Coon may help keep Higgs in power to avoid election during potential COVID-19 outbreak
PC minority government to table budget Tuesday, Liberals have vowed to try to defeat government
Green Party Leader David Coon is opening the door to keeping the Higgs minority government in power to avoid sending New Brunswickers to the polls in the midst of a potential COVID-19 outbreak.
No one in the province has tested positive for the virus, but Coon says one way to limit the spread of the disease when it arrives would be to avoid the large gatherings that are part and parcel of an election campaign.
"The coronavirus is in my thinking, of course," Coon told reporters Monday afternoon. "How can it not be? There's got to be an adult in the room on this.
"Exactly how do you campaign if you're got an outbreak of coronavirus? How do you have rallies if you've got an outbreak of coronavirus? These are all important questions that we're all grappling with right now."
Premier Blaine Higgs adopted the same logic later in the day when he set the date for two provincial byelections for June 15, rather than as early as possible in April.
"Thinking about what kind of exposure this would give people, when we're trying to keep people away from each other or at least exercise caution, [and] to think there's already a municipal election — this would potentially be another added risk," he said.
Municipal elections are scheduled for May 11, and Higgs said Elections New Brunswick told him it would be easier to not have overlapping campaign periods.
But he said the COVID-19 risk "absolutely played a role" in the decision as well.
Voters in Saint Croix and Shediac Bay-Dieppe have been without members in the legislature since last year.
Higgs said if a serious outbreak happens closer to the byelection dates, he has the power to postpone the votes in the two ridings.
"If it gets to a point where it would be a risk, we'll have to think about that and readjust."
Liberals lack votes to topple government
Higgs's Progressive Conservative minority government will table its second budget on Tuesday, kicking off a debate that could culminate in the legislature rejecting the document and triggering an early provincial election.
Liberal Leader Kevin Vickers has vowed that his party will do everything it can to bring down the government and send voters to the polls.
But the Liberals lack the votes to do that on their own and would likely need the support of the Greens to make it happen.
Coon has so far refused to say how he'll vote, laying out a list of things he'd like to see in the budget without clearly indicating if any of them would lead him to cast his vote with the PCs.
On Monday afternoon, Finance Minister Ernie Steeves said Coon had been briefed on the contents of the budget, including what Steeves called a "significant" increase in social assistance benefits — something the Green leader has asked for.
"I find that Mr. Coon is a thoughtful man, but he certainly didn't give me an indication on how he's going to vote," Steeves said.
But just hours later Coon introduced the new factor in his thinking: the near-certainty that cases of COVID-19 will show up in New Brunswick.
The Green Party leader said he's confident that provincial institutions such as Public Health and the Emergency Measures Organization are "very well prepared" and he believes they could function well even during a campaign.
But he said many typical campaign activities, such as door-to-door campaigning and handshaking, and large rallies with supporters, would be unwise if the virus reaches the province.
"A campaign would have to look quite different. I don't know what it would look like, exactly, but it would have to change."
He did not say explicitly that he would vote for the PC budget to avoid a campaign.
"I'm just saying it needs to be a discussion among all the parties to see what people's views are on that," he said.
"It's a serious matter and I think all the political parties need to think about what this government needs to do and what this legislature needs to do regarding the soon-to-arrive coronavirus in New Brunswick … so we need to have that discussion in the legislature."
Higgs agreed with Coon and said Vickers and the Liberals should reconsider whether to try to bring down the government.
"I always thought they should rethink their plans," he said. "Certainly for this reason, I think it's a consideration that we don't put people at risk.
"I think there are a lot of additional reasons they should be rethinking their plans, but this might actually be one that gets traction."
A spokesperson for Vickers said he was not in Fredericton on Monday to comment.