Thursday, 20 February 2025

PC party ponders a new direction — and a new leader — in wake of defeat

 
 

PC party ponders a new direction — and a new leader — in wake of defeat

Former minister Daniel Allain is so far only potential leadership candidate

Jacques Poitras · CBC News ·
Former PC minister Daniel Allain was dumped from cabinet in 2023 by then-premier Blaine Higgs. As of now, he's the only potential leadership candidate for the party. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)

As Premier Susan Holt prepared to deliver her State of the Province speech last month, a handful of Progressive Conservatives were two blocks away, pondering the state of their political party.

Daniel Allain, a former PC minister dumped from cabinet in 2023 by then-premier Blaine Higgs, had invited what he called "like-minded New Brunswickers" to a reception at a Fredericton bar.

The "like-minded" people who responded were Tory stalwarts mulling over the direction of their party in the wake of October's election defeat.

Among them was Jeff Carr, another former PC minister dropped by Higgs in the same cabinet shuffle as Allain in June 2023.

The Fredericton gathering was the second Allain organized, after a "Blue Christmas" reception in Moncton in December.

"I like talking to people. I'm in the people business. I miss politics a little bit, so I want to be part of the renewal process," he said.

Allain acknowledged being part of that renewal may include running for the PC leadership. 

"We'll see in the future but it's definitely something I'm interested in," he said.

A grinning man wearing a blazer   Jeff Carr, a former minister who was dropped from the Higgs cabinet in 2023, attended a reception of 'like-minded New Brunswickers' who discussed next steps for the PC party. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)

The party hasn't set a date to choose its next leader.

A PC member in Saint John has proposed changing the leadership race voting system to give all 49 ridings in the province equal weight, as New Brunswick Liberals do.

Party president Erika Hachey has not responded to questions from CBC News about when that will be decided.

'It wasn't all Blaine Higgs's fault'

The party has other issues to resolve, including what direction it should take in the post-Blaine Higgs era.

"We've got to get some things straightened out," said Miramichi West MLA Mike Dawson, who believes the 16-member PC caucus he is part of at the legislature needs to pay more attention to grassroots members.

Dawson complained last fall when many members weren't notified in time to attend an annual general meeting held just after the election.

A woman in a sweater poses for a photo Susan Holt took the Liberals to victory in October's general election. (Michael Heenan/CBC)

The PCs did not hold a policy convention during Higgs's eight-year tenure as leader, and some caucus members complained he didn't consult them on major decisions.

Dawson blamed issues like health care and inflation — not Higgs — for last fall's defeat. 

"I know everybody wants to point and say Blaine Higgs was the problem and Blaine Higgs was the reason we didn't get elected. It wasn't all Blaine Higgs's fault." 

Higgs himself said during a recent online interview with one of his former candidates that voters upset about rising prices weren't won over by his government's effort to balance the budget and reduce the province's accumulated debt.

"People just react to their local challenge, and not the bigger picture," he said.

WATCH | New Brunswick's PCs have decisions to make:
 
After last year’s defeat, PCs ponder what’s next
 
The party must pick a new leader to replace Blaine Higgs — and decide whether to move in a new direction.

While Dawson considers Higgs one of the best premiers in the province's history — and sided with him when others tries to remove him as leader in 2023 — the MLA said it's time for the PCs to consider "a more proactive direction."

"We've got to keep the conservative values that we have as a conservative party, but we've got to be more progressive with, maybe, some issues," he said.

Public reaction to changes to Policy 713, which added a parental consent requirement if students younger than 16 wanted to adopt new names and pronouns at school to reflect their gender identity, rocked the Higgs government.

Six MLAs, including four ministers, voted with the opposition on a motion calling for more study before the changes were adopted.

Two of the ministers quit, complaining that Higgs didn't listen to his caucus, and two others — Allain and Carr — were shuffled out of cabinet. 

Policy 713 also galvanized social conservatives, including Christian activist and broadcaster Faytene Grasseschi, who signed up followers to support Higgs and who became the PC candidate in Hampton-Fundy-St. Martins.

