NB Power isn't saying whether it will reconsider a refusal to disclose the size of a severance package it paid to former president David Hay seven years ago, given a court ruling that forced the province to disclose what it paid former Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Eilish Cleary.
"I will check on this," an NB Power representative said in an email Monday morning, when asked if details of payments to Hay can now be released.
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No further response was received by the end of the business day.
On Monday, following a lengthy right to information battle it eventually won, Radio-Canada reported the province had to pay Cleary $720,000 in severance after firing her in December of 2015.
In the ruling that ordered the information to be released, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Zoël Dionne called the payment "public information," stating that government was wrong to try to suppress it.
"It doesn't come from the pockets of negotiators or ministers or managers," Dionne said in his oral ruling. "It's from the taxpayers of New Brunswick."
But Cleary's severance package is not the first — and likely not the largest — to be kept secret by the province.
David Hay, former president of NB Power, abruptly resigned in 2010.
His resignation came in the middle of Shawn Graham's government, who was attempting to sell the utility to Hydro Quebec. He quit shortly after it was revealed he was the only member of the board of directors not to endorse the sale when it came up for a vote.
Hay led NB Power for six years and was just nine months into a new three-year employment contract when he left on one day's notice.
He had been earning close to $500,000 a year — nearly double Eilish Cleary's salary — and although then Liberal Energy Minister Jack Keir hinted Hay's severance package was significant, the details have never been released.
"The type of severance package that David Hay would have agreed to is the norm within the industry for a CEO at his level," said Keir two days after Hay's resignation.
Keir said Hay's severance would eventually be reported in the public accounts but it never was.
Two years after the resignation, Keir's replacement, Progressive Conservative Energy Minister Craig Leonard, said he couldn't reveal the size of Hay's severance deal because of secrecy agreements signed by the Graham government.
"His severance package is subject to a confidentiality agreement that was agreed to by the previous government and so obviously, we have to live by that confidentiality agreement," said Leonard.
Cleary's severance payment was also subject to a confidentiality agreement, but in the ruling that required it to be released, Justice Dionne said government should not be able to hide how it spends public money that easily.
"If it's allowed to act in secret that's very dangerous for democracy," he said.
The severance payments for Cleary and Hay are not the only ones government has tried to keep from the public.
In 2012, an unnamed employee in the Department of Education had details of his or her severance package kept secret, according to a note in the public accounts.
"Due to confidentiality provisions with government, the severance paid to one employee is excluded," the province's comptroller's office noted at the end of the department's salary disclosures.
And then beginning in 2014, the province started making a blanket declaration that details of any number of severance packages may be withheld from the public.
"In cases in which severance is paid to an employee as per an agreement containing a confidentiality clause, the amount is not disclosed," a note in the public accounts has said for the last two years.