Premier Susan Holt answering question on cut to Green Party caucus budget at her news conference last week
Liberal Premier Susan Holt says she has no intention of overriding the work of a legislative committee that decided to slash the Green Party caucus budget by $154,000 and give that money instead to her party’s caucus.
“The decisions on how the opposition and the government members’ offices are funded is a decision of the Legislative Administrative Committee,” Holt explained last week, adding the committee members agreed to a funding formula that they felt “was most equitable and fair across all 49 representatives in the New Brunswick legislature.”
She was responding to a question at her weekly news conference about the potential loss of effective opposition voices in the legislature.
The Greens have been forced to lay off two of their four caucus staff members because of the budget cut.
“There’s clearly an attempt by the Liberals to try to undermine the work that we do in the legislature,” Tantramar Green MLA Megan Mitton said today in a telephone interview.
“It’s frustrating because some of the work that we need to do is to read and research bills,” she added, “so that we are effective in dealing with them at committee.”
Mitton said that she and Green leader David Coon will continue to put in even more hours to do that work.
“I refuse to let them slow us down despite their best efforts,” she added.
She also pointed out that the new budget allocations have nothing to do with the Greens’ loss of one seat in the election last fall because the party’s caucus budget had already been reduced to reflect that loss.
“They’ve taken this further,” she says. “This is clearly an attack on the Greens.”
Cuts to Green statements
MLA Megan Mitton reading a statement in the legislature in 2020
Mitton says that yesterday she was writing a statement to read in the legislature when she learned that the rules had been changed and the time for Green statements had been cut in half, from two per day to one, with that lost time allocated to the Progressive Conservatives.
“What that means is, they’ve taken 40% of our caucus budget and they gave it to themselves, and then they took 50% of our member statements and gave them to the PCs,” she says, adding that those brief, one-minute member statements are important for calling attention to issues that matter.
She says the statement she wasn’t allowed to read yesterday was a follow-up to questions she had asked about how many people apply for social assistance and how many actually receive it.
“I finally got the number and I was shocked,” she says. “More than half of people who call and apply for assistance are screened out as ineligible. It’s like 11,000 people who call and ask for help and don’t get it. And so, I was going to draw attention to how the system isn’t working.”
She says the figures also showed that about 42% of those who apply for disability benefits get rejected.
“I was going to draw attention to how the government is failing thousands of people who are struggling the most.”
Two party system
Mitton says she has made statements every day she was in the legislature since 2018 when she was first elected — statements ranging from expressing concerns about cuts to road maintenance budgets, the rough shape of many roads such as Rte. 955, lack of access to primary health care, the need to reform laws for victims of sexual abuse, inadequate responses to the climate crisis and the urgency of protecting the Chignecto Isthmus from rising seas and violent storms.
“I speak for thousands of people,” she says, “and I was extremely upset yesterday when I learned that the government is trying to silence us.”
She says the all-party committee that decided on the caucus budget cut meets behind closed doors and discussions there are not made public, but she feels the Liberal majority and their PC colleagues were motivated by politics.
“I do think this is an effort to reinforce the two-party system that benefited both the Conservatives and the Liberals, because they basically just passed power back and forth, 100% of the power, you know, every four or eight years.
“And they were quite happy to do it that way,” she says.
““I do think this is an effort to reinforce the two-party system that benefited both the Conservatives and the Liberals, because they basically just passed power back and forth, 100% of the power, you know, every four or eight years.
“And they were quite happy to do it that way,” she says.”
Sadly, this is pretty much it.
And in between those four to eight years, people will complain about how X party is doing oh so bad and that Y party is somehow better (or not).
Maybe someday NB will wake up and give another party a chance.
You mean vote for a different party than these red/blue/green agenda parties Elaine? We can only hope! Libertarian Party of New Brunswick was founded in 2024 by Keith Tays, a man who pours foundations for a living with his sons. I think he’s got a lot of great ideas for our province at http://lpnb.ca .. and of course less government and lower taxes appeals to everyone at this point. A great platform for fresh ideas and free thinkers.. that’s the “give another party a chance” I can get behind. Candidate for Tantramar – Donna Allen – who ran against Megan Mitton in 2024 for the Libertarian Party of New Brunswick is now running as a federal party candidate – also think she is way more experienced in life and in the work world than Megan Mitton so I would vote for her at this point over someone who has listed job experience as “working at the Wetlands Centre” of the local highschool.
