Higgs government survives 1st session of house with mix of successes and setbacks

When the new Progressive Conservative minority government opened its first session of the legislature last November, it had one overriding priority: survival.

The session adjourned Friday for the summer, and the PCs have done more than just survive: they've implemented major parts of their agenda while gaining in popularity.

With only 22 of 49 seats and just 32 per cent of the popular vote in the Sept. 28 election, Premier Blaine Higgs has often joked that he can't count on being in office for long and can't make promises beyond next spring.

Yet his government has managed to repeal the Liberal carbon tax, reform WorkSafeNB and stand its ground in a dispute with unionized nursing home workers.

It also cancelled $200 million in planned infrastructure spending and passed a balanced budget that pays down debt for the first time in a decade.

Government house leader Glen Savoie said Friday it's the result of constant consultation with other parties.

"When a bill has to come forward, we want to make sure all of the other parties are aware of them, that they understand the intent of each bill, and make sure they have the opportunity to ask questions in a briefing," he said.

"When they come into the legislature we have a sense of how the debate is going to go, to the benefit of New Brunswickers."

Voters seem to like the result. A series of polls have put the PCs above the 40 per cent mark, well ahead of the Liberal Opposition and in a position to win a majority in an early election.

Despite the successes, there have been setbacks. MLAs from the three other parties passed a symbolic motion calling for binding arbitration with the nursing home workers.

And the PCs had to withdraw a fiscal transparency bill because of objections from the three other parties.

Struggling with constitutional rights

The Tories have also struggled to navigate the terrain of constitutional rights.

They announced in December they would relax bilingual hiring requirements for paramedics in some areas of the province — a move that would violate both the Official Languages Act and the Charter of Rights.

They backtracked a month later, acknowledging the government's legal obligations. But Higgs seldom talks about why those obligations matter to francophones.

Instead he focuses on how French immersion has failed to produce anglophone graduates who can land bilingual jobs.

That may explain why a poll this week by Narrative Research shows the PCs still lagging behind the Liberals among francophone voters.

Higgs has also articulated his vision of Indigenous rights.

Indigenous leaders criticized the government for not consulting them before exempting the Sussex area from the provincial moratorium on shale gas development.

While Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jake Stewart has made a point of acknowledging aboriginal rights in the legislature, declaring "we are all treaty people," Higgs hasn't used the same kind of language. And he called the duty to consult on resource issues "vague" and "undefined."

Alliance claims success

The Tories' closest collaborators in the legislature, the People's Alliance, declared their first session of the legislature a success. The party elected its first three MLAs ever last September.

On Friday the Alliance released a list of their purported accomplishments, taking credit for helping the PCs pass their balanced budget and citing partial victories on small-scale pocketbook issues.

A bill introduced by Alliance Leader Kris Austin to require car inspections every two years, instead of every year, passed this week and received royal assent Friday. But he compromised and let the PCs remove a section to eliminate the need for annual registration renewals.

"People think that because it's a minority situation that you're able to accomplish everything, and that's just not realistic," he said.

"It's like we have a nuclear button. There's no in-between. You either collapse government, or you work with government to get as much done as you can. And I feel we've accomplished that in our roles."

Austin revives language issue

Austin also pushed the Tories and Medavie to come up with a mechanism for hiring more unilingual paramedics for permanent, full-time jobs.

Still, in recent weeks Austin has revived complaints about the bilingual requirement for paramedics. He said he'll try to amend the Official Languages Act next session to eliminate it.

That coincides with polls showing the Alliance losing a lot of the support it won on election day. Narrative's latest poll had the party at six per cent, less than half of what it received on election day.

Austin said the polls don't worry him because the Alliance was at the same level six months before its election breakthrough.

Liberals struggling

The Liberals have also taken a tumble. Though they won the popular vote last Sept. 24, they've trailed the PCs in polling since then.

The party has taken a beating on some of its actions while it was in government, including a $22.8 million bailout for the City of Saint John and a bid to host the Francophonie Games that turned out to be far more expensive than predicted.

The Liberals have also struggled to articulate clear positions on some issues. On Friday, Moncton South MLA Cathy Rogers said she was against glyphosate spraying but said her party did not want to move too fast in calling for a ban.

'Mr. Vickers, where are you?'

The party has a new leader, Kevin Vickers, who has yet to appear at the legislature and is not giving any apparent direction to Liberal MLAs there.

"Mr. Vickers, where are you?" Alliance MLA Rick DeSaulniers asked in a tongue-in-cheek statement. "Come out of hiding."

Dieppe Liberal MLA Roger Melanson said Friday the party is operating on two parallel tracks, with MLAs opposing the government in the house while Vickers travels the province to listen to citizens.

"In due course, when eventually there will be an election, we will have a platform that will represent New Brunswick's ideas and New Brunswick's aspirations," Melanson said.

Green surge

Polling suggests the Liberals have been losing support to the Green Party. The two parties are tied among anglophone respondents in Narrative's new poll, and overall the Greens were at 18 percent.

Green Leader David Coon said both the Liberals and the PCs are nervous about "the surge of Greens" in the polls.

The PCs have called the Liberals and the Greens "the Red Green Show," lumping them together.

But Coon said that despite the rhetoric — and despite his party's opposition to Higgs's position on oil pipelines and shale gas — his party is being listened to by the government.

"We've found cabinet ministers to be very open so we've had frequent meetings with ministers about issues that are important to New Brunswickers," he said.