Opinion: Higgs had to go

Decisive vote leaves no doubt how New Brunswickers feel about regressive, divisive politics

The numbers weren’t with Blaine Higgs on Monday night. 

Or to put it another way - the data kicked his ass.

The message was clear: New Brunswickers rejected the Progressive Conservatives’ record of targeting vulnerable populations to score cheap political points.

Few thought a Liberal landslide was possible in this vote; the pundits kept telling us how close this race was, but they overestimated New Brunswickers’ tolerance of the kind of negativity that defined Higgs’ approach to leadership, to governance, to communication.

Former premier Blaine Higgs (Photo: Government of New Brunswick website)

Perhaps the most telling sign that this election was specifically about the Tory leader, his failure to deliver the services people need and the backwards philosophies he tried to manifest as policy was the fact Higgs couldn’t even win over his own neighbours. 

The notion of an incumbent premier losing his seat as his government falls is politically earth-shaking. It was the sharpest rebuke of Higgs’ vision of the Conservative brand one could imagine.

“It’s certainly not the night we hoped for,” he said in his concise concession speech Monday night, but I hope he realizes it was exactly the kind of night most New Brunswickers were hoping for.

The ousted premier’s message to premier-designate Susan Holt was to advise her that she had “earned the trust of the people.”

The positivity of that sentiment was certainly a marked change in the tone of how he talked about her during the campaign, but I think it also speaks to the possibility that Higgs doesn’t see that he lost the trust of the people.

The former premier - along with former education minister Bill Hogan, former addictions/mental-health minister Sherry Wilson and Christian nationalist Faytene Grasseschi - campaigned on the fictional notion of the importance of parental rights, a cultural wedge issue that ought to render the “Progressive” element of their party’s name as false advertising.

They also sought to use those with substance-abuse issues as fodder for their outrage machine by promising to force them into addictions treatment against their will, an approach that experienced professionals in the medical field and experts say doesn’t work. But Tory politicians felt it played well with those who viewed addicts as subhuman and undeserving of free will.

Higgs even turned to the dog whistle of demonizing immigrants in declaring New Brunswick’s supposed inability and unwillingness to absorb a greater share of newcomers.

Holt and the Liberals certainly won a decisive mandate Monday night, but they ought to bear in mind that while the votes they earned were certainly for the policies and promises they put forth, they were also votes against Higgs-ian conservatism.

Premier-designate Susan Holt (Photo: NB Liberal Party website)

The premier-designate and her team fought hard for this victory, but the honeymoon will be short-lived. They’ll need to work just as hard - if not harder - to maintain the momentum, to deliver the services New Brunswick so desperately needs and to prove the dramatic tack we’ve taken was the right one after all.

This election was a referendum on what Higgs represented. The next one will be on what Holt represents. As she takes the reins of the province, she should always remember how the voters and even members of her predecessor’s own caucus rejected his heavy-handed, my-way-or-the-highway style of management.

Monday was a historic night for New Brunswick, with the province electing its first woman as premier, and more importantly, rejecting a toxic approach to policy and people.

Given the surprises, the elation that many experienced and the speculation about how a new government will take shape, it would be easy to overlook a more muted but nevertheless important development:

Steve Outhouse is out of a job. 

And hopefully, other conservative parties in the country will look at what he failed to accomplish in New Brunswick and think twice before choosing his brand of poisonous politics going forward.

Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.