Liberals link PC leader to former premier — despite their public feud - CBC

Barely a week after the Progressive Conservatives picked Daniel Allain as their new leader, several Liberal ministers and MLAs are trying to tie him to former premier Blaine Higgs. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)Social SharingIt didn’t take long for Premier Susan Holt’s Liberals to find their rhetorical footing against new Progressive Conservative Leader Daniel Allain. 

The previous PC administration is no longer known as “the Higgs government.”

Now it’s “the Higgs-Allain government” — a reminder that Allain served as minister of local government under premier Blaine Higgs from 2020 to 2023.

Justice Minister Rob McKee dropped the line into a French-language radio interview on Thursday morning during an interview about legislation creating a mental health advocate.

Later that day, Housing Minister David Hickey slipped it into a media scrum focused on housing after the PC opposition’s official response to the government throne speech.

“What we saw was a re-run of what plagued the former Higgs-Allain government,” Hickey said of the speech, “and a rehashing of what troubled that government at the time.”

He was commenting on the PC refusal to impose a cap on rents when the party was in office.

Allain fed the attack this week when he would not commit to keeping the cap the Liberals adopted in 2024.

That opened the door for another Liberal, backbencher Kate Wilcott, to utter the new mantra Friday morning.

“After 46 per cent rent increases under the Higgs-Allain government, Daniel Allain has a new idea to make life more expensive for New Brunswickers,” she said.

Holt herself said during a question period exchange with Mary Wilson, a PC MLA she knew before she was in politics, that “it’s unfortunate that she was part of the Higgs-Allain team.” 

There’s just one problem with the narrative the Liberals are spinning.

Allain had a very public falling out with Higgs in 2023. (Tara King-Stewart/CBC)

Higgs and Allain had a very public falling out in June 2023 over Policy 713, the provincial framework on gender identity and sexual orientation in provincial schools.

Allain was one of six MLAs who voted with the Liberal opposition on their motion calling for further study of the policy changes before they were implemented.

Two weeks later, Higgs dumped Allain from his cabinet.

During the PC leadership race this year, a small group of party members repeatedly attacked Allain for that vote, calling it a betrayal and blaming it for their defeat in the 2024 election.

Higgs was deeply unpopular by then and a large segment of the party didn’t participate in the campaign.

Allain said he volunteered for PC candidates in Moncton-area ridings but that didn’t spare him from withering criticism online.

“That’s what split the party in two. That’s what made the divide,” said Jason Purdy, a PC member who is working to create a new centre-right party because he opposes Allain’s leadership.

Last fall, Higgs himself made his preference clear about whether he thought Allain should become leader.

“He played a role in that," Higgs of the caucus revolt. "So it’s tough for me. But we all move on, and I’m trying to do that." 

In a March interview with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, however, the former premier suggested Allain and the other five MLAs used the Policy 713 controversy to remove him as leader.

“They thought, ‘This won't go down well. This is the thing that'll get rid of Higgs,’” he said.

Liberal backbencher Kate Wilcott was one of the MLAs who used the new line to tie Allain to Higgs. (Jacques Poitras/CBC)

In the Liberal narrative, though, the former premier and his former minister remain interchangeable.

“He voted with Higgs hundreds of times, and he voted against Higgs one time,” Wilcott told reporters Friday.

“They served alongside each other. It’s the same party.” 

She said many cabinet ministers who stood by Higgs in 2023 are now prominent members of Allain’s caucus.

"It's the same group of people that are sitting across the floor from us,” she said.

“They’re people that served under Higgs, alongside Higgs, and alongside Allain. So nothing seems to have changed in the week since the leadership changed.”

A potential downside of the Liberal attack may become apparent if New Brunswickers decide when they go to the polls in two years that ballooning deficits make them miss the famously frugal Higgs.

By then they’ll have had plenty of time to decide if Allain was too close to Higgs, or not close enough.

Jacques Poitras has been CBC's provincial affairs reporter in New Brunswick since 2000. He grew up in Moncton and covered Parliament in Ottawa for the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal. He has reported on every New Brunswick election since 1995 and won awards from the Radio Television Digital News Association, the National Newspaper Awards and Amnesty International. He is also the author of five non-fiction books about New Brunswick politics and history.