A man in a suit standing outside. Mike Dawson, elected as a Progressive Conservative in the Southwest Miramichi-Bay du Vin byelection in June, says the 16-member PC caucus needs to pay more attention to grassroots members. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)

Higgs said she represented a "revolution" within the party, but her nomination led many PC members to support Liberal candidate John Herron, who defeated Grasseschi.

A poll by Mainstreet Research during last year's election showed that 50 per cent of respondents supported Higgs's changes to Policy 713 while only 35 per cent opposed them.

Even so, Liberal pollster Dan Arnold said his data showed voters believed that Higgs was distracted by Policy 713 at the expense of issues like affordability and health care — and that the party split showed he wasn't a good leader.

'What do they represent?'

Political scientist J.P. Lewis of the University of New Brunswick in Saint John said the party now needs to decide whether to stick with social conservative issues.

"I think the biggest issue is: what do they represent? I think the last couple of years of the Higgs government, for all to see, represented an existential crisis within the party," he said.

"I think they know there's a base for what Higgs focused on at the end, but I think there's a ceiling for that."

Two men walk down a sidewalk, traffic is visible on the street beside them. Then-premier Blaine Higgs (right) dumped Daniel Allain from cabinet in 2023. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)

Grasseschi would not do an interview with CBC News but said in an email she has not decided whether to run again, or seek the party leadership herself.

"I have not put any thought into this and am quite occupied in other directions at the moment. I am not aware of anyone else who is tire-kicking, so I have not thought about endorsements," she said

"Everyone should stay involved in the party that most represents their views and values. I will do that."

A longtime PC supporter in Hampton who supported the Liberals over Grasseschi, Al Walker, said he'll wait until the leadership race to decide whether to return to the Tory fold. 

Dawson says he believes "it would be best for the party" to chose a francophone leader to lead it into the next election.

Over three elections, the Higgs team never elected more than a single francophone MLA at a time.

Other potential leadership candidates include current interim leader Glen Savoie, who in an email statement did not rule out running. 

"My only focus is on the task before me, which is being an effective opposition for the people of this province and leading the rebuilding of our party for the next election," he said.

Allain wouldn't stake out a position on the party's future direction. 

"There's a lot of things we can change, but I think New Brunswickers want an alternative. They want a solid alternative… and the PC party has that institutional knowledge, that organizational knowledge, so we can be ready to govern." 

Lewis said given the party won 35 per cent of the vote last fall — better than in 2018 when they formed a minority government — a quick comeback isn't out of the question.

"It's an existential crisis that, if they solve it correctly, they're not far off from taking power again," Lewis said. 

"They could easily be competitive in 2028."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


Jacques Poitras

Provincial Affairs reporter

Jacques Poitras has been CBC's provincial affairs reporter in New Brunswick since 2000. He grew up in Moncton and covered Parliament in Ottawa for the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal. He has reported on every New Brunswick election since 1995 and won awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association, the National Newspaper Awards and Amnesty International. He is also the author of five non-fiction books about New Brunswick politics and history.

CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices
 
 
 
 

N.B. premier's press secretary resigns over letter leak

CBC News ·

New Brunswick Premier Bernard Lord's press secretary has resigned in the latest twist of what has become one of the most bizarre and dramatic legislative sessions in recent memory.

Lord announced Chisholm Pothier's resignation on Thursday during a heated exchange in question period at the legislature in Fredericton.

The government was being questioned about why it had released a letter containing personal information about a constituent in Neguac.

Drunk driving history revealed

The letter contained the constituent's name, address and drunk-driving history, and the fact that he was seeking to have his driver's licence reinstated.

Lord said Pothier was acting alone when he handed copies of the letter to the legislative press gallery and accepts personal blame for the decision.

"Unfortunately, I am losing a very competent press secretary who made a mistake and owned up to his mistake," said Lord.

Liberal house leader Kelly Lamrock said the premier is responsible for the release of the information and shouldn't make his staffer take the fall.

"The premier's conduct requires a mea culpa, not a they-a culpa," Lamrock said.

Official complaint

Lamrock has laid an official complaint about the matter with the New Brunswick ombudsman, naming both the premier and the transportation minister. He says both men violated the Protection of Private Information Act by keeping a letter containing a citizen's personal and private information and using it for political gain.

The individual's personal information was contained in a January 2005 letter Lord referred to in the legislature on Wednesday.

