From the Notebook archives, 2022
- MacPolitics: Joseph Khoury At The Heart Of Liberal Scandal
Then 2022 Nova Scotia Liberal Party president Joseph Khoury was a prime figure in the developing news story at party headquarters in 2021-2022.
As I reported in an exclusive news story on Friday Feb. 11th, 2022, Khoury was apparently participating in a cover-up of a theft by a former staffer of $150,000 over a six-year period.
In January 2021, a letter from then-Premier Stephen McNeil suggested Khoury to investigate whether there had been theft. McNeil told Khoury if wrongdoing was discovered, to report it to the police.
Despite the strong wording of McNeil’s letter, Khoury did not go to the police after the investigation concluded in the spring of 2021 that wrong-doing had occurred. By then, McNeil had left office.
No public acknowledgement of the missing money was made until March 2022 – it was not disclosed to party members in 2021.
In Feb. 2022, Khoury was not responding to numerous phone calls and email messages.
My original source on this file writes about Khoury’s involvement in the cover-up at the highest level of the province’s Liberal Party.
“Throughout the period the (then) NSLP president, Joseph Khoury, and the (then) NSLP executive director, Mike Mercer, made every effort to limit any possible public disclosure of the theft. Management board members were only told pieces of information, and they were required to sign non-disclosure agreements for the little bit of information they were provided,” my source writes.
“The theft occurred throughout the time that Mike Mercer was executive director of the Nova Scotia Liberal Party. Why was a governance review not authorized given that it was his signature forged on the cheques? What poor processes were in place that allowed the situation to not only occur but also continue undetected for years? Why does a staff member have signing authority anyway? Typically signing authority rests with the elected officers of the board, but a governance review would determine best practices and whether the NSLP was employing good practices or not,” adds the source.
Who Is Joseph Khoury?
Former Nova Scotia Liberal party president Joseph Khoury is an associate professor of English and teaches at Saint Francis Xavier University in Antigonish.
STFX professor Joseph Khoury is president of the Nova Scotia Liberal Party. He has never given a media interview on allegations he had covered up the alleged theft of $150K from Liberal coffers.
Khoury, who studied political philosophy and comparative literature, specializes in Shakespeare. He is currently editor of a book series on the Renaissance and is chair of the Festival Antigonish Summer Theatre, considered one of the top five professional summer theatres in Canada.
In 2015, Khoury served as a juror for the Governor-General’s Literary Prize.
He received the Outstanding Teaching Award at St. FX in 2016. Before taking his post at St. FX, Joseph taught high school in Ottawa.
A biography says Khoury “fell into politics at an early age. Three months shy of his 12th birthday, Joseph and his family became landed immigrants in September 1976, after having been internally displaced refugees on the run for two years following the occupation of their home in Beirut during Lebanon’s 1975 civil war.
“Joseph and his family landed in Mirabel, Québec, with just a few dollars and able to speak Arabic only. They have always expressed their gratitude to Pierre Trudeau’s welcoming of Lebanese people displaced by the civil war. Joseph co-founded the StFX for SAFE (Syria Antigonish Families Embrace) which raised over $100,000 to help sponsor several Syrian refugee families, now settled in Antigonish,” adds his bio,
“Joseph’s first volunteer activity for the Liberal Party was in Ottawa Centre 35 years ago. An active political volunteer over the years, he picked up where he left off when he moved to Antigonish to take up his position at St. FX. Joseph became president of the Antigonish Liberal Association in 2011, where they initiated town halls, community breakfasts and BBQs, and strengthened their ground game in order to win back the provincial riding in 2013.
“Joseph became regional director for Central Nova in 2014 and worked with the Central Nova team to win back the federal riding in 2015. He has worked on over a dozen provincial and federal election campaigns as a senior member of the campaign teams,” adds his bio.
“Joseph is married to Janet Becigneul, a former journalist and public relations and communications specialist. They were set up by a Liberal MP when Janet worked on Parliament Hill. They have two children: Juliana is currently at university and served as a Parliamentary Page in 2015, and James made his debut as an official Young Liberal at the 2018 provincial AGM.” His spouse in 202102021 sat on the Liberal board – raising serious questions of corporate governance and conflict of interest issues, I think.
