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Liberals and Progressive Conservative members of the legislature used a Friday committee session to revive each other’s recent controversies over tourism spending.
The PCs zoomed in on cuts announced earlier this year to various tourism sites in the province, while the Liberals questioned the value a pricey trip to Europe by a previous PC tourism minister and her staff.
PC MLA Rob Weir got the department’s deputy minister, Hélène Bouchard, to acknowledge that the cuts announced in the March 2026 budget had not been on the horizon during the 2024-25 budget year — the last year covered by a Tory budget.
“The budget process in 24-25 did not identify anything for 25-26 for divestiture,” Bouchard said during her appearance at the public accounts committee.
“I assume that means it was all decided in 2026,” Weir said. “So that’s interesting, very interesting.”
The legislature’s public accounts committee turns into a political point-scoring session.
Sites that lost funding included Cape Enrage in Albert County, Bonar Law Provincial Heritage Place in Rexton, Doak House Provincial Heritage Place in Doaktown and North Lake Provincial Park in Lakeland Ridges.
Weir did not identify any of the sites in his questioning.
“All of the things that you think I might be alluding to, which I’m not necessarily alluding to, I just want to understand that we followed procedures all the way through,” he told Bouchard.
“I see some oddities in how these things kind of sprung up.”
But the Liberals also had their own points to make during the session.
Liberal MLA Natacha Vautour asked Bouchard about a $42,000 trip that former PC tourism minister Tammy Scott-Wallace and departmental staff took to the United Kingdom and France in 2023.
It was billed at the time as a chance to meet with tour operators who market New Brunswick excursions to Europeans.
Bouchard told MLAs that tourism spending by visitors from France didn’t budge from 2024 to 2025, staying at $20 million.
Spending by U.K. tourists in the province rose to $29 million from $25 million.
Vautour questioned whether the $4 million increase was worth the $42,000 trip.
At the time, Scott-Wallace said her staff’s visits to the British Museum and the Palace of Versailles also provided ideas on how to offer tours of Saint John’s New Brunswick Museum to cruise ship visitors.
Bouchard repeated that rationale Friday.
“So we’re comparing the New Brunswick Museum to the Palace of Versailles,” Vautour said. “OK.”
She also posed questions about an apparent cut by the Liberals to $15,000 in funding for the Atlantic Balloon Fiesta in Sussex, in Scott-Wallace’s riding.
Bouchard said the funding reduction was based on new criteria that resulted from recommendations by Auditor-General Paul Martin about the better tracking of tourism grants.
Those criteria include using postal codes collected from visitors to track the percentage of people coming to an event from farther than 75 kilometres away.
The balloon fiesta is free, and without ticket sales it couldn’t collect the required postal code information, organizers said earlier this year.
Using the criteria, the event would have received a lower level of funding in 2024-25, when Scott-Wallace was still minister, but “a decision was made to give a larger amount,” Bouchard said.
In an interview, Vautour said her line of questioning was not partisan.
“We have to be able to ask those hard questions, whether they come from one side or the other,” Vautour said.
Weir said he found the Liberal questions “challenging to sit through, but I guess sometimes you’ve got to sit and listen to somebody else’s work at burying themselves.”
Vautour said Weir’s questions about the spending cuts to tourism sites were fair.
“I didn’t see that they were being political on that aspect, no.”
Source: www.cbc.ca
