FALL RIVER: The PC candidate for Waverley-Fall River-Beaver Bank is denying allegations made by Stacey Rudderham in a blog post on NSAdvocate.org.
Rudderham, one of the leaders in the fight against the Fall River quarry, wrote a post about a couple of encounters and meetings with McNaughton, who is looking to unseat Liberal Bill Horne for the riding. In the post, posted on May 17 and still up as of 9 a.m. on May 18, Rudderham alleges McNaughton made racist remarks about Indigenous people and environmental stewardship and that Nova Scotia Environment wouldn’t let something come in that was bad.
McNaughton has retained lawyer Stephen R. Boyce, who has sent a letter to the owner of NS Advocate website to remove the post by Rudderham as the allegations made in the post are all “unsubstantiated”, also calling them false, defamatory, and malicious.
In the letter sent to Robert DeVet, who owns the website NSAdvocate.org, Boyce writes about McNaughton’s long and distinguished 35 year career in the RCMP before retiring in 2017.
“For 20 years, Mr. McNaughton was active in the First Nation community in all aspects of police work without one single complaint made against him,” the letter reads. “In addition, Mr. McNaughton has a sister who is a full First Nation member.”
It goes on to say that publishing the outrageous and false statements made by Rudderham and attributed to Mr. McNaughton are “defamatory, malicious, and damagingly misrepresents everything Mr. McNaughton is both as a human being and promoted during the course of his professional career with the RCMP.”
“In addition to the harm caused to Mr. McNaughton there is no doubt that this article will have a damaging affect on both his spouse and children,” the letter said.
It asks that NS Advocate remove the offending article from the publication immediately.
“Failure to do so will leave Mr. McNaughton no alternative but to pursue all available remedies at law to rectify this attack against his character,” said the letter.
phealey@enfieldweeklypress.com
