NB Liberal leader Susan Holt with Tantramar candidate John Higham. Photo: NB Liberal Party
“A change is needed in how politics are run in New Brunswick,” John Higham told about 50 people who had gathered Monday night at the Veterans Memorial Civic Centre in Sackville.
“Higgs and his team, and their disregard for broader voices, has to go,” the former Sackville mayor declared shortly after he was officially nominated as the Liberal candidate in Tantramar for the provincial election scheduled on October 21st.
“Tantramar must be a part of a new Holt government,” Higham added. “We need an MLA who sits at the table where concerns are heard and where decisions for real change are going to be made.”
Higham, who served as Sackville mayor from 2016 to 2020 and as town councillor from 2008 to 2012, said that his time in politics had taught him to pay attention to community efforts and local voices especially in the field of economic development.
Tantramar Liberal candidate John Higham
He spoke about his efforts to get money to study ways of preventing flooding on the Chignecto Isthmus and expressed pride in helping to attract the electrical transformer manufacturer Cam Tran and the frozen food storage company Terra Beata to Sackville.
Higham also mentioned his more recent volunteer work as co-chair of the Rural Health Action Group which has been lobbying for improvements in local health and hospital services.
He also pointed out it was the Higgs PC government that tried to close six rural hospitals including the one in Sackville.
“Higgs’s approach to health leadership has been wrong, slow, difficult and I would say elitist,” Higham said, adding that after six years of it, 160,000 New Brunswickers “are looking for doctors right now.”
Liberal campaign themes
Higham’s words echoed those of Liberal leader Susan Holt who spoke about the three main themes of her campaign which she summarized using the letters: C, B and T.
“I want to talk about care, balance and team,” she said, adding that care referred to much-needed improvements in health care while balance meant balanced budgets, reinvestment of any surpluses in improved social programs and making life more affordable partly by eliminating the 10% provincial sales tax on home electricity and partly by imposing a cap on rents.
As for team, Holt stressed the need for strong, local voices in the provincial legislature.
“We are going to bring 49 phenomenal individuals together who are going to raise their voices loudly and passionately for their communities,” she said referring to a full slate of Liberal candidates including John Higham.
Higham’s hesitation
Liberal leader Susan Holt
Holt said it took four phone calls to persuade Higham to run again for the Liberals. (In 2006 he came in second, 972 votes behind Progressive Conservative Mike Olscamp.)
This time he is running against Green Party incumbent Megan Mitton, first elected to the provincial legislature in 2018 and re-elected in 2020.
The two served together on town council and Higham told reporters after the meeting that he had hesitated to run against her.
“I thought about it long and hard,” he said.
“I actually went and spoke to her personally and said, ‘My issue with this is that Higgs has gotta go and you have to have a majority government to get him out and would you at all be interested in running as a Liberal?'” Higham said, adding that Mitton answered that she would not run as a Liberal.
“That was quite some time ago,” he said, “so, it’s not something that we wanted to do, she’s a good representative yes, but I think the stakes are now so high and you can’t just hope that you’ll get enough seats, you actually have to go out and try to find enough seats that you can make sure that he (Higgs) is not the government next time.”
To listen to John Higham’s exchange with reporters, click on the media player below. It begins with a question from CHMA reporter Erica Butler about Liberal strategy in the new riding of Tantramar which no longer includes the Village of Memramcook:
Note: The Progressive Conservatives have scheduled a Tantramar constituency meeting beginning at 6 p.m. on August 14th at the Sackville Legion.
Better to have a few Greens or like-minded MLAs to keep the Liberals honest. Last thing we need is a “business Liberal” government with a strong majority, which is what Susan Holt is likely to deliver. The change will only be superficial.
I wouldn’t expect any less from a hypocritical operator like him.
Another reason to vote for another party. Any party.
Less government meddling, social engineering, and taxation are what everyone should be seeking after so many years of elitist Liberals in power in Ottawa .. so why on earth would you want Liberals in control of the piggy bank in Fredericton? Thought Higham was more savvy than that and was able to read the room. Liberal programming is strong and the network is in place for an academic woman like Susan Holt to be phoning him four times and asking him seems odd – does she know something about his connections and track record that we have failed to notice or Wark has failed to report on? Libertarian Party of New Brunswick has been registered for the 2024 election .. read the “about us” platform at http://lpnb.ca .. because if you’re speaking about real change you’re speaking about the libertarian way of thinking – less government – less invasiveness – less taxation – less bureaucracy…. I’m looking forward to hearing from the real opposition to Higgs’ regime… Tantramar Libertarians.. I’m hearing some rumblings.
This might be a good time for residents to revisit Tommy Douglas’s ‘Mouseland’ story about the mice who kept electing cats to look after their best interests. First they would elect a black cat, and then in the next election they would elect a white cat, but in either case the cats always looked after themselves and did nothing for the mice (other than occasionally having them for breakfast). With this in mind, it might be advisable to avoid the Conservatives and Liberals and vote for our current MLA who has done as much for the riding as an opposition MLA can during her time in office. She has been instrumental in organizing local health care forums with Horizon Health executives so that residents of our riding can hear from those executives in person and express their concerns.
Sally, I checked out the Libertarian Party’s platform, and they have stated positions on many different issues, such as wanting tax dollars going to private schools, but it’s interesting to note that there is no mention of the health care crisis that I could find. Would the reason for there being no mention of health care be that if they were in power they would try to completely privatize our health care system, something that many residents would vehemently oppose?