Nova Scotia's Keystone Minister

ATV reported yesterday that Ron Chisholm, Tory MLA and Minister of Fisheries, was stopped by police after picking a prostitute up at a Tim Hortons a month or so ago. He says he was just giving her a drive home because it was very cold outside. He didn’t tell either his wife or the Premier until yesterday.

This morning's Chrinicle Herald had this on the issue:

Passenger trouble for Chisholm
Minister gave ride to woman known to cops in Dartmouth
By JEFFREY SIMPSON
Another provincial Tory cabinet minister has been involved in an incident involving police that he didn’t report to the premier.
Officers pulled over Fisheries Minister Ron Chisholm two weeks ago in Dartmouth as he was driving with a woman they described to him as "a person of interest to them."
Mr. Chisholm wasn’t charged and drove away while the woman remained behind with police. But he didn’t mention the matter to anybody, including Premier Rodney MacDonald, he said. "I didn’t really think anything much of it," Mr. Chisholm told The Chronicle Herald on Tuesday. "I didn’t do anything wrong."
Mr. Chisholm said he had been working until about 10 o’clock that night, which he believes was March 8, and decided to drive to Dartmouth for some Chinese takeout from Yum Yum’s. After picking up some beef fried rice and two egg rolls, he stopped at a Tim Hortons near the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge as he headed back to Halifax, where he has an apartment.
After buying a coffee, he got back into his car, he said, and a woman wearing a hat and scarf beat on the window and asked for a lift home. Mr. Chisholm said he initially turned her down. But she persisted.
He said he felt sorry for her because it was —30 with the wind chill so he agreed to drive her. "She was pleading with me," the Guysborough-Sheet Harbour MLA said. "I gave in, I guess. "I didn’t know who this lady was."
The woman, who he believed was over 25 years old, was directing him to where she wanted to go as they drove. They only got about a mile, he said, before police stopped them. An officer took his licence and explained that they wanted to speak to the woman. Mr. Chisholm said he doesn’t know how the police knew she was in the car. "I couldn’t tell you — I have no idea," he said.
But he suspects they might have seen her getting into his car. "It appears that way," he said. "I had no idea why they wanted to talk to her. They didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask."
Mr. Chisholm was free to continue on his way, while the woman stayed with police.
"Was it good judgment on my part?" he said. "Probably not. But I guess if somebody asked me for a drive home on a cold night, I’d probably say yes again."
Mr. Chisholm said he buys Chinese food from the same takeout all the time; he gets his hair cut at a barbershop in the same area and often patronizes a nearby tailor shop, where he had a snowmobile suit altered a few weeks ago.
He said he didn’t think the incident was worth making a big deal over.