Bilingualism resurfaces as an electoral issue
(or is it more than that?)

by Maurice Y. Michaud (he/him)

The People’s Alliance of New Brunswick was created in June 2010 in opposition to the Liberal government’s plan to sell NB Power to Hydro Québec, and to the Progressive Conservative Party which was deemed to lack credibility. The party called for “common sense government,” and the abolition of the Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages, whose responsibilities would be transferred to the office of the provincial ombudsman. In that sense, it amended but echoed policy positions that used to be held by the Confederation of Regions Party, or CORe, back in the 1990s.

The Alliance ran only 14 candidates in the general election held in September and did not enjoy much success, garnering only 1.17% of the votes province-wide and not preventing the PCs from forming a 15-seat majority government. However, it charged back in 2014, this time with 18 candidates, and increased its share of the popular vote by 1%.

The Liberals formed a majority government, but while they obtained 22,089 more votes than the PCs and Alliance combined, their majority was of only three seats. Although the Alliance did not win a seat, was the support it received enough to rob government from the PCs?

To find the answer, let’s:

Thus we could conclude that there would have been 4 differences.

The answer is YES, the conservative forces would have formed government. They would have had a majority of only one seat and this would have been a “wrong winner” election. Therefore, it can be argued that the votes the Alliance received, few as they were, were as much to blame as the 8% increase in the popular vote for the Liberals compared to the previous general election.

It is certainly a generalization but, since at least the middle of the 20th century, the Acadian community has tended to support the Liberals more than the anglophones. The presence of the Alliance from 2010 to 2022 in New Brunswick’s political landscape had solidified this adage. If, at the time, we had drawn a diagonal line from the northwest to the southeast of the province, we would have noticed that the primarily francophone northern half was over­whel­mingly Liberal red, while the opposite was true for the primarily anglophone southern half. The linguistic divide in New Brunswick was stronger than ever.

While the rise of support for the Green Party in the 2018 general election added a new dimension to the political landscape, the nearly 500% increase in support for the Alliance compared to the previous election undisputably complicated matters on the right of the spectrum.

On election night, when Premier Brian Gallant went in front of the cameras, it was to declare victory, albeit a muted one: his party had won 22 seats against the PCs’ 21. But while he was speaking, those numbers flipped: the PCs had 22 and the Liberals 21, and those numbers didn’t change once all the votes were counted. On the grounds that his party had clearly won the popular vote and was the incumbent, Gallant attempted to form a gov­ern­ment and retain the confidence of the assembly, either on a vote-by-vote basis or with the agreement of the smaller parties, but it was almost imme­di­ately defeated in a confidence vote on its throne speech. Blaine Higgs was then called to form government, which the Alliance leader, Kris Austin, informally agreed to support on a bill-by-bill basis for 18 months.

But couldn’t all this political drama have been avoided if the Alliance and PCs had united before the election?

To find the answer, let’s:

Thus we could conclude that there would have been 7 differences.

Of course it would have avoided that whole mess! Of the four ridings the Liberals won through vote splitting, three had gone to them with razor-thin pluralities: 244 in Carleton-Victoria, 261 in Fredericton North, and 10 in Saint John Harbour. Instead of having a majority of +1, the Higgs government would have had a majority of +5.

But whether the government would have been formed immediately or on the second try, as was the case, 2018 marked a low point in relations with the Acadian community. After the election, representatives of 14 Acadian associations and 19 mayors of francophone municipalities criticized the Alliance for its “anti-francophone and anti-equality” positions, deeming the party “not to be associated with” (infréquentable).

Higgs’ fragile government became even more so when PC MLA Greg Thompson died in September 2019, and deputy premier Robert Gauvin resigned from the party in February 2020 over its proposed health reforms, which included the nightly closure of six hospital emergency rooms across the province. The government was to face its next confidence vote in March 2020 over its budget but, once again, then COVID! All parties decided to cooperate with each other to avoid a spring election. However, by the summer, after several weeks of relatively low numbers of COVID cases, Higgs, claiming to have failed in his negotiations with the other parties to avoid an election before the fixed date in 2022 or the end of the pandemic, called a snap election.

It could be argued that the PC government was rewarded for its handling of the pandemic compared to other provinces. However, although the Alliance lost one of its seats to the PCs, was its presence still allowing Liberals in anglophone ridings to be the first past the post?

To find the answer, let’s:

Thus we could conclude that there would have been 3 differences.

Yes, the Alliance’s presence allowed ONE Liberal to get through. However, that is hardly the point anymore. The legacy of the Alliance has been to recreate in New Brunswick the sharp left-right contrast that to now has been more typical of the western provinces. As a result, three points much more significant than vote splitting must be considered from this juncture.

1. Although the Alliance only won two seats in 2020, one of them was where Kevin Vickers was running. That is significant in that he was the Liberal Party leader.
    
2. That one Liberal who had slipped by, Lisa Harris in Miramichi Bay/Néguac, resigned in August 2021 to run for the federal Liberals in the riding of Miramichi—Grand Lake, as did the longtime PC MLA in the neighbouring riding of Southwest Miramichi-Bay du Vin, Jake Stewart, for the federal Conservatives. She lost. He won. Harris’ provincial riding was then occupied by a Lord-era PC, Réjean Savoie, while Stewart’s replacement was also a conservative (newbie Michael Dawson).
    
3. In March 2022, the two elected Alliance members, Kris Austin and Michelle Conroy, deregistered the Alliance and formally joined the PCs. However, the one Alliance MLA who was defeated in 2020, Richard DeSaulniers, became its interim leader and re-registered it in May.

That third point is particularly significant when one considers that, in 1989, Premier Higgs had run for the leadership of the CORe Party, the Alliance’s predecessor. While he claimed that his position on bilingualism evolved afterwards, it had become evident, judging from his actions while in gov­ern­ment, that his new position was not too far from the one that Austin and Conroy held. And on social matters, Austin, Conroy and Higgs were well aligned. Therefore, it can be argued that the People’s Alliance of New Brunswick accomplished what the CORe Party could not: move the province’s PCs to the right, while sowing discord between the linguistic communities.

That rightward shift became particularly evident in the second half of Higgs’ second mandate — too much so for a key minister, Dorothy Shephard, and for several PC caucus members from the Saint John area who either didn’t complete their term or didn’t reoffer in the 2024 general election. And perhaps too much so as well for the constituents of the three major cities in southern New Brunswick, particularly the Saint John area which dramatically swung to the Liberals and even toppled Higgs in his own riding of Quispamsis.

Looking superficially at the results above, one could conclude that the Alliance simply lapsed into insignificance in 2024 just as the CORe Party had by 1999. However, while CORe was a flash in the pan, the impact the Alliance has had is profound.

Faytene Grasseschi, the PC candidate in Hampton-Fundy-St. Martins, became emblematic of that party’s shift. She was narrowly defeated by John Herron, a former PC MP who has been uncomforable since 2001 with the pronounced rightward shift of the overall conservative movement in Canada. So now the question is: Will the New Brunswick PCs stay the course despite this stunning rebuke, or will they endeavour to undo the transformation that the Alliance brought to them?

And coming back to bilingualism in New Brunswick: it would seem that those who continue to have a problem with bilingualism almost always reside in the farthest reaches of the right. But when centrist Tory Richard Hatfield formed his fourth majority PC government in 1982, he did so by fully embracing the Acadian community. So if the New Brunswick PCs choose to stay the course, are they relying only on the Liberals’ inevitable wear of power after a few years to be ushered back to office?

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