LAMEQUE, N.B. — Job creation was the focus of the first weekend of the New Brunswick election campaign as Conservative Leader David Alward promised to create a new business agency modelled after one in neighbouring Nova Scotia while the Liberals denounced the plan.

Alward accused the Liberal government of spending tax dollars through the Department of Business New Brunswick to prop up failing businesses, golf courses and financial institutions.

"Unfortunately, Premier Shawn Graham has used BNB as his personal political piggy bank," added Bruce Fitch, the Tory finance critic, in a release Sunday.

The department currently has a division to support New Brunswick businesses and one to attract new businesses.

Alward said if he's elected premier, he'd create a new agency to attract business and jobs to the province.

He said the new agency -- which he'd call InvestNB -- would be led by a private-sector board of business leaders able to make non-partisan decisions.

"It's going to take partners at the table, and I look forward to working with business leaders on the future direction, allowing them to have real input and real oversight to the decisions and the focus that we go," Alward said. "I believe this will do great things for New Brunswick."

But Business New Brunswick Minister Victor Boudreau was quick to denounce the Conservative plan as no plan at all.

"They're recycling old ideas," Boudreau said.

"When they came to power in 1999 they did exactly that. They took the old Department of Economic Development and Tourism and divided it into two," he said. "And within two years they brought it all back together because they saw it didn't work."

Alward said Nova Scotia is having success with a similar model with its Nova Scotia Business Inc., and he believes it would work in New Brunswick.

Boudreau said each province needs its own solution and chastised Alward for first committing to cut the size of government, then announcing he'd create more bureaucracy.

Alward used a nomination meeting in Lameque to also promise a $200-million job-creation fund for the north of the province.

He said the goal of the fund would be to create permanent jobs in the Acadian Peninsula and the Restigouche, Chaleur and Madawaska regions of the province.

However, he wouldn't say how many jobs the fund would create.

Graham has promised to create 20,000 jobs over the next four years if his Liberal government is given another mandate.

Boudreau was pressed by reporters on the future of Business New Brunswick under a Liberal government, but said the premier would have the answer when he addresses the economy in a speech this week.

The New Democrats have already stated that they would scrap the agency, if elected.

Candidate Tony Myatt said it's time to end the transfer of millions of dollars of public money to private companies that too often go bankrupt.