concerned about what Sheridan was up to with off-site project at McInnis Cooper law firm:

Feb 14, 2012: Curley email to McQuire, MacLean, Campbell, Beck Re: Tom Isaac

“I spoke with Tom late this afternoon and he has grave concerns about the legality of this.  Although theoretically possible, it is highly unlikely based on his knowledge of PEI aboriginal history that there is an aboriginal right to gaming, let alone the regulation of gaming, and even if there were such a right it would not extend beyond PEI boundaries and certainly not all the way across Canada.  He advises strongly against the PEI government getting involved in anything that purported to have that kind of reach…”

Feb 14, 2012:  MacLean email to Curley Re: Tom Isaac

“That’s the most clear legal opinion I’ve seen in a good while.  And so opposite to what Don and Kevin out forth, the latter who presumably has little/no bias.”

Feb 14, 2012:  Curley email to MacLean Re: Tom Isaac

“Yes, he was flabbergasted that the province was considering doing this.”

What’s the chances?

In one of my submissions to former Commissioner Rose on the Brad Mix review I said that the chances that a 2-year “gap” in Brad Mix’s record corresponding exactly with the same 2 year egaming period [2010-12] that is of material relevance to CMT’s lawsuit would or could be a “coincidence was “infinitesimally small”.  Her comment in her Order on that point was as follows:

Now we know, thanks to the testimony of Brennan and Malone at the Special Committee on Records that our (Maines and my) suspicions were spot on!  Brad Mix’s records were found to be intentionally deleted, and the only person responsible and able to either do that or allow someone else to do it was Brad Mix.

Furthermore, with so many other named Defendants now known to have had gaps [we have yet to discover how many gaps, how long the gaps are for each archive, etc.] quite likely overlapping the very same 2-year period as Brad Mix. What are the random chances of that happening with so many accounts I wonder? It will be interesting information to get access to – the mysterious “gaps”.

PART 5

I’M NOT QUITE FINISHED YET

(But I should have Been)

***************

5.1   The  Records Committee’s Final Report tabled in Legislative Assembly

The very first paragraph of the Executive Summary of the Final Report of the Special Committee on Records,  as tabled in the House on November 27, 2020, makes it clear that the primary focus of the Committee was to  investigate how Brad Mix’s records came to be “deliberately deleted”: 

The Report then proceeded to say nothing of real importance on “the missing records referenced in an Order of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (Order No. FL-20-007, dated June 9, 2020)“.

Neither the PC government nor any Green or Liberal Opposition MLA on the Committee apparently had any real interest in taking things further when all was said and done. The opportunity was sitting right in front of them to take the bull by the horns and expose the “big lie” lurking behind everything related to the deletion of government gaming records, all the lies, the coverups and withholding information and records, etc. that can be summed up roughly as:

That neither the Defendants named in the CMT lawsuit, nor PEI Government, had anything to do with CMT and would therefore have had no reason to delete their records. 

There is now confirmation that Brad Mix is responsible for deliberately deleted gaming-project related records, records he and his lawyer Jonathan Coady failed to disclose had been deleted.   Mix remains at his desk as PEI’s most senior person responsible for recruiting businesses to the Island.

We now know that Brad Mix’s records were deliberately deleted.  The same is likely true for the new named Defendants discovered to also have “gaps” AND missing email records in their archives. The Final Report said only the following about all of that criminal backstory:  

“Following this portion of the meeting, John Brennan, Director Business Infrastructure Service, ITSS, answered questions related to the
missing emails referenced by the Auditor General in the Special Assignment report. Specifically, the Special Committee was given information regarding a search of additional email accounts from the time frame of January 1, 2010 to March 31, 2015. As a result, the Special Committee determined it would request the names of individual account holders, the length of the archives, any gaps in the archives and possibly the size of any gaps. The information was provided by the provincial Treasury Board Secretariat on October 16, 2020.”

That’s all that was said in the report about what is likely 5 more instances of the illegal deletion of government records.

That’s how scandals are quietly covered-up – they’re just ignored after they for a moment surface into the light of day, “mum’s the word.”

The Letter From Cindy Harris to the Committee

The claim that “The information was provided…” as stated in the Report is not exactly accurate. Some information was provided, but not all the information that Ed Malone indicated would be provided was provided in the letter to the Committee signed by Cindy Harris.

