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CHANGING THE WAY GOVERNMENT WORKS

The New Vision: an open, responsive government

Success Targets:

New Vision • New Brunswick puts people first. Why? Because governing is about listening all the time, not just at election time.

It changes the way government works for New Brunswickers, making it more open and responsive. It emphasizes local values. It empowers communities and the people who live there and know their needs best to make decisions that affect their lives.

It restores the elected representatives and institutions of the people – MLAs and the Legislature – to a central role in those decisions that most affect people’s lives.

Setting the Record Straight: The Liberal Power-Grab

After twelve long years in power, the Liberals have forgotten the first rule of government: to listen to people. Power and decision-making have been centralized, taken away from people and communities. Patronage appointments to boards and commissions are now the order of the day. MLAs and the Legislature have been marginalized, making it more difficult to call government to account. The government misuses taxpayers dollars to promote itself at the expense of solving real problems. Rural New Brunswick has been ignored, its unique and special concerns set aside time after time.

It’s time to change that once and for all.

Our plan for Changing the Way Government Works includes:

Empowering People & Communities

New Brunswick is a province of communities. Each community, and the people who live there, have unique needs and perspectives. Government should take these into account when making decisions that affect those communities. And the people who live there should be allowed to take a more active role in government decisions affecting their lives, beginning with democratically selecting local government boards and authorities. We will empower people and communities across New Brunswick by:
  1. Involving communities in regional and local economic development decisions affecting their future through new Community Economic Development Agencies.
  2. Creating publicly, locally-elected Education Councils and giving them a key role in education decision-making.
  3. Creating Regional Health Boards with locally-elected and appointed individuals as part of new Regional Health Authorities.
  4. Allowing New Brunswickers to determine the future of video lottery terminals in the province by holding a referendum on VLTs at the time of the next municipal elections.

Reinforcing the Role of MLAs and the Legislature

MLAs are on the front-lines of democracy. Our Legislature is the "people’s house" where debate and dissent coalesce to ensure diverse views are presented and heard. At the same time, MLAs must be fully accountable to the voters and communities who chose them to represent their views. A strong Legislature enhances democracy by helping call government to account. We will reinforce the role of MLAs and the Legislature by:

  1. Expanding the mandate of MLAs and Legislative Committees to examine major public policy issues by creating two new Standing Committees on Health and Education.
  2. "De-politicizing" the appointments process for agencies, boards, and commissions by having an all-party committee of the Legislature review key appointments for recommendation to Cabinet.
  3. Introducing an MLA Responsibility Act setting out the key roles and duties of MLAs, a code of conduct, and requiring that each MLA hold at least two public meetings per year.

Ensuring Responsive, Accountable Government

Government is there to serve people, not itself. To do so, government must strive always to be responsive and accountable to voters and taxpayers. Promoting itself at the expense of solving real problems only breeds cynicism and mistrust. At the same time, we must continue to build a strong, professional civil service able to both tackle and anticipate the problems and solutions of government. Senior officials of the government should spend more time "in the field" meeting with the people who use or need the services offered by their department. We will help ensure a more responsive, accountable government to the people of New Brunswick by:
  1. Halting all politically-motivated government advertising and setting new rules for advertising to ensure it is legitimate and justifiable as a public service need.
  2. Making public the salaries of all crown corporation senior management employees including the CEOs of health care corporations. under a new "sunshine" policy,
  3. Establishing a new, government-wide 24-hour Efficient Service Standard for responding to inquiries by the public for key designated services.
  4. Building a stronger, professional civil service by recruiting and promoting new, young managers and ensuring opportunities for training and advancement are in place for all civil servants.
  5. Requiring Deputy-Ministers and senior civil servants to spend a designated period of time each year "in the front lines" visiting schools, hospitals, and other government funded institutions. This will be time spent meeting with New Brunswick residents, consumers and customers of departmental services, in order to ensure government remains responsive and accessible to people.

 

Respecting New Brunswick’s Diversity

New Brunswick is almost evenly split between both rural and urban communities. Everyone in New Brunswick, regardless of where they live, is entitled to equitable levels of service. To achieve this goal, we must make a greater effort to identify service needs and opportunities for growth in rural New Brunswick. We will respect New Brunswick’s rural and urban diversity by:

  1. Creating a "Smart Communities" initiative in cooperation with the federal government and the private sector that ensures rural communities are "wired" to benefit from the information technology revolution. This will link these communities with such government services as health and medicine, education and learning, and social services through today’s modern infrastructure of fibre-optic cables and the Internet.
  2. Improving health care for  rural New Brunswick by hiring more doctors and nurses; utilizing new technologies to help deliver services; and creating a new regional health service delivery model of Regional Health Authorities.
  3. Adopting a "total development" concept for our natural resources that identifies and puts to use every possible source of value-added transformation to create jobs and protect rural communities that rely on natural resources for their livelihood.

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