Tory ex-ministers become accountability all-stars in new committee roles

Three former Progressive Conservative cabinet ministers are bringing a new level of inquisitorial zeal to the New Brunswick Legislature's public accounts committee.

The trio of Tories left Premier Blaine Higgs's cabinet in June over their differences with the premier.

They're now using their time on the backbenches to bring extra scrutiny to how government departments spend money and administer programs.

Their approach was on display last week during four days of public accounts committee sessions and will be back in the spotlight again when they resume next week. 

"You pointed out a significant gap, I think, that needs to be fixed going forward," Portland-Simonds MLA Trevor Holder declared to Auditor General Paul Martin when he tabled his report on the province's COVID-19 response.

Holder was referring to a snafu in June 2020 when the government issued an emergency order on mandatory masking — only to change it the next day because the wording didn't reflect what ministers had actually decided.

"That wasn't leaving out a comma or a colon somewhere," said Holder, who was part of the cabinet at the time.

"That was a pretty significant oversight that changes what cabinet actually decided. That's a pretty big breakdown."

Holder and his Saint John colleague Dorothy Shephard quit as ministers in June, complaining that Higgs's unwillingness to involve his cabinet and caucus in decisions was contrary to PC party values. 

Two other ministers, Jeff Carr and Daniel Allain, were shuffled out of cabinet after they joined Holder and Shephard in voting for an opposition Liberal motion on changes to Policy 713. 

Holder, Shephard and Carr all found themselves assigned to the public accounts committee, along with two other PC MLAs who were dumped from cabinet in 2020, Andrea Anderson-Mason and Ross Wetmore. 

They're like a team of accountability all-stars, combining deep knowledge of the government's inner workings with an independent streak befitting the public accounts role. 

Urges accountability

Shepherd, a former minister of health from October 2020 to July 2022, urged her former department to do more to track the cost and outcomes of the provincial methadone program.

"I think that accountability is really important, especially with the dollar figure that's now attached to this program," she told senior officials.

"This is a program that needs to be reviewed very periodically and there needs to be an accountability to the dollars that are invested and to the outcomes that we are hoping to gain from a program such as this." 

Green Leader David Coon said the quality of questioning was obvious. 

"Each of them brought a particular context to their questioning because of their background in cabinet," he said. "That obviously made for more robust and thoughtful questions that, without that experience, you wouldn't have."

The public accounts committee was shifting to a less political approach even before the addition of the ex-ministers.

The Liberal chair, Chuck Chiasson, and the PC vice-chair, Wetmore, have been trying to make proceedings less partisan and more focused on genuine accountability and oversight.

But the addition of three members who were privy to behind-the-scenes cabinet deliberations just a few months ago has added a new level of scrutiny.

"I could tell by the way they were asking their questions that they might know more, they might have a bit more inside information, than we would have," said Liberal MLA Benoit Bourque.

"It certainly allows a more in-depth probing. There is less restraint. … I have to say it was certainly interesting for us as an opposition to watch." 

Discussions confidential

Cabinet discussions are confidential by law, so the ex-ministers can't reveal what happened there.

But their questions can hint at a lot.

Some of their questioning even implied that the Higgs government gave misleading information to the auditor general about the decision-making process during the early months of the pandemic response.

Holder and Anderson-Mason questioned Martin about an organizational chart depicting an entity called COVID Core — a group of senior bureaucrats the two MLAs said they'd never heard of. 

"Maybe it just wasn't called that at the time," Holder said. "I don't particularly remember anything being called the COVID Core."

Anderson-Mason asked Martin, "How do you know it actually exists?" He answered that he had to take the government's word for it, because there were no written records of COVID Core meetings.

Anderson-Mason, who was attorney general when the pandemic began, also questioned why the government's organizational chart didn't show any role for that office. 

"I would say that in the information that you've been provided, that may be a critical piece of information that's missing," she said.

Carr also suggested Martin hadn't been given the whole story, telling him that if he'd interviewed former ministers during his audit, "you would seriously have a lot different report in front of us than you have now." 

The new approach isn't guaranteed to last.

The makeup of the committee will change after the next election, depending on which party and which MLAs are elected.

In the meantime, Holder, who described himself as "a big process guy," said he'd like even more changes to how the public accounts committee functions.

He suggested last week that rather than having all departments appear automatically each year, the committee could focus on those that need the most scrutiny and maybe even hold multiple sessions with them.

"Your approach absolutely makes sense," Martin told him. 

In fact, that's already happening.

The committee has added a second session with Ambulance New Brunswick next week to follow up on its Sept. 6 appearance. 

It has also voted to hold a public meeting with officials from the Executive Council Office to question them about the auditor general's pandemic report. 

That means the feisty former ministers who claim they've never heard of the "COVID Core" group will be able to confront top officials on that issue directly.