It is unfortunate that members of the Special Committee did not regard these ethical and legal matters of sufficient importance to either take or recommend action.  The absence of any details in the final report or recommendations to Government to, for example, take the matter as seriously as it needs to be taken and either bring in a third-party entity like the RCMP to investigate, or perhaps initiate some legal actions and let the judicial process finally “get to the bottom” of things. There was nothing of that in the Report, which is conclusively telling in itself regarding the collective will to hit the “delete” button on the “deleted email” file…it’s apparently how government works these days.

There were no recommendations from the Committee that government take action on either of the two major revelations that happened at Committee, exposing a fair number of lies and decisions to cover-up a very serious legal matter, i.e., the widespread destruction of government records (1) involving numerous individuals, (2) for the same time period as the egaming scandal, (3) with most of the individuals for whom records went missing or were deliberately deleted were named as Defendants in a PEI Supreme Court civil procedure alleging both spoliation (e.g., the unauthorized alteration or destruction of documents) and misfeasance (the wrongful and injurious exercise of lawful authority); or breach of contract with the MOU.

The Report offered nothing of  (1) the official and definitive technical evidence concerning how the only access point to engage in a necessarily intentional process resulting in either the deletion or removal of emails besides ITSS was Brad Mix;  nor (2) made any recommendations that government immediately have ITSS reconstruct all of Brad Mix’s emails that may still be available in archives preserved in a separate digital environment during the course of the 2015 investigation, other government employees with whom Mix was engaged in the egaming and financial services global transactions platform projects with CMT/FMT.

The evidence presented by the ITSS Senior Management staff appearing before the Committee was clear, concise, detailed and offered definitive technical details about how password access and deliberate steps had to be taken to delete the emails, all of which lead to one and only one logical conclusion: Brad Mix was responsible for the deletion of his his own 2 years of emails. 

This revelation should have been sufficient by itself (given a “balance of probabilities”) to trigger a call for a criminal investigation and/or some form of legal action by the Government…but it didn’t.

This is unacceptable from the Leader of the OFFICIAL OPPOSITION who brought forth this Motion in the first place then not only failed to fulfill the mandate of the Committee but misrepresented the matter entirely in a clear attempt to leave people with the impression that nothing further could be done and it was a dead issue. That is not true, and represents a betrayal.

When integrity is lost in the Leader of the Official Opposition to Government claiming to defend the honour and will of the people, we lose oversight, we lose insight, and we ultimately lose democracy.

5.2   Letting Brad Mix Off the Hook 

Committee members were informed that it was indeed Brad Mix who was responsible for illegally deleting his 2 years of records,  with clear evidence. His email archive was password protected. Only ITSS and Brad Mix had access. Access was required, but after gaining access, it was then necessessary to take a number of very precise steps with intention to succeed in destroying or otherwise removing the records.

Again, the testimony was clear: only ITSS and Brad Mix had access to the archive and could have deleted the records, or given access to someone else to  delete them. Mr. Brennan declared for the record that ITSS did not access the account and then delete the emails.  That leaves just one other person who could have been responsible, Brad Mix.

Yet this is what Hon. Peter Bevan-Baker told a CBC reporter following Mix’s appearance before the Committee on October 28, 2020, two weeks after Brennan and Malone’s appearance and testimony:

5. 3  Ignoring the Missing Records with Other Employees Involved in Egaming

Malone declined to name the other employees with gaps and missing records for fear of naming someone by mistake, but he indicated that he would provide the information to the Committee in the form of a letter by the end of the week.

The letter was sent to the Committee; however, was not attached to the Final Report, not tabled in the Legislative Assembly, or otherwise made public. Nor were the names on that list included in the Final Report submitted to the Legislative Assembly. 

To my knowledge, the only media coverage of this important discovery of additional employees with missing records came from Kerry Campbell at CBC. It was mentioned in an article he published discussing the final report of the Committee after it was presented in the House.

5.4  Despite Everything,  the Narrative has Changed Completely

Remember when Wes Sheridan was publicly denying that he and his government had any dealings with Paul Maines and Capital Markets Technology?  Those days are gone!

It’s both shocking and shameful to now go back and read from Hansard what Sheridan had the bold-faced audacity to stand in the Legislative Assembly and say about CMT, a reputable internationl company the PEI Government had actually RECRUITED (as FMT, CMT’s 100%-owned subsidiary) and signed an MOU with to establish a financial services centre or “hub” in PEI.   Attempts to dismiss and deny CMT’s long-standing business relationship was incredibly damaging to both the truth, and to CMT’s good name.

