PREAMBLE

The truth has a way of catching up with people in positions of power whenever they try to hide it from the people they are elected to serve.

At least that’s the case whenever there are people who know the lies being sold as truth to the masses are indeed lies, and are not willing to allow those lies and the deception to “win the day” on the issue of whether government corruption should be given a pass.

Paul Maines and I are two such people. 

The problem is not that most people don’t know that there is corruption, lying, cover-up, and self-serving agendas at play behind the scenes…it’s just that those things usually can’t be “proven” in court, so no one believes there will ever be any consequences.

Truth always wins over lies and deception; and  light will always erase the darkness.  But not necessarily in this world, for each and every case.

That only happens in this world if there are people willing to carry the truth forward until all the attempts by the liars to evade the truth are exhausted and the ‘ light switch’ can finally be turned on to expose the lies with the truth that was dug out from the shroud of darkness it was hidden under by those ruling PEI in the shadows, behind-the-scenes, as an infamous and nebulous group I refer to as the “Insider Club,” made up of some of the most prominent property and business owners, and of course the professionals (lawyers, accountants, consultants) skilled at scheming and effecting cover-ups.   

The truth exposing the corruption with egaming (along with the key players) has, I believe, finally broken through that shroud to a sufficient degree with the filing of this $2 million  lawsuit against the Premier of PEI, Dennis King, Chris LeClair, Allan Campbell and others:There is much to unpack with this new development delving into the secret and darkest recesses of the ongoing egaming saga – it’s a complicated filing: the Motion Record is  445 pages.

I will be doing some of that “unpacking” with subsequent articles; however, for this one, I simply want to give an  insightful synopsis (hopefully) of what just happened with this filing that makes a few key connections between the 2012 and 2021 phases of this long-standing scandal (notice that 2012 and 2021 have exactly the same set of numbers, two 2s, an 0, and a 1, just rearranged, which is exactly the case with the composition of the Insider Club behind the scandal at the heart of this lawsuit). 

THE LAWSUIT AGAINST DENNIS KING – IN A NUTSHELL

On the eve of Christmas Eve, December 23rd, 2020, Premier King and his Cabinet passed an Order in Council authorizing the PEI government to get into the online ‘egaming’ business.

I subsequently published a slew of articles in the months following that Order in Council, highlighting the “secrecy” under which such a major and shocking decision was being made by the Premier.

I suggested that what was going on was that King had simply woken up the same secretive sleeping egaming giant that had been hibernating since 2012, waiting for the day it could leap over the hurdle that put it to sleep, which was that the federal government would change the law in the Criminal Code allowing single-event sports betting, opening that up to the free market, so to speak.  That happened August, 2021.

Normally, it would be a cinch to find out what corporate mechanism the King government put in place to handle the money coming in, and who the people associated with that company or commission or whatever were, but I could find NOTHING! 

I figured that would be the case, because I also figured there would be a very deliberate attempt to keep it hidden, ESPECIALLY FROM ME, because I knew if what I suspected was really happening, they’d know I’d be looking for any breadcrumb they might carelessly drop.

My articles and posts on egaming since that Order back in December, 2020 have all been on various aspects of how what is really going on is more or less identical to what was in the works, but never came to completion, in 2012….just a few new players in government, as is the way with the changing nature of the membership in the Insider Club. 

With the secret egaming file, Wes Sheridan was the “in guy” back in 2012….. but it’s “Wes who?” now.

Dennis King has taken Sheridan’s chair, or perhaps, to be more precise with the use of analogies, I should say he’s taken on the “the strings on the marionnette held by the non-government and far-more permanent members of the Insider Club!”

But it’s the same-ole secrecy, with Premier King and his closest insiders (Shaun MacIasic and Dan Campbell, then Deputy Minister of Finance under Hon. Darlene Compton, who’s husband “Russ Compton” is on the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Canada Aerospace (ACED).

The Chief-of-Staff to former Premier Robert Ghiz, taking over for Chris LeClair when he went to McInnes Cooper to work on the egaming file, is the head of ACED, Allan Campbell. 

Dan Campbell, nephew of Judge Gordon Campbell, Gordon MacFarlane and Shaun MacIsaac, both core members of King’s election team, ARE ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE ATLANTIC LOTTERIES CORPORATION, nicely in position to allow those prospering professional insiders in the “business owner; lawyer; consultant; accountant” category of membership with the Insider Club to move forward with the same-ole egaming scheme.

The thrust of my warning – I was actually willing to take on bets, by the way – was that King had just reactivated the old corrupt, “off-the-books” secretive scheme from the early Ghiz-Wes Sheridan egaming project days, but who exactly was at the trough was yet to be determined.  

I published a series of articles, mostly published on Facebook, along with this key overview article of the situation of cover-up and deception published February 28, 2021:   King Says His Intention is to “Regulate” Online Gaming: Wanna Bet?