Outside chambers, Pothier handed copies of the letter to reporters without blacking the individual's name out. He later apologized, saying he regretted that decision and was personally responsible for making the letter public.

This spring's rocky session has been marked by floor-crossings, strange outbursts from MLAs and wild accusations from both sides of the legislature.

The government is hanging on to its majority by just one seat and the Liberal Opposition is hungry for an election.

CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices|
 
 

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.

Oct 25, 2024


Blaine Higgs (right) on the campaign trail. Image from his X account.

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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PCs need to purge - was posted by Chisholm Pothier ( press secretary to B. Lord) on Facebook- Thoughts?

A few thoughts on New Brunswick election.

I don't live there anymore, but am very close to it still.

First off, congratulations to Susan Holt. Great campaign, great victory. As a former NB Progressive Conservative, I was pulling for you from the start. Like pretty much all my PC friends, that was because you weren't Blaine Higgs at the start. But I came to admire your style and substance. Huge, historic victory.

Second, must acknowledge and respect Blaine Higgs' contribution to public service as he leaves office. He was finance minister for four years in the David Alward government, where I worked briefly and got to know and like Blaine. And Premier for six. In his first minority term, he was a good premier. I didn't love the pandering to the anti-bilingualism, anti-New Brunswick People's Alliance, but he got the province through Covid and that was a significant accomplishment.

The wheels came off once he won a majority. And that, sadly, will be the legacy of an otherwise impressive run of public service.

I'm already seeing revisionism among NB Tories about the loss. Victory has a thousand mothers, defeat none. (As an aside, when I was press secretary to Bernard Lord when we lost in 2006, I remember doing interview after interview with various provincial media, in English and French. Had we been winning, people would have been pushing me out of the way to get in front of the cameras and talk about our victory.)

So, today, we are seeing people who would have defended Faytene Grasseschi's candidacy up until 7:59 pm last night as an example of the PC big tent and proof Blaine Higgs listens to many perspectives (he doesn't) and anyone attacking her has a bias towards Christians. Today those people are saying allowing an extreme religious zealot who has said, among other things, that health based on faith healing is probably better than a government run system, was a decision that proved fatal to the Tories last night. It did. I've been saying it for a while. They started saying it around 8:45 pm last night.

I've seen Conservatives blame it on Justin Trudeau. He has created the conditions and the hardships that make it almost impossible for incumbent governments to win. That's what cost the PCs the election.

You can blame many things on Justin Trudeau. Many, many things. But it would take a long, ardous journey deep into Cloud Cuckoo Land to blame the defeat of Blaine Higgs on him. You'll still see it. I mean, the PC messaging hasn't exactly covered itself in glory so far, why change now.

Especially when one of the brilliant (and, let me be petty, expensive) strategies run by this iteration of the PCs was to link Holt and Trudeau as fellow travelling Liberals from before the election started to the moment the polls closed. It was shameful disinformation and an unfounded personal attack on Ms. Holt. And it was useless. Money well spent PCs.

Finally, Policy 713. Originally an inclusive policy to protect trans kids in their journey to fully disclosing that they were in fact 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 Higss that was abolished and parents would be informed.

Now let's break this down. This was arguably the number one campaign issue for the Higgs PCs. 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?

And this is the issue the current iteration of the PCs tried to convince New Brunswickers was top of mind. And they fundraised in the darker reaches of Faytene Grasseschi's perversion of Christianity across the country and tried to create a 'Conservative' groundswell of outrage that anything so vile could be contemplated. And they roped third parties into pearl clutching over the parents - who will think of the parents?! - and made the non-issue of parental rights a cynical centrepiece of the campaign.

Meanwhile, the health system too often didn't meet the needs of the population, the education system continued to fail students, a lack of affordable housing continued to run amok.

Once again, brilliant strategy and money well spent. Will any PC operative raise their hand today and say they fucked up? Fucked up big time?

You know who would have been sitting at lunch with those trans kids and protecting them from any harm? Jesus. Yup, that's what Jesus would do. 

