A high profile and popular former politician in northwest New Brunswick went on trial Wednesday on charges of resisting and obstructing police during an episode stemming from a family dispute over a dementia patient's money.

Bernard Valcourt, a former MP and cabinet minister in the governments of prime ministers Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell and Stephen Harper, listened intently in an Edmundston court as staff from a local nursing home testified about the alleged incident.

"I said, 'Bernard, what are you doing? I've never seen you act like that,'" Jean-Anne Pelletier, the care manager at Villa des Jardins, told the court. 

Pelletier testified that she had known Valcourt for a long time, and he was "a happy man" but he also had a temper.

According to prosecutors, Valcourt, a lawyer, violated Section 129 of the Criminal Code on Oct. 4, 2022, when he "voluntarily obstructed" two Edmundston police officers and "resisted" them as they were trying to do their work. 

                                  Colette Cloutier, an elderly resident of Villa des Jardins, was diagnosed with dementia. (Bellavance funeral home)

In his testimony, Valcourt disputed the prosecution's account, telling the court a resident of the nursing home wanted to hire him as a lawyer, and she had the right to consult him without interference.

"I tried to explain [to the police] and they didn't want to hear anything about it," he testified. 

The Crown is seeking a summary conviction that would carry no jail time.

The nursing home's manager, Diane Bouchard, told the trial that Valcourt arrived at the home on Oct. 4, 2022, to see Colette Cloutier, an elderly resident diagnosed with dementia.

Bouchard said Cloutier's son Charles had power-of-attorney over her care and her legal affairs, so staff were concerned when Valcourt went to her room to meet with her alone.

Bouchard confronted Valcourt in Cloutier's room and asked him why he was there.

"He said, 'It's none of your business.' I said, 'Yes, it's my business. Madame Cloutier has dementia, and she can't have discussions alone with a lawyer.'"

Valcourt's lawyer, Luc Roy, objected that prosecutors had introduced no power-of-attorney documents as evidence and said that would be key to the defence. 

"Mr. Valcourt had the right to speak to the lady.… That's the nub of the problem," he said.

Valcourt testified that Cloutier was unhappy with what he referred to as "the so-called power-of-attorney" and wanted his legal advice.

Luc Roy is representing Bernard Valcourt in court in Edmundston. (Yves Lévesque/Radio-Canada)

He said he was there to get a sense of whether she was competent to make decisions about hiring him.

Earlier, Bouchard had recounted calling Charles on her cell phone and putting him on speaker so he could find out what Valcourt was discussing with his mother. 

Charles testified that he asked his mother, "It's your son Charles, what's going on there?" but his mother's answers weren't clear. "She was confused," he said.

Valcourt contradicted that. Cloutier recognized him immediately from his years in politics. "Why, it's Bernard!" she declared when he arrived, according to his testimony.

Bouchard said after Valcourt cut off two attempts by Charles to speak to his mother, "I said, 'That's enough, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.' He sat down and said, 'I'm not leaving.'"

In Valcourt's account, he insisted that the solicitor-client relationship was confidential and privileged and that he could stay.

He also said Cloutier told her son over the phone, "I'm finished with you.… I can make decisions for myself."

When the police arrived, Bouchard testified Valcourt became confrontational and was yelling, which alarmed a tearful and confused Cloutier.

Annie-Claude Breton, a prosecutor from Quebec, is handling the trial because of Valcourt's high profile and network of connections in the New Brunswick legal system. (Yves Lévesque/Radio-Canada)

Police testified Valcourt told Cloutier not to answer their questions and he refused to co-operate with them.

"He said if I wanted him to leave, I was going to have to make him leave," Edmundston police Const. Samuel Côté testified.

But Roy, Valcourt's lawyer, suggested during his cross-examination of Côté that the situation wasn't that clear-cut.

He played police dispatch audio of the confrontation in which Cloutier can be heard saying of Valcourt, "I hired him" and asserting, "I have a right to talk to him."

The officers said Valcourt resisted their efforts to handcuff him, though Valcourt disputed that.

Getting up out of the witness stand to act out the arrest, waving his arms, he said when the officers cuffed him, "It felt like they were tearing my arms out of the sockets."

According to testimony from Bouchard, Pelletier and another nursing home employee, Melissa Martin, staff at the home were frequently caught in the middle of a dispute within Cloutier's family, and in particular between two of her sons.

Valcourt said there was no feud but that Cloutier's other son, Philippe, had contacted him to tell him his mother wanted him as a lawyer.

Pelletier said some family members accepted she had dementia and others did not. There were disagreements about money, she added, and the sale of her house came up during Valcourt's visit.

Then-prime minister Stephen Harper with Bernard Valcourt in 2011. Valcourt was a cabinet minister in the Harper government. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Valcourt had two stints as a federal MP, first from 1984 to 1993 as the MP for Madawaska-Victoria and then from 2011 to 2015 as MP for Madawaska-Restigouche.

