Chisholm Pothier: The New Brunswick conservatives did this to themselves
There were key issues New Brunswickers cared about. They were the ones the provincial Liberals were talking about.
By: Chisholm Pothier
A few thoughts on New Brunswick election.
First off, congratulations to Liberal premier-designate Susan Holt. As a former N.B. Progressive Conservative, I was pulling for you from the start, like most of the PCs I know. At first that was because you weren't PC Premier Blaine Higgs. But I came to admire your style and substance.
Second, must acknowledge Blaine Higgs' contribution to public service. He was finance minister for four years and premier for six. In his first minority term, he was a good premier. I didn't love the pandering to the anti-bilingualism People's Alliance Party, but he got the province through COVID. That was a significant accomplishment.
The wheels came off once he won a majority.
And that, sadly, will be his legacy. I'm already seeing revisionism among N.B. Tories. I've seen PCs blame it on Justin Trudeau. The theory goes that he created the conditions that made it almost impossible for incumbent governments to win.
You can blame many things on Justin Trudeau. Many, many things. But it would take a long, arduous journey deep into Cloud Cuckoo Land to blame this defeat on him. Especially when one of the brilliant Tory strategies was a disinformation campaign linking Holt and Trudeau as fellow-travelling Liberals from before the election started to the moment the polls closed.
Equally brilliant, framing Policy 713 as a defence of parents’ rights. Originally a policy to protect trans kids in their journey to fully disclosing they were trans, it was commandeered by Higgs, with no evidence to back it up, as an issue of great concern to the population on parental rights. Previously, if a kid wasn't comfortable revealing their transition to their parents, they could do so in confidence to their peers and teachers at school and change their pronouns if they wanted. Under Higgs that was abolished and parents would be informed.
Now let's break this down. How many trans kids are there in New Brunswick schools? A handful? And, of those few, how many would have home situations where they would be afraid of revealing their journey to their parents, for fear of abuse, psychological or physical? A fraction of that handful? Their right to live free of persecution and possible violence is fundamental to our concept of a just society and, it should go without saying, must be protected by governemnt. But by default we are talking about a vanishingly small number of citizens
Yet this is a key issue the PCs tried to convince New Brunswickers was top of mind. They fundraised across the country and tried to create a “Conservative” groundswell of outrage. They roped third parties from the darker regions of Christian organizations into pearl-clutching over the parents — who will think of the parents?! — and made “parental rights” a cynical centrepiece of the campaign.
Meanwhile, even as Higgs told the voters that this was a key concern, the health system too often didn't meet the needs of the population, the education system continued to fail students, and a lack of affordable housing continued to run amok. These were the issues New Brunswickers cared about. And they were the ones Liberals were talking about.
Policy 713 was the tipping point. The cream of Higgs' front bench — Dorothy Sheppard, Trevor Holder, Jeff Carr, Danny Allain — couldn't continue and stepped down. Former ministers Andrea Anderson-Mason and Ross Wetmore expressed their opposition. Later Gary Crossman stepped aside, saying the party no longer reflected his values (and he subsequently supported Liberal John Herron in defeating Christian Nationalist candidate, and significant organizer of the parental rights lobby, Faytene Grasseschi. Can I get an amen?).
Around that time, there was an attempt to dethrone Higgs from within. It was defeated. But it revealed a deep cleavage in the N.B. PC Party, a battle between the party of former leaders Richard Hatfield, Barbara Baird, Dennis Cochrane, Bernard Valcourt, Bernard Lord and David Alward vs. the party Higgs had remade it into.
New Brunswickers took note.
I had parted ways with Higgs much earlier, when he decided the review of the Official Languages Act (an almost sacred piece of legislation in Canada's only bilingual province) would involve a revamping of the English education system's French immersion program.
The Official Languages Act exists for one reason, namely, to ensure the provision of government services in the official language of any citizen's choice. As francophones are the minority in New Brunswick, it is particularly important to the francophone population.
French immersion in the province is an entirely anglophone issue. So Higgs was taking the most important piece of legislation for francophones in New Brunswick and making it about outcomes for English-speaking students.
Take all the above, add in a leadership style that brooked no dissent, that hobbled ministers by making their deputies report to the premier, not to them, and an obsessive, almost paranoid, edict of central control in the Premier's office, and you get Monday night.
That’s job one accomplished. Job two is to take back the party.
It won't be easy. The remnant of the Tory caucus are either Higgs loyalists who presumably largely share his vision, or they are spineless chancers who liked their seat in government. Either way, they won't be much use in the rebuild.
I expect Kris Austin, late of the People's Alliance and an opponent of French-language rights in N.B., will make a run at the leadership. His mission will be to complete a makeover of the PCs in the image of the late, not at all lamented, anti-bilingualism CoR Party.
So the job of PCs in the N.B. tradition is to make sure that doesn't happen. Disillusioned Tories need to re-engage. Take out a party membership. Join an electoral district association. Become president of the EDA. These will all play significant roles in choosing the next leader.
This election has shown hate and division don't work in New Brunswick. Governing in New Brunswick requires respectful acknowledgement and balancing of all its communities. Our party once did that.
Our path forward out of this wilderness is to do it again. Otherwise we will be consigned to irrelevance. And we will deserve it.
Chisholm Pothier served as press secretary to New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord from 2003-2006 and director of communications for Premier David Alward in 2013.
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Chisholm, out here swinging. This was a very good read.
Matt and Jen recently expressed in a recent podcast the very valid concern that the federal conservatives might become fixated on the wrong thing, such as punishing CTV for their editing fiasco, when concerns of much greater importance loom. It seems this is a feature of conservative politics, which is very, very unfortunate considering the very real potential for positive change. I hope the feds don't squander their lead or make a hash of their newly formed government by resorting to petty arguments.