Higgs may wait until 2024 to reveal his plans for next election
Premier casts doubt on timeline for leadership announcement early next year
Premier Blaine Higgs may make New Brunswickers — and members of his Progressive Conservative Party — wait another year or more before he announces whether he'll leave politics ahead of the 2024 election.
Political insiders have been assuming the premier would signal in early 2023 whether he plans to stick around as party leader for the next campaign or retire beforehand.
But in a year-end interview with CBC News, Higgs was ambiguous about his timeline, suggesting he could announce "early in the year of the election, very early."
The fixed-date schedule of elections in provincial legislation sets the date of the next election as Oct. 21, 2024.
The premier said a leadership convention in May 2024 would give the PC Party enough time to get ready for a campaign five months later.
"So I think I've got time, just yet, to make a decision," he said.
'The great reveal'
In the fall, Higgs appeared to suggest to Brunswick News that he'd declare his intentions in his annual state of the province speech, now scheduled for Feb. 9, 2023.
He told CBC, however, that he was referring at the time to using the speech to highlight "what we've accomplished to date, the mandate, the things we're working on … and kind of go from there. So I will talk about it."
He said that what he jokingly calls "the great reveal" may not happen at that time.
Brunswick News reporter Andrew Waugh tweeted Thursday morning that he has a recording of his September interview in which Higgs mentions the state of the province speech and says, "My intention is to, at that time, identify what my plans are."
The premier's new comments in the CBC interview came the same day a group of 48 New Brunswickers, including one former PC cabinet minister, released an open letter calling on members of the party to trigger a leadership review to oust Higgs.
The letter asked that it happen before the Feb. 9 state of the province speech.
"I personally think he should pass the torch to someone else," said Jean-Pierre Ouellet, a minister in the former PC government of Richard Hatfield.
Ouellet said Higgs's handling of language issues shows the party needs a new leader.
It's not healthy for northern francophone ridings to be mostly represented by one party and southern anglophone seats by another, Ouellet argued.
"If he decides to reoffer, the members of the Progressive Conservative Party have to ask for a leadership review to try to deal with this situation, with this division that is not good for the economy and not good for the province," he told Radio-Canada.
"It takes a leader who can unite the province to deal with the situation."
Hasn't decided, premier says
Higgs acknowledged that "what's typical, what's normal" might be to announce his plans in early 2023 so the party could hold a leadership vote in the fall and give a new premier a year to establish their own record before going to the polls.
"But I really haven't decided," he said.
Pushing Higgs out while he's premier would require 50 grassroots party members, including 20 riding association presidents, signing letters to ask the PC president's council to consider a review vote.
That council, made up of the party executive, regional vice-presidents and all 49 PC riding association presidents, would then have to vote two-thirds in favour of a review.
Only then would a vote on removing Higgs be scheduled for all members.
After Higgs appointed former People's Alliance leader Kris Austin to his cabinet in October, one party vice-president, Maurice Arsenault, called for a review. But no one else came out publicly in favour.
At the party's annual meeting in November, a candidate for party president, Andrew Dawson, said Arsenault's letter "was the 'check engine' light" flashing for the party.
Members at the meeting rejected that message, electing Fredericton lawyer Erika Hachey as party president with 110 votes to 70 for Dawson.
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