Legislature adjourns for election with final clash over Higgs's leadership
Premier says his approach has made province stronger, but Liberals denounce ‘reckless’ decisions
On the last day of the final session of New Brunswick's 60th legislature, former Progressive Conservative cabinet minister Dominic Cardy invoked another, earlier Tory milestone.
On June 7, 1999, he pointed out, New Brunswickers elected the PC government of Bernard Lord, "a government that showed that after that party was subjected to the pressure of right-wing populism, it pushed back, and it showed that it could win," Cardy said.
Cardy, an independent MLA who quit Premier Blaine Higgs's cabinet in 2022, is not running in this fall's election, so Friday was his last day in the house.
He invoked Lord's centrist approach as one that led to a victory across geographic, ideological and linguistic lines — an approach he says Higgs has eschewed with a shift to the right.
In his final address to the legislature, former PC cabinet minister Dominic Cardy accused Higgs of shifting to the right. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)
Earlier PC governments were "part of an interrupted thread of progress of a party with a noble and rich tradition in this province's history [that] I hope will once again rise again," Cardy said.
That parting shot was a fitting endnote to a legislative session in which Higgs's governing style was the focus of debate like never before in his six years as premier.
"The premier has created a culture of circumventing process," Opposition Liberal Leader Susan Holt said during the final Question Period, which she spent grilling Higgs about $173 million in travel-nurse contracts signed under his watch.
Holt quoted Dorothy Shephard, who quit Higgs's cabinet last year and who described him as a leader unwilling to listen to expertise and prone to impulsive, reckless decisions.
As he's done throughout the session, Higgs didn't shy away from the suggestion he is breaking the mould of conventional PC politics.
"What [Holt] doesn't talk about is the tremendous success in this province and what we're doing now that's never been done before," he said.
He pointed to record population growth, six consecutive balanced budgets, lower income taxes and increases in minimum wage and social assistance rates.
"We can talk about decisions made and changes and all that, but our province is stronger and better than it ever has been," Higgs said — a paraphrase of his planned campaign slogan.
As Question Period exchanges go, Friday's was a concise distillation of the choices facing New Brunswick voters when they go to the polls on Oct. 21.
Higgs said his decisiveness is responsible for lower taxes, more prosperity, and $2 billion shaved off the province's accumulated debt, a reduction that has lowered the interest charges the government must pay and freed up more money for services.
"This may sound like an election list, but you know what it is? It's an action list that's been completed," Higgs said.
The session that wrapped up Friday saw 41 bills passed, including legislation that forced five public-sector employee groups into a shared-risk pension plan they have spent a decade fighting.
That had been on Higgs's to-do list since his days as finance minister a decade ago.
All three parties in the legislature unanimously supported legislation that will create and enforce new regulations to expand accessibility for people with disabilities.
But there was a lot of unfinished business, too.
Liberal
Leader Susan Holt quoted the words of Dorothy Shephard, who quit
Higgs's caucus last year, as she spoke about the premier's leadership
style. (Ed Hunter/CBC)
The government postponed a promised Compassionate Intervention Act that would have allowed authorities to force homeless people with severe drug addictions into treatment.
A planned reform of local government taxation and financing did not materialize either, and a consultation on mandatory paid sick leave went nowhere.
But the government got most of its agenda through because six unhappy MLAs on the government backbenches did not prove to be as disruptive as some expected.
The six Tories voted against Higgs last June on changes to Policy 713, which now requires parents to consent if children under 16 want to adopt a new name or pronoun at school to reflect their gender identity.
Six PC MLAs voted against Higgs's changes to Policy 713 last summer. None of them are running again this election. (Radio-Canada)
Those changes — which Holt also attributes to the premier's impulsive decision-making — are facing two court challenges alleging they violate constitutional rights.
The half-dozen PC MLAs who broke ranks on the issue are not running again, but they opted not to vote against government measures during this session.
"We've had our challenges without doubt within our own group and it hasn't been easy. We have a group of individuals that are all passionate about what they do and passionate about how they represent their ridings," Higgs said in a closing speech Friday.
"It has been difficult, and I make no excuses for that, because it's reality. But … we've persevered."
