'Whistleblower' cited in liquor agency store case withdraws complaint

A purported whistleblower who was said to have "alarming" evidence of "serious breaches and irregularities" at the New Brunswick Liquor Corporation now says she never made the claims attributed to her in court last year.

Stacey McKinney, a former director of finance at N.B. Liquor, says in an affidavit filed in Court of King's Bench last week that she has no information relevant to an ongoing lawsuit over the awarding of a contract for a liquor agency store in Hartland.

She says "all of the representations" made last year by her former lawyers in the case "were made without my instructions."

The New Brunswick Labour and Employment Board says in a Nov. 2 letter in the court file that McKinney recently withdrew her complaint to the board about her 2020 firing.

Last year, McKinney's lawyers said she had been fired for raising concerns about "financial, ethical and illegal irregularities" at the corporation and was seeking protection as a whistleblower under New Brunswick's Public Interest Disclosure Act.

At a hearing last November, Erica Brown, a lawyer for Hartland businessman Peter Cook, asked the court to put his lawsuit against N.B. Liquor on hold so she could gather "fresh evidence" from McKinney that "directly contradicts" the corporation's evidence.

Now McKinney says she never had anything to offer the case.

In her affidavit filed Nov. 1 in Court of King's Bench, McKinney says did not make "any allegation regarding the agency store program" in her complaint under the whistleblower law.

"I have no evidence that directly contradicts anything filed by [N.B. Liquor]" in the Hartland lawsuit, she writes.

She said she "made no representations" to Brown or to her own lawyers Christian Michaud and Joel Etienne "with respect to the award of the agency store in Hartland, New Brunswick." 

Cook sued N.B. Liquor in 2021 after his lucrative contract to host an agency store in his grocery store expired and was awarded to another business in the village.

He alleged "manipulation" by N.B. Liquor in the awarding of the contract, which the corporation denied.

Brown wrote in a Nov. 1, 2021, letter to the court that she had learned "out of the blue" that McKinney and other "individuals" had evidence that "directly" contradicted what N.B. Liquor was saying in the Hartland case.

Michaud told a hearing the following week that McKinney had information about financial improprieties, misstatements in financial reports and questionable expense claims.

He said she was fired after trying to raise her concerns with N.B. Liquor's audit committee.

N.B. Liquor's lawyers argued last fall that because she was fired in June 2020, before the awarding of the Hartland contract, her testimony would be irrelevant to the case.

McKinney sought designation as a whistleblower under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, which says it exists "to facilitate the disclosure and investigation" of actions in the public service "that are potentially unlawful, dangerous to the public or injurious to the public interest."

According to the law, disclosures are investigated by the provincial ombud, while complaints about "reprisals" — such as the firing of an employee for bringing information to light — go to the labour board.

Adjudicator George Filliter told the board Nov. 2 that "this matter has been resolved" and McKinney had withdrawn her reprisal complaint. 

Etienne and Michaud are no longer her lawyers.

In a email, Etienne said he and Michaud "will always stand by the professional and diligent work that we have accomplished" working together on cases over four decades.

He said they hadn't seen McKinney's affidavit so it would be inappropriate to comment on it.

Brown did not respond to a request for a comment.

McKinney's new lawyer, John Kingman Phillips of Toronto, turned down interview requests to him and McKinney. He said her issues with N.B. Liquor had been resolved. 

N.B. Liquor also refused to comment and did not respond to a question about whether it had reached a settlement with McKinney.

In last November's court hearing, Michaud told Justice Hugh McLellan that five other former N.B. Liquor employees had contacted him about coming forward to reveal "issues of concern."

Brown's letter also referred in the plural to "high-level individuals" who had worked there and who had evidence to share.

There's no indication in the case file that evidence from other former employees materialized, and McKinney's affidavit says she knew nothing about other former N.B. Liquor employees. 

Cook had the N.B. Liquor agency store contract at his Freshmart grocery store in Hartland from 2019 until the spring of 2021.

That's when it was awarded in a new bidding process to a Valufoods store and Irving gas station.

Cook, a well-known Liberal supporter, alleges that N.B. Liquor's politically appointed board of directors headed by prominent Progressive Conservative and one-time Irving Oil employee John Correia influenced the scoring of the bidding process.

With McKinney's process "now concluded," N.B. Liquor's lawyer Clarence Bennett asked the Court of King's Bench in a Nov. 2 letter to get the Hartland case back on track for a hearing "as soon as possible."