E-gaming legal saga not over: Maines

Paul Maines, the president of the company at the centre of the ongoing e-gaming controversy, says he is undaunted by Wednesday’s dismissal of his $150-million lawsuit by Justice Gordon Campbell.

The lawsuit was the second filed by Maines to be thrown out by Campbell. A previous $25million lawsuit was dismissed in 2016. The most recent statement of claim targeted the provincial government in its actions related to the e-gaming scheme and had originally named 14 defendants, including former premier Robert Ghiz and former finance minister Wes Sheridan. One defendant, Paul Jenkins, settled in February.

Campbell’s 172-page ruling described the lawsuit as “wholly without merit” and found there were no genuine issues requiring a trial.

Maines said he plans to appeal Campbell’s ruling.

The most recent lawsuit alleged several members of the Ghiz government committed misfeasance in a public office, alleged some officials violated the terms of a memorandum of understanding with CMT and alleged several public officials had tampered with evidence.

Between 2009 and 2012, the province, working with the Mi’kmaq Confederacy of P.E.I., pursued a plan to establishing P.E.I. as a regulatory centre for online gambling.

Simplex, a firm partially owned by CMT, was involved in providing a financial services platform for this effort, and CMT was later briefly engaged as a contractor to provide a similar platform for a tourism loyalty card program.

Maines believes the evidence presented to the court, which included hundreds of pages of internal government emails and documents related to both the shelved e-gaming project and the loyalty card program, was sufficient enough for the case to go to trial.

“The bar for going to trial is low,” Maines said in an interview Wednesday.

Campbell wrote in his decision that “the bar for establishing misfeasance in public office has indeed been set high.”

Campbell also wrote that CMT had failed to “put their best foot forward” in presenting the degree of evidence required for the court to conclude there was a possibility of success.

“It’s so off-side that it’s crazy,” Maines said.

Maines said the province’s lawyers, represented by Stewart McKelvey, did not disclose email communication between some officials named in the lawsuit.

Specifically, he pointed to two years of emails from Brad Mix, an employee of Tourism P.E.I., that Erin McGrath-Gaudet, the province’s deputy minister of economic growth, tourism and culture, has admitted were missing.

In a July letter, McGrathGaudet suggested the emails may have been lost due to a mobile phone upgrade in 2015.

Maines said the information that these emails had been missing since 2015 was not relayed to his counsel in disclosures from Stewart McKelvey.

“They lied about Brad Mix’ emails,” Maines said.

“That’s a trial-able issue there.”

Maines also said the province is still not disclosing information. He shared with The Guardian several email exchanges that reveal four Freedom of Information requests directed to the Department of Justice and Public Safety have been deemed “refusal”.

Maines also said the findings of the 2015 Auditor general’s report on the e-gaming initiative supported many of the allegations in his amended statement of claim.

Campbell had not directly considered the findings of the auditor general’s report because, he wrote, the office of the auditor general was not “designed nor equipped to conduct an inquiry to discuss civil liability”.

The Guardian reached out to a representative from Stewart McKelvey but did not receive a response by deadline.