Auditor General Paul Martin completed a review of New Brunswick’s Covid-19 response and presented it to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

The review covered the period of April 2020 through March 2022 with a purpose of evaluating the policies used by provincial health authorities to reduce the spread of Covid-19 (testing, contact tracing, contact management, and infection prevention and control guidance), and weigh these policies against the evidence used to support them.

What he found was unexpected.

The Department of Health was unable to provide any evidence used. In fact, any hard evidence that may have been used was disposed of and no one knows why.

The Department of Health said it could not “provide a fulsome and detailed list of all of the evidence consulted,” the auditor said in his report, “People want to know… there was no political interference. I have no evidence that there was or wasn’t. The evidence isn’t there.”

Former Health Minister Dorothy Shephard, who held the portfolio during a portion of the pandemic, said she was “not sure” why records had not been kept, yet was quick to declare, “we made decisions based on the best information we had at the time,” saying she is “fairly confident” that the public health information was validated by (department doctors).

New Brunswick had activated the highest ‘Level 3 measures’, with stringent restrictions on travel, leisure and gatherings, in response to a ‘record high number of 104 people in hospital with covid’. That announcement also came with a statement from the Premier stating they would ‘do what is necessary to compel people to get vaccinated’, “Life will become increasingly more difficult for those who are able to be vaccinated but choose not to”.

Martin offered 33 recommendations in his report, mostly toward implementing better planning and documentation strategies.

Transparency has been non-existent at all levels of government throughout the ‘pandemic’. They take actions that suppress our rights and freedoms and hide the evidence when held to account. It’s a playbook that’s getting old and one we cannot tolerate in a democratic society.