Former N.B. minister accuses premier of running the province like a corporation and alienating cabinet

Ex-minister shares letter to Premier Blaine Higgs Former cabinet minister Dorothy Shephard who resigned last week shared a letter sent to the premier about his concerning leadership style.

The former New Brunswick cabinet minister that resigned last week has shared a letter she wrote to Premier Blaine Higgs accusing him of micromanaging, running the government as if it were a corporation and failing to trust his cabinet.

In a five and a half-page handwritten note sent in October 2021 to Higgs, Dorothy Shephard told the premier that he chooses to “avoid and circumvent process because you think it is a waste of time.”

"This ship is sinking because you have alienated everyone who could bail it out for you," she said in the letter.

The former minister of social development said she had hoped the letter would be an intervention for Higgs and that she met with the premier in early 2022 to discuss the contents of her letter.

“I don’t feel anything really productive came from it,” she said.

Shephard resigned from Higgs’s cabinet Thursday after voting in favour of an Opposition Liberal motion calling for “full consultations” on Policy 713 changes with a child and youth advocate.

Shephard was among six Tory MLAs that voted in favour of the Liberal motion.

The premier said today he took in Shephard’s comments in the letter and “certainly reflected on what she had to say.”

“We can improve one way or another. I’m not saying anyone is perfect, least of all I am suggesting I am. But I think we should really think about the big picture of the province,” Higgs said Monday.

He also said that “his current disappointment” is that the letter and discussions surrounding it were a “private conversation.”

The Progressive Conservatives did not respond Monday to questions about calls from other parties that Higgs’ leadership be reviewed.

Shephard said Monday she’s feeling angst about the situation surrounding her resignation.

“I’m quite sad to be honest that I can no longer do the work I was doing. I loved being minister of social development. I loved the sectors I represented and I think I did a good job,” she said.

J.P. Lewis, a University of New Brunswick Saint John political scientist, said Shephard’s letter is remarkable and that it’s the “sort of thing we find out about years later, in the memoirs of a prime minister, premier or minister.”

“It’s quite something [to see] of all this happening in real time,” Lewis said.

With files from Nick Moore.

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