bill casey Archives - Stephen Taylor

On the matter of this nonsense against Bill Casey

During the previous election campaign, on October 10th, I received a “brown envelope” email from someone I presumed (and still do) to be a constituent of Bill Casey. The email made quite an accusation of corruption against the now-independent member from Cumberland-Colchester. The email promised proof of this corruption to be sent via fax, so like any lead I followed the trail to see what I would find. I received the fax and proceeded to ask around carefully about what I had just received.

Sometimes bloggers get accused of jumping the gun on biased single-sourced information and rush to produce it as an exclusive. In the world that is supposed to work on solid citation and reliable sources, a disaffected grumbler in Nova Scotia with an axe to grind falls far below what one might read in the Economist; one must consider bias, motive and track record when weighing information and it is critical to seek substantiation. I know of only a handful of reporters in this town that depend on single-sourced information more often than not. All of the others seek solid substantiation on every story.

Grasping the seriousness of the accusation against Bill Casey and sensing that an agenda might be at play, I made sure to ask around. Not only double-sourced but triple-sourced! The answer was the same: my original source only gave me half of the story (the withdrawal of the $30,000). The other half which wasn’t being told was that he paid it back.

This story, now not a story, was put into the archives of my email (instead of on the front page of this website) and was not considered again. Until this afternoon,

Today, CBC reports,

Nova Scotia’s Independent MP Bill Casey is lashing out at federal Conservatives, saying allegations that he stole from the party amount to character assassination.

Casey, a former Tory who was kicked out of the party in June 2007, spoke out in the House of Commons on Tuesday.

“They put a cloud over my head and have hurt my ability to do my job as a member of Parliament because they’ve hurt my credibility,” he said.

“Who’s going to feel comfortable coming into my office knowing that the Conservative Party of Canada, the governing party has had the RCMP investigate me for theft and embezzlement?”

Casey, MP for Cumberland–Colchester–Musquodoboit Valley, received a copy of an RCMP memo that describes how Conservative party members wanted the Mounties to investigate allegations he embezzled funds.

The document is a briefing note to the RCMP commissioner. It describes how a member of the Conservative party contacted Bible Hill RCMP on Sept. 19, 2008, accusing him of stealing.

At issue was a $30,000 cheque from May 2007 from the party.

Since this filthy dog of a non-story landed in my email box last year and since it is now causing Bill Casey public troubles, I wanted to produce what information I have. Unfortunately, producing the identity of my source would go against a separate principle so I cannot do that. However, I will say that those folks I followed up with during the campaign who told me that there was no story there because Casey paid the money back were federal Conservative officials in Ottawa.

Here is the original email that I received,

Why Bill Casey should step down.

Bill casey stated publicly that he had only 1 minute to decide to vote against the budget(www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2007/06/05/budget-casey), yet 5 days earlier a check signed by Frank Elliott ( Bills Campaign Manager) and Mr. Neilson was written out to bill caseys official agent( Ian Hamilton )cleaning out the account. The check amount was 30K. Obviously, they had made up their mind and understood Bill would be kicked out of caucus and that they would loss access to the money. The money was taken out of the riding association while under Scott Armstrongs watch, he was the president of the riding association and is now working for Bills campaign. He never said a word against the money being taken out. In fact there is a a witness that can testify to the fact he supported it at the time the money was stolen. There are several issues here. 1st. He lied to the nation. 2nd. He and his cohorts stole and embezzled a large amount of money. 3rd. He knew better. If he is willing to do all this and have such a disregard to the laws of this great nation, what else has he done that we don’t know about? I think its time Bill does the honourable thing by removing himself from the race and apologizes to all Canadians for such criminal actions.

I have a copy of the cheque. the cheque number is 150 made out on may 31, 2007, from the North Nova Conservative Party of Canada Association. their account was at the royal bank. the cheque was cashed at CIBC in Amherst, Bills hometown. feel free to contact me any time, I am willing to fax you a copy of the cashed cheque.

