Keeping Taxpayers in the Dark

New Brunswick Chief Medical Officer refuses to provide reasons for pandemic decisions.

The above appears on page 65 of the Auditor General’s report. Click image for the full, 141-page PDF.

A report by the Auditor General of New Brunswick, released late last year, contains a mini bombshell. It says public health authorities in that province refuse to explain why they made key pandemic decisions. The Auditor General “selected a sample of 33” recommendations made by the Office of the Chief Medical Officer, and then asked for “evidence-based documentation to substantiate the decisions.”

What did he receive in response? Zip. Nada. Nothing whatsoever.

Since no exhaustive list of the material they consulted was compiled, Health Ministry bureaucrats say there’s no need to identify any of it. Not a single study. Nor, apparently, did they produce any minutes of any meeting in which matters were discussed. Or any emails.

The official position of Public Health New Brunswick is that every one of those 33 pandemic decisions is a state secret, a black box we aren’t allowed to inspect. The personnel involved, whose salaries are all paid by taxpayers, apparently feel no inclination to explain their behaviour or defend their actions.

Remember, Public Health ran our lives for two years. In New Brunswick, the chief Medical Officer’s decisions not only affected the 820,000 people who reside in that province, they affected anyone needing to drive through New Brunswick in order reach (or leave) Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. This same report tells us 78,000 vehicles were turned back at New Brunswick’s borders. Some travellers were forced into quarantine hotels and charged $200+ a day. Other people were fined thousands of dollars for violating public health measures. None of this is small potatoes.

Paul Martin, the Auditor General, describes the lack of cooperation from the Office of the Chief Medical Officer in the blandest language possible in his report. He may as well be telling us about the weather. He doesn’t scold anyone. He doesn’t denounce this outrageous lack of transparency or accountability. He doesn’t demand that all records be handed over, as incomplete as they might be.

Likewise, when his office issued a press release about the completion of this report, the headline declared: “Auditor general finds Department of Health and regional health authorities went above and beyond to support New Brunswickers during the pandemic.” That small matter - in which government employees stonewalled the Auditor General and got away with it - isn’t mentioned until the very end.

Unbelievable.

Click image to read this press release online.

hat tip to Police on Guard, who reported on this yesterday