Bills kill severance for Robert MacLeod, Margaret-Ann Blaney

The former CEOs of Invest New Brunswick and Efficiency New Brunswick have received an unpleasant and retroactive October surprise from the Gallant government, CBC News has learned.

Robert MacLeod and Margaret-Ann Blaney will be prevented from collecting any severance pay and banned from suing the province over their firings two months ago.

Those provisions are contained in two pieces of legislation: one, introduced on Thursday, will dismantle Invest NB and replace it with a new agency, Opportunities New Brunswick. The other, introduced on Friday, would dissolve Efficiency NB.

Most of the Opportunities NB bill sets out how the job-creation agency will work, but Section 35 lays out how one job in particular -- MacLeod’s -- is to be eliminated. The Efficiency NB bill uses identical language to terminate Blaney.

MacLeod, a former Progressive Conservative leadership candidate and campaign co-chair, was appointed CEO by then-Premier David Alward in 2011. Blaney, a long-time PC MLA and cabinet minister, became president of Efficiency NB in 2012.

Both were dumped in October after the swearing-in of the Gallant Liberals, who had denounced both hirings as patronage. Both had been paid six-figure salaries.

The province refused to discuss the terms of MacLeod’s and Blaney’s departures, but ordinarily they would receive severance under the terms of their five-year employment contracts.

But the new bills, once they take effect, will put an end to that by retroactively eliminating both positions effective Oct. 16, nine days after the Liberals took office.

The bills, using identical language, say MacLeod’s and Blaney’s jobs are “revoked” and that “all contracts, agreements, orders or by-laws relating to the remuneration,  the rate of reimbursement for expenses or severance pay to be paid” to each of them are “null and void.’

It also says that regardless of any contract MacLeod and Blaney had, no severance or expenses are to be paid to them.

Another sub-section makes it illegal for anyone to file a lawsuit against the government over the dissolutions of Invest NB or Efficiency NB, or over MacLeod’s and Blaney’s terminations

“This is normal procedure,” said Energy Minister Donald Arseneault, who introduced the Efficiency NB bill. “It’s in the legislation, it’s black-and-white, and further than that, I won’t talk about personnel matters.”

But PC Leader Bruce Fitch, who was part of the cabinet that appointed MacLeod and Blaney, called the clauses “heavy handed” and “very politically motivated.”

He said MacLeod and Blaney, as deputy minister-level appointments, were entitled to the same severance provisions as any government employee.

“Whether there’s a contract, whether there’s years of service provided to the people of New Brunswick, they should receive their entitlement,” Fitch said.

He agreed that Gallant can appoint and remove deputy ministers, but when someone is let go, ““there’s usually entitlements that go with that.”

He refused to say whether the initial appointments of the two high-profile Tories were also politically motivated.