Denis Caron lands job at Belledune port after RDC job

A former deputy minister in the New Brunswick government landed a job with an organization he was dealing with in his civil service job just two months earlier.

Denis Caron will officially take over as chief executive officer of the Belledune Port Authority in January, though he started working at the port's office this month.

As recently as late April, Caron was dealing with the port as deputy minister for the Regional Development Corp., a provincial agency that hands out taxpayer dollars to support job creation and economic development. He met with both port officials and a company looking to use the port.

That was at the same time a Halifax-based recruitment agency was arranging job interviews for the job ultimately awarded to Caron. The job offer came in June, two months after Caron's last email about the port.

NDP Leader Dominic Cardy says the province needs stricter rules on where public officials can work after leaving their government jobs.

"To have someone switching from advocating for a body to then having a position at the top of that body is inappropriate," Cardy said.

Officials should be subject to a "time-out" period during which they can't go work for any organization they dealt with while in government, he said.

"Make sure there is a sufficient time out so that information they gained through their public service can't be used to benefit a specific private corporation," Cardy said.

"In the case of the port, they're in competition with other ports, including with other ports in New Brunswick. So to have someone who was at the highest position Mr. Caron was, being able to go and provide that privileged information to one port, it's definitely giving them an advantage that I would argue is unfair."

The current conflict of interest law has no such time-out rule, though it prevents former deputy ministers from lobbying the government they used to work for during a 12-month period.

The act also says deputy ministers, while in their jobs, can't accept any benefit "which could reasonably be considered to influence his or her decision as a deputy minister" and can't use "any privileged information or position to which he or she may have access" in their job for personal gain.

Caron refused to comment on the timeline around his hiring.

So did Barry Kyle, chairman of the board of directors of the Belledune Port Authority.

In an email, Caron's executive assistant Jeannine Scott said it wasn't the board's policy to discuss personnel issues, including the CEO hiring process, "especially since it was outsourced to ensure an open and transparent process."

Caron met with port, other companies

In his government job, Caron met with Grand Falls-based Maritime Minerals Inc. and with Port of Belledune officials earlier this year to talk about Maritime Minerals' plans to use the port.

That included between January and May of this year, after the port CEO job had been posted and while job interviews with applicants were taking place, according to the recruitment firm that handled the hiring.

Access to the port is key to Maritime Minerals' marketing pitch. The company's website says it produces "premium grade aggregates" and is "ideally located" to export those aggregates to "high end international markets" through the Port of Belledune.

In a Feb. 15 email, Louis Leger, the president of Maritime Minerals, asked for a meeting with Caron "related to our Belledune Project. I know that you will be meeting soon with the Port of Belledune."

Caron agreed to set up a meeting, which took place Feb. 19.

Caron was part of an email thread later in February discussing another meeting, and in March, he organized meetings between RDC and other government officials to talk about Belledune.

CBC News obtained the emails through a right-to-information request. Some information in the emails was redacted by RDC officials before they released them.

Caron was also included in emails in March about the Maritime Minerals project between Victor Boudreau, the minister responsible for RDC, and officials at Opportunities New Brunswick.

Caron's last appearance in the emails is April 24, when RDC official Roger Robichaud emailed him.

"According to the draft guidelines, projects must be [redacted]," Robichaud told Caron.

"This will limit projects in the north to one or two!!!! Belledune! [Redacted] will not be eligible so it will be hard to transfer projects from the Northern Fund to the infrastructure program, for example!"

Four days later, Caron vanished from a new email thread about Belledune when he was not included in an email exchange between RDC and federal officials about funding for the port project.

There's no explanation for why Caron was suddenly not involved. Boudreau refused to comment through a spokesperson.

Louis Leger from Maritime Minerals could not be reached to comment.

Caron retired in August, replaced earlier

Caron retired from the civil service at the end of August, but documents show he was replaced at RDC two months before his retirement.

Caron had been the deputy minister of both RDC and the Department of Agriculture, Aquaculture, and Fisheries.

An order-in-council approved by the provincial cabinet on June 17 assigned senior bureaucrat Bill Levesque to replace him at Agriculture, Aquaculture, and Fisheries on Aug. 17, just before his retirement.

But the same order-in-council replaced Caron with Levesque at RDC almost immediately, on June 22. The document doesn't explain why Caron was replaced so quickly at RDC.

Cardy says someone in government was likely concerned about a potential conflict of interest.

"It looks as though there has been recognition inside government that 'Well, we don't have any rules about this, but it's clearly happened so let's do what we can to make it look not as bad,'" Cardy said.

"Maybe there's a more innocent explanation but it certainly does look odd."

Port won't give date of offer

The outside recruiter, Kevin Stoddart of the firm Knightsbridge Robertson Surrette, told CBC News that Caron was offered the job in June. He said he didn't have a precise date.

Belledune Port Authority officials would not provide the precise date of Caron's job interview or the precise date he was offered the job.

Premier Brian Gallant visited the port last Friday, and a government publicity photograph shows him with two local MLAs and outgoing CEO Rayburn Doucett. Caron is not in the photograph.