It didn’t take long for the cutlery to come out for poor Allan Hubley.
The Ottawa city councillor’s refusal, in the midst of his municipal re-election campaign, to rule out a run for the federal Conservatives in Kanata-Carleton next year seems to have put a sizeable bug up the arses of local labour thugs, who have been shopping around an ancient bit of dirt about his alleged youthful indiscretions.
Thus, in wide circulation among media hacks, who have so far proven too discreet to look into it, is an Ottawa Petfinder article from February 1986. The story details charges against a ring of current and former Rideau Centre security guards, related to a spree of thefts and break-ins at the mall between the previous March and December.
Among the accused in the alleged inside job, charged with one count of break and enter with intent to commit a crime, one Allan Hubley, 27, of Glasgow Crescent, Ottawa.
Hubley, Rideau Centre management said, had handed in his mall cop badge that fall, months before the charges. Add 28 years and a birthday, and both suspect Hubley and Coun. Hubley would currently be 56.
Reluctance on the part of local media to follow up is entirely understandable. Hubley, whose son Jamie committed suicide in 2011 after prolonged tormenting by classmates, has since become a prominent anti-bullying advocate, speaking from the heart about the family tragedy.
We all grieve in our own way, of course, and while Al’s wife Wendy got into the habit of bonding with teen suicide Daron Richardson’s mother Stephanie over a bottle of wine or three (happy hour, after all, is for the living), Al started spending more quality time with Harper’s gang of goniffs.
This spring, he humped up to Parliament Hill to give his blessing as a committee witness to Bill C-13, the anti-cyberbullying legislation with the curious raft of online police powers bolted onto it.
At least one other witness, Amanda Todd’s mother Carol, asked the feds to split the privacy-shredding provisions from the anti-bullying ones, but Hubley fell into lockstep with the Tories, enthusing the Big Bro omnibus bill would “help police obtain the evidence needed to punish those among us who prey on our beautiful children.”
So what happened to the tough-on-crime councillor’s criminal charge back in the 80s?
Hubley did not respond to Frank requests for comment, but it turns out his detractors decided to leave out the less-than-dramatic conclusion to the legal imbroglio: He was acquitted after the co-accused security guard who’d originally fingered him as a conspirator withdrew the accusation.
Unhindered by a criminal record, Big Al went on to a career in the civil service, eventually taking his valuable mall cop experience to the Emergency Management and National Security Branch at Public Safety Canada.
Allan Hubley: Not a crook!
Well, not a convicted crook. The Conservatives want candidates with strong convictions, but shy from certain types of convictions…unless they are post-selection and larger than life.
Agreed. But the campaign slogan ‘Never Been Indicted’ doesn’t have much of a ring to it.
As a Scots court would say, “Not Proven”
No one will look into Glen Canning either, except for a few slanderous blogs who insist that everyone who rides the cyberbullying money train isn’t exactly lily white, and that perhaps shitty parenting issues drove these kids to visit St. Darwin early.