Susan Holt will be the new Premier in New Brunswick after her Liberals won a solid majority with 31 of the 49 seats in Monday’s election. The Progressive Conservatives slid from their majority government position down to 16 seats, with Premier Higgs losing his seat. Green Leader David Coon was one of two Green MLAs elected, but lost caucus mate Kevin Arseneault who had represented the district of Kent North. With Arsenault’s loss to Liberal Pat Finnegan, the Liberal party now holds all 17 francophone majority districts in N.B.
Over the past few months, the polling gap between the PCs and Liberals had shown either a tight race or the Liberals with double digit leads. In the final days of the campaign, the gap appeared to widen again. On election day, the results showed an even larger vote share for the Liberals than the polls predicted – 48.2% of the vote for the Liberals compared to the PCs’ at 35%. Publicly reported surveys have not shown that great a gap since 2022. The Green party captured a respectable 13.8%, higher than the final couple of public polls had projected. Voter turnout was 66.1%; low for New Brunswick – lower even than the 2020 pandemic general election.
Changes and upsets
In 2020, the PCs swept all 11 Southern N.B. / Saint John seats but held only 6 of them in this election. Blaine Higgs lost his own seat to Quispamsis Acting CAO, Aaron Kennedy. Cabinet members lost all over the province, including Attorney General Ted Green in Rothesay, Social Development Minister Jill Green in Fredericton North, Indigenous Affairs Minister Rejean Savoie in Miramichi Bay – Neguac, Labour Minister Greg Turner in Moncton South, and Finance Minister Ernie Steeves in Moncton Northwest.
John Herron, a former federal Tory MP, ran as a provincial Liberal and defeated controversial PC candidate Faytene Grasseschi in Hampton-Fundy-St. Martins. The former PC district had been represented by Gary Crossman for a decade, but Crossman resigned stating his views no longer aligned with the Higgs government. Local PCs were concerned by many of Grasseschi’s previous public statements on various social and religious issues as well as alleged problems with the nomination process. News reports and activist sources showed signs that many PC supporters were either going to stay home or back Herron, who won in the end with a 2.7% margin of victory.
Factors, lift and drag
Several PC nomination battles, including Hampton-Fundy-St. Martins, became campaign focal points due to the divide that had erupted after the Higgs government announced the revision of Policy 713, an education policy related to students identifying as LGBTQIA2S+. One of the provisions of the original 2020 policy required school personnel to use students’ preferred pronouns and chosen names. The revised 2023 policy included changes that forbade New Brunswick teachers from using those names and pronouns of students under the age of 16 without parental consent. This led to some internal division within the Progressive Conservatives, including resignations, nomination disputes and several PC MLAs opting not to run in 2024. As a result, the 2024 PC campaign saw many popular incumbents not running again and with some of the party faithful choosing not to volunteer.
Susan Holt largely overcame the drag she faced from the unpopularity of the Trudeau Liberals at the federal level. She achieved this with specific actions ranging from promises on fiscal stability, writing to Trudeau to call for a pause in the carbon tax increases, and minimizing Liberal branding and colours on election signs.
Both major parties battled throughout the pre-campaign and campaign periods on health care, with commitments centering on similar themes of innovation, technology, new facilities and faster access. This often put the government on the defensive, citing improvements and trying to counter Liberal claims about inaction on the file in the last four years. New Brunswick has a strong tradition of “unofficial” general term limits. There hasn’t been a 3-term Premier of New Brunswick since Liberal Frank McKenna in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
A Holt Liberal government: what’s next?
With a larger Liberal caucus than many expected, Susan Holt has a significant pool from which to select her first cabinet. The Liberals now have MLAs in most regions of the province. It may take up to two weeks before the new cabinet is announced.
It remains to be seen how much appetite there will be to enact all Liberal commitments on leadership and accountability. For instance, the party had promised to ban out of province contributions to provincial political parties, something that may impact her party the most.
