Finance Minister LeBlanc’s stay at Irving home puts ties to wealthy N.B. family into focus

Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, under an ethics screen to shield him from his government’s extensive dealings with J.D. Irving, Ltd, recently stayed over at the home of the Irving family patriarch, highlighting the close and often controversial relationship between Mr. LeBlanc and the wealthy New Brunswick family.

Mr. LeBlanc and his wife, Jolène Richard, slept over at the mansion of James D. (Jim) Irving at the end of a mid-December Christmas party that the billionaire held for the province’s business and political elite, according to a source with knowledge of the guest list. Mr. LeBlanc was public safety minister at the time and became Finance Minister on Dec. 16 when Chrystia Freeland abruptly resigned.

Mr. LeBlanc’s ties to the Irvings have come under scrutiny in the past and resurfaced as he took over the powerful role in the Finance Ministry and prepares for a possible Liberal Party leadership run if close friend Justin Trudeau steps down.

The source said the party was held in the town of Rothesay outside of Saint John, where many of the Irving family live. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the source, who was not authorized to discuss the private affair.

Mr. LeBlanc, a key political lieutenant and boyhood friend to Mr. Trudeau, set up an arrangement with the Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner in 2016 to screen him from any dealings with J.D. Irving, Ltd. and its affiliates and subsidiaries.

The conflict-of-interest screen would not block him from attending intimate gatherings with the New Brunswick corporate tycoon.

“My friend Jim Irving, the New Brunswick business guy, teased us. He said there’s more snow in front of the plow now,” Mr. LeBlanc said in a podcast interview last week, referring to the very poor polling and fundraising metrics that the Liberal Party is contending with.

Mr. Irving is the president and chief executive officer of the Irving family’s vast corporate network that has interests in numerous industrial sectors, including agribusiness, lumber and shipbuilding.

Through Irving Shipbuilding, the company is also the beneficiary of billions of dollars of government contracts to build new warships for the Royal Canadian Navy at its shipyard in Halifax.

When the ethics screen was set up, Mr. LeBlanc said it will “ensure that I will abstain from any participation in any discussions or decision-making processes and any communication with government officials in relation to any matter or issue forming part of the subject matter of the conflict-of-interest screen.”

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A close confidant who has been making calls on Mr. LeBlanc’s behalf for a possible leadership run said his campaign will have no trouble raising money because of his connections to the Irving family and his new role as Finance Minister. The confidant described Mr. LeBlanc as the government’s best communicator and someone who is capable of preventing the Liberals from being wiped out in a Conservative sweep when an election is held.

The Globe is not identifying the confidant who was not authorized to discuss Mr. LeBlanc’s potential leadership plans.

A spokesperson for Mr. LeBlanc said that he continues to abide by the ethics screen in his dealings with the Irving family and that it will remain in place in his new role as Finance Minister.

“Minister LeBlanc and Mr. Jim Irving have been friends going back decades. That is why, in order to avoid any conflict of interest, real or perceived, Minister LeBlanc has a conflict-of-interest screen to ensure that he does not, in his official capacity, weigh in on any matters or decisions that could impact Mr. Jim Irving’s business dealings,” director of communications Jean-Sébastien Comeau said in a statement.

“Minister LeBlanc has also informed the Deputy Minister of Finance of the conflict-of-interest screen, to ensure that [Mr. LeBlanc] does not participate in any decisions that could benefit Mr. Irving’s business interests.”

Conservative ethics critic Michael Barrett accused Mr. LeBlanc and the Prime Minister of cozying up to wealthy elites and being out of touch with main-street Canadians.

“Life is harder than ever before for everyday Canadians who are struggling to get by,” Mr. Barrett told The Globe. “While the Liberals’ ultra-rich friends and insiders have never had things so good.”

Mr. LeBlanc, the son of a former governor-general, has been the recipient of the Irving’s generosity over the years, using their corporate jets to get to medical appointments and spending time at a cedar lodge known as Downs Gulch, an exclusive salmon-fishing spot reserved for the province’s richest family.

Mr. Comeau declined to say whether Mr. LeBlanc has used the lodge after he became a Trudeau government minister in 2015.

In 2019 and 2020, he accepted private flights from J.D. Irving, Ltd. to see a Montreal doctor about cancer treatment. The flights were preapproved by Canada’s federal ethics czar, although opposition and other critics said they should not have been allowed.

“Minister LeBlanc has not used any Irving aircraft since using one to travel to Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital in 2019, at a time when his immune system was severely compromised and he could not, on the advice of his doctors, take any commercial aircraft,” Mr. Comeau said. “The conflict of interest and ethics commissioner at the time had cleared his use of Irving aircraft.”

Spokespersons for the Irving family did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In 2003, Mr. LeBlanc ran into controversy when it was reported that he had taken one of the Irving jets to a wedding in Ottawa and to fly to Washington. He had not declared the free air travel with the ethics commissioner.

Since he became a cabinet minister in the Trudeau government in 2015, Mr. LeBlanc has had brushes with the commissioner’s office.

When Mr. LeBlanc was fisheries minister in 2018, then-commissioner Mario Dion ruled that he violated the country’s ethics act when he awarded a lucrative clam licence to an Indigenous business group that had a family connection. He approved a multimillion-dollar Arctic surf clam licence for the Five Nations Clam Co. in which a first cousin of his wife was involved in the winning bid.

In 2019, The Globe reported that four of the six judges appointed to the federal bench in New Brunswick in the past eight months had links to Mr. LeBlanc, prompting renewed questions about the government’s use of partisan criteria in its choices for the judiciary.

In April, 2023, Mr. LeBlanc’s sister-in-law, Martine Richard, resigned as the interim ethics commissioner a day after a House of Commons committee decided to investigate her appointment by the Prime Minister.

Opposition parties said her closeness to Mr. LeBlanc made her a poor choice for a job that involves holding the government to account for ethical violations.