N.B. election day: Voters head to the polls in tight race between Liberals, Tories

CITYnews halifax / By Hina Alam, The Canadian Press

FREDERICTON — New Brunswick residents are casting their votes in what polls suggest is a tight election centred on two leaders with sharply contrasting visions for the province.

Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs is seeking a third term as premier, after running a low-key race during which he held no public events for at least one-third of the 33-day campaign. The former oil executive presented voters with a two-page platform containing 11 promises, including a pledge to cut the harmonized sales tax by two percentage points to 13 per cent.

The Liberals led by Susan Holt have made 100 campaign promises, such as opening 30 community health clinics by 2028 and eliminating the provincial sales tax on electricity bills for residential customers.

The Greens, led by David Coon, have also focused their campaign on health care, promising to spend $380 million a year on the network and decentralize decision-making to give more freedom to hospitals.

Coon cast his ballot Monday in his Fredericton riding, while Holt and Higgs voted early in advanced polls.

At dissolution, the Conservatives held 25 seats in the 49-seat legislature. The Liberals held 16 seats, the Greens had three, there was one Independent and there were four vacancies.

Jamie Gillies, a political science professor at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, said if the Tories maintain their majority, it will show that Higgs managed to attract new voters for his socially conservative message. The Tory leader has been accused by his political opponents of dragging the party to the right, with promises to reject all new applications for supervised drug-injection sites and to force severely addicted people into drug treatment.

But voters are also judging Higgs for his policy on gender identity in schools, which requires teachers to get parental consent before they can use the preferred first names and pronouns of students under 16. That 2023 change to Policy 713 triggered backlash across the country, but polls show it is popular in the province. One of Higgs’s 11 campaign promises is to “respect parents” — a direct reference to the policy.

Gillies said in a recent interview that if Holt’s Liberals win, especially in an environment in which the federal Liberals are deeply unpopular across Canada, then it might be due — at least in part — to the provincial Tories’ gender policy.

“I wonder if the Progressive Conservatives and Higgs just simply didn’t read the electorate well on Policy 713,” he said.

The Greens, meanwhile, could hold the balance of power if neither the Liberals nor the Tories win a majority of seats. That result, Gillies said, would show there is still strong support in New Brunswick for a progressive and non-Liberal, non-Progressive Conservative voice.

New Brunswickers enjoying Monday’s sunny, mild weather can cast their votes at polling stations until 8 p.m.

The three major parties are each holding viewing parties as the votes come in after the polls close.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 21, 2024.

Hina Alam, The Canadian Press