Higgs said however that he's confident that some of the new candidates running — including Nicolle Carlin, his former top communications advisor — will see the government "continuing our work and tackling our objectives, and returning stronger than ever in the fall."
Health Minister Bruce Fitch also referenced the fall election, needling Holt's Liberals for losing some ground in a new Narrative Research poll released this week.
Narrative's poll showed 37 per cent of respondents planned to vote Liberal, compared to 34 per cent who will support the PCs and 13 per cent will vote Green.
The sample, gathered from May 8 to 30, has a margin of error of 6.5 percentage points in 19 out of 20 polls of that size.
Because Liberal support is often concentrated in northern and francophone ridings, the party could need more than a three-point lead in the popular vote to win more seats than the PCs.
Holt pointed to another part of the same poll showing only 29 per cent of respondents were satisfied with the Higgs government's performance — a record low, according to the polling firm.
PC MLA Jeff Carr, another of the unhappy departing members of Higgs's caucus, didn't attempt to spin the usual upbeat predictions of an inevitable party victory when he spoke to reporters.
But he didn't write the Tories off either.
"A lot of members of PCNB have left, and there are some gaps there right now, although the people who are left behind know how to campaign," he said.
"So the October election will be interesting to see."
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"Scientist working on mystery N.B. brain condition claimed he was 'cut off' for 'political' reasons"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/brain-disease-new-brunswick-michael-coulthart-email-1.7228096IMHO Cardy's Major Faux Pas was getting a bunch of PC sheople to sign a note to me when he became Higgy's Chief of Staff in 2017
If you can't find fun in this madness you will go as crazy as Cardy and little Lou
N.B. seeks to intervene in Saskatchewan gender-identity case similar to Policy 713
Attorney general Ted Flemming says case is a constitutional issue involving the notwithstanding clause
New Brunswick's attorney general says the province is asking to be an intervener in a court case over Saskatchewan's gender-identity policy for schools.
The case, currently before the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, is already being supported by Alberta as an intervener.
In a brief statement, posted around 4 p.m. Friday, New Brunswick Attorney General Ted Flemming said he had sent a letter to the Saskatchewan court that the province is seeking to intervene by the July deadline.
"We believe in the principles of law. This is a constitutional issue about whether the notwithstanding clause is the final word when a legislature invokes it," Flemming said in the statement.
"We believe that legislative assemblies have the right to make laws that are important to the people of their province, and that they have the right to protect those laws through the use of the notwithstanding clause, if necessary."
Saskatchewan's Parents' Bill of Rights became law in October. It's protected by Section 33 of the Constitution, also known as the notwithstanding clause — a tool that allows provinces to override some human rights.
But in February, a judge decided that a lawsuit by UR Pride, a 2SLGBTQ+ group from the University of Regina, could proceed despite the notwithstanding clause.
The Saskatchewan government says it's appealing the decision to allow the challenge — essentially trying to block it. That province is now joined by the governments of both Alberta and New Brunswick in that appeal.
New Brunswick's own school gender-identity policy, Policy 713, was revised last summer to require parents to consent if children under 16 want to adopt a new name or pronoun at school to reflect their gender identity.
Those changes are now facing two court challenges alleging they violate constitutional rights.
New Brunswick's gender-identity policy came out in June 2023 and Saskatchewan's was created in October. Evidence shows that New Brunswick's policy influenced Saskatchewan's.
A freedom of information request revealed that the government of Saskatchewan only received 18 letters from concerned citizens — 16 of which explicitly called for a policy similar to New Brunswick's.
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Scientist working on mystery N.B. brain condition claimed he was 'cut off' for 'political' reasons
Dr. Michael Coulthart was moved off file after team ‘ruled out’ his specialty cause of disease, PHAC says
A leading federal scientist claimed he wasn't allowed to keep investigating a mystery neurological illness that made dozens of people sick in New Brunswick, according to an email obtained by CBC News.
Dr. Michael Coulthart, who is the head of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Surveillance System, wrote last October that he had been "essentially cut off" from working on the file at the public health level for reasons he could "only discern to be political." He said he was worried there are more than 200 people experiencing unexplained neurological decline.
"All I will say is that my scientific opinion is that there is something real going on in [New Brunswick] that absolutely cannot be explained by the bias or personal agenda of an individual neurologist," microbiologist Coulthart wrote last October. "A few cases might be best explained by the latter, but there are just too many [now over 200]."
Coulthart did not respond to requests for comment, but forwarded an email inquiry to the Public Health Agency of Canada's (PHAC) media relations team.
The agency declined an interview, but sent a statement saying Coulthart was initially called to help investigate the string of illnesses because he specializes in Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) — an exceedingly rare and deadly brain condition caused by brain proteins "misfolding" into an abnormal form.
"Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease is Dr. Coulthart's area of expertise and work at the agency so, once prion disease was ruled out, he was no longer involved in this issue," read the email from PHAC.
The email is the latest criticism of what patients and families have described as an unclear, inadequate response to a public health issue.
Despite the province having closed its investigation more than two years ago, people affected by the illness have continued for years to push for more testing — particularly to determine whether environmental causes might explain their symptoms.
Politicians 'leaped' to say nothing was going on, scientist says
In his email, Coulthart said his "strong hypothesis is that there is some environmental exposure — or perhaps a combination of exposures — that is triggering and/or accelerating a variety of neurodegenerative syndromes" in people who are already predisposed to different protein-misfolding conditions, which could include Parkinson's, Alzheimer's or Huntington's disease.
The email said "this kind of phenomenon does not easily fit within the shallow classification paradigms of diagnostic pathology," which has created "a 'loophole' through which the politicians have eagerly leaped to conclude nothing coherent is going on."
The health ministry in New Brunswick first warned the public about a possible unknown neurological brain disorder in early 2021, after more than 40 people were found to have been suffering from a condition with similar symptoms to CJD.
For some patients, who ranged in age from 18 to 85, those symptoms included painful muscle spasms, visual and auditory hallucinations, memory loss and personality changes. The sickness began with muscle pain and, for some, progressed to debilitating dementia.
Coulthart was part of a nationwide working group PHAC pulled together in January 2021 to support New Brunswick in its investigation, but the collaboration was only up and running for a few months before the province changed directions and created its own independent oversight committee that spring.
The province's review included the 48 cluster patients that had been identified by April 2021. New referrals continued to come in, but documents show they were not added to the original cluster and so not included in the committee's work.
PHAC has not analyzed case files
Federal Health Minister Mark Holland declined an interview request and referred questions back to the province.
In a statement to CBC News on Friday, New Brunswick's health department (PHNB) said it "does not hinder any research into this area of study."
The committee concluded there was no mystery neurological syndrome and that the patients in the original cluster had potentially been misdiagnosed. The final report marked the end of the province's investigation in February 2022.
"The oversight committee has unanimously agreed that these 48 people should never have been identified as having a neurological syndrome of unknown cause and that based on the evidence reviewed, no such syndrome exists," Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Jennifer Russell said on Thursday.
The report also cast doubt on the work of Dr. Alier Marrero, who was sidelined from the investigation after identifying 46 of the 48 patients included in the original cluster. Last year, PHAC sent epidemiologists to help Morrero complete the required paperwork on his patients — though the agency noted it has not "analyzed" those files because the province, which is lead on the case, has not asked them to do so.
"PHAC continues to maintain an open dialogue with PHNB and remains ready to discuss additional support, if requested," the email read.
Coulthart wrote his email on Oct. 12 — a little more than 18 months after the province's investigation ended.
In closing, he wrote: "I believe the truth will assert itself in time, but for now all we can do [redacted] is continue to collect information on the cases that come to us."
Several lines have been redacted from the copy of the email obtained by CBC, as has the name of the recipient.
Only 29 notifications received, province's health ministry says
In its statement on Friday, the New Brunswick health ministry said it had received a total of only 29 completed notifications submitted by Marrero within the past year, and those cases "are being reviewed."
"Public Health New Brunswick continues to deploy resources to assist Dr. Marrero with his legally required notifications," the statement said.
"Once all the notifications are completed, the Department of Health will be able to review the information and determine if any additional actions may be needed. To date, Public Health New Brunswick has not received any similar notifications from other physicians."
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