Joseph Edward Bérubé was the longest serving

Ombudsman An ombudsman (, also ,), ombud, ombuds, ombudswoman, ombudsperson or public advocate is an official who is usually appointed by the government or by parliament (usually with a significant degree of independence) to investigate complaints and at ...

of the province of

New Brunswick New Brunswick (french: Nouveau-Brunswick, , locally ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. It is the only province with both English and ...

, Canada, occupying the office from 1976 to 1993.

History

Joseph Bérubé was a native of

Edmundston, New Brunswick Edmundston is a city in Madawaska County, New Brunswick, Canada. On 1 January 2023, Edmundston will expanded, annexing the village of Rivière-Verte and parts of the local service districts of the parish of Saint-Jacques and the parish of Sai ...

. Following his graduation in law from the University of New Brunswick, he was called to the New Brunswick Bar in 1957 and to the Ontario Bar in 1958. Prior to assuming the role of Ombudsman in 1976, Bérubé had been a New Brunswick Provincial Court judge since 1965, following a period in private practice. Prior to accepting the appointment as Ombudsman, Bérubé had been the President of the New Brunswick Provincial Court Judges' Association, as well as the President of the Canadian Association of Provincial Court Judges.Uncredited
Biography of Joseph E. Bérubé
Office of the Ombudsman of New Brunswick. Retrieved 2016-11-14. In 1991, Bérubé and the New Brunswick Ombudsman Office initiated an inquiry into the 1987 collapse of the

Principal Group The Principal Group was a group of interrelated Canadian financial companies that collapsed in 1987, resulting in losses to an estimated 67,000 people. Losses were in recovered in part through provincial governments paying compensation, based on ...

and its effect on residents of New Brunswick. The focus of the inquiry related to the activities in New Brunswick of First Investors Corporation, one of the main operating corporations of the Principal Group. In addition, in its 1991 annual report, released in 1992, the Office of the Ombudsman of New Brunswick disclosed that it had "investigated a complaint lodged on behalf of 3,252 mostly elderly persons of limited means who suffered severe financial loss following the collapse of First Investors Corporation".National Criminal Justice Service, Abstracts Database,
Office of the Ombudsman (New Brunswick), 25th Annual Report, 1991
'. Retrieved 2016-11-11.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bérubé, Joseph Ombudsmen in Canada