Pallister, trusted adviser running the show on Broadway

Opinion

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This article was published 15/12/2020 (1374 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The legend of Paul Beauregard continues to grow.

Amidst a controversial effort to defend himself against Opposition allegations of conflict of interest, the embattled secretary to the Treasury Board suddenly finds himself in a most unusual place.

Premier Brian Pallister confirmed, in a year-end interview with the Free Press, that Beauregard — whose job would normally keep him far away from the media spotlight or the front lines of government operations — is now a “senior leader in our COVID response.”

Why is that so unusual?

Secretary to the Treasury Board is one of the most senior bureaucratic positions in the provincial government, overseeing one of the most important internal functions of government. The Treasury Board is the regulator on all fiscal matters and the forum for all major expenditure decisions.

However, the role is not traditionally one of a decision maker, per se. The secretary oversees the operation of the Treasury Board, while key cabinet members (led by the finance minister) make final recommendations later put in front of the premier’s executive council.

The secretary also does not get involved on the front lines of government operations, nor serve as a political adviser to the premier.

There is a strong case to be made Beauregard does all those things.

For years, it’s been clear Pallister relies on Beauregard for advice and guidance. Tory sources confirm Beauregard makes his presence felt on a wide range of departmental and operational issues normally well-outside his position’s authority.

Pallister’s revelation Beauregard has his hands on the wheel for the province’s testing, contract tracing, and, now, COVID-19 vaccine distribution raises further concerns.

Chief among those: the Pallister government has not performed well on the first two of those pandemic functions. (On vaccines, we’re still in early days, and it wouldn’t be fair to predict similar problems.)

Beauregard’s expanded role supports the theory offered by Opposition critics and many in the health-care field that Manitobans have suffered because Pallister is more concerned about controlling expenses than he is about building an effective pandemic response.

As well, in previous Manitoba governments of all stripes, the secretary to the Treasury Board was simply not involved on the front lines of an emergency response. A canvass of former NDP and Tory staffers and senior bureaucrats suggests there is virtually no precedent in recent Manitoba political history.

Of course, as Beauregard has assumed a higher profile in the Pallister government, more details about his unusual involvement in areas normally outside the realm of the secretary to the Treasury Board are coming to light.

The NDP has uncovered a trove of examples where Beauregard was tasked with negotiating contracts or deals that would normally have been done at the deputy minister level of individual departments.

Beauregard, for example, signed the contract with Morneau Shepell for virtual mental health services — not the deputy minister of health. Tory sources also noted Beauregard was the point man on a new contact that privatized Manitoba forest firefighting services, including its fleet of water bombers — not the deputy minister of infrastructure.

Then, of course, there is the contentious administrative triangle between Beauregard, Manitoba Hydro and Bell MTS.

A former executive at Bell MTS, Beauregard was to have recused himself from any government business involving the telecommunications firm. Instead, he became a key participant in a series of meetings that ultimately led to Bell MTS being awarded an extension on a valuable data network contract, seemingly without any competition.

Documents produced by the NDP show clearly Beauregard was directing Hydro — which has a subsidiary in the data network business — not to bid on the contract awarded to Bell MTS.

When pressed on this issue at the year-end interview, Pallister said cabinet had directed Beauregard to extend the Bell MTS contract. The premier would not say, however, why he thought Beauregard was the right man for a job normally filled by a deputy minister.

Pallister has created a mechanism within government that has short-circuited many of the established paths for fiscal decision making, and taken significant authority away from deputy ministers and from other cabinet ministers.

Even worse, Beauregard’s astonishing decision to file a workplace harassment complaint against the NDP for allegations made in the legislature appears to be a clear effort to stop anyone from digging any deeper into his profoundly expanded role in government.

Pallister has already cut himself off from his cabinet ministers when it comes to major decisions. In leaning heavily on Beauregard, he is also now undermining a significant chunk of senior levels of bureaucracy, whose role is to inform elected officials on all decisions.

Two men making important decisions on a wide range of files, outside of normal administrative channels and beyond the scrutiny of senior mandarins and elected officials.

What could possibly go wrong?

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca