New Brunswick Tory leader Higgs kicks off election campaign with swipe at the feds

As New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs started his election campaign Thursday, he claimed his main rivals were already planning a power-sharing deal similar to the now-defunct one between the federal Liberals and NDP.

Minutes after announcing a vote would be held Oct. 21, Higgs said provincial Green Party Leader David Coon was drawing up demands for Liberal Leader Susan Holt "in order to get into power" if Higgs's Progressive Conservatives win a minority government.

"This is a direct page out of the Justin Trudeau-Jagmeet Singh playbook," Higgs said, referring to the confidence and supply agreement that saw Singh's New Democrats support Trudeau's Liberal minority government until earlier this month.

"Susan Holt has refused to speak against anything Justin Trudeau has done … we cannot let Susan Holt and David Coon do to New Brunswick what Trudeau and Singh have done to Canada." He did not elaborate.

An online ad produced by the Tory party shows separate photos of Holt and Coon accompanied by images of Trudeau and Singh standing behind them. 

Later in the day, Holt dismissed the idea of forming a Liberal-Green alliance.

"We're confident that we're on track to win enough seats for a majority government," she said in an interview.

The Liberal leader said Higgs's musings about Trudeau and Singh are aimed at distracting voters from Tory failures, particularly when it comes to dealing with health-care wait-times, housing shortages and the high cost of living. 

"So while he's focused on Ottawa, we're focused on New Brunswickers," Holt said.

Coon also rejected the possibility of a partnership — even though he was less definitive a day earlier when he said, "We'll have to wait until we get there to see what (voters) decide."

But on Thursday, Coon said, "My priority is on defeating Blaine Higgs and winning this election so a Green government can fix the problems that are plaguing New Brunswickers. There is no interest on our part in a partnership with the Liberals."

Higgs, who is seeking a third term in office, has long made a habit bashing the federal Liberals, a strategy that has also been adopted by other conservative premiers as the prime minister's popularity has waned.

On Thursday, Higgs made it clear that strategy would be part of the 33-day campaign, which is expected to also focus on pocketbook issues and the government's provocative approach to gender identity policies.

The 70-year-old Tory leader has attracted national attention by requiring teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred first names and pronouns of students under the age of 16. More recently, however, the former Irving Oil executive has tried to win over inflation-weary voters by promising to lower the provincial harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent if re-elected.

At dissolution, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Greens had three, there was one Independent and there were four vacancies.

J.P. Lewis, a political science professor at the University of New Brunswick, said Higgs's bid to link Holt with Trudeau could prove lethal for the provincial Liberal campaign. He said many voters see little difference between federal and provincial parties.

"Many people would say it's unfair," Lewis said. "But it's simply saying, 'Well, she's a Liberal.'"

Still, Lewis said the top three issues facing New Brunswickers are affordability, health care and education. "Across many jurisdictions, affordability is the top concern — cost of living, housing prices, things like that," he said.

Meanwhile, Holt and Coon are focusing on economic and social issues.

Holt has promised to impose a rent cap and roll out a subsidized school food program. And on Thursday, she announced that a Liberal government would eliminate the provincial sales tax on home energy bills.

"This is a commitment that will provide affordability relief that New Brunswickers need right now," Holt told a campaign event in Miramichi, N.B.

Coon has said a Green government would create an "electricity support program," which would give families earning less than $70,000 annually about $25 per month to offset "unprecedented" rate increases.

Higgs's party was elected to govern in 2018, when the Tories formed the province's first minority government in 100 years. In 2020, he called a snap election — marking the first province to go to the polls after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and won a majority.

Since then, several well-known cabinet ministers and caucus members have stepped down after clashing with Higgs, some of them citing what they described as an authoritarian leadership style and a focus on policies that represent a hard shift to the right.

Meanwhile, the legislature remains divided along linguistic lines. The Tories have dominated in English-speaking ridings in central and southern parts of the province, while the Liberals have held most French-speaking ridings in the north.

The drama within the party began in 2022 when the province's education minister, Dominic Cardy, resigned from cabinet, saying he was opposed to controversial plans to reform French-language education. The government eventually stepped back from those plans. 

A series of resignations followed last year when the Higgs government announced changes to the gender identity policies in schools. When several Tory lawmakers voted with the opposition to call for an external review of the change, Higgs dropped dissenters from his cabinet. And a bid by some party members to trigger a leadership review went nowhere.

Late Thursday evening, Higgs accepted his party's nomination at an event at King's Church in his riding of Quispamsis, about 130 kilometres from Fredericton, in front of 300 people, including 44 candidates.

Higgs spoke on a variety of issues including the importance of family and parents playing a role in "governing" their kids, treating drug addiction and stopping asylum seekers. 

"This (election) is about saving our province and keeping it on the trajectory that it is on." 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.