Vitalité CEO 'impartial,' despite presence at PC fundraiser, board chair says

The chair of the Vitalité Health Network board of directors is defending the presence of the authority's CEO at a Progressive Conservative fundraising dinner last Friday.

Thomas Soucy says he paid for the $600 ticket used by Dr. France Desrosiers so they could mix and mingle with Premier Blaine Higgs and other Tory politicians in Saint John.

Desrosiers, who administers the health authority, is politically impartial, Soucy said.

"I'm the one who asked France to be there," he said.

Soucy is the CEO of Groupe Westco, a major poultry producer based in Saint-François, and was appointed chair of the Vitalité  board last year.

He said he frequently attends fundraisers for both the PC and Liberal parties as a way to get access to provincial decision-makers. 

"This year I figured Vitalité needed to talk to ministers," he said, explaining that he offered Desrosiers one of the tickets he'd normally provide to a Westco employee or shareholder. 

"We had enough tickets that we could bring her along and I thought it would be a great event for us to be able to meet with all the different ministers and try to tell them what we're doing, what we're pushing in the health care system." 

The pair did not attend a reception before the dinner that required a separate $200 ticket.

Soucy became chair of the Vitalité board last June under the Higgs government's new legislation creating completely appointed health authority boards. 

The government removed partly elected boards in July 2022 and placed both health authorities, Vitalité and Horizon, under trustees until the new system was in place. 

Soucy acknowledged that he and Desrosiers meet with the premier and ministers without having to attend partisan fundraisers like the one last Friday night. 

But "every time I have the ability to tell people what changes need to be done, what we need and why we need it, I try to put as many people in front of the government as I can, as often as I can."   

In 2012, the then-CEO of Horizon Health Donn Peters publicly apologized after buying 10 tickets to a PC fundraising dinner, using a Horizon fund for event tickets drawn from parking and cafeteria revenue.