Policy 713 was the tipping point, although it may not have seemed like it at the time. The cream of Higgs' front bench - Dorothy Sheppard, Trevor Holder, Jeff Carr, Danny Allain - couldn't continue under that regime and stepped down. Former ministers Andrea Anderson-Mason and Ross Wetmore expressed their opposition. Dominic Cardy had long since departed, but he would not have abided that either. Later Gary Crossman stepped aside saying the party no longer reflected his values (and subsequently supported John Herron in defeating Grasseschi. Can I get an amen?).

Around that time, there was an attempt to dethrone Higgs from within (full disclosure, I enthusiastically participated in that effort along with so many of the PCs I know, respect and value as friends in NB, the rebel six MLAs, Jason Sully, John Williston, Wallace Flloyd, among them). Using procedural party rules and probably some skulduggery on who qualified as what, that effort was defeated. But it revealed a deep cleavage at the heart of the NB PC Party, a battle between the party of Richard Hatfield, Barbara Baird, Dennis Cochrane, Bernard Valcourt, Bernard Lord and David Alward vs. the party Blaine Higgs had remade it into.

New Brunswickers took note.

I had parted ways with Higgs much earlier. I didn't at all like his pandering to the People's Alliance. But it was a minority government and you do what you have to to govern. But when Higgs decided the review of the Official Languages Act, an almost sacred piece of legislation in Canada's only bilingual province, would be a revamping of the English education system's French immersion program, that's when I was done.

The Official Languages Act exists for one reason. To ensure the provision of government services in the official language of any citizen's choice. So if you're an Acadian in St. Stephen, you should be able to receive services in French. It doesn't work perfectly. But it is a beautifully aspirational law that works to protect minority languages, whether that's English in Tracadie or French in St. Stephen.

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.

I can't decide whether this was an incredibly profound and complete misunderstanding of the Official Languages Act - a stunning thing for a Premier of New Brunswick - or a sinister ploy to erode French language rights in the province. I lean to the latter based on this government's track record.

And people more versed in the relationship with First Nations can deconstruct this government's performance on that issue, but from my limited knowledge the Higgs government simply chose to pretend these sovereign nations - who have NEVER ceded anything Mr. Premier - had no rights and thus there were no government obligations.

I remember sitting at a State of the Province speech where he said 'They say we have a Duty to Consult. Well I say, consult on what?' I think he thought it was a good joke.

All that, and 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 last night.

So, that's done and I'm glad. I wasn't on the front lines like the aforementioned Sully, Wallace and Williston, who have become heroes of mine for having the courage to put province over party (and in a funny way, put vision of what the party should be over what it had become) but I chipped in with some social media snark where it seemed appropriate.

Job one accomplished. Job two is to take back the party.

It won't be easy. The remnant of the Tory caucus are Higgs loyalists who presumably largely share his vision of New Brunswick. Or else they are spineless chancers who liked their seat in government. Either way, they won't be much use in the rebuild.

And I expect Kris Austin, late of the People's Alliance and an opponent of bilingualism in NB (they couch it in common sense, but underneath it's a profound desire for there to be one official language in the province. I'm actually cool with that. As long as the one official language is French - that's a joke pearl clutchers.) will make a run at leader. Their mission will be to complete a makeover of the PCs in the image of the late, not at all lamented, CoR Party.

So the job of the majority of PCs - not the instant PCs Grasecchi, Austin and even Higgs would sign up from the margins of 'Anglo rights' groups and sympathetic churches - is to make sure that doesn't happen. This party has been eviscerated. It almost doesn't exist in northern, francophone New Brunswick. What we need to do now is re-engage. Take out a party membership. Join an EDA. Become president of the EDA. These will all play significant roles in choosing the next leader.

This election has shown hate, division and negativity don't work in New Brunswick. Right now, they work in the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick. Our job is to change that.

New Brunswick, only officially bilingual province, largest percentage of francophones in the population outside Quebec, many First Nations, is a microcosm of Canada. And it needs to be handled with sensitivty and respectful acknowledgement of all its communities.

Our party did that, and did it well, under the aforementioned Hatfield, Baird, Cochrane, Valcourt, Lord and Alward.

Our path forward out of this wilderness is to do it again. Otherwise it will be a long consignment to irrelevance. And we will deserve it.

 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chisholm-pothier-3637b711b/details/experience/

Chisholm Pothier

Chisholm Pothier
Freelance communications
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

 

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
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