Pallister’s key adviser now officer at deputy minister level

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This article was published 31/01/2021 (1425 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A powerful provincial civil servant has been handed a different role as he transitions out of government.

Paul Beauregard’s appointment as treasury board secretary was revoked last week, according to a Jan. 26 cabinet order. He will remain with the civil service as a “technical officer” at the deputy minister level.

Recently, Beauregard gave notice that he would leave his position with Treasury Board once a replacement was found. The government said he would continue to be a part of Manitoba’s Vaccine Implementation Task Force “until the latter stages of the vaccine roll-out.”

Brenda DeSerranno, assistant deputy minister in the Finance Department’s treasury board secretariat, becomes acting treasury board secretary. She will earn $146,690 per year in the role.

Beauregard, a key adviser to Premier Brian Pallister, joined the government in 2017 after working in senior positions with Manitoba Telecom Service Inc. and BCE/Bell Canada.

He has been a senior leader in the government’s pandemic response, Pallister has said.

In a brief statement to the Free Press Monday, the province did not indicate to whom Beauregard would report.

“The title, ‘technical officer’ at the Deputy Minister level is part of the transition from his senior role with Treasury Board, and is the same title/role that other senior civil servants (such as Deputy Ministers) have maintained as part of the transition when they are preparing to leave government,” the government said.

Beauregard had developed a higher profile than some who have served in the same role because the seeming enormity of his reach within government.

The treasury board secretary is the civil servant charged with overseeing government spending decisions.

Beauregard had been given responsibility for negotiating contracts with outside suppliers, informing institutions and unions of government cuts, and created headlines last year when it was revealed he had warned senior officials at Manitoba Hydro not to bid on a lucrative provincial contract.

He also filed a workplace harassment complaint last year against an NDP MLA who had charged that Beauregard had improperly directed Hydro over the contract, which wound up being awarded without a competition to his old employer, Bell MTS.

MLA Malaya Marcelino, the NDP’s legislative and public affairs critic, said Beauregard was “very obviously a political appointee” who was handed a senior position in the bureaucracy.

She said it would have been better for the premier to “call a spade a spade” and give Beauregard a purely political role, rather than have him remain in the civil service.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca