As the Emergency order comes to an end in New Brunswick, the Office of the Official Opposition is repeating its call for an independent comprehensive review of the management of the pandemic.

“Last year, the Liberal Opposition tabled a motion calling on the Government to undergo a fully independent and comprehensive review of New Brunswick’s pandemic response, but the Higgs Government voted it down” says Roger Melanson, Leader of the Official Opposition. “The Higgs Government is known for its serious lack of transparency. We need a real review of the past two years and for it to have merit, it must be completely independent and objective.”

The intent of Motion 86, tabled by Official Opposition Leader Roger Melanson, was for government to conduct an independent comprehensive review of the New Brunswick pandemic response once the emergency measures were lifted which would provide recommendations for consideration by government.

“Government seems to indicate that an independent review will be done, but they haven’t even identified the purpose of the review yet so I’m hesitant to believe it give us the information we need” says Roger Melanson. “No one was really prepared for a pandemic in 2020, but we have the opportunity to prepare a pandemic response plan for future generations in case this happens again. To do this, we need to learn what worked well, what didn’t work, what unexpected consequences came from certain measures, so on and so forth.”

In order to ensure true objectivity and independence, the Interim Liberal Leader suggests someone like the Auditor General, Paul Martin, would be ideal to lead this review. “The Auditor General is a highly respected Legislative Officer who would bring great credibility to the review.”