New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant and Service New Brunswick Minister Dr. Ed Doherty announced plans on Monday to overhaul the home tax assessment system.

Premier Gallant has appointed an independent review of the process that produced more than 2,000 inflated property tax assessments.  He's also creating a new independent agency to carry out assessments.

Justice Joseph T. Robertson has been appointed as an independent commissioner to conduct a review of all Service NB's policies and procedures.

“As your government, we will introduce legislation to create an agency independent of the provincial government to oversee property assessments,” says Premier Gallant. “We will do so in the fourth session of the legislature.”

Premier Gallant’s promised changes include:

  • All properties subject to the arbitrary formula will be visually reassessed
  • The province will extend the request for review deadline of March 31 to August 1, there is also no deadline for residents to report errors in assessments.
  • The appeal deadline is 21 days after receiving Service NB's findings.
  • The province will no longer conduct property assessments.

Premier Gallant said officials recognized discrepancies from a computer generated assessment and the arbitrary formula was implemented to correct it.

“They provided an arbitrary formula to reduce the assessment that was calculated by the computer,” says Premier Gallant.

“I regret all the confusion caused by this, and as minister responsible for Service New Brunswick, I sincerely apologize to all New Brunswickers,” says Minister Doherty.

Minister Doherty's apology wasn't enough for Progressive Conservative MLA Bruce Fitch.

“You see a government here in full crisis mode,” says Fitch. “You heard the minister apologize, I was hoping he'd go a step further and apologize or the premier would tell the minister to step down.”

The independent review will look at assessments for the last seven years; it could also come with some recommendations for dismissal of some Service NB staff.

With files from CTV Atlantic’s Jonathan MacInnis