Most Islanders are unaware that Dennis King has been at the “we can do this egaming thing!” discussion with the insider club for over 20 years, in slightly different capacities, as I explained in a chart in the above-linked article:

Premier King was former PC Premier Pat Binns’ communication Officer back in 2002 when Binns and King had the Deputy Provincial Treasurer at the time, Mike O’Brien, pursue an online-lottery scheme called “Earth Lottery”.

King and O’Brien were both “behind-the-scenes” players in the egaming scheme back in 2002, and although King remained “behind-the-scenes” in the second attempt to get into online gambling under Ghiz, O’Brien was one of the core members of the secret egaming working group that met at McInnes Cooper law firm rather than government offices. 

Some years later, Dennis had to excuse himself from speaking to the issue when he was on the CBC political panel, invoking a “conflict-of-interest” citing his involvement with egaming while working for the Mi’Kmaq Confederacy.

I also submitted a Freedom of Information request after that Order in Council, on March 31, 2021, seeking official confirmation of what I STRONGLY suspected was in the works, connections with some of the same old players. The wording of my request was as follows:

https://kevinjarsenault.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/resp-to-applicant_FIN-2021-107.pdf

The PC’s were very strong in their criticism of the Liberal egaming initiative that happened under Ghiz – and was then defended vigorously by his Liberal successor, Wade MacLauchlan. For years, as the Official Opposition, almost daily, they pounded the Liberal government for egaming corruption and cover-up.

They flip-flopped 100% the minute the results from the election were confirmed  in May, 2019, adopting (without amendment) the very same legal defence against CMT.

I know that the current PC Cabinet members – Hon. Jamie Fox; Hon. Steven Myers; Hon. Brad Trivers; Hon. Darlene Compton; etc. –  all worked diligently to expose the corruption of that secret egaming initiative, as the Official  Opposition, because I helped them, and they also helped me, immensely, with my own research and investigation, sharing all their FOI documents (and there were A LOT of them).

LIKELY THE LAST LAP FOR LASLOP, WITH LEGAL LYNCHINGS LOOMING

To better situate the mess the Premier currently finds himself in, both historically and contextually, and to understand how King has inflicted a second ‘black eye’ on the face of our beautiful Island, it is necessary to make a few connections…and to do that it is necessary to “name names”.

The two key names to name from the Ghiz-day’s secret egaming scandal archives for this story are Chris LeClair and Keith Laslop. Both were working with members of that secretive insider’s club back in 2010-12, along with the then-puppet connection to government, Wesley Sheridan.

FOI documents that I received from the PCs [provided by Hon. Steven Myers, and Cory Deagle, an office worker for the PC Opposition at the time who did the photocopying for me] were especially helpful in exposing the breach of the Memorandum of Agreement (MOU) that Innovation PEI had signed with CMT/FMT. The MOU was an agreement containing legally-binding “exclusivity” and “confidentiality” clauses.

Myers was a fierce fighting force for justice back in those days, pounding them daily with the documents they were getting, but also with what I was discovering in my many FOI requests as well that I was sharing with them, as well as my analysis and insights. 

You can skip over this, but I’m inserting it for those of you who may not know the “old” Steven Myers, when political advantage could be had with Islanders with a strategy to expose the corruption of the sitting government (something the Greens could learn a lesson from!); however, it does appear that as bold and boisterous as all that was, it was nothing more than a political strategy. It all went down the toilet on election night with Myers:

DOUBLING DOWN ON DECEPTION AND CORRUPTION

KING: “I’LL SEE YOUR BLACK EYE…AND RAISE YOU ANOTHER BIGGER BLACK EYE!”

Back in 2012, the “black eye” that Premier King used as a metaphor to compare and contrast what happened with egaming in 2012 with what he and his government were doing, which, I suspect, was at least in part the clandestine activity that was being kept “off” the official government record as a result of the secret meetings and discussions going on between: (1) Wes Sheridan, and (2) the client [Keith Laslop] of former Chief of Staff to Premier Robert Ghiz [Chris LeClair], who had left his position as Ghiz’s Chief-of-Staff in October 2011 where he was working closely with Wes Sheridan on the egaming file, to work closely with Wes Sheridan on the egaming file from the “off-campus” safety of McInnes Cooper law firm under the auspices of his business, PolicyIntel.

FLASH FORWARD TO 2021

When the Spring sitting of the PEI Legislative Assembly opened, on the very first day, in the very first Question Period, with the very first question from the leader of the Opposition, Hon. Peter Bevan-Baker, it was more or less suggested that Premier King had become the new “puppet” (my word, not Bevan-Baker’s) for a new “secret” egaming initiative not unlike the Ghastly Ghiz Gongshow, referencing  what happened back in the 2012 as a benchmark comparison.

The Premier responded (mostly addressing his shoes for – I think my fellow Islanders will agree – obvious reasons) in an attempt to express indignation at being compared to that immoral and corrupt legacy that he likened to a “black eye” on PEI’s otherwise pure and beautiful legacy to the world.

The body language was less-than convincing:

The lawsuit just filed against Dennis King is not simply alleging that he abused his role as Premier of PEI to facilitate the same “secret online egaming initiative” as Ghiz and Sheridan did back in 2010-12, it’s saying that, but also that King is doing it with many of THE SAME PEOPLE: CHRIS LECLAIR, ALLEN CAMPBELL, and others.

