Blaine Higgs seeks to take politics out of governing from the top

He held the second-most powerful political job in the province and was once a senior executive for Irving Oil. Yet Blaine Higgs is running as a rebel.

Higgs is one of seven candidates for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick and he's among those promising big changes to how politics are done.

"I'm running because I have the independence of thinking this province desperately needs," he said when he launched his campaign.

"I did not grow up in a political family. I did not come from deep roots politically."

Higgs developed a reputation during his four years as finance minister as a straight talker. He often walked right up to the line of criticizing his own government:

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He admitted the Tories and other parties make election promises they're not sure they can afford.

"It's a case when politicians are the most vulnerable and people say `I'll get him to promise this,'" he said.

He refused to endorse Premier David Alward's appointment of cabinet minister Margaret-Ann Blaney as the chief executive officer of a Crown corporation.

"He made it clear that was his appointment," he said in the legislature.

"That is his decision."

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He questioned the cost of keeping small rural schools open and building large highway infrastructure.

After the PCs lost the 2014 election, Higgs admitted they had put off $30 million in education cuts to try to hold onto power.

"During an election period, a lot of the focus gets off the planned initiatives. I saw it happen during the election and during the lead-up to the election," he said.

Sparred over budget speech

Higgs' frustration with politicized decision-making has been a theme of his for years. In an interview with CBC News, he described a fight with staffers in Alward's office.

In 2011 he was given a draft of his first budget speech, assembled by the premier's office and the finance department.

"And I took it home [over the weekend] and I went through it, and I re-wrote it," he said.

On budget day, he drove to Fredericton.

"Lo and behold it was right back where it started," he said. He was told that some of the statements in the speech were politically risky.

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"So I said, `Well, who's going to give the speech? Because if I'm giving it, this is what it's going to say. But if I'm not, that's OK too.'"

Higgs delivered his version. For the remainder of the PC mandate, he would continue to chafe at how politics influenced decision-making.

Fix system from top

Eventually, he says, he realized the only way to fix the system was to reach the very top of it.

He has told PC audiences this year that he's "running for premier because I can't get it done as finance minister."

But Higgs sometimes seems to contradict that.

When former Saint John mayor Mel Norton bragged at one forum about how he and his council "fixed a bankrupt pension in six months," Higgs claimed the credit for himself and the Alward government.

"We know all about the pension plan," he said.

"We changed the rules, so that municipalities could do it across the province."

So how does Higgs claim he couldn't get things done, while asserting he got things done?

He says the pension reform took almost two years to introduce "because many of the people around [Alward] were very much involved with the politics, more than the process improvement or making the change."

'I've been there. I've seen it'

An inexperienced PC leader who becomes premier in 2018 may face similar delays, something Higgs says he can avoid with his experience.

"There's that process and the learning curve, which I don't need. I've been there. I've seen it."

But two PC MLAs who support Norton say it's not fair to condemn political decision-making.

"We are politicians," says Saint John Lancaster MLA Dorothy Shepherd.

"We're going to have party discussions about things that are important to us."

And Saint John Portland MLA Trevor Holder says "when it's done right … politics is what makes things happen."

Higgs' crusade against political decision-making may also cost him the support of party members who want appointments or favours because of their PC ties.

Higgs "would appoint somebody to a position because he thought he was a good person, as opposed to returning a favour," says Chris Waldschutz, a Saint John party member and supporter.

"I think a lot of people fear that line of thought. People perhaps of lesser innate quality but who are in important positions from the old system — where you scratch my back and I scratch yours — have lots to lose."

Counting on grassroots

Higgs is counting on grassroots Tories and newly signed up members to make up for that.

He says he tells New Brunswickers who like his message that "it doesn't matter what the party's called — use the PC party as a conduit to change politics in New Brunswick."

Go to the centralized position and change it.- Blaine Higgs, PC leadership candidate

Another possible Higgs contradiction: if a top-down system is bad, won't getting to the top yourself just perpetuate it?

"Go to the centralized position and change it," Higgs says.

But many leadership candidates have promised to run a more bottom-up government and to take the politics out of decisions — only to decide once they're at the top that top-down isn't so bad.

Higgs answers with a question: "So how many things have I said since I started that I haven't followed through on? How much have I changed since I started?"

It may take a Higgs win at Saturday's convention, and in the election two years from now, before New Brunswickers get to see just how real his rebellion would be.