Political communications and government reform: New Brunswick under Richard Hatfield

The expansion of governmental activities in the modern world requires greatly increased research into the ability of governments to gather, process, and communicate information. Ever greater amounts of data must be gathered. Communication channels evolve as societies change and as government structures are revised. We need to know how different governments deal with this overarching challenge of information handling and communication. One set of answers is provided by this analysis of events and conditions in New Brunswick during the premiership of Richard Hatfield (1970-87). New Brunswick is a small, linguistically divided society. The Hatfield years was an era when the modernizing and centralizing initiatives of the Robichaud years (1960-70) were firmly entrenched, when debates over bilingualism were widespread, and when important steps were taken to upgrade government operations and public service professionalism. These steps included revised departmental and cabinet committee structures, expanded translation services, and increased regulation of possible partisan excesses (conflict of interest, fund-raising practices, etc.). The resulting improvement in information gathering, processing, and communication was significantly shaped by Hatfield's leadership style and the character of provincial society. The New Brunswick experience demonstrates that modernization and greater government activity necessitate more sophisticated communications channels and institutional arrangements. Under Hatfield's leadership there were concerted pushes toward bureaucratic professionalism, institutionalized bilingualism, and increased provincial government acceptance of lang-range planning and cost-consciousness. New channels of communication developed both within government and between government and society.