Is there a populist option in the 2018 provincial election?

Businessman Mark MacFadzen sat listening patiently at a table near the back of the room one recent Friday as Progressive Conservative leader Blaine Higgs made his pre-election pitch to a business luncheon of about 40 people.

"We're building a conduit to save New Brunswick," said Higgs. "We're building a movement to save New Brunswick."

MacFadzen, an investment planner in Fredericton and self-described libertarian, is looking for a voice in the upcoming election — someone who will articulate his own grievances about the political status quo.

"We've seen politicians in Canada and the United States for the last 50 years tell you one thing, and then when they get in power, do something else," he says.

MacFadzen looks enviously to the United States, where Donald Trump rode a wave of populist anger to power.

He wishes someone in Canada would do the same — taking on what he calls "identity politics" and what he considers wasteful programs like foreign aid.

"I haven't seen any leader step up, in any part of our country anyways, that will go against political identity politics. They're always careful. They're afraid to offend anybody," he says.

At least Trump, he says,  "stood up and he said, 'You know what? This is what people are thinking.'"

Not a perfect populist

If MacFadzen is seeking a populist champion in the Sept. 24 provincial election, Higgs may not be a perfect fit.

The PC leader avoids sweeping, over-the-top commitments like Trump's.

"We're not going to promise you more," Higgs tells the business lunch crowd. "We're going to promise you better."

Well, you don't see Blaine up until three in the morning tweeting ridiculous things.- PC MLA Pam Lynch

​Higgs eschews Trump's narcissism as well: "I don't come in here pretending to have all the solutions."

And as a former finance minister in a PC government, and a former executive with a major company, Irving Oil, Higgs can hardly claim outsider, anti-establishment credentials.

"Whether Blaine has an ideology that he'll stand by — only after he gets elected do you find out if that's the case or not," MacFadzen says.

Unsure of Higgs

MacFadzen joined the PC party in 2016, in part to help stop what he considers Liberal mismanagement. He voted for Higgs in the leadership race but admits he still isn't completely sure the PC leader would shake up the system.

"I don't know enough. You get the sound bites, but you don't get a real in-depth feel for somebody's personality, ideology," he says.

Higgs defined himself as a political outsider when he joined the leadership race.

"I did not grow up in a political family," he said at the time. "I did not come from deep roots politically."

But he's not from the same mould as Trump or Ontario PC leader Doug Ford, who has railed against "corrupt elites." Higgs just doesn't talk like that. He doesn't rouse a crowd into a frenzy.

"Well, you don't see Blaine up until three in the morning tweeting ridiculous things," says PC MLA Pam Lynch.

Higgs believes Canada has a different, more deferential political culture than the United States.

"Canadians always take a kind of low-key approach — 'oh well, you know, we'll work through this,'" he says.

But that can lead to inaction, he adds.

"People are tired of politics as usual. They're tired of politicians talking about what will keep them elected as opposed to what people are talking about on the street."

'Not the most charismatic'

"He's probably not the most charismatic man, you see," says Fredericton Tory supporter Dave MacIntosh. "He's not the type of person who goes out and has this appeal to people."

But that's fine, MacIntosh says, because while many New Brunswickers want change, they're not looking for a fire-breathing radical.

"People vote for people like Trump because they're fed up with the system the way it is," he says. "I don't know if people here are fed up with the system so much."

St. Thomas University political scientist Jamie Gillies defines populism in part as the mobilization of voter anger or resentment.

Higgs was involved with the anti-bilingualism Confederation of Regions party three decades ago, but Gillies says he has left that behind.

"I don't think Blaine Higgs is a populist," he says. "The giveaway is … he's made it fairly clear that on issues like language, his views have evolved on those. I don't think so far the PCs provincially are running a populist-style campaign."

Another populist claimant

There's another claimant to the populist label in this election: the People's Alliance, a party that formed for the 2010 election and has been a persistent critic of corporate subsidies, linguistic duality, and other issues that rankle many voters.

"It's hard to narrow down what the term really means," leader Kris Austin says of the "populist" label. "In terms of being an outsider, then yes, I would consider us an outsider of the established political way of doing business, and I'm proud of that."

But Austin, while taking on some political sacred cows, isn't much for Trump's bombast and self-regard.

"I'm not that kind of guy," he says. "I want to look at things reasonably and rationally and find a common sense solution that will work for people."

But while he's stylistically different, "I think it's great what these guys are doing. They're shaking things up and I think things need to be shaken up in government."

A wasted vote?

But the People's Alliance has little chance of winning power — a fact the PCs hammer home to persuade voters that supporting Austin is wasting their ballot, and no way to change the system.

"Kris Austin is a really nice guy and he's a good person but a vote for him is a vote for the Liberal Party," says Lynch, who defeated Austin in Fredericton-Grand Lake in the 2014 election.

"He's not going to form government so he's not going to be able to change anything. And we need change."

Higgs says broad-based mainstream parties have the "structure" to win election and get things done, while protest parties only divide the vote.

"A start-up party can cause another party to not get elected for a time."

Minority scenario

But Austin lost to Lynch by only 26 votes, so just a little extra burst of populism this year would make him an MLA. And if the campaign is close and there's a minority government, he says, he would have a lot of clout.

"It gives us a lot of power. We hold the balance of power in that scenario where we can start to push the very policies that we've been pushing for for years."

MacFadzen, the libertarian businessman, says for all his desire for change, the Alliance represents "a radical viewpoint, and some people don't want to go that far."

That means that like many New Brunswickers, his way of trying to shake up the system will be to support the PCs — a party that's part of that system.

"I'll probably vote that way and I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that he does something that's a bit more challenging."