Donald Savoie is Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at the Université de Moncton.
New Brunswick has long been known for re-electing governments for two, three and even four terms and for steering clear of third parties. No more. We have just seen the third successive government fall after only one mandate and, for the first time in nearly 100 years, New Brunswick has a minority government. Third parties are increasingly making their presence felt and they will decide how long incoming Premier Blaine Higgs stays in power.
New Brunswick faces many difficulties in governance.
- The province has a sharp linguistic divide with some politicians exploiting it for partisan political purposes; a pronounced north-south economic divide; a declining population; a ballooning provincial debt, which now stands at $14.5-billion; some of Canada’s highest tax rates; too much infrastructure; and not enough people.
- We have a federal government that throws infrastructure money at our province. Ottawa is unable or unwilling to see that our economy needs spending – but not on infrastructure. We are not Southern Ontario.
- New Brunswick has one of Canada’s fastest aging populations, taxing further health-care facilities
- We are expected to deal with a looming federal tax on carbon that will make New Brunswick markedly less competitive than even its neighbouring provinces.
I could go on. All in all, it’s a powerful brew that explains New Brunswick’s political discontent and why three successive governments have been unable to secure a second mandate.
This comes at a time when New Brunswick requires nothing short of a Churchillian effort to deal with the province’s daunting economic challenges. In brief, the effort requires an aggressive business-friendly agenda and both a willingness and a capacity to strike controversial decisions. I have long argued that it was and is wrong for New Brunswick to say no to shale gas development while grabbing with both hands transfer payments generated by regions that have said yes to this development.
New Brunswick must put out the message that the province is open for business – and this time, actually mean it. Fiscal discipline and lower taxes work, as other jurisdictions have shown. Those who do not agree with these prescriptions have a responsibility to lay out their ideas for economic development in clear terms and with a sense of urgency. New Brunswickers can no longer pretend that the future will somehow take care of itself, that our economic challenges will magically disappear or that governments can do it all. Every New Brunswicker will need to put shoulder to the wheel to get the job done and accept that tough decisions are required.
The province has to strike very difficult decisions in virtually every sector. It operates 24 hospitals for a population of fewer than 750,000 people. New Brunswick has well over 300 schools with a dwindling student population and a municipal structure of more than 350 cities, towns, villages and local service districts. The status quo is no longer sustainable. Someone will have to give a strong wrench of the wheel to realign the province’s public-sector infrastructure with its capacity to pay and to reallocate resources from one sector to another to meet changing demands. This is difficult to do in the best of political and economic times – these are hardly the best of times.
Political observers have long argued that majority governments are better able to pursue difficult political decisions. To be sure, New Brunswick has no shortage of difficult decisions, at a time when it has a highly precarious minority government holding only 22 seats of a 49-seat Legislative Assembly. Time will tell if New Brunswickers, their interest groups and their political parties are able to put aside their immediate interest for the broader public good and make minority government work.
New Brunswickers, however, have no experience with making minority government work. They need to learn quickly, given the state of the province’s demographic and economic circumstances. Failure to do so will only fuel linguistic and regional tensions, economic envy and continued discontent with the role of government in society. The challenges are beyond the capacity of the provincial government, particularly when it is in a minority situation, and its public service. Everyone in the province and in Ottawa has an interest in seeing New Brunswick meeting them.