Blaine Higgs shoots down Liberal charges he helped negotiate Irving's LNG deal

Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs has punctured the latest attack against him from Premier Brian Gallant's Liberal government.

Gallant and other Liberals have accused Higgs of helping to negotiate a controversial tax break for the Canaport LNG terminal when Higgs was an Irving Oil executive in 2005.

But Higgs said Thursday the reality was much simpler.

I did not participate in any negotiations with the City of Saint John regarding the tax deal.- Blaine Higgs, PC leader

"My work was with negotiating with Repsol to bring the Canaport LNG plant to Saint John," Higgs said on CBC New Brunswick's political panel, referring to the Spanish company that co-owns the terminal.

"I did not participate in any negotiations with the City of Saint John regarding the tax deal."

That deal was controversial from the moment Saint John's council approved it in 2005. It froze the LNG terminal's tax bill at $500,000, a bill that would have been $8 million last year without the agreement.

The agreement was struck by the city, but the PC government of Bernard Lord had to change provincial laws to make it legal.

Higgs was an Irving Oil executive until he retired in 2010 and ran for office.

Gallant brings up bio

Higgs has been grilling Gallant in question period for weeks about the property assessment fiasco, accusing the premier of not giving retired judge Joseph Robertson enough independence to properly investigate the situation.

Last week, Gallant seized on Higgs's biography on the PC party website, which says he was "a member of the Irving team negotiating with Repsol on the Canaport LNG project."

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"What role did he play in getting them that tax break?" Gallant demanded.

Gallant asked Higgs to explain his role in the tax deal. Higgs answered that he'd explain if Gallant appeared in a public forum with him for a one-on-one debate on both the tax break and the property assessment scandal.

Higgs explains on CBC

Gallant wasn't on Thursday's CBC panel, but Higgs explained anyway that he worked on the deal that made Respol and Irving partners in the plant, not on the tax agreement with the city.

"There. You want an answer? That's it," Higgs told Liberal cabinet minister Donald Arseneault. "You read my bio. My bio says I was a member of the Irving negotiating team with Respol. With Repsol."

The Gallant government repealed the tax deal last year, subjecting Canaport LNG to the province's regular property assessment process.

But outside consultants reassessed the plant, pegging its value at $98 million instead of the previous year's $299.5 million a change that also reduced the expected $8 million tax bill to $2.6 million.

Arseneault said during the panel that Robertson, a retired New Brunswick Court of Appeal justice, will be given access to whatever information he needs to investigate the property assessment fiasco,in which Service New Brunswick was found to have invented fictional renovations for more than 2,000 homeowners so it could accelerate implementation of a new assessment system. It led to huge spikes in their tax bills.

"Justice Robertson will have full support of cabinet on whatever information he needs," Arseneault said. "Let him do his work."

But Higgs said Robertson should be given full powers under the Inquiries Act to subpoena documents and witnesses.

"No one's compelled to tell him anything," Higgs said.

Political Panel May 4

7 years ago

Duration 47:20

The panel assembles to ponder the issues that have dogged a contentious sitting in the legislature.