Why Has CBC Not Reported The Story of Government Investment in eGambling on PEI

This article was last updated on May 25, 2022

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What kind of journalism are Canadian taxpayers funding at the CBC?

By Stephen Pate – Canadians are being shocked by a new political scandal involving an aborted attempt by the PEI Government to establish illegal gambling on PEI.

Using First Nations Canadians as a front, the PEI government was organizing and investing in a scheme that have could led to organized crime in other areas.

Small island, big bet: How PEI lost its online gambling gamble headlined the story in the Globe and Mail on February 27th, 2015.

“The fact that the plan was illegal – and had elsewhere been used by the Mafia – is one of this story’s more mundane details.  In September, 2008, then-finance minister Wes Sheridan released a report on the province’s gaming strategy. He warned that the rapid growth of unregulated online gambling could threaten PEI’s gaming revenue from its racetrack/casino and lotteries – “unless actions are taken.”… It would have to attract users from outside the island – and that was against the law.”

During the intervening years, the Finance Minister invested personal and public funds in this possibly illegal venture along with a who’s-who list of PEI civil servants, public officials and others who were involved in some way or another including:

John Shane MacEachern, PEI Department of Finance;

Melissa MacEachern (wife of John Shane) PEI Deputy Minister of Tourism;

Chris LeClair (and his wife Christine DaPrat), former-PEI Deputy Premier and Premier’s Chief of Staff;

Paul Jenkins and Garth Jenkins;

Jeff Trainor;

Don MacKenzie, Mi’kmaq Confederacy of Prince Edward Island;

Wes Sheridan, PEI Minister of Finance;

Mark O’Halloran, Liberal Party executive director;

Brad Mix at Innovation PEI (a crown corp.);

Neil Robinson, PEI Conflict of Interest Commissioner;

Bill Dow, a lawyer and ex-Premier Robert Ghiz’s uncle;

Eddie Francis, a manager for the Murphy Group;

and Mark Rodd, president of Rodd Hotels and Resorts;

The Globe investigation raises many troubling questions already posed about conflict of interest in politicians and civil servants.  It it wasn’t so pathetic it would be amusing that PEI’s Conflict of Interest Commissioner was an investor. He obviously has no nose for the job.

PEI is a small place. Everyone knows everyone and their business. As the Globe put it “Around 35,000 people live in the capital of PEI. On any given night in Charlottetown, the province’s power brokers are likely sitting in one of half a dozen restaurants or bars, all within walking distance of each other.”

What is not clear is why it took two reporters from the Globe to fly 1,700 KM from Toronto to Charlottetown to investigate and report the story. CBC has 36 journalists in Charlottetown.

Canadian taxpayers pay $1 billion to subsidize a public broadcaster dedicated to Canadian journalism. CBC Charlottetown has more than 60 employees in Charlottetown. 36 CBC employees are accredited journalists with the PEI Press Gallery.

What is clear is that PEI’s best journalists, the one’s who work for the CBC, have no nose for the job of journalism because not one of them reported this story before the Globe broke it.

After the story broke last week, the same 36 journalists have busied themselves with press releases from the government and a few soft ball interviews.

Of those 36 accredited CBC journalists not one could research and report a story that was right under their noses. This story was so widely known it was being carried in a local blog Redlikeme for the past 10 months.

At one point, some of the principals in the story filed a lawsuit in PEI Supreme Court against RedLikeMe but CBC failed to report any parts of the story.

So what are Canadians funding with their $1 billion a year CBC investment? It appears news is off the table.

In the picture above, Canadians are listening intently to Canada’s news source CBC Radio Canada.  If CBC’s ratings are declining it may be the public knows they are not a reliable source of information.

Sources within CBC News tell us that Charlottetown Executive News Producer Donna Allen refused to allow this story to be reported. While that may be true, what reason is there for the French CBC Radio Canada to not cover it? They have their own management team.

Here are the CBC employees who are accredited members of the PEI Press Gallery. Individually they are no doubt great people. However, as a group they are incompetent and not performing their jobs to report the news on PEI. The taxpayers of Canada are not getting their money’s worth.

Ken Adams

Donna Allen

Marc Babin

Maggie Brown

Kerry Campbell

Lindsay Ann Carroll

Laura Chapin

Frederique Charest

Julie Clow

Julia Cook

Mitch Cormier

Leonard Drake

Patrick Faller

Sara Fraser

Rick Gibbs

Ryan Hicks

Brian Higgins

John Jeffery

Sarah Keaveny-Voss

Nicole Kitchener

Rob LeClair

Tracy Lightfoot

Karen Mair

Pat Martel

Randy McAndrew

Laura Meador

Robyn Miller

Sally Pitt

Bruce Rainnie

Matt Rainnie

Steve Stapleton

Steve Bruce

Federico Cahis

Shane Hennessey

Angela Walker

Kevin Yarr

By Stephen Pate, NJN Network

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