Here is the fax I received with the cheque,

From all accounts from the time I’ve lived in Ottawa and my time around federal Conservative politics, I have known Bill Casey to be an honourable and reputable man. That is still the case. This story is unfounded.

UPDATE: Bill Casey brings this up in the House of Commons,

Mr. Bill Casey (Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, Ind.): Mr. Speaker, on September 23, 2007, the RCMP informed the Conservatives that there was no evidence to back up their accusations of theft and embezzlement against me by their official agent. Yet two weeks later, other Conservatives distributed the same accusations of theft and embezzlement to the media and on the Internet. In fact, members can see those accusations against me on the website stephentaylor.ca.
Last week, the Minister of Public Safety said there was only one person involved, but now obviously there is more than one Conservative, and I do not mean Conservatives in this House, but there is more than one Conservative involved. Will they release the names of all those Conservatives?

Hon. Peter Van Loan (Minister of Public Safety, CPC): Mr. Speaker, as I advised this House previously, the RCMP looked into this matter and made it clear that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing with regard to the member for Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley.
I also confirmed to this House that the Conservative Party was of the same view.

Bill Casey passed on his thanks.

Casey votes against the budget he liked

Today, Nova Scotian MP Bill Casey from Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley voted against his party’s budget by voting against C-52, a budget implementation act.

This is odd, because Casey has spoken favourably about the budget in the past. Consider this article from the Truro Daily News on March 22nd of this year:

TRURO – Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley MP Bill Casey feels the 2007 federal budget is a boon for his riding.

“I have never seen a budget that has had more in it for the people of my riding than this one does,” Casey said from his Ottawa office, yesterday.

He said benefits can be easily pinpointed throughout the budget for the high population of seniors, working families with children and low-income families in his riding.

Casey was surprised by the controversy caused by the federal budget because it provides extra funding for health, infrastructure, and post-secondary education through equalization payments and other programs.

The vote, of course, is one of confidence and if parliamentary tradition is any guide (and it usually is), Casey will find himself outside of caucus tomorrow.

UPDATE: According to government whip Jay Hill, Casey is out of caucus.

The $2 Billion Boondoggle

Paul Martin and the federal Liberals are not having a good week.

CBC News reports today that the cost of Canada’s national gun registry has soared to $2 Billion. Critics of the Liberal boondoggle have only recently pegged this figure at about $1 Billion dollars. Conservative MP Bill Casey’s website at gunregistry.ca compares the billion dollar pricetag of the program, which has been largely ineffective, to what else could be bought for $1 Billion. Mr. Casey, you’ll have to double that figure today.

The program was introduced in the mid-1990’s under the fiscal eye of then finance minister Paul Martin. The now Prime Minister has declared that he will not scrap the wasteful program. As always, the Prime Minister has stated that he will ‘review’ it and then make some changes. Mr. Martin, as some psychologists would declare, suffers from entrapment bias which is defined as an increase in commitment to a failed course of action to justify the investments that were already made. The original cost of the program was estimated, by Mr. Martin’s department, to be $2 million. Now, the program’s costs have burgeoned 1000-fold. When’s the last time that you spent 1000 times more on a purchase than you originally intended? In a hypothetical comparison, no Canadian would finance a $25,000 car at a cost of $25,000,000.

The program itself isn’t an effective measure for crime prevention; gun registration requires compliance. Most of the guns used in crimes are largely unregistered illegal weapons. Meanwhile, every farmer and hunter in this country is being told to register their rifles.

If we are to update the figure on Mr. Casey’s website, we’d be astonished to learn that in the realm of crime prevention (which is the intent of the program), $2 Billion dollars could buy: 66,666 police cruisers at $30,000 each or it could pay for the salaries of 2000 police officers forever ($2 Billion invested at 5% interest). Alternatively, the money could have paid the tuition for almost every single university student in this country for 2 years.