Andy Scott, a former New Brunswick Liberal MP and cabinet minister, has died at the age of 58.
He was a senior provincial public servant before he ran for Parliament in 1993 and won a seat in Fredericton.
He was re-elected in 1997 and appointed solicitor general by Jean Chretien.
He resigned, though, after a New Democrat MP overheard him talking during a plane flight about a pepper-spray incident that occurred during an international meeting in Vancouver.
Scott was said to have told a companion that the RCMP officers involved would take all the blame.
Paul Martin reappointed him to cabinet as a minister of state in 2003 and made him Indian affairs minister after the 2004 election.
A spokeswoman for New Brunswick's Liberal party said Scott died overnight in Fredericton.
Before entering federal politics, Scott was a senior policy adviser to former premier Frank McKenna.
More recently, Scott was executive director of the New Brunswick Social Policy Research Network at the University of New Brunswick.
He is survived by his wife Denise and three sons, Nathan, Nicholas and Noah.