Carbon tax the difference in Saint John: Weston

Conservative Rodney Weston is crediting the deep public unrest over the Liberal party's Green Shift policy for his nail-biting victory in Saint John over two-term incumbent Paul Zed.

The Conservatives eked out a victory Tuesday in the formerly Liberal riding of Saint John, one in a series of battleground seats across New Brunswick that tilted to the Tories.

Weston, a former provincial cabinet minister and then chief of staff to Bernard Lord during his final term in office, defeated Zed by a margin of 13,781 to 13,286. When the election began five weeks ago, Weston said he could sense that many people in Saint John were unsettled by the possibility of a carbon tax and how that policy could throw a spanner into the city's ambition to position itself as a regional energy hub.

"Obviously, it was a big factor. We are in Saint John, and Saint John has staked its future on the energy hub. It has the potential to be devastating to the energy hub," Weston said.

"But also, we have a big population of seniors that were very concerned about it. And when the economy became such a big issue near the end of the campaign, the carbon tax dovetailed with that concern."

Along with Saint John, the Conservatives picked up seats in Fredericton and Miramichi.

Tom Bateman, a political scientist at St. Thomas University, said it is evident by the losses in industrial cities such as Saint John and Miramichi that New Brunswick voters did not warm to the Liberals' Green Shift proposal.

"In Saint John as in Miramichi, it just shows that the Green Shift has been a tough sell," Bateman said.

Weston and Zed were both buoyed in their campaigns by visits from their national leaders, a symbol of how tight the race was and how seriously the national campaigns took the Port City race.

Weston took the offensive early in the campaign, warning voters that the possibility of a carbon tax could scuttle Irving Oil Ltd.'s plans for a second, $7-billion refinery in Saint John.

Saint John has traditionally been a strong Tory beachhead. Before Zed won in 2004, well-known Tory MP Elsie Wayne, the city's former mayor, held the seat from 1993 and Gerald Merrithew, a cabinet minister in the Brian Mulroney government, controlled the riding between 1984 and 1993.