Ex-minister's 2021 letter warned Higgs he had 'destroyed' his team

Former cabinet minister Dorothy Shephard warned Premier Blaine Higgs in October 2021 that his hands-on management style was alienating members of his cabinet and threatened to "destroy" his government.

Shephard told the premier that he was micromanaging issues, running the government like a corporation and refusing to trust his ministers, staff or the civil service leading to paralysis in decision-making.

"You avoid and circumvent process because you think it is a waste of time," she wrote in one passage.

"What you fail to recognize is that there is an elected body from every part of the province that has a responsibility to represent their constituency, no matter how inconvenient it is, or how trivial you think the motives of any individual."

Shephard described the six-page handwritten letter in an interview last Friday with CBC's Information Morning in Saint John.

She turned down a request for a copy at the time but provided one late on Sunday.

WATCH | Higgs responds to letter from his former cabinet minister:

Premier Higgs says hes not perfect

1 year ago

Duration 0:39

Blaine Higgs reacts to a 2021 letter from Dorothy Shephard that said his leadership style 'destroyed' the team around him.

The Oct. 30, 2021, letter reads at times like a prediction of what happened in the last two weeks: a rebellion by members of the PC cabinet and caucus upset by what they called "a lack of process and transparency" in the Policy 713 review.

"You do not have a team and it is your own doing," Shephard wrote back then.

"Premier, this ship is sinking because you have [alienated]everyone who could bail it out for you.

"Whether it is with your elected colleagues, your senior management team or the public, your reckless and arbitrary conduct has destroyed a team that could make your success."

Shephard's criticisms are similar to those made by former education minister Dominic Cardy when he resigned last year.

Higgs told reporters at an event in Woodstock on Monday that he "reflected" on Shephard's letter at the time, but its contents and their subsequent conversation about it were private.

WATCH|Dorothy Shephard, minister of social development, resigns from cabinet:

Dorothy Shephard resigns from cabinet

1 year ago

Duration 2:00

In a note addressed to the premier, the social development minister said, I can no longer remain in your cabinet.

"We all can improve one way or another," he said. "I'm not saying anybody's perfect, least of all am I saying that I am. But I think we should really think about the big picture in our province."

He said he and the team around him had delivered good results for New Brunswick, and he wanted to focus on that, not the divisive Policy 713 debate.

"I want to move on," he said.

Shephard and three PC other ministers, and two PC backbenchers, voted with the opposition last week for a Liberal motion calling for more consultations on Policy 713 by Child and Youth Advocate Kelly Lamrock. The motion passed 26-20 thanks to their votes.

She resigned after the vote, and in subsequent interviews, her criticism of Higgs has closely matched what she wrote in October 2021.

On Friday, she told CBC's Power and Politics that his handling of Policy 713, which sets standards for providing safe spaces for LGBTQ students in schools, was "the last straw."

Asked about the 2021 letter last Friday, Higgs said that he had "strong personalities in our caucus, as I think is well evident, and along with that come very hard-line positions taken from many, and you could include me in that as well."

"But I am the premier, so at some point decisions have to be made."

Shephard's letter was written nine days after an Oct. 21, 2021, news conference where Higgs acknowledged "we may have made mistakes along the way" in lifting COVID-19 restrictions in July 2021, only to see a new spike in cases by September and a return to masking.

She said in an interview that the letter wasn't prompted by COVID decisions but by "other issues" that she could not identify publicly because of cabinet confidentiality.

The letter paints a picture of a premier ignoring his ministers in favour of ideas he heard from "agenda-driven individuals" outside government, who Shephard said often turned out to be wrong.

Those people were often people who reinforced what the premier already believed, she said, even if it was at odds with the reality that ministers or civil servants were telling him about.

"You do not trust the people who serve you," she wrote. "You do not value the insight that they bring to your table. You have built a system where no one takes things to the ministers anymore, they simply go to you and you allow it."

She also offered that she would do "everything I can to help" if he changed his leadership style and started listening more.

Shephard also insisted she was writing as a friend and colleague and was not trying to launch a rebellion against his leadership.

"No one can save you from yourself, except you," she wrote. "And I hope you can see that my incentive is not an agenda of mutiny it is one of intervention."

The letter proposed an all-day cabinet meeting the following Sunday to air the concerns.

Shephard told Information Morning Saint John last week that she and Higgs didn't discuss the letter until January 2022 and that conversation didn't lead to the premier changing his ways.

"I can't say that there was anything that productive that came out of it," she said.

She decided to stay in cabinet at the time.

"I just put my head down and did my job and spoke up when I needed to," she said.