He still chases them.
In New Brunswick politics, most defeated premiers quietly retire, staying out of debates within their parties about what future direction to take or who should be the next leader.
Blaine Higgs was always different. It still is.
Over the weekend, Higgs appeared at the Progressive Conservative Party’s annual general meeting and weighed in on potential leadership candidates, the 2023 caucus rebellion against him and even the possibility of changing the party’s name.
He told reporters that trying to make the PC a broad-based, “big tent” party was foolish because many “progressive” Conservatives are actually Liberal, NDP and Green supporters.
Blaine Higgs speaks at PC meeting on party direction and leadership
“So they shouldn’t be part of the party,” Higgs said.
Removing the word “Progressive” from the party name was an “interesting” idea, he added.
“Our party needs to decide who we are as conservatives. We can follow the whims of the public, and people can say it’s the only way to get them to vote you into government.”
“Is it about being elected government or about making a difference in the province?”
That is the central dilemma facing conservatives after the defeat that ended six years in power: Should they move away from Higgs’ vision and broaden the base in an effort to win in 2028?
During his 14 years in public life, Higgs often said that compromises and concessions from middle-of-the-road political parties were an obstacle to governing effectively and affordably.
He said Saturday that he tried the big tent approach in 2017 when he lured former NDP leader Dominic Cardy into the party and that it clearly hadn’t worked.
Cardy resigned as education minister in 2022 and Higgs’ comments imply it was not his fault.
Many of the former prime minister’s internal PC critics disagreed. They felt he had neglected the basic obligations of party leadership: considering different points of view, making ministers and MPs feel valued, and forging consensus.
Higgs disagreed with that tradition from the beginning.
When he ran for party leadership in 2016, the majority of deputies did not support him.
He recruited supporters who had no PC background and urged them to use the party as a “vehicle” to reshape New Brunswick.
In eight years as leader, he held no political conventions to give rank-and-file members a voice in government priorities.
In 2021, Dorothy Shephard, Health Minister at the time, wrote Higgs a confidential letter urging him to change his approach, to stop seeing the back-and-forth of caucus deliberations as the tasteless, old-school partisan politics he disdained.
“You don’t have a team and it’s your doing,” Shephard wrote.
MLAs were legitimate reflections of their constituents and deserved to be heard, he wrote, “no matter how inconvenient or how trivial they considered any individual’s motives.”
The letter seemed prescient when it was made public in 2023, after Shephard followed Cardy to the exits.
The prime minister’s changes to Policy 713, on pronouns and gender identity in provincial schools, were at odds with a compromise reached by the PC group, several MPs would later explain.
Six of them broke ranks in June 2023 and voted in favor of a non-binding liberal motion calling for further study of the issue.
Liberal pollster Dan Arnold later said on The Writ, a political podcast, that Policy 713’s changes were not unpopular, but that the public’s ugly PC split convinced voters that Higgs was neglecting affordability issues and was no longer a competent administrator.
In the wake of the rebellion, many PC MLAs decided not to contest the 2024 elections.
Higgs downplayed the departures at the time, saying they created room for new candidates in the party more in line with his thinking.
However, over the weekend their resentment was clear.
He called out PC stalwarts who, dissatisfied with his turn toward social conservatism, supported liberal candidates last year.
And he said it was “difficult” to look favorably on former Moncton East MLA Daniel Allain’s campaign for party leadership, given that Allain was one of six MLAs who broke ranks.
“My whole situation unfolded, of course, and he played a role in that,” Higgs said. “So it’s hard for me. But we all move on and I’m trying to do it.”
By contrast, Higgs described MLA Kris Austin — a former People’s Alliance leader who jumped to the PC in 2022 and stayed with Higgs during the caucus turmoil — as “a great candidate,” who “brings a lot of value to the party, honesty and integrity.”
Those comments could complicate things for Allain, Austin and others.
They send a signal to Higgs supporters that Allain wasn’t loyal enough, even though Allain worked for local PC candidates in Moncton last fall.
Allain has been pushing the message that the party needs to return to a more “progressive” conservative orientation and welcome back moderate members and voters.
“So I disagree with Mr. Higgs,” he said over the weekend.
For Austin, who is considering a leadership run, the blessing of a former leader roundly rejected by the electorate and a large segment of the party may not be much of a boost.
Austin himself sounded more conciliatory than Higgs over the weekend.
“I think the goal is how to ensure that everyone has a voice at the table, that it’s open to everyone. [and] all opinions, but I still come out of it with values that are truly conservative in nature,” he said.
He added that he had “a lot of respect” for Allain.
“He is a good man, he was a good minister and we are all going in the same direction.”
Higgs’s intervention is also a distraction for interim PC leader Glen Savoie, who will try over the next year to focus attention on Holt’s Liberal government.
“I don’t want next year to be in vain,” said Savoie, who told reporters that the word “progressive” should remain in the party’s name and that everyone should feel welcome.
Savoie, who also supported Higgs during the 2023 split, told delegates on Saturday that “the party’s only successful path is through forgiveness, reconciliation and redemption.”
Carleton-Victoria MLA Margaret Johnson said the party had to shed its “far-right” image, make room for marginalized groups in the party and leave Policy 713 behind.
Even the two PC MLAs who backed Higgs for the party leadership in 2016 said they wanted to put the rebellion against him behind them.
“Everyone has their opinion on the things they do,” said Albert-Riverview MLA Sherry Wilson. . “They do things for a certain reason.
“I don’t decide what other people do, so I don’t really have an opinion.”
Kings Center MLA Bill Oliver said the divide over Policy 713 is that “in the past we suffered the consequences and we can move forward from there.”
It seemed that everyone present at the party meeting was united in their desire to move forward, except, perhaps, Blaine Higgs himself.
