Former N.B. legislature Speaker drops lawsuit against province, ex-premier

A former Speaker of the New Brunswick legislature quietly ended his lawsuit against the provincial government and former premier Brian Gallant last year.

Court documents show that Chris Collins, a former Moncton Centre MLA expelled from the Liberal caucus in 2018 over harassment allegations, halted the court action last May.

The filing by his lawyer, Andrew Moss, says Collins "wholly discontinues" the lawsuit and agrees not to pursue the allegations in the future.

In a statement to CBC News, Gallant said "there was no financial settlement in this matter."

Collins could not be reached for comment by email or through Moss.

In April 2018, Gallant announced the Liberal caucus was removing Collins because of the harassment complaint against him as Speaker from an unidentified employee of the legislature.

Liberal Brian Gallant was premier of New Brunswick from 2014 to 2018. (CBC)

The all-party legislative administration committee commissioned an investigation and later said the complaint was "founded in part," though the report was never released.

Collins later told reporters he was making a "complete and unreserved apology for anything I said that offended the complainant or anyone else," saying he considered his comments "humorous and inoffensive" but to others they were "perceived as inappropriate."

He also said the "overwhelming majority" of the allegations against him had been deemed unfounded. In court filings he said 77 out of 80 were unfounded.

Collins remained in the position of Speaker until the provincial election later that year.

He announced he would not run as a Liberal under Gallant and instead became an independent candidate, placing a distant second to Liberal winner Rob McKee.

His lawsuit against Gallant, the provincial government and the legislature accused them of breach of employment contract, breach of privacy and abuse of authority.

According to Collins, Gallant initially dismissed a complaint from the staffer in 2016, then revived it in 2018 after Collins, as Speaker, wouldn't let the Liberals introduce partisan motions attacking then-Progressive Conservative Opposition leader Blaine Higgs.

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He claimed Gallant's office had the legislature adopt the provincial government's workplace harassment policy so it would apply to MLAs, then encouraged the woman to use it to file the complaint against Collins.

Those allegations by Collins were never proven in court.

In 2021 a judge blocked Collins from suing the legislature, ruling that Canadian precedent prevents the courts from reviewing the institution's internal proceedings, including the disciplining of its own members.

Collins returned to public life in 2022 as the executive director of Canadian Parents for French, which lobbied the Higgs government to abandon a plan to replace French immersion.

That led Collins to interact with some of the Liberal MLAs who had voted to expel him five years earlier.

He said last year the reception he received "was apologetic and it was warm and I appreciated that. … They seemed to know what happened. It was all good."

He said he was "looking forward to having my day in court and getting this over with and putting it behind me and moving on."

According to the court file, Collins asked the court in February 2023 for more time to respond to a government request for more documentation because his lawyer Harold Doherty had "serious health issues" that prevented him from being in court.

Moss took over the case May 12 and filed the notice of discontinuance the same day.

In his statement Tuesday, Gallant said he maintained "that the complainant in this matter had a right for their complaint to undergo an impartial, non-partisan, and independent investigative process given the nature of the allegations that were made — and given the importance of safeguarding the integrity of our democratic institutions."

He said he'd been prepared to go to court to defend that position but was "fine" with the discontinuance.

The province's lawyers were representing Gallant in the case because he held a government position when Collins was expelled.

A spokesperson for the New Brunswick attorney general's office did not respond to a request for comment.