Opinion - Higgs’ missed opportunity: honesty
Trying to gaslight New Brunswickers about the government's plans for French immersion was the wrong tactic to take
“It was never a sure thing.”
That was New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs’ description this week of a push toward a radical overhaul of French immersion education in the province.
It marked an about-face in the tone of the government’s messaging on the issue, but certainly one that Education Minister Bill Hogan and other officials were sidling toward in recent weeks as they witnessed vehement opposition to the proposal at public consultation meetings.
That plan - initially dressed up as a fait accompli and what the Higgs government deemed as being best for anglophone New Brunswickers - was to move to a 50/50 split in education, with all elementary students spending half of their school days divided between the two languages, all while admitting it wouldn’t achieve a genuine level of bilingualism.
It’s clear why the premier and his underlings softened on their stance. The blowback has been pronounced, so much so that it couldn’t be dismissed as a vocal minority.
With the premier yet to decide if he’ll lead the Tories into the next election, it’s unlikely he changed course to save his own political future. It’s far more plausible he needed to appease the Tory MLAs who aren’t at the end of their careers in office. We’ve seen hints of mutiny before this point.
That Higgs doesn’t care what the electorate thinks of his governance has been abundantly clear since he managed to slide his minority government into a majority in a pre-vaccine pandemic election.
When it comes to dealing with the province’s Indigenous communities and peoples, the premier hasn’t just been on the wrong side of history - he’s been on the wrong side of the law.
Higgs ignored legal advice when he unilaterally decided that the new carbon tax wouldn’t be subject to tax-sharing agreements with First Nations. A Court of King’s Bench judge urged the parties to negotiate the issue in good faith rather than let him decide it, noting that one of the sides wouldn’t be happy with the outcome.
It was painfully obvious that it was the government that was in the wrong. And when the case didn’t go the government’s way, the premier cancelled the agreements, in a manner that clearly violated those contracts.
He tried to strong-arm civil servants such as teachers and nurses into unfavourable collective agreements, just weeks after calling them heroes of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The premier’s approach to leadership is best described as his way or the highway.
Only it’s not.
It seems every heavy-handed attempt to ram his square peg of problems with bilingualism, Indigenous reparations and the civil service through the round hole of public policy has backfired or failed. The government’s backpedalling on French immersion is a clear signal Higgs has no choice but to abandon another hard-line position.
Ultimately, the premier has inflicted maximum damage on his party’s political fortunes while accomplishing nothing in the process. Easing off on the French immersion plan likely won’t save them at the polls in 2024.
After all, it seems the Tories - and specifically, Higgs - have been actively working toward being ousted from office in the next vote.
One could argue the premier lost the 2024 election when he claimed nurses lacked empathy for victims of sexual assault, when he ignored his own timeline in 2021 for the lifting of pandemic mandates for the sake of a New Brunswick Day weekend party, when his finance minister kept touting budget surpluses all while telling people there wasn’t enough money for essential government services and workers.
Hell, his infamous “Data my ass” quote in his notorious feud with former education minister Dominic Cardy - a quote he bizarrely confirmed he’d uttered - could practically serve as his opponents’ campaign slogan next year.
His overreach on the French immersion file is just more of the same, but he missed an opportunity to mitigate it. He opted for a ludicrous strategy, trying to tell voters nothing was set in stone for the anglophone education system.
Gaslighting the public isn’t working. Just because consultations were held and that the plan wasn’t actually enacted doesn’t mean it wasn’t the definite direction the government planned to take. So many other elements and a larger context told a different story.
The rushed nature of the behind-closed-doors planning, the inclusion of former People’s Alliance of New Brunswick leader-turned-Tory minister Kris Austin in that planning and, most importantly, the tone the premier took in addressing the issue at first – these are all factors that contradict this attempted narrative that the immersion changes weren’t a done deal.
Instead, the premier ought to have owned up to the flawed scheme and called a mea culpa..
In other words, Higgs should have said, “I made a mistake.”
It has the advantage of being the truth, and it would have scuttled a good deal of the continued criticism that’s arisen this week as the premier tries to turn his ship around. Sure, regardless of such an acknowledgement, many wouldn’t forgive the transgression, but some might have appreciated a leader taking responsibility and admitting fallibility.
But instead of “I made a mistake,” we got “It was never a sure thing.”
But this French immersion overhaul fiasco actually has given rise to a sure thing: a victory for Susan Holt’s Liberals in 20 months’ time.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.
Not sure I would go so far as to declare next year's election a done deal, but overall I find this a solid, well-thought-out, and well-written piece.
Agreed.
Diane Reid
Reid n’ Write
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diane.reid@rogers.com or @dianereiddotca
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