New Brunswick Rejects Grumpy Old Man, Elects First Female Leader

No, not the one in New Jersey.

(Photo: Ryan Hagerty/US Fish & Wildlife)

Is anyone game to hear about a recent election that polls suggested could have easily gone to the lunatic Right but instead ended up being a landslide victory for empathy havers?

There’s a chance it might help you get some sleep before Nov. 5.

Last week I wrote about the terrifyingly tight race in British Columbia between the center-left NDP and the formerly fringe BC Conservatives that was still up in the air several days after voting closed. Sanity ultimately prevailed (more on this in a sec) but someone in the comments section asked — since the stated hope was to report on a “lefty party in a virtual dead heat with a MAGA-adjacent challenger, and then handily beat the crap out of them on election day” — why your aspiring new Canadian boyfriend didn’t weigh in on the results of the New Brunswick provincial election instead.

British Columbia Torn Between Goofus And Gallant

Fair question! The wee province of New Brunswick is generally off most people’s radars, including most Canadians, but I don’t have the same excuse as I actually grew up there. I even wrote a trivia book about the place many years ago, copies of which may still be available at some of its lesser Big Stops.

Roughly the size of West Virginia but with less than half the population, NB is best known for being the place people drive through on their way to Nova Scotia or PEI. New Brunswick/Nouveau-Brunswick is also Canada’s only officially bilingual province, the home of the world’s largest frozen French fry manufacturer (due primarily to all the potato fields, not the French people), and the birthplace of Oscar the Grouch, where he is also known locally as Oscar le Grincheux.

Just imagine all the time Republicans wasted being mad at “Sesame Street” for their long-standing Ronald Grump parody of Dear Leader when there was an actual illegal, non-white immigrant sitting right there the whole time!

Oscar doesn’t understand why so many people are upset about a floating island of garbage. (Photo: Muppets Wiki)

It is also essentially a subsidiary of the Irving Oil Corporation, which owns pretty much every major industry in the province, including (until a sale to the dismal Postmedia chain a few months ago) its remaining newspapers. You may recall back in 2019 when a cartoonist named Michael de Adder, who was also quietly let go from the WaPo earlier this year, made headlines after being fired for mocking a certain former president. The garbage decision was at the direction of the billionaire Irving family, who directly employ one in 12 New Brunswickers, including Blaine Higgs, who worked for Irving Oil for 33 years before becoming premier in 2018 and then another six pro bono.

Boss Higgs, the oldest preem in NB history, was seeking a third term in office, which is remarkable in itself as he steadfastly refused to learn even basic French. Higgs is also known for being one of the first politicians to import US-style culture war bullshit to Canada, including pandering to the “parental rights” crowd by demonizing trans or non-binary kids, specifically through doing away with a section of Policy 713 that allowed children to use their preferred names and pronouns in school without needing their parents’ say so.

But au contraire, mon frère, said voters. The Progressive Conservatives — yes, Canadians are well aware it’s an oxymoron — ended up winning just 16 seats out of an available 49 in an upset by the Liberals led by Susan Holt, who is about to make her premiere as NB’s first female premier.

Higgs even lost his own seat in Quispamsis, the same riding where I went to high school. (“Go, um, Crusaders!”) The Beaverton, Canada’s answer to The Onion, had the best headline after his defeat: “New Brunswick notifies Blaine Higgs’ parents that his name changing to ‘ex-premier Blaine Higgs.’”

Which would’ve been even funnier if the guy wasn’t 70 and his parents were still around.

Meanwhile, in British Columbia

I flew back to my adopted home province after attending the Wonkette Halloween party at the Schoenkopf Compound in Detroit to the welcome news that BC hadn’t completely fallen into the hands of the crazies. But it was hella close. After all mail-in ballots were received and two recounts, the incumbent Dippers will form a majority government with 47 seats in Victoria to the Tories’ 44 and the Green Party’s total of two.

One of the decisive final tallies was in Juan de Fuca-Malahat on Vancouver Island, which the NDP’s Dana Lajeunesse initially won by 23 votes but anything under 100 means an automatic recount. He eventually reached 141, which probably came as a relief even to some Conservatives after it came out his main opponent, Marina Sapozhnikov, said the quiet part out loud to an alert j-school student on election night.

Sapozhnikov brought up her thoughts on Reconciliation unasked, calling Indigenous people “savages” and saying that 90 percent of them were on drugs, which didn’t go over well with potential constituents coming from a Ukrainian immigrant seeking elected office on unceded Coast Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth First Nation territories that have had their own form of government for centuries. Or half of constituents anyway. Probably didn’t help her reputation as a doctor much either although she’s retirement age.

BC Conservative leader John Rustad has since promised she won’t be running for them in the next election. Which will likely be sooner rather than later since the Official Opposition smells blood in the water and will be looking to topple the NDP through a non-confidence vote at the first opportunity. Huzzah. They may even do some rudimentary vetting of candidates next time around.

But for now at least neither Higgs or Rustad are screaming that the elections were RIGGED or STOLEN, unlike many of their supporters. We’ll take it as a win.

[CBC / Snopes / CNN / The Beaverton]