‘Never briefed’
Finance Minister Allen Roach says he had no detailed knowledge of e-gaming file
Finance Minister Allen Roach says he was never briefed on the controversial e-gaming file, despite being minister of the department that funded the venture with a dubious $950,000 loan. Roach appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts Wednesday, where he attempted to reassure MLAs that all of the auditor general’s recommendations and concerns raised in her special audit of the e-gaming venture are being addressed by government.
Instead, he found himself defending his role as minister of Innovation and Advanced Learning at the time the egaming loan was approved. Roach told the committee he was “never briefed on the egaming project.”
“I think it was sometime around 2013 early in the year that I really first became aware that there was a fairly lengthy file that involved the former minister of finance (Wes Sheridan) and the Mi’kmaq/ MCPEI,” Roach said. Opposition MLAs Darlene Compton and Brad Trivers were incredulous at this and pushed for timelines and details of what he was told and when.
Roach says he had no detailed knowledge of the $950,000 loan from Island Investment Development Inc. (IIDI) to the Mi’kmaq Confederacy of P.E.I. (MCPEI), approved Nov. 14, 2011, even though he was the minister of the department that houses IIDI. R oach became minister in one month earlier. He told the committee he only learned of the loan’s existence from his deputy minister in 2013.
Auditor general Jane MacAdam raised a number of concerns about this loan in her audit report, notably in the way it was approved. MCPEI requested the $950,000 loan in October 2011 but provided no security. Instead, Sheridan provided a letter of guarantee for the loan saying, “in the event of default by MCPEI, the Department of Finance accepts responsibility for the ultimate repayment of this loan to IIDI.”
A letter of guarantee like this must be approved by treasury board and executive council, but these approvals were not present with this loan. This is a violation of the Financial Administration Act, but it was approved anyway.
Roach was questioned about statements made in the legislature in 2014 indicating the loan was in good standing. No payments were ever made on the loan, and it was finally written off last November. Roach says he was told the loan was in good standing by his deputy minister, Neil Stewart, and that he was never informed that no payments had ever been made.
The finance minister says he only learned full details of the whole e-gaming scheme by reading MacAdam’s 2016 audit report.
“As a former minister of innovation, I think it would have been nice to know what was going on at that time, yes. And, certainly, if I’d had the information at the time, without question, I would have asked a lot of questions.”
After the meeting, Opposition MLA James Aylward pointed out he began asking questions in the legislature about e-gaming in 2013. He questions why Roach never saw fit to demand more information about this file sooner.
“If I was the minister of a certain portfolio that held this file and there was questions being asked in the legislative assembly, I would certainly be going back to my department and asking, demanding a full briefing immediately.”
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Finance Minister Allen Roach