New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs, followed by an aide, pays a visit to Lt.-Gov Brenda Murphy at Government House in Fredericton on Aug. 17, 2020 to ask her to disolve the legislature.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
As he travels the province in the final days of the election campaign, New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs has filled his bus with something he didn’t have in 2018 – prominent francophone advisers.
This time around, the Tory Leader is hoping he can finally win over French-speaking New Brunswickers who largely snubbed his party in the last election. Mr. Higgs, surrounded by his francophone chief of staff, principal secretary and former senior and junior cabinet ministers, is seeking an elusive breakthrough in the province’s Acadian regions where votes have been hard to come by for the Conservatives.
Voters here head to the polls Monday in the country’s first provincial election held during the COVID-19 crisis. While the pandemic presents unprecedented challenges for politicians and election officials, for some, the province’s linguistic divide trumps all else – even the economic recovery.
New Brunswick’s electoral map after the 2018 vote shows how stark those language divisions remain. Mr. Higgs and the Tories captured just one predominantly francophone riding – a seat held by Robert Gauvin, who ultimately defected to the Liberals.
Opinion polls suggest the Liberals, who hold 20 of 49 seats, still dominate support among French-speaking New Brunswickers, who make up about a third of the population. In English-speaking New Brunswick, however, that support flips to Mr. Higgs and the Progressive Conservatives, who also hold 20 seats.
But political observers say there’s also a scenario where Mr. Higgs could win a majority without winning a single francophone riding. That troubles some Acadian voters, who are wary of his minority government’s partnership after the 2018 election with the People’s Alliance, a rural populist party that opposes official bilingualism.
Others remain suspicious of Mr. Higgs for his membership 30 years ago in the now-defunct Confederation of Regions party, which campaigned against government services being offered in both languages.
“Higgs has baggage,” said Roger Ouellette, a professor of political science at the University of Moncton. “He’s an issue for some francophones.”
While the Liberals have positioned themselves as the best party to protect francophone interests, Mr. Higgs has increased PC support among many voters for his handling of the pandemic.
The economy is reopening at a faster rate than most other provinces, and cases of COVID-19 have been kept low. In July, Statistics Canada said the province led the country in employment recovery, with the jobless rate at 9.4 per cent – nearly what it was in February, before the coronavirus hit.
Support for Mr. Higgs remains high in opinion polls, rebounding after he cancelled a controversial plan to close rural hospitals around the province last year. He has also disavowed his decades-old involvement with the anti-bilingualism movement, and has said repeatedly that his views on language rights have changed since then.
Mr. Higgs is attempting to do what Richard Hatfield first did in the 1970s and Bernard Lord did in 1999 – lure Acadians away from traditional voting loyalties and into the Tory tent.
The unilingual Premier, who is getting French lessons on his campaign bus from his daughter, used a translator in Wednesday’s televised French language leaders' debate. His main rival, Liberal Leader Kevin Vickers, spoke in passable French, although he raised eyebrows among some viewers when he misunderstood a question about culture for a question about agriculture.
"That also sent a message to French voters. It was a really, really bad look,” Mr. Ouellette said.
None of the New Brunswick party leaders are francophone, although the Green Party’s David Coon is fluent in French and his party is rising in popularity in French-speaking regions, even passing the PCs in some areas as voters' second choice. His ability to speak to francophones in their own language is part of the reason for that surge, Mr. Ouellette said.
In many parts of New Brunswick, however, those old French-English language tensions still remain. Progressive Conservative candidate Jean-Gérard Chiasson, running in the Acadian heartland of Shippagan-Lamèque-Miscou, says he’s been called a “traitor” and “anti-francophone” for campaigning for the Tories.
The Liberals also dumped their candidate in the southern Saint Croix riding over comments about francophones and gay pride in social-media posts from 2018, while another came under fire for criticizing a language policy that hires French-speaking paramedics.
“We don’t have a language problem in this province, we have a leadership problem,” said Alexandre Cédric Doucet, president of the New Brunswick Acadian Society. “Under Higgs leadership, the Conservatives have become very toxic for the French community. He can’t be trusted to defend francophone rights.”
Mr. Doucet’s group, which argues 50 per cent of all immigration to New Brunswick should be francophone, said there’s a troubling normalization of anti-French sentiment happening in the province. They’re also concerned by Tory pledges to lower bilingual language requirements for the public sector – a key issue for some unilingual, English-speaking voters who complain they’re ineligible for many government jobs.
While the People Alliance’s, led by Baptist minister Kris Austin, are polling so low they may be wiped off the map, the anti-bilingualism sentiment they embrace isn’t expected to go away, Mr. Doucet said.
“Language is a tectonic feature of New Brunswick politics. Sometimes it bubbles up and becomes very visible and raucous, and sometimes it slips beneath the surface. But it’s always there,” said Tom Bateman, a political scientists at St. Thomas University in Fredericton.
Mr. Ouellette said the PCs have worked hard to attract qualified candidates in the province’s French-speaking regions. The big question remains whether voters there will see support for the Tories as the only way to get more Acadian voices into government.
“There’s a bandwagon effect that could happen,” he said. “Higgs has surrounded himself with strong French advisers. With strong candidates, in the right ridings, there’s a chance it could work.”
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