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N.B.’s integrity commissioner says the tickets don’t count as gifts and the lobbyist registry isn’t sophisticated enough to disclose it
Published Apr 06, 2026 • Last updated 8 hours ago • 6 minute read
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Susan Holt has attended two NHL games and an NBA game all paid for by private interests since becoming premier. But it’s not something that’s publicly disclosed anywhere. Photo by Adam Huras/Brunswick NewsArticle content
Susan Holt has attended two NHL games and an NBA game all paid for by private interests since becoming premier.
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But it’s not something that’s publicly disclosed anywhere.
New Brunswick’s integrity commissioner says the tickets don’t count as gifts and the province’s lobbyist registry isn’t sophisticated enough to disclose individual meetings, ultimately leaving New Brunswickers blind to when companies use private boxes to bend an elected official’s ear.
Charles Murray says that even he doesn’t know when the province’s politicians are getting free tickets to games, unless they voluntarily tell him.
There’s no record of whether former Premier Blaine Higgs was brought to a game during his six years in office, Murray said.
His office wasn’t told about it, if he did.
Holt’s office disclosed to Brunswick News, when asked, that the premier was invited to attend three games in her first year on the job.
“These include a Raptors game, a Boston Bruins and a Maple Leafs game,” said premier’s office spokesperson Katie Beers.
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She then suggested they don’t count as gifts, stating “these items have no clear commercial value, but out of an abundance of caution and transparency, the premier is claiming those items,” deciding to proactively tell the integrity commissioner about them.
“We remain committed to transparency and actively work with the integrity office to ensure we uphold those standards,” Beers said.
Asked to disclose who paid for the tickets, Beers said that information was provided to the integrity commissioner, and it was up to him to release it.
Who paid for the tickets
Murray has since released that information to Brunswick News.
In Toronto for the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention, Holt was invited to a Leafs versus Philadelphia Flyers game on March 2 at Scotiabank Arena.
Box seats were paid for by Sunny Brook, a northern New Brunswick mining company.
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“They held a reception in a box at the game,” Murray said. “When she (Holt) left the PDAC convention it was to go to see a company that was at the event that had its own reception at the Maple Leafs game.”
That comes as the Holt government has unveiled a new mining strategy that it hopes will help revive the sector, while promising incentives to industry to get to work.
Meanwhile, box tickets to a Bruins game versus the Tampa Bay Lightning on March 15, 2025, at TD Garden were paid for by International Seafood & Bait, a Shippigan-based company.
That came the night before Seafood Expo North America in Boston began, which the premier attended to promote New Brunswick’s fish and seafood industry.
Then on April 3, 2025, Holt attended a Portland Trail Blazers versus Toronto Raptors game at Scotiabank Arena.
Those tickets came from Tom Liston, a prominent technology investor, who is on the board of directors at Opportunities NB and the fundraising chair for the World’s Oldest Basketball Court Group in St. Stephen.
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Earlier that day, Holt delivered a keynote speech at the Canadian Club in Toronto.
The World’s Oldest Basketball Court Group also held a reception as it attempts to fundraise $18 million to become the Canadian National Basketball Experience Museum.
It’s lobbying the Holt government for $6 million.
Nothing against the rules
Murray said none of the tickets need to be disclosed publicly.
New Brunswick’s conflict of interest act makes it clear that “a member or a member’s immediate family member shall not accept a fee, gift or personal benefit…that is connected directly or indirectly with the performance of the member’s duties of office.”
But the law does provide limits to what needs to be reported.
The statute sets a limit at $250, meaning any gift below that threshold doesn’t require a politician to file with the integrity commissioner a gift disclosure statement.
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The premier’s office suggests the true value of the tickets Holt received can’t be established.
Another section of the act creates a seemingly large grey zone that is open to the interpretation of the integrity commissioner, as well as being subject to the judgment of MLAs.
Disclosure “does not apply to a gift or personal benefit that is received as an incident of the protocol or social obligations that normally accompany the responsibilities of office,” reads the legislation.
Murray states it’s that line preventing the need for public disclosure, specifically that attending the game is part of government meetings.
“From my perspective, all three of these things look like attachments to other events which are part of the premier’s duties,” he said.
Murray said all three do amount to lobbying the Holt government.
But, he added, the New Brunswick’s lobbyist registry doesn’t log individual incidents of lobbying, only providing a list of names who intend to talk to government officials, meaning there’s nowhere to publicly record these free tickets to sporting events.
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“I’m hopeful that’s going to change,” Murray said. “The barrier to doing that is resources.”
The integrity commissioner’s office is made up of Murray and one other staffer.
“We’re going to need to build a computer database that can handle that, which we currently don’t have, but we are working on trying to find a way to source that at low cost,” he said.
“And then we’re going to need to add at least one more staff member.”
Missing incidents
Murray suggested he may not be even getting a full picture of when New Brunswick politicians are being given free tickets.
Not one gift Blaine Higgs was given while the province’s premier for six years has been publicly registered.
Murray told Brunswick News that no tickets were disclosed by the Higgs premier’s office.
“I have no reports in the disclosures that he did any of those things and I don’t have any authority at this point to compel answers on those questions,” he said.
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Higgs did not return a request for comment from Brunswick News.
The newspaper then asked Nicolle Carlin, who worked as the lead spokesperson in the premier’s office throughout Higgs’s tenure, who suggested Higgs likely did attend at least one NHL Leafs game while in office, although likely as a guest of Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
Carlin did recall several internal discussions with ministers about making sure they weren’t spending while on the road.
“After COVID, times got tough for New Brunswickers, the economy was hurting a bit, we were very cognizant,” she said. “We had talks with all of our ministers about travel, about the optics of buying lavish dinners, that they shouldn’t be doing that.”
Carlin said it bothered Higgs when Progressive Conservative Tourism Minister Tammy Scott-Wallace and her deputy, Yennah Hurley, were grilled over the large bill officials racked up in a trip to the United Kingdom and France.
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She added that she would be in favour of the public disclosure of things like hockey tickets.
Murray said he did have a problem with hockey tickets while the Higgs government was in power.
The 2023 IIHF World Junior Championship was co-hosted by Moncton and Halifax from Dec. 26, 2022, to Jan. 5, 2023. Murray said he learned after the fact that New Brunswick’s sponsorship of the event afforded the government dozens of free tickets to several games.
A portion of those tickets were to games that likely wouldn’t sell out, including matches like Latvia versus Switzerland where the goal was to get people in the seats at the Avenir Centre to show the appearance of a strong crowd, Murray said.
“But some people got tickets to the gold medal game in Halifax, and those tickets had a street value of about $3,000 each,” he continued.
“So that’s a very different example of valuation.
“I found out about all of this after the fact, and that was really problematic for me because I cannot make you give back the experience of going to a gold medal game. You’ve accepted that gift.”
He added: “I told (government) ‘We do not have good rules on this. We need to build some protocol for this.’”
It’s a situation Murray said the integrity office will now scrutinize when the government partners to hold any major tournament.
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