Imagine a business that hands out payments without signed contracts, never checks if they receive what they paid for and doesn’t notice when it pays the same supplier twice. That business would collapse in a week.

In New Brunswick, that business is the Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture.

And it’s wasting your tax dollars.

A recent report from New Brunswick’s auditor general examined how the department hands out more than $21 million a year in grants for tourism, arts, sport and heritage projects.

The conclusion is blunt: the department does not have sufficient processes to ensure responsible investment of taxpayer money.

And the details are worse than the conclusion.

The auditor general reviewed 73 grant projects worth $17.1 million. More than half, 53 per cent, had no signed agreement. No contract means no enforceable terms, no timelines and no accountability if the money disappears.

Nearly one in four grant applications showed no evidence of any formal evaluation. Eighteen of those projects were approved anyway, worth $4.2 million.

Then there is the film grant.

One recipient was eligible for $2.8 million under the program’s advertised funding formula. The department paid it $5 million. That is $2.2 million more than the rules allowed.

Did recipients spend the money as promised? The department mostly took their word for it.

The auditor general found $8.3 million was paid out based solely on self-reported expenses. No receipts. No audited statements.

And the follow-up?

In 79 per cent of the files reviewed, there was no evidence anyone checked the final reports.

The department paid a recipient the same $30,000 grant twice in 2023. And despite being discovered, the money still had not been recovered as of February 2026.

None of this should surprise New Brunswickers.

Last year, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation handed New Brunswick a Teddy Waste Award after the tourism department spent $77,000 sending the minister and bureaucrats to Europe to pitch the province. The results were ads promoting a zoo that closed years ago and incorrectly calling Saint John its largest, capital city.

That was embarrassing.

This, however, is systemic.

The junket was one bad campaign. The auditor general’s report shows the waste is baked into how the department hands out money and the pot keeps growing.

And to make matters worse, the provincial government has been busy maxing out the taxpayer credit card.

Premier Susan Holt is irresponsibly borrowing $1.4 billion this year. This is her second straight budget built on borrowing after she promised the debt would not grow on her watch.

Instead, since Holt took office, government debt is up $3.6 billion, about 30 per cent.

Interest charges alone will cost taxpayers $851 million this year. That is nearly $1,000 for every New Brunswicker. That money’s just gone without filling a single pothole or shortening a wait list by even one spot.

Every grant dollar handed out without a contract or a receipt is a borrowed dollar. And taxpayers will be paying interest on that sloppiness for decades.

The fix is not complicated. The department agreed with every one of the auditor general’s recommendations. The problem is the timeline. Some fixes are not scheduled until 2028-29.

Taxpayers should not have to wait three years for the government to start collecting receipts.

Think about what government demands from taxpayers. Miss a receipt on your tax audit and the government comes after you. But when the government hands out millions of your dollars, receipts are optional.

Taxpayers must answer for every dollar. It is time the government did too.

New Brunswickers deserve better.