The report that was undertaken by Simplex was all about and for the CMT/FMT transaction platform project underway at Innovation PEI with Brad Mix.  Maines had arranged to have Simplex undertake the study on behalf of CMT/FMT, as Simplex was CMT’s technology business partner with the technical expertise to undertake the study. That was the truth that Sheridan knew, but read what he said during Question Period on 21 NOVEMBER 2014, on p.338:

This is the big lie that both the initial cover-up and then the cover-up of the cover-up by the Special Committee on Records has been bent on keeping out of the conversation at all costs. The truth they have taken such desperate measure to keep hidden over many years undermines everything they have advanced in their legal case: namely, their denial of the truth that the PEI Government had been diligently working with CMT/FMT throughout that entire 2-year period [2010 – 2012] on establishing a transaction platform to attract gaming companies, and the records of multiple Defendants that were not disclosed  from that period as the rules of civil procedure were deliberately deleted would have revealed both the truth, and the cover-up of the truth, not to mention various crimes in the process of effecting the latter. 

No one has ever asked ITSS to have those Brad Mix records “reconstructed,” to whatever extent possible given the gaps,  nor requested precise information on the status of the missing records in those multiple archives: (1) no one when Mix claimed to have first discovered his emails were missing just as the CMT lawsuit was commencing ( the first cover-up with Jonathan Coady, Dan Campbell and Marie Kemp and likely others), and (2) no one else – including the Special Committee on Records – has made that request up to the present. 

It appeared Malone was fully expecting that the Special Committee would be making that request and so, gave a lot of detail by way of guidance on how to do that, which I certainly appreciated. However, the Committee was apparently not as impressed and made no such request, nor did the Committee recommend Government make such a request in its final report, which together represents a second cover-up in my books that was collectively and very intentionally effected by members of the Special Committee on Government Records.

5.5  New FOI Requests

Ed Malone gave the committee everything it needed (1) to expose that initial coverup in more greater detail, (2) to recreate Brad Mix’s records, and (3) ascertain the status of missing records, possibly even who would have had access to them and who would have been the only person(s) able to take those same “deliberate” steps that Malone and Brennan explained had to have been taken to delete Brad Mix’s 2-years of records.

Unfortunately , the outcome of all that effort and cost to taxpayers was for the Committee on Records to say nothing could be found out, which is not only not true, but proven wrong by what was found out and learned and then not mentioned.

I have decided to do what the government and opposition wouldn’t do; namely, instruct ITSS to provide me with all the records from the accounts of the other candidates for records that were sent to Brad Mix, received from Brad Mix, or that make mention of Brad Mix.  I’m sure that’s what Malone and Brennan expected the Committee would make happen immediately:  but just like Dan Campbell back in early 2015, no decision was made to do anything with Mix’s records.

(a) FOI Request #1:  Malone Documentation Re: New Email Archive Environment

I submitted a FOI request dated February 17, 2021 seeking a copy of the letter that Ed Malone mentioned at Committee, the one that PC MLA Sidney MacEwan said the Committee would “love to see,” but apparently not so much as to motivate anyone to ask for it. If it was gotten, it wasn’t mentioned.

The wording of my request was as follows, which I made long and detailed so as to be unambiguous and precise, which I’ve learned from experience is essential or I’ll get a request back to “clarify” my request. I thought what I wrote was clear, but it apparently still  stumped the Public Body:

As you can see from that last sentence in the above letter, more clarification was needed, so I sent the following with my fingers crossed:

Nothing more to report on this one yet.

(b) FOI Request #2: Gaming Records from Shauna Sullivan-Curley

Back in early December I submitted a request for Shauna Sullivan Curley documents for roughly a two-year period where I either know, or suspect, Ms. Curley had involvement with the egaming file. I received the following on December 14, 2020:

There were no surprises there; I expected the Department of Justice to take the 30 day extension and never expected to get a response to my actual request until January 16, 2021, and that’s what was promised.

I received nothing by January 16, and sent the following email:

As it turned out, buried in the previous response near the end was a request for funds to keep the FOI going, which I had not seen, which put my request on hold for a bit. The last communication I received was a letter saying I can expect a response to my request by the end of March:

(c) FOI Requests #3, #4 and #5: Reconstructed Mix Records and “Gap” Information

Using the detailed explanation of how to reconstruct Brad Mix’s records (to the extent possible, given the confirmation of missing records by Mr. Malone in some of the candidate’s email archives) I have submitted FOI requests that are more-or-less identical for each of the other individuals identified as having gaps in their email archives, with that 5-year chunk of their email archive persevered in a separate environment at ITSS.

