New Brunswick’s provincial election campaign is finally getting underway this morning.
After more than a year of political turmoil within the Progressive Conservative government — and after coming close to triggering an early election a year ago — Premier Blaine Higgs is launching his bid for a third mandate.
He’s expected to meet Lt.-Gov. Brenda Murphy at 10:30 a.m. to formalize the dissolution of the legislature and send New Brunswickers to the polls on Oct. 21 to elect 49 new members.
A win would make Higgs the first New Brunswick premier to secure a third term since Frank McKenna in 1995.
The Progressive Conservative leader held no public events Wednesday.
Nor did Liberal Leader Susan Holt, who is looking to end Higgs’s six-year tenure and return her party to power.
Holt also opted against any final pre-campaign events on Wednesday, instead releasing a short promotional video attacking the PC record on health care and the cost of living.
“The choice in this election has never been more clear,” she said.
The Greens, the only other party with seats in the legislature heading into the campaign, held its launch in Fredericton Wednesday.
Leader David Coon said his party is aiming to take power despite its third-place standing.
He pointed out that the Greens have defied predictions in the past — when he was elected as the party’s first MLA in 2014, and when it elected a total of three MLAs in 2018 and again in 2020.
“To my amazing candidates and their volunteers, when they say a Green government cannot be elected in New Brunswick, flash a big smile and keep knocking on those doors,” he told an outdoor rally that included most of the party’s candidates.
“It’s going to be bye-bye, Blaine Higgs.”
David Coon and Green Party candidates held a rally in Fredericton ahead of Thursday’s election start.
Two other political parties are hoping to reverse their declining fortunes during the campaign.
The People’s Alliance elected three MLAs in 2018 and two of them — including leader Kris Austin — were re-elected in 2020, only to defect to the governing PCs in 2022.
The party was de-registered and then re-registered.
New leader Rick DeSaulniers, a winner in 2018 who lost his seat two years later, is running against Austin in Fredericton-Grand Lake.
Meanwhile, first-time NDP Leader Alex White faces an uphill climb to elect a party MLA for the first time in more than two decades.
The party won only 1.7 per cent of the popular vote last time.
Three new political parties have also registered for the first time to run candidates in this campaign.
Tanya Roberts, the leader of the Social Justice Party of New Brunswick, is a former investigator for WorkSafeNB who is fighting her termination from the agency.
She says she organized the party to fight for whistleblowers in provincial organizations who try to expose cover-ups.
“The oversight bodies are there but nobody’s actually providing the oversight,” Roberts said in an interview this week.
Leaders of new political parties, including Tanya Roberts, say the existing ones won’t make real change.
She claims her party can win the election.
“I’m not here for second place,” she says. “We’re going to have a hard reset on the government.”
A co-founder of the Libertarian Party of New Brunswick, on the other hand, said the party is unlikely to win any seats this time, but is laying the groundwork for 2028.
The party began as an idea for a non-profit organization to espouse a vision of smaller government, local community decision-making and the elimination of taxation, said François Provost.
“Do I think a party was the answer to what is needed?” he said.
“I don’t think so, but it’s useful to have one if you want to change things.”
The third new party, the Consensus N.B. Party, wants to have more collaborative decision-making in the legislature.
Leader Lenny O’Brien said he was inspired by the four-party co-operation that existed for COVID-19 policies when Higgs had a minority government.
When Higgs called an early election in 2020 to win a majority, “the system exposed itself for what it is,” O’Brien said —too focused on power.
He decided a new party was needed to work toward the eventual complete end of party politics.