Cardy resigns as N.B. education minister, sends scorching letter to premier
CBC
Dominic Cardy has resigned as New Brunswick's minister of education and early childhood development.
Cardy announced in a tweet that he was quitting the cabinet of Premier Blaine Higgs but would stay on as a Progressive Conservative MLA for Fredericton West-Hanwell.
In a scorching resignation letter to Higgs, Cardy slammed the premier's leadership style, saying "change requires care, not a wrecking ball" and some reforms to French second-language education "will stall because of your micromanagement."
"You cannot change deadlines on large systems based on your emotional state, without undermining the quality of the work, or the morale of your team," the letter said.
"Government is not the same as building oil tankers," Cardy wrote, apparently referring to the premier's previous career with Irving Oil.
He also accuses Higgs of "choosing to yell 'data my ass' at a senior civil servant" because he didn't like what the department's numbers showed.
"That was the end of your political project in my eyes: If you reject evidence because you dislike it then you don't believe in evidence," he wrote.
Cardy also said Higgs's abolition of partly elected regional health authority boards represented "a steady consolidation of power in your hands" and that he was trying to delay or undermine reconciliation between language communities and with Indigenous people.
Higgs told reporters he was "disappointed" with the letter and what he calls its "hurtful" comments.
But he confirmed he did say "data my ass" when Cardy and his department presented him with what he considered "irrelevant" numbers on French second-language education.
"Yes, I did," he said. "The numbers did not reflect any real value in information we were trying to understand: 'are we getting better?'"
He disputed that he made decisions based on emotion.
The premier said he met with Cardy Thursday morning and told him he was going to be shuffled out of cabinet because of a lack of progress in improving the education system.
At that point, Cardy produced the resignation letter. The fact it was already drafted suggested it was "part of an orchestrated plan," Higgs said.
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