He resigned from the Mulroney cabinet in 1989 after pleading guilty following a drunk-driving accident, but was reappointed in 1990.

He was also leader of the New Brunswick Progressive Conservative party, taking the party to defeat in the 1995 provincial election.

His personal popularity in the region was always high, with a walking bridge over the Madawaska River named in his honour.

But in 2021, some local residents launched a petition to remove his name from the bridge after he accused media organizations of quoting a local doctor as part of "a campaign of terror" about COVID-19.

The trial is expected to conclude Thursday, with the prosecution's cross-examination of Valcourt and closing arguments. 

A prosecutor from Quebec, Annie-Claude Breton, is handling the trial because of Valcourt's high profile and network of connections in the New Brunswick legal system.

But the 12-year plan unveiled Wednesday falls short of putting a price tag on the transition, with Premier Blaine Higgs warning it will be a "difficult" endeavour that will require help from Ottawa.

"Is it going to be easy? No it's not," Higgs said at a news conference in Fredericton. 

"We have to balance affordability and the reliability, and … ensure that at the end of the day we don't put more and more hardship on the citizens to a point where they just can't afford to live and work in our province.

"Are we on a path to higher energy costs? Absolutely. I mean that path was set 10 years ago, I would say, by the federal government."

The strategy, titled "Powering our Economy and the World with Clean Energy," lays out a series of objectives the province hopes to meet between now and 2035.

If followed through on, the strategy would see New Brunswick quadruple its reliance on renewable sources of energy such as wind and hydroelectricity, while doubling its nuclear energy production through the startup of small modular reactors.

The New Brunswick government is aiming to boost the capacity of nuclear energy production by 600 megawatts annually by 2035. (Government of New Brunswick)

Meanwhile, the province would convert its Belledune generating station from burning coal to burning biomass, while relying on its gas and diesel-fired power plants only on rare occasions when demand exceeds capacity — anticipated to only account for one per cent of the province's needs by 2035.

The provincial government's strategy aims to position New Brunswick to meet the federally set target for the province to decarbonize its electrical grid by 2035.

It comes just months after N.B Power, the Crown utility, released its own report indicating "considerable uncertainty" when it came to how it planned to do so.

The report, released in August, said a mix of wind power, a costly update to the Mactaquac Dam, an extension to the life of its Bayside gas-fired plant and small modular reactors, were all essential to meeting the 2035 deadline.

But the cost of developing small modular reactors — a key pillar in the plan — remains a "significant unknown," and the timing of their deployment depends on the pace of the technology.

Speaking alongside Higgs on Wednesday, Energy and Natural Resources Development Minister Mike Holland said the province has familiarity with the costs associated with wind and hydroelectricity, but admitted the cost for bringing small modular nuclear reactors up to the anticipated capacity remains unknown.

Energy Minister Mike Holland says he doesn't know how much small modular reactors will cost long term but is hoping the federal government comes forward to help develop the technology. (Ed Hunter/CBC)

"We will be looking to the federal government to assist and join us in funding some of the projects, some of the research," Holland said.

"And at the end of the day when we move forward, we also have an understanding that the ratepayers of the province in New Brunswick have thresholds and we certainly aren't going to be moving into an area that exceeds the ability to pay."

According to a chart included in the province's latest report, nuclear energy is expected to be the largest source of electricity, at 38 per cent, by 2035.

It's followed by wind at 23 per cent, clean energy imports at 19 per cent, hydroelectricity at 11 per cent, natural gas at three per cent, and solar and diesel and oil at single percentage each.

Too much reliance on nuclear, Coon says

Green Party Leader David Coon said he was disappointed by the strategy's plan to double the capacity of nuclear energy in the province.

He said the energy source is among the most expensive in the world and could contribute to higher rates for consumers if it becomes relied on to the degree set out in the plan.

"So they want to double it, which means to me, doubling the debt for N.B. Power and doubling power rates for New Brunswickers, on top of the ecological consequences of going more into the nuclear realm."

Coon also questioned how the strategy arrived at a forecast that sees the total amount of electricity consumed in the province going up by 60 per cent by 2035.

"We just can't support that growth. I don't know where that's coming from."

Liberals want greater focus on refurbishment

Liberal energy critic René Legacy said he admired how the strategy took a broad look at the province's energy ambitions, such as targets around efficiency and generating electricity both on and off the grid.

Liberal energy critic René Legacy says he would have liked to have sees the strategy say more about the need to refurbish aging infrastructure. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)

But he said he thought there should have been more attention paid to aging infrastructure.

"I still find it's a little lacking on the situation we have right now, which is aging assets that need refurbishment, and we're kind of dragging our feet on them," Legacy said.

Legacy said whether N.B. Power goes ahead with a $3 billion refurbishment of the Mactaquac generating station looms large in the backdrop, adding that other generating stations will be nearing their end of life in the next two decades.

"I'm not saying it should be one or the other, but it just seems the minister is focused on new technologies like small modular reactors."