Susan Holt’s career has included work in an engineering company and IT firms. Some of the larger IT firms on her resume include IBM, Xerox, HP and Research In Motion. Before entering the political arena, Holt served as CEO of the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce and CEO of the New Brunswick Business Council. A graduate of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., she has also worked as a lobbyist and consultant. Holt frequently offered reassurances that if she formed government, her goals would include continued growth and diversification of the New Brunswick economy. She also indicated she would continue to balance New Brunswick’s budget (though she did face criticism during the campaign for double counting HST revenue in the Liberal platform costing).
Health care promises make up the bulk of the costed commitments disclosed under the province’s “Transparency in Elections Commitment Act” (legislation introduced by the previous Liberal government in 2018). In addition to $111.5 million over the next two years for nurses’ retention cheques, the Liberal platform calls for the establishment of 30 community care clinics that offer local, collaborative care from a variety of health professionals in one place with dedicated non-clinical staff and administrative support, provided by the government at a cost $34.5 million over four years. So far, the announced locations include Fredericton, Moncton, Saint John, Edmundston, Campbellton, Carleton North, the Acadian Peninsula, St. Stephen, Sussex, Sackville, Woodstock, Blackville, Kennebecasis Valley, Blacks Harbour, and Perth Andover.
There is also a commitment to invest in “modern technology, including centralized waitlists and standardized digital records management systems, to facilitate the seamless and secure exchange of patient information among health care providers, regions, the regional health authorities, and community care clinics.” The digital commitment is costed at $10 million over the next 3 years – $5 million in the first year and $2.5 million in the 2 subsequent years.
Given the Liberals’ campaign emphasis, affordability commitments are expected early in the government’s term such as rent caps, removing select provincial taxes from home heating and other fuel, as well as a school lunch program ($104 million over four years). Observers will be watching to see whether there is a macro policy shift in government efforts and attitudes on energy and NB’s primary industries in general. The Liberal platform speaks of working with the federal government to ensure “big emitters bear the brunt of the price on carbon.” Those emitters include the province’s largest employers in resource, energy and manufacturing. As compared to the Higgs PCs strong pro-nuclear/SMR stance, Susan Holt has usually taken a more social license-themed stance and questioned nuclear as an energy source.
There is also a Liberal commitment to overhaul property taxes. New Brunswick had maintained a simple residential versus non-residential property tax system and by statute, non residential would be 1.5 times residential rates. During its overall reform and amalgamation of New Brunswick municipalities in 2022, the Higgs government changed to a possible municipality-selected range of between 1.4 and 1.7 times the residential rate. These reforms also included addition of a “heavy industry” category that could be set at a different rate than the other non-residential ratio. It remains to be seen how far a Holt Liberal government will further change property taxes – particularly on heavy industry.
The federal dynamic
Susan Holt’s letter last winter to the Prime Minister requesting a pause in carbon tax increases did highlight some difference and distance between her provincial party and the Trudeau Liberals. It remains to be seen whether the two governments will work closely together on any files. The provincial Liberal platform did include a commitment on working with the federal government to ensure big emitters pay for their pollution.
Prime Minister Trudeau has taken shots at Newfoundland and Labrador Liberal Premier Andrew Furey and other provincial politicians who have taken positions opposing the carbon tax, referring to them as “short term thinker” politicians. Provincial Green leader David Coon leveled similar criticisms at Holt after her letter to the Prime Minister on the subject.
There are other priorities for the Holt Liberals that would benefit from a working relationship with Ottawa – in particular their commitments related to creating new housing units, which seem in part to be built on assumptions about the federal plan.
Over the last year and a half, support for the Liberal Party of Canada has plummeted in Atlantic Canada since the last federal election, dropping by 15 points on average. Support for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives has increased by a similar amount. There is no evidence yet that the Holt Liberal victory in New Brunswick has changed or will affect federal party support levels.
For more insights on the New Brunswick election, connect with Senior Consultant Liam O’Brien.
