Province trying to block former PC minister's legal challenge to firing

The New Brunswick government is still fighting to block former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Margaret-Ann Blaney from challenging her 2015 firing from a Crown agency job.

Blaney wants a ruling from the New Brunswick Human Rights Commission that Liberal legislation that dissolved Energy Efficiency New Brunswick in 2015, and eliminated her job as CEO, violated her rights.

She's arguing that the Liberal government of Premier Brian Gallant got rid of the organization and her job because of her partisan PC affiliation.

A judge ruled last March that the commission could continue its investigation, but in December the province filed a new application in Court of Queen's Bench trying again to get the case tossed.

Blaney turned down an interview request about the latest developments.In 2013, she told reporters that the Liberals wanted "to play politics" with her appointment.

It's been almost a decade since the former Rothesay MLA, PC leadership candidate and minister in two Tory governments was handed the CEO position.

The appointment by then-premier David Alward in May 2012 caused a political firestorm, with opposition parties calling it patronage and then-Finance Minister Blaine Higgs refusing to publicly endorse the decision.

Blaney said in court filings that Alward assured her that her new job would be "secure regardless of the outcome of any provincial election to be held in 2014."

But after winning power in 2014, the Gallant Liberals passed a bill eliminating the agency and Blaney's job. The bill also blocked "any court or administrative body" from hearing a challenge to the dissolution or firing.

The bill took effect in March 2015 but its provisions applied retroactively to Oct. 16, 2014, almost two months before it was introduced in the legislature.

Blaney launched her human rights complaint in 2015, saying the firing was politically motivated and violated the Human Rights Act's protection from discrimination based on political belief. She argued the ban on legal action also violated her rights.

According to the March 31, 2021, ruling on the province's first attempt to block the challenge, a case analysis report by staff at the human rights commission initially concluded it did not have the jurisdiction to investigate.

But after Blaney argued that it would be "a great disservice" to throw out her complaint because of "a single broad and general clause," the commission opted to go ahead.

It told the province it would investigate "events" between Oct. 6 and 14, 2014, just before the legislation took effect retroactively.

The province tried to get the commission's investigation thrown out but Blaney's lawyer argued it would be premature to quash it during "an ongoing process."

Justice Judy Clendening agreed.

"I am inclined to accept the argument that courts should not interfere with an ongoing administrative process until there has been an evidentiary inquiry," she wrote last March.

"Intervention in the matter at this point is unwarranted."

Last September the commission officially told the province it would not dismiss some parts of Blaney's complaint and would ask the New Brunswick Labour and Employment Board to hear the case as a board of inquiry.

That led the province to file the new application in December, repeating its argument that the commission has no jurisdiction to deal with the complaint.

The province is also arguing that because the complaint is against the legislation itself and its ban on lawsuits, investigating it would violate the parliamentary privilege that the legislature has to debate and pass bills.

Blaney's lawyer has yet to file a response to the new application.