New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Party Leader Blaine Higgs delivers a concession speech in Quispamsis, N.B., following the results of the provincial election, on Oct. 21.Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press
Donald Wright is a professor of political science at the University of New Brunswick and president of the Canadian Historical Association.
After a 32-day campaign, which saw the party leaders make a lot of promises on health care, affordability, housing, pronouns and taxation, New Brunswick has elected a Liberal government. Susan Holt will become the province’s 35th – and first woman – premier.
Smart, passionate and authentic, Ms. Holt led a positive and forward-looking campaign, winning on her own steam. But if elections are won, they are also lost, and Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs – who was defeated in his own riding, the first incumbent premier to do so since 1987 – certainly lost this election.
First, he moved his party to the right when he deliberately cultivated a gratuitous moral panic over trans and non-binary kids about a year ago. Then, in the weeks leading up to the writ, Mr. Higgs and his team took aim at the woke mob (whoever they are), the Liberal-friendly media, Justin Trudeau, carbon pricing, supervised consumption sites, and asylum seekers.
Targeting asylum seekers – especially when almost no one is seeking asylum in New Brunswick – marked a new and shameless low. When Mr. Higgs deflected a question on health care by pointing to asylum seekers at a special session of Fredericton’s city council, Mayor Kate Rogers cut him off, describing his rhetoric as “offensive.” The Tory leader was not amused, but nor was he deterred.
Mr. Higgs’s top-down leadership style rubbed many people the wrong way. Eleven Tory MLAs – and one former Tory MLA who became an independent after a very public spat with the Premier – didn’t seek re-election. Indeed, the PCs struggled to recruit enough candidates. In one riding, they nominated a candidate whose explicit TikTok videos raised questions about the party’s vetting process. But when asked about the videos, the party of parents’ rights and family values effectively replied: “So what?” In another riding, the PCs nominated a self-described “Jesus freak” who has linked same-sex marriage to bestiality, fretted about “the gay agenda,” peddled misinformation about abortion and cancer rates in women, and claimed that a coven of witches in some coffee shop once cast a spell on her.
Both women lost in typically safe Conservative ridings.
By tacking to the right, and then running a negative campaign, Mr. Higgs narrowed his base in English-speaking New Brunswick, a strange strategy for a leader who has never been embraced by French-speaking New Brunswick because of a vow he once made to establish English as New Brunswick’s only official language.
In his concession speech, Mr. Higgs didn’t utter a single word in French, not even “bon soir” or “merci” – to some, a parting shot at the province’s francophones.
For Green Party Leader David Coon, and for the party that he has done so much to build, it was a bittersweet night. Yes, he held on to his Fredericton riding, but the Greens saw their share of the popular vote decline by 1.5 per cent, and they will return to the legislature with a caucus of two, down from three.
It’s too bad, because while every party was talking about affordability, only the Green Party was talking about deep poverty and even proposed a guaranteed livable income.
Now, the premier-elect certainly has her work cut out for her. Since 2020, the province has seen an unprecedented increase in population, primarily through immigration, but also through in-migration from other provinces during the pandemic. Its population has grown to 850,000, which represents an 8.5-per-cent increase. This has put pressure on already stretched public services. There are doctor shortages, nurse shortages, and teacher shortages, especially French-immersion teachers.
In addition, vacancy rates have fallen to 1.5 per cent, the lowest on record, and the average rent has increased nearly 30 per cent in 4 years, while the price of everything has risen. Too many New Brunswickers struggle to make their rent, stock their pantries, heat their homes, and fill their tanks.
To these ends and more, Ms. Holt made 100 distinct promises, although she artfully dodged the issue of the carbon price. Leaving it out of the Liberal platform altogether, she talked instead about conversations with Ottawa and made-in New Brunswick solutions.
Has Ms. Holt overpromised? Maybe. Certainly, her mathematically creative platform, which double-counted HST revenues to project annual surpluses, suggests that she has.
Of course, the proof will be in the pudding once her government is sworn in and she is called upon to deliver, especially on health care, education, housing, and affordability, which she made the centrepieces of her refreshingly optimistic campaign.
There’s a steep road ahead, and I wish her luck.