Noah Fry, PhD Candidate, Political Science, McMaster University
THE CONVERSATION
Tue, July 4, 2023
New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs speaks to the media outside Government House in Fredericton, N.B., following a cabinet shuffle in June 2023.
Tue, July 4, 2023
New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs speaks to the media outside Government House in Fredericton, N.B., following a cabinet shuffle in June 2023.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stephen MacGillivray
Though he lacks Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s showmanship, New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs has a hard-line conservative record to make right-wing ideologues giddy.
Unlike some of its previous initiatives, the New Brunswick government’s Policy 713 — an education directive on sexual orientation and gender identity — has put Higgs on the national radar.
Using the language of “parental rights,” the policy now requires parental consent for any name and pronoun changes for students under 16. It also removes language protecting gender identity in sports.
Read more: New Brunswick’s LGBTQ+ safe schools debate makes false opponents of parents and teachers
In response to the changes, six members