Funny – green has NEVER been a party in power so I think from the start you’re missing the point.
Since you missed it, it seems, the point was for some OTHER party than the Cons or Libs to have their chance at making or breaking NB. To give a chance to a different party, and a party that was more focused on NB as a whole with realistic, actual positions, not just another Conservative party revamp under a ‘neat name'(and before you say anything, yes I HAVE looked at the stances of the Libertarian Party and let’s be polite to say no agreement with some if not most of their opinions/stances).
But you do you.
Actually, Green has never been close to being in power, so lumping them in with the Cons and Libs is disingenuous. The Greens are just the modern day NDP; no real power even if the people and policies are something people should consider.
NB needs to look at other parties than the Cons or Libs, give them a try to make or break NB.
As for the Libertarian Party of NB…
You do you.
They lost a seat, the Tantramar-Memramcook riding decreased in population by 23%. The votes cast in Tantramar and Fredericton South that went towards electing the two Green candidates represent 1,05% of all eligible voters province wide.
Puts things in perspective.
Comment from Bruce Wark: I guess “perspective” depends on the figures you choose. For example, the Liberals won under half of the popular vote (48.2%) but 63% of the seats in the 49-seat legislature. Their seat total was 31. The PCs won 35% of the vote and 16 seats or almost 33% of the seats. The Greens won 13.8% of the vote and only 4% or 2 of the seats. These figures show that in terms of the overall popular vote, the Liberals are disproportionately over-represented while the PCs and Greens are under-represented — the Greens most notably so.
That’s what happens in a first-past-the-post system where many thousands of votes are wasted and final results do not represent the will of those voters who actually cast ballots or the actual support parties have among voters. (I notice you choose the figure of all “eligible” voters and for some reason you choose to restrict the Green vote to the two ridings they won, not the provincial totals which were: Liberals: 180,803, PCs.: 131,329 and Greens 51,558.)
To put this another way, the Liberals won less than half of the vote, but can now do whatever they like in the legislature. As Megan Mitton told me, they have 100% of the power, enough it seems to strip the Greens of half of their research and communications staff. No wonder debates in the legislature are meaningless and the important decisions are made elsewhere, i.e. in the premier’s office, the cabinet room and among deputy ministers whom the government appoints and in the bureaucracies that those deputies run.
This is another “perspective.” I leave it to you and readers to choose between them or come up with their own.
Imagine the power Megan Mitton would have been able to enjoy at this point to get a covered bridge fixed and more.. if only she had “flipped” and taken John Higham’s advice to join that fast-moving Holt Train.. just imagine that Tantramar? Green are fringe and they will always be fringe party politics. Unfortunately for the quiet people of Tantramar who just want to be left alone they’re apathy and lack of voter turnout won Megan’s seat for her, not her popularity.. she did not win a popular vote.. she won because her supporters are particularly noisy and influential around the town of Sackville where most professors put out Green lawn signs on their big comfy homes’ front yards.
And just imagine the backlash she would have gotten for going against her stance/principles just to “get in power”.
Her standing with the Greens even though there was no chance of power says a lot more about Megan than those who say she should have ‘flipped’. And I say good on her for standing her ground and standing for her morals and beliefs.
I voted for Megan.
I voted for her because I actually believed that their solution for Health Care is the BEST solution for Health Care. While my stances on other things can shift, when it comes to Health Care, that’s one of the biggest issues for me.
Green aren’t a “Fringe” party. An example of “Fringe” would be the Libertarian Party (they only got 57 votes; NDP would also be ‘fringe’ with their 84).
But in one thing you are right – voter apathy hurts everyone, regardless of the stance on party. In a riding of Tantramar, as of 2023, there were 14,545 people. In the election last year, only 5,051 people voted. That’s only 34.7% of the population. Even then, Megan beat the John by just over half but that half was NOT a lot of people. I think there are LOTS of reasons why this happened and it’s not just apathy.