DNR officer received 'strange' call over Andrew Harvey charges

The former Department of Natural Resources officer who laid charges against Liberal candidate Andrew Harvey says he received a strange phone call from Fredericton just days before journalists were tipped off about the prosecution.

Allen Goodine launched his investigation into Harvey in November 2011 after other DNR officers stopped a logging truck on Crown land.

That probe culminated in charges laid on July 29, 2014, three weeks before the start of the campaign in which Harvey is running as the Liberal candidate in Carleton-Victoria.

I really dont know why he called, but I got a gut feeling that something just didnt seem right.- Allen Goodine

Goodine said he told supervisors about the charges in July because Harvey was a high-profile candidate.

But then, on Aug. 29, his last day on the job before he retired, he said he got a phone call from a senior bureaucrat at DNR.

He said the official wanted to know details of the charges, including the names of the people accused, at which courthouse the charge was filed, and the date set for pleas.

"At that time, I said, `I got a gut feeling. I think there's something's adrift here, Goodine told CBC News.

He said hed never received a call like that in his 33 years with DNR. The questions were the kind one would ask if they wanted to look up the court file, he said.

I really dont know why he called, but I got a gut feeling that something just didnt seem right.

The day of the call, Aug. 29, was Friday before the Labour Day long weekend. Four days later, on the evening of Sept. 2, the CBC received an anonymous e-mail with the court charge document attached. Other media organizations were also tipped off.

A DNR spokesperson said Wednesday there would be no comment on the alleged phone call to Goodine.

Fraud charges dropped

The charges were withdrawn last week, and the assistant deputy attorney-general, Luc LaBonte, released a statement saying a secondary review determined that the charges didn't meet the threshold required to prosecute.

Goodine wouldnt speculate on the secondary review. He said because of scheduling changes and a maternity leave, three different Crown prosecutors saw the file during the investigation and felt there was a case.

Then a no-name guy comes along and its all squashed, he said.

Ive never had anything like that ever happen before.

Goodine said he has since learned that, since retiring, he is not allowed into the DNR office in Florenceville-Bristol to visit his former colleagues.

Goodine said there was no political motivation to his work.

He said he has no ties to the Progressive Conservative party or to his former PC MLA, Dale Graham, or the current PC candidate in Carleton-Victoria, Colin Lockhart.

His comments come as Harvey distributes a brochure in the riding telling voters he has powerful enemies in the Conservative Party whose goal is to get me to step aside in this election. I am certainly not perfect, but I am innocent of the allegations as reported in the media.

Harveys brother knew in 2011, Goodine says

When word of the charges got out on Sept. 3, Andrew Harvey issued a written statement saying that he was recently advised that these charges were being brought forward.

That appeared to be an attempt to explain why he hadnt told the Liberal party of the case when he went through a candidate background check before his nomination in May.

Goodine said while he has no firsthand knowledge of Andrew Harvey learning of the charges earlier, Harveys brother, David, knew of the investigation from the very start.

On the night the truck was stopped and seized with a load wood, his brother [David] came to the office.

After explaining to Harvey his Charter rights, Goodine said, I told him what we were investigating. He didnt want to give us a statement. He wanted to talk to his lawyer.

David Harvey and Fred Harvey, a former Liberal MLA and the father of both David and Andrew, were also charged in the case in July, along with three of their companies. Those charges were also withdrawn last week.

Goodine says the allegation was that loggers working for the Harveys had cut wood on Crown land and had used paperwork intended to make it appear the wood came from private land.

Goodine also refuted suggestions, including by Liberal Leader Brian Gallant, that the charges were timed to coincide with the start of the election campaign.

He said the investigation was time-consuming because it involved multiple witnesses and a large number of documents. He said he pursued the case throughout 2012, often having to put it aside to deal with his other duties.

The case itself was complex, Goodine said. For example, he had to get a land surveyor to confirm the land in question was Crown land a process that cant be arranged overnight, he added.

Goodine said it took until March 2013 to gather enough evidence to apply for a search warrant to seek records from the local wood marketing board.

Once you got the search warrant, there were lots of documents, and checks, and all that stuff has to be matched and verified by the truckers that this is a transportation certificate they completed, and where they got this wood, and so on.

When the file was finally ready for the Crown in March 2014, it contained more than a thousand pages of documents, Goodine said. The prosecutor who had been working on the file was on maternity leave, meaning a new prosecutor had to go over everything again.

All of that, and not political considerations, explains the timeline, he said.