Defeated PC Party braces for internal battle over direction, leadership
Party members divided over what went wrong in campaign, how to choose successor to Blaine Higgs
Two years ago, longtime Progressive Conservative supporter Andrew Dawson warned party members that growing internal discontent was jeopardizing voter support.
The "check engine" light was on, Dawson said when he ran for the position of party president at the PC annual general meeting in November 2022.
"A vote for me is a vote to pull over and look under the hood," Dawson said. But he lost the race to Fredericton lawyer Erika Hachey.
Fast forward two years and Dawson says what he was warning about — leader Blaine Higgs's indifference to how grassroots party members felt — played a major role in his government's defeat in last week's election.
"The car's broke down on the side of the road," Dawson said. "Now the problems are bigger than if we'd maybe stopped to check them."
Out of power and with their lowest seat count since the 1995 election, the PCs are preparing for a major reckoning over what went wrong and how to recover in time for the next campaign in 2028.
"We did deviate maybe more toward the conservative side over the last year or so, and I'd like to see us get back to more progressive so I'm more comfortable in the party," cabinet minister Jill Green told CBC's Information Morning Fredericton.
Green, the government's housing minister, was defeated last week in Fredericton North.
What direction the 16 elected PC MLAs will take when the legislature convenes next month remains to be seen.
There's been no public indication of a caucus meeting since the election.
The group is dominated by MLAs who stayed loyal to Premier Blaine Higgs while others rebelled. But Higgs himself lost his seat and won't be in the legislature to lead them.
"There's a pretty good crew left and I think they're going to do a good job holding the government accountable," Green said.
Meanwhile, major battles are looming outside the legislature in the post-Higgs era.
"That chapter of the history of the Progressive Conservative Party is over, and I think that now it's time to flip the page and start a new chapter," said François Robichaud, the president of the PC riding association in Shippagan-Les-Îles.
Dawson said he plans to run again for party president at a PC annual general meeting scheduled for Nov. 9.
He said his priority will be to give members more of a say, including in policy development — something that was lacking with Higgs as leader.
"He had attributes that allowed him to make decisions that needed to be made, but there's an aspect to governing and to our party system that I don't think is irrelevant yet, which is there's a party behind the elected members," Dawson said.
"What also matters is having a group of people distributed across the province, in every community, who believe in the party and who have contributed to the policies … and are back home in their communities spreading the word back.
"I don't think we had that this time."
One decision for the membership will be the rules for electing the next leader.
Higgs won the leadership in 2016 under a one-member, one-vote system.
But some members want a weighted voting system like the provincial Liberals use.
Under that system, each riding has 100 points up for grabs, and a candidate's share of those points in each riding is based on how many votes they got from members in those ridings.
It creates an incentive for a leadership candidate to look for support everywhere rather than just in areas where the party has the most members.
"If there's a [potential] leader who's from Woodstock who decides to put their name forward, that person will need to speak to members from Shippagan, from Tracadie, from Bathurst," Robichaud said.
He said he didn't think Higgs would have won in 2016 if weighted voting had been in place.
Party member Corben Parker submitted a motion for that rule change to be debated at next month's meeting.
Parker would not agree to an interview but said the party has pushed back the debate on his motion to another meeting planned for next March.
Dawson said he opposes the change.
The voting procedure in place may give some potential candidates an advantage, though it's not clear yet who may run for leader.
"I think it's way too early to make those types of decisions right now," former PC MLA and minister Jeff Carr said during CBC's election-night broadcast.
Carr was shuffled out of cabinet in June 2023 after voting against Higgs on Policy 713.
His colleague Daniel Allain, also removed the same day, posted last week that Tories should "take the time to properly reflect, to heal and then focus towards rebuilding" the party so it appeals to all New Brunswickers.
But he said on a Radio-Canada panel he had not spoken to anyone about running for leader.
Another former minister, Mike Holland, said on election night he was "with like-minded PCs and we are discussing that subject right now. More will come in the near future."
In 2022 former People's Alliance leader Kris Austin, who had recently joined the PCs, wouldn't rule out a future leadership bid.
"I leave all options on the table," he said. "I don't want to box myself in one way or the other."
Austin did not respond to an interview request this week.
Green said she had no plans to run but had been encouraged to do so.
"I never say never. … Maybe we need several female premiers, one after the other."
Other differences within the party are already spilling out publicly.
On election night, Hachey posted to social media to accuse two party members, who had wanted to remove Higgs as leader, of calling her late at night to make profane comments.
Two former PC caucus colleagues also got into a heated argument about the election defeat.
Ross Wetmore, one of six MLAs who voted against Higgs on Policy 713 last June, posted on Facebook that "all it would have taken" to avoid last year's split was for Higgs to talk to them.
A re-elected colleague, Sherry Wilson, accused him of being bitter over losing his cabinet position in 2020.
That led to an exchange in which Wilson repeated her claim from a post on Truth and Reconciliation Day suggesting a parallel between the "parental rights" debate over Policy 713 and the suffering of Indigenous children at residential schools.
She removed the post the next morning, and Higgs said he disagreed with it, but on Facebook last week she said it was the "Liberal media" who made the comparison.
Green said last week that one reason the party lost the election was that "we chose some battles that the public didn't really want us to choose," a reference to Policy 713.
"I would never have chosen that battle."
Dawson said while there must be room for debate within the party, those who rebelled against Higgs — including those who sat out the election — were as responsible for the defeat as the premier himself.
Higgs, he said, "made the right decision on Policy 713, but I think he should have shut up about it and kept on going. I think he lived there a little bit."
Dawson argued there's still a need for a fiscally conservative political party to balance other parties too far to the left, "but maybe it doesn't have to be so nasty."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
With files from Information Morning Fredericton