Blaine Higgs says nothing wrong with accepting free tickets from ALC
New Brunswick's new Opposition leader says there was nothing improper about him accepting free concert tickets from the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, even though the corporation says it's reviewing the practice.
Blaine Higgs says he was offered the tickets to the ALC-sponsored Cavendish Beach Music Festival during a meeting of finance ministers on Prince Edward Island in 2014, and he decided to go.
He said the value of the two tickets, for him and his wife, were below the $250 threshold that would require him to report them in his annual conflict-of-interest disclosure.
And he said attending such events with ALC officials is a good way to do business.
"Building these relationships, you secure a much better deal because you get to know them, and you get to talk about things in a setting that is not just across the boardroom table," he said.
On Wednesday, the four Atlantic auditors general rapped Atlantic Lottery for spending $14,000 on 125 tickets to the festival for its executives and for elected officials and political staffers.
The corporation also spent $48,000 on 300 tickets to last year's AC/DC concert in Moncton.
The audit said the purchases "do not demonstrate an appropriate use of shareholder money."
ALC justified the giveaways by saying they help build relationships with shareholders — the four Atlantic provincial governments — but "management have not supported this by facts or analysis," the audit said.
Noting the corporation wasn't even sure if the people who received the tickets used them or gave them away, the auditors wrote that ALC "should not buy event and concert tickets to give to government and elected officials in an effort to simply improve shareholder relations."
Lottery corporation CEO Brent Scrimshaw announced just hours after the audit's release that the company would review the practice. "That's being revisited, for sure."
Higgs says it makes sense for ALC to review the value of the practice, but said from the politician's end of the equation, there's nothing wrong with accepting them unless it violates conflict of interest rules.
No conflict
Higgs says in his decades of experience in the business world, such events are a normal way of getting to know your partners or suppliers. It's appropriate as long as the socializing doesn't cloud your judgement, he said.
"Does anything I have ever received or offered — keeping in mind the guidelines — influence my decision making? The answer always has to be `No, it does not,'" he said.
He cited an example when he was an Irving Oil executive, when an overseas bidder to supply the company on a major project told another senior executive they'd pay him $10,000 if they won the contract.
Not only did the executive turn down the favour, but the bidder was immediately disqualified from the process, Higgs said.
But he said there's no such potential conflict with a pair of concert tickets that allowed him to attend a show with other finance ministers and ALC executives.
"Do I see an advantage to having a social event with people I'm working with? Absolutely. It creates a whole different element of being able to communicate what you want to communicate on the business side of what you're discussing."
Fitch gave away AC/DC tickets
Among those who received free tickets to the AC/DC show in Moncton last summer was Marc Robichaud, the executive assistant to Liberal cabinet minister Roger Melanson.
Melanson wouldn't grant an interview Thursday but he said in a statement Atlantic Lottery bought hundreds of tickets as a concert sponsor.
"Those that were not allocated for promotional purposes were offered to stakeholders who could put them to use," the statement said, "and Atlantic Lottery has been open and transparent about which officials received these tickets."
Melanson's statement didn't say whether Robichaud used one of the tickets he received.
PC MLA Bruce Fitch, who got 12 AC/DC tickets from Atlantic Lottery, said the lottery corporation called him and offered the tickets. "I gave the tickets away and I did not go to the concert," he said in an email.
The AC/DC tickets were $109.50 plus tax and service charges, so 12 tickets would be well over the $250 threshold for having to declare them as a gift.
But Higgs says if Fitch didn't use the tickets personally and was only "disbursing" them to others, he wasn't exceeding the limit on gifts in the conflict-of-interest law.
"If they're personal use, that's one thing," he said. "If he's just the conduit and ALC has designated where they're going, that's a different situation."
