Tuesday, April 25, 1967

intention of solving these difficulties. They never had any intention of solving these difficulties, and they have recently succeeded in setting up some sort of a Board, called the New Board of Directors of Gulf Garden Foods. Now I will try and sketch this together as well as I can, but events have been happening so fast in the last few days that it is difficult to follow most of them. After the meeting of February 8th, which the Premier attended in the naive expectations that Mr. Moe 1 was going to sell everything he owned for one dollar, he came home, or rather i he went to Quebec City, to attend the Winter Games there. Games in Quebec City, apparently, are more important than industries in Georgetown. He came home and left Mr. Nicholson, I suppose you could call him Minister Plenipotentiary, to carry on the negotiations. Mr. Nicholson was not authorized to carry on any seri- ous negotiations with Mr. Moe and, although they did talk for several days, Mr. Nicholson came home no further ahead than Mr. Campbell when he left. Now I expect that the terms of reference were so restrictive that no progress could be made. I spoke to Mr. Nicholson on several occasions after he came home. I asked him what his impressions of Mr. Moe were since he had met Mr. Moe more times than I, and should be in a position to know him better. I asked him what he thought of Mr. Moe, and he said, “Mr. Moe is not a bad fellow. He deserves better than he is going to get from this Government.”

Following this Mr. Stavert found it necessary to come to the Island to carry on several meetings with the Government and other people here. Mr. Stavert, I should inform you, is the Canadian lawyer in Montreal who is acting on behalf of Norinvest. He found it necessary to go to Norway in March to work on this problem further, and the net result of it all was that the Government now thinks that there is a new Board in charge of Gulf Garden Foods. This is a matter which will have to be decided in the Courts and I am not in a position to say who the Board of Gulf Garden Foods is at the present time. However, the Government has made a committment, passed by two Ordewin-Council, the numbers of which I can get, last

Wednesday morning, to appropriate some money to be paid by the P.E.I. Industrial Corporation for the proposal of bankruptcy of the new Board of Gulf Garden Foods. Some three agreements, I understand, have been drawn up to facilitate these mat- ters and to leave the Government in the clear. The Premier is doing this despite the admonition of his legal counsellors that one of these agreements may, in fact, be. . .

Honourable Alexander B. Campbell: (Remark inaudible.)

J. Cyril Sinnott: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Premier to remember that I said that, and he better check with his legal counsellor, because his counsel has written down that he would not advise the Government to be in a position, to be put in a position of having to defend the legality of one of these documents.

Honourable Alexander B. Campbell: That is quite correct, but not quite the way you said it the first time.

J. Cyril Sinnott: The same thing. Is that correct or not? Is it correct?

Honourable Alexander B. Campbell: We will make our statements, Sir, you go on and do the best you can. You are not doing a bad job.

J. Cyril Siunott: You are engaged in under the table activities . . . Honourable Alexander B. Campbell: Above the table.

J. Cyril Sinnott: They are not above the table at all. You are spending the taxpayers money which is gone and lost on behalf of a Board which may not be legally constituted. You are acting with documents which maybe, in fact, be illegal and your legal counsel has told you that you should not be in a position of having to defend the legality of it. Yet you, knowing that they may be illegal, are going ahead and doing this. The creditors meeting is set for May 25th.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I am going to :let Georgetown rest in peace for awhile. Seven! Members: Oh, dear, oh,no!

1., Cyril Sinnott: I have a suggestion that we move to Alberton how would that be .

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