It was 1985 and the New Brunswick Liberal Party was about to elect a new leader. Up and comer Frank McKenna seemed to have all the momentum and it looked like he was going to cruise to victory over interim leader and veteran cabinet minister Ray Frenette.  

With the convention just days away, Frenette knew he was up against it and decided it was time to throw a Hail Mary. He brought in some communications hot shot from Toronto in the hopes that this hired gun from out of town would help him turn things around. So this guy writes Frenette’s convention speech.  

As Hail Mary’s go, this was one for the ages. A blistering attack on McKenna with an edge rarely seen in New Brunswick politics. It did not go well. Not only McKenna supporters, but many of Frenette’s own supporters were upset. Lots so much so they were taking off their Frenette buttons and throwing them to the ground in disgust as they headed for the exits. 

Despite Frenette’s many years of service and accomplishments, for many Liberals, that day is what he is most remembered for.  

This Toronto guy may have been a solid communicator and writer, but he didn’t know or understand our political culture. And so that speech, which may have worked fine elsewhere, bombed big time here.  

Flash forward nearly 40 years and I have to wonder if Premier Blaine Higgs is on the verge of making a similar mistake.  

To be clear, I have no basis other than what I see from afar, but I have to wonder if a change in tone by Higgs and company is related to his hiring an of an outsider to run his election campaign. To give the devil his due, if you’ll pardon the expression, Baptist Minister and now Higgs’s campaign manager Stephen Outhouse comes with an impressive track record in Conservative circles, including taking Danielle Smith to a majority government in Alberta. 

Just as Ray Frenette painfully learned all those years ago that what works in Ontario doesn’t necessarily work here, the strategies and tone that got the Conservatives elected in Alberta might not be right for New Brunswick today.  To be fair, Outhouse is from the Atlantic region, and I have no reason to doubt he’s smart enough to adapt. But if he is influencing what we are seeing as of late, that could be trouble. And if it’s not him, that doesn’t bode well for Higgs either.  

Consider just this week. Forty-one year old Adam Dickerson, a homeless man in St. Stephen dies from the elements because he had nowhere to go to get out of the cold. The St. Stephen mayor and council, desperate for something to be done to stop this from happening again, declares a State of Emergency, in hopes it grabs the Higgs government’s attention and it does something. How does Public Safety Minister Kris Austin respond? Not by taking any sherd of responsibility. Rather he responds by accusing Mayor Allan MacEachern of playing politics, referenced a leftist agenda and blamed Trudeau. And then he cancelled the State of Emergency because it didn’t meet the proper criteria. He’s right on that last point that technically it’s not a State of Emergency, but wow.  

I can’t remember ever seeing a politician respond to such a tragedy in such a callous manner. And while It may be an extreme example, it is not an isolated one.  

About three weeks ago, I got a donation pitch from the PC party, signed by Higgs, and then about a week later, a donation pitch signed by Outhouse, who used the opportunity to introduce himself as Higgs’s new campaign manager. The focus of both letters was Policy 713, and the tone in both was the same, positioning Higgs as a victim of unfair attacks from Liberal leader Susan Holt, unions, and even the CBC.  

Both letters ignored the fact that on this contentious issue, there are valid arguments on both sides, instead characterizing opposing arguments as only held by the “extreme left”. In others words, not worthy of consideration. This includes views expressed by District Education Councils, teachers, guidance counsellors, child psychologists, social workers, and many others including six of his own MLAs. One has to wonder how they feel being dismissed as “extreme left” by their own leader.  

Sadly, this is a position that promotes polarization, the suggestion that our side is completely right and the other side is completely wrong. We can see the result of this approach in the U.S. and so you would think we’d be doing everything in our power to not go there. But it is consistent with the road the leader of the federal Conservative Party has chosen.  

But back to New Brunswick, it was obvious the donation letters were written by the same person, and I doubt very much it was Higgs. So that narrows it down a bit, and since Outhouse signed one of them, that narrows it down even further.  

Dismissing those with opposing views as dishonest, blaming the media, the lack of empathy and responsibility in the face of tragedy - none of this sounds like the Progressive Conservative Party New Brunswickers are used to. There’s a mean-spirited edge here that wasn’t there before.  

Maybe Higgs and company should take a lesson from history. Going nasty didn’t work for Ray Frenette. Why does Higgs feel it will work for him?  

No matter which side of the political divide you are on, this new tone can’t be seen as good.

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Credit for cover photo: Larry Dickinson mynewbrunswick.ca