Being unclear as to whether ITSS can handle the request (with permission from the respective Deputy Ministers with the Department of each individual) or whether the request would need to be handled directly by the respective Departments, I submitted essentially the same request for each person to both ITTS and the appropriate Department.  The FOI request for (1) Cheryl Paynter; (2) Wes Sheridan; (3) Steve MacLean; and (4) Allan Campbell were all more or less the same. Here is the request for Cheryl Paynter sent to both ITSS:

BACKGROUND FOR THIS FOI REQUEST

In 2015, ITSS received a request to create a segregated environment containing the email archives of a number of “candidates” [government officials and/or MLAs] for a specified period of time [January 1, 2010 -August 31, 2015]. Senior officials with ITSS [Ed Malone and John Brennan] recently informed the Special Committee on Government Records [October, 2020] that the environment that ITSS created in early 2015containing those email archives of various candidates remains intact within ITSS. He further noted that if ITSS was to receive a request to search those email archives it would be easy to do so; however, authorization from the Deputy Minister(s) of the Department(s) within which the person or persons were employed would be required.

The process was explained to the Committee by Mr. Brennan as follows: “The request would be – you would have to identify the individuals whose email accounts you’d want us to look at or grant access to someone to look at. And then, the current deputy of those departments who own the records would have to sign off and authorize that search for those individuals to do so. It could be – not knowing the individuals, but it could be one department or four departments, so you’d need four individual deputy ministers to authorize the search because the deputy holds the ownership of the records.”

I am submitting this same FOI request to both ITSS and to the Premier’s Office. Based on Mr. Brennan’s explanation of the process for requests and searches of that environment given to the Committee, it is my expectation that this FOI request will belong to ITSS, given that(1) the records are in the possession of ITSS and (2) I am submitting it to ITSS. I expect that ITSS will seek whatever departmental authorizations that may be required (i.e. If the individual worked in more than one department during the span of roughly 5 1/2 years, then I’m assuming ITSS would seek authorizations from two Deputy Ministers to undertake the search.

WHAT I AM SEEKING IN THIS FOI REQUEST

I am first of all expecting to receive – from the outset – precise details regarding the missing records for the entire archive for Allan Campbell as it currently exists in the environment at ITSS, being the time frame from January 1, 2010- August 31, 2015.

As was stipulated in the former Information and Privacy Commissioner’s Order No. FI-20-007 [June 9, 2020],it is illegal and a violation of section 8.1 of the FOIPP Act for the Public Body to withhold information from FOI applicants concerning missing records, although that has already happened a number of times with me with previous FOI requests. The former Commissioner expressed befuddlement regarding the motivation for the Public Body’s decision to withhold such information from me in my FOI request for Brad Mix records [I was“ Applicant #1 in that Order] and she indicated that it should have been the FIRST thing the public body disclosed to me. I am therefore expecting precise information concerning Cheryl Paynter’s missing records is the first thing I will receive, hopefully with the acknowledgement letter to this request.

(1) Precise and detailed information, as much as is available, in whatever different metrics available, e.g., the periods of time for each instance of missing records in the form of dates ( “from – to”) for each gap in Allan Campbell’s email Archive; the size of the loss of records for each period of time having missing records(GB size of each period where there are missing records before and after) etc.; and

(2) all records in Allan Campbell’s email archive as contained in the environment created by ITSS in 2015 that were either: (a) received from Brad Mix, (b) sent to Brad Mix, (c) or mentions “Brad Mix” “Brad” or “Mix”.

Similar versions of the above have been submitted as follows:

1. Cheryl Paynter [ITSS and EGTC]
2. Allan Campbell (ITSS and Premier’s Office]
3. Wes Sheridan [ITSS and Department of Finance]
4. Steven MacLean [ITSS and Premier’s Office]

With at least one of those requests – Cheryl Paynter – I expect to find out immediately what records are there and what records are missing, for what time periods, etc. [read the highlighted promise by Ms. McGrath when she was caught on the Brad Mix case].  Erin McGrath-Gaudet told the public through the local media she would disclose that information “next time”….well, I’m next time.

“Absolutely if I were to go back and do this again, I mean, now obviously having the ruling of the privacy commissioner, that would be something that we would now disclose to an applicant.” [CBC, “‘Hindsight is always 20/20′: Deputy minister answers to committee on missing records,” November 6, 2020]

My  FOI seeking Cheryl Paynter records (which I discuss in the final section of the article) well, “that’s your big chance” Ms. McGrath-Gaudet.

