Newfoundland and Labrador cabinet minister Christopher Mitchelmore should have quit or been fired by the premier as a result of code of conduct violations, the leader of the province’s Opposition Progressive Conservatives said Friday.
Instead, members of the House of Assembly voted Thursday night to suspend Mitchelmore for two weeks without pay when the house resumes sitting in March.
Members of the house debated a motion to strip Mitchelmore of his ministerial salary for a year, but that was defeated by a vote of 20-19.
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A report released Monday found Mitchelmore “grossly mismanaged” his code of conduct obligations when he directed the hiring of Carla Foote to a marketing job at Crown corporation The Rooms, a gallery and archive in St. John’s.
The Office of the Citizens’ Representative, a provincial ombudsman service, said Mitchelmore mismanaged public funds by dictating Foote’s hiring and signing off on increasing the job’s salary to $132,000.
Foote had previously worked for the Liberal party under Premier Dwight Ball and is the daughter of provincial lieutenant-governor Judy Foote.
“The brazen aspect in this lies in the premier not putting (Mitchelmore) out of cabinet and in his failure to resign from cabinet,” Tory Leader Ches Crosbie said Friday.
Crosbie said there should be a new competition for the Rooms job, and Foote would be free to apply.
“The evidence shows that she is not qualified for the job. She should not have gotten that job, certainly not at that salary level. She does not have the credentials and qualifications,” Crosbie said.
The report tabled Monday found “no evidence” that Foote’s qualifications were assessed against the 77 other candidates who applied for the position.
“It is impossible to conclude that she was the best qualified person for the position,” the report said.
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Mitchelmore and Ball have defended Foote’s hiring as a “lateral move” between executive positions, but the report concluded the positions were not equivalent and the job was reclassified to an executive level to accommodate her.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 6, 2019.
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