A historic Liberal victory in Monday’s New Brunswick election may not be the boost Justin Trudeau needs, according to local experts, who believe the provincial race was a referendum on the outgoing premier and not the embattled prime minister.
Susan Holt’s Liberals beat out Blaine Higgs’ incumbent Progressive Conservatives in Monday’s election, denying the latter his seat in the legislature and a third term running New Brunswick.
The victory means Holt will be the province’s first female premier, and marks a win for the Liberal brand at a time when most provinces have Conservative leaders and the federal party under Trudeau appears to be in trouble.
Donald Wright, a professor of political science at the University of New Brunswick, said the result could be welcome but comes in an election fought on entirely different issues.
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“It may be a moment of brief joy for the Liberal Party of Canada, but the bottom line is that dynamic has its own logic — it’s unfolding according to its own timeframe,” he said in an interview with Global News hours before polls closed.
“I don’t think the results in New Brunswick — whatever they are — will affect, one way or the other, the Liberal Party of Canada and its prospects.”
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The 33-day campaign was considered a tight race, as Higgs sought a third term from the people of New Brunswick.
The campaign focused closely on the cost of living, health care and housing. The Progressive Conservatives pitched a short platform built around a reduction in the sales tax as a solution to the affordability crunch. The Liberals and Greens moved weightier policy documents with policies they claimed would fix health care and housing.
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The PC campaign also tried, as other similar campaigns have across Canada, to link the local provincial Liberals to the carbon tax and federal party. That tactic, Wright said, was made more complicated by Higgs’ two terms and own issues with popularity.
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“Blaine Higgs wants you to think this is all about Justin Trudeau, that this election is all about Justin Trudeau, the carbon price,” Wright said.
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In the build up to the election, several senior Progressive Conservative cabinet ministers said they wouldn’t run again, with some suggesting Higgs himself was part of the issue.
In April, then-environment minister Gary Crossman stepped down, saying his “personal and political beliefs no longer align” with how the party was being run. The post-secondary education minister quit earlier in the year and the natural resources minister said he wouldn’t run again.
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Chisholm Pothier, a long-time Progressive Conservative strategist who supported the Liberals in Monday’s election, said the ballot came down to Higgs personally.
“I was in New Brunswick recently for a visit and every Progressive Conservative that I know and that I visited there is voting Liberal in this election because there is a collective feeling that the party has slipped from the grasp of the real Progressive Conservatives,” he said.
“Look at how many cabinet ministers resigned from his cabinet — and pretty much all of them said, ‘We can’t work with this guy.’”
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Pothier worked for two Progressive Conservative premiers — Bernard Lord and David Alward — and said he believed the personality problems Higgs has experienced made it harder to get a Trudeau-Liberal association to stick.
“The Progressive Conservatives here have tried to do that, they’ve tried to link Susan Holt to Justin Trudeau, I don’t think it’s been effective,” he said.
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“I don’t think that the linking of Holt to Trudeau — as wildly unpopular as he is anywhere — I just think that the more pressing issue is, ‘Do you want Blaine Higgs or not?’”
On the Liberal campaign, there was also an effort to distance the New Brunswick Party from its struggling federal counterpart.
“The Liberal Party in New Brunswick really is campaigning on Team Holt, Team Susan Holt,” Wright said.
“They don’t even talk about the Liberal team, it’s Team Susan Holt. They’re downplaying Liberal, they’re downplaying the colour red. This really is about change in New Brunswick and time for change in New Brunswick.”
Holt also worked to set herself up as a “stark contrast” to Higgs, calling the incumbent premier “far right” in his politics.
“We have a stark contrast between Mr. Higgs and his one-man show taking New Brunswick to the far right, and myself and my amazing team of people,” Holt said in a media interview during the campaign.
“(We) are bringing a balanced approach to make life more affordable … and improve access to health care …. We need a government that acts as a partner and not as a dictator from one office in Fredericton.”
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The New Brunswick result is a win in the Liberal column after a relentlessly tough year for its federal cousins.
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Trudeau’s team has endured byelection losses — including a historic defeat in Toronto — and has seen senior members of the government announce they don’t plan to run again. Exclusive polling for Global News in September concluded the party had hit a “new low” after its numbers continued to slide over the summer.
While the New Brunswick Liberal win may be celebrated in the east, those who know the province best suggest the result is an endorsement of its unique characteristics and not necessarily a return to health for the Liberal brand.
“This is a very specifically New Brunswick election — I don’t think it would be wise to read anything into the federal landscape at all with the results of this election,” Pothier said.