CHRIS LECLAIR

Keep in mind that both Chris LeClair and Allan Campbell are named defendants in the CMT lawsuit, and both were involved with the “secret” egaming file back in 2012, working closely with Wes Sheridan.

ALLAN CAMPBELL

And just so you don’t misunderstand my use of the word “secret”, wondering if I’m perhaps putting my own exaggerated spin on the nature of the process with the egaming project back in 2012, thinking that perhaps the reason why they weren’t saying much about the egaming project publicly, consider the wording in the following email related to Wes Sheridan’s interest in “marrying” (1) the egaming project secretly being housed at McInnes Cooper, with (2) the establishment of a financial transaction hub, by connecting it to the FMT Project that was already underway at Innovation PEI with CMT/FMT under Brad Mix, who was under the Deputy Minister of Innovation and Advanced Learning at the time, Neil Stewart:

Premier King is the new “Wes Sheridan” in the resurrected egaming scandal  which is now unfolding and which will be fully exposed in the course of this lawsuit, the main action of CMT, and continuing actions I am engaged in with FOI requests. 

In 2012, LeClair was representing someone associated with a “yet-to-be-formally-named” company that was being referred to in the correspondence between Sheridan, Mix, LeClair, etc., as “Newco,” a company belonging to Keith Laslop.

The company involved with the PEI Insider Egaming Group in 2021 is the co-founder of Gamesys:

It now appears that the “black eye” of 2012 has suddenly turned into “two black eyes,” in 2021 under King, and a lot more, given the fact that it was the promise of this PC government to be transparent, honest and remove such corruption from government, and the Premier has betrayed those promises as he operates against the people of PEI and for the personal gain of the Insider Club.

There was (as alleged in the Motion Record for this lawsuit and the Affidavit of the Private Investigator, Derrick Snowdy, engaged by Maines’ legal counsel, John Phillips) a meeting to explore how members of the secret egaming initiative could:

(1) Personally benefit from the new egaming online platform; and,

(2) Keep me and Paul Maines from finding out.

In other words, the allegation is that Premier King was engaged in a secret process more or less identical to what was going on back in 2012, what the Auditor General identified as the main problem with the entire egaming project in her Special Assignment on Egaming , i.e., that it was set up in secret, was unaccountable to both the taxpayer and government, and operated completely outside government (she couldn’t even get the documents from the secret egaming group):

I’m sure that it was that kind of secrecy and “off-site” project management that Premier King had in mind when he used the “black eye” term to describe the 2012 egaming scandal.

AN ANONYMOUS WHISTLE-BLOWER…..UH…”BLOWS THE WHISTLE“

“Nothing secret about what we’re doing here,” says Premier King, in the House, for the official Hansard in the above video clip. Hmm.

A whistle-blower says otherwise.

The following email was provided to the plaintiff in this case:

Notice that it’s all “off-the-record”…no one on this email chain is with government, except Dennis King, who is using his PC email account, not his Premier’s email address. 

LIttle wonder that I was told by Dan Campbell that there were no documents with my Foi request asking for gaming documents associated with the Order in Council, a point that was mentioned in the filing in paragraph 18:

The Private Investigator who was engaged by Maines’ legal counsel, also mentioned this in his Affidavit:

Contrast that with what Premier King stated in the House  back in March, 2021, when challenged by the leader of the opposition that his government was abusing the FOIPP system [something I could easily prove with a number of my files, but that’s another issue] and breaking the law:

Bound by law indeed!

One more paragraph from the filings in the PEI Supreme Court yesterday (Friday, September 17th) identifying what the crimes the Plaintiff’s Statement of Claim alleges against the named defendants, and then I’ll wrap this one up:

Them’s some pretty darn serious claims Premier King! 

“…civil conspiracy, misfeasance in public office, fraudulent misrepresentation, and obstruction of civil justice….”

What say ye to that Premier King?

SUMMARY

There’s so much more to say about this historical event for PEI where the light shines on the Insider Club and at least some of it’s membership get exposed, and lies don’t get to “win the day” and write the final chapter on this egaming story, hiding the truth forever in the historical record.

Not this time Premier King…..not this time!

The piper has been paid. 

The tune has been called.

There will be dancers!

And those dancers are likely going to demonstrate some awesome gyrations and feet-kicking akin to what you’d see with a group of poorly prepared  firewalkers desperately trying to get across the burning coals with some of their feet still in tact. 

I predict the Premier will only dig himself in deeper, because he is in so deep with the lies and deception on egaming now, he will default to “Story-Teller” mode, and a good story teller knows people like a good story, they don’t usually care if it’s true or pretend.

That won’t work for him this time if he decides to go that route; it will only add another crime to what’s already being alleged if he denies everything – in a sworn Affidavit as his ‘Defence’ adding a “perjury” charge to the list.

As they say….more to follow. And please share this one, Islanders have a right to know the truth about this, and they are not likely going to get much of that from the mainstream media.