Throughout my journalism career, I’ve developed a fascination with stories about corruption. If you’ve been listening to the work that Jordan and I have done either at COMMONS or here at The Hatchet, you’ve probably picked up on that.
And during that time, I’ve developed some theories about where I think corruption is happening, but isn’t being fully exposed or made right.
My first theory is that I think Anglo-Canadian politics is just as corrupt as Quebec politics. For decades, those of us in the Rest of Canada have patted ourselves on the back while various elected officials in Quebec have been charged with political crimes. But I’m increasingly convinced that the only difference is that police in Quebec are willing to arrest politicians. And the cops in the rest of the country aren’t.
My second theory is that corruption is more likely to happen in smaller jurisdictions, where fewer people are going to be paying attention. Journalists and activists often ignore what’s happening in smaller communities because they don’t have the resources to be monitoring every government body.
And that, in a very round about way, brings us to the subject of this episode. It’s not surprising that Prince Edward Island gets ignored by most of the press outside of the Maritimes. It’s by far the smallest province, with less than 200,000 residents. And the last time PEI politics were being covered nationally was when PEI senator Mike Duffy was at the centre of a massive expense scandal well over a decade ago.
But that lack of attention is a disservice. One, because like I said, I’m increasingly convinced that all of us Anglo provinces are way more corrupt than people think. And two, because PEI isn’t just a collection of small communities. It’s a full-fledged province, with equal standing in Confederation, and with a government responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in spending.
For a relatively small place, those are some pretty high stakes.
So I was really interested to read about a possible corruption scandal that’s come out in the province, which has already led to the resignation of a cabinet minister and is being investigated by the RCMP. It involves allegations of a golf course development, sensitive wetlands and allegations of bribery. Which sounds like your cookie-cutter corruption scandal.
But there’s a lot of things about this story that are out of the ordinary. First off, this alleged bribe wasn’t paid to the politician, but to a sort of do-gooder group of retired francophone teachers. And secondly, it was the premier himself that exposed his alleged corruption.
So I decided to give a call to Stu Neatby, the political reporter for The Guardian, PEI’s paper of record. Alongside trying to parse through this corruption scandal, Stu also walks us through the state of PEI politics and another strange conflict-of-interest case involving another PEI minister, who just wants to go fishing. It’s the most Prince Edward Island political story you’ll ever hear.