McGrath-Gaudet unfortunately didn’t feel the law was sufficient in itself to compel her to disclose anything about the “gaps” in Cheryl Paynter’s email archive in her final letter  to me  [with another “no records found” incidentally] for a FOI request I had filed back in January, 2020.  That was before her above-noted enlightenment from the Commissioner’s ruling and subsequent public promise to disclose next time. So I have, I believe, at least a smidgeon of cause to hope that she might disclose the details I’m asking for this time around:

5.6  It looks like “what goes around” really does come around

I expect to be stonewalled by Deputy Ministers with my new FOI requests I’m sorry to have to say. Anything else would be a surprising departure. Oh…and lied to as well. The bold-faced kind you can make with a smile while you type, because the only consequence the person has to face is to mail back my $5 cheque.

I’ll likely also have to request reviews with the Information Commissioner on at least some of these FOI requests, so a resolution isn’t going to come next week.

The government is seemingly immovable when it comes to its addiction to secrecy and fraudulent communications with Island citizens, at least Islanders seeking government information and records. One would think having a legal right to records and information should suffice, but when there are no consequences, legal breaches and stonewalling becomes the norm.

Those expected reviews with the Commissioner on these new FOIs will likely be my last move in what seems like a never ending story. I don’t know how a review would not be successful if they withhold information about the exact time period for the “gaps” in my FOI requests, for example, given that it was one of the strongest messages from the former Commissioner in her Order and, blatantly illegal.

That Deputy Ministers are continuing to withhold information in FOI requests that are AFTER Ms. Rose’s Order (e.g., information concerning  the “gaps” in those other employee’s emails) represents a major middle finger to the former Commissioner’s ruling.

Again, I am grateful for the important information and evidence John Brennan and Ed Malone put on the record when they appeared before the Committee.

In retrospect, I wonder if they may have volunteered all those “extra” details – which they could have just as easily kept to themselves – such as Ed Malone saying he has a personal, paper copy of that key document I’m now asking for in a FOI, with the idea that if the Committee decided it would not pursue the matter [which wouldn’t be a stretch, since no one has seen fit to to date], then perhaps someone else [wink, wink, poke, poke] with access to the instruction manual would be interested.

I have had previous email communication with Ed Malone attempting to get information and I could tell he was a “by the book” kind of person which I admired, and didn’t have the authority to give me the information, so he had to pass me on to a more senior person who knew exactly how to respond to me: ignore me. But I sensed he wanted to help me, and would have, and wanted me to be clear that he simply couldn’t.

SUMMARY

THE  “REALLY BIG” REVEAL THAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN

Motion 2  was passed about 2 weeks ago, calling on Government to hold consultations before proceeding with the new gambling online site, but that Motion is technically not  “binding” on government. 

The focus with those who spoke to the Motion has been entirely on the possible negative impacts of more gambling, not on the illegitimate, corrupt, and largely-secret gambling scheme on the table.

MLAs who spoke to Motion 2 may not be fully aware of the illegitimate nature of the entire digital platform enterprise.  There have been many false and misleading things said by Premier King and the Minister of Finance, Hon. Darlene Compton that have created confusion about what is being proposed, and what is not being proposed.

My previous article sheds some  light on the subject [“King Says His Intention is to Regulate Online Gaming: Wanna Bet?“] the next one will shed a considerable amount more.

MLAs Cory Deagle and Sidney MacEwan seemed genuine with their questions to witnesses coming before the Committee. It appears they got more information than they bargained for and took no next steps in their pursuit of truth and justice. Motion 2 offers an opportunity to make amends. Will Sydney and Corey and Natalie and Zack, and other PC MLAs insist that public consultations are held on what has been likened to the the “crack cocaine” of online gambling, i.e., single-event sports betting?

PC MLAs  on the Committee – Deagle and MacEwan – wouldn’t stand up when the Report was tabled in the House and say, “Wait a minute! What about that evidence we got that Brad Mix is responsible for the intentional deletion of 2 years of his records?” or “Are we just going to forget about those additional employees with gaps and missing records?”

Will they and other PC MLAs stand up against the corrupt scheme being hatched to launch an online gambling site?

Final Note:  If you believe this information is important, please make an effort to share it with other Islanders. It is  not a story Islanders will see in the mainstream media or learn about otherwise.