Horizon CEO fired by Higgs feels vindicated but still 'in the dark' after $2M labour board decision

Seven months after New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs fired Dr. John Dornan, the former president and CEO of Horizon Health Network, says he feels vindicated by a labour board decision, but still "in the dark" about what happened.

"I think that my employer, Premier Higgs, would be the only one that knows that. And aside from a press release, he has not shared that with me," Dornan told CBC Thursday during a telephone interview from his Saint John-area home.

It's the first time he has spoken publicly about the incident.

Dornan broke his silence after he won his unjust dismissal case against the province.

A labour board adjudicator awarded Dornan about $2 million, which his lawyers say is the largest employment compensation award in the province's history. It includes $200,000 in aggravated damages.

"I accept the position of the grievor that his dismissal was done in a 'public, disingenuous and callous manner,'" the adjudicator wrote in his 34-page decision.

Higgs announced Dornan's termination during a news conference July 15 in a major shakeup of New Brunswick's health-care leadership. Dornan had served only four months of his five-year contract.

Higgs also replaced Dorothy Shephard as health minister and removed the boards of both Horizon and Vitalité, New Brunswick's two health authorities, citing a growing health-care crisis that included the "traumatizing" death of a Fredericton patient July 12 in the waiting room of the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital's emergency department.

Although some people have suggested Dornan was made a "political scapegoat," he said doesn't know if that's true.

He does know "it happened very abruptly" — during a phone call that lasted less than a minute.

When Higgs called, Dornan was in his parked car, about to get his hair cut for the Fredericton news conference Higgs had invited him and the head of Vitalité Health Network to attend the night before, following a meeting about the ER patient's death.

He said Higgs informed him Bruce Fitch had replaced Shephard as health minister. Then Fitch got on the phone, according to the arbitrator's decision.

"The evidence of the grievor was that the new Minister of Health said that the 'CEO serves at the pleasure of the Minister' and 'you are no longer employed,'" the decision states.

Dornan, who previously served as the interim president and CEO of Horizon for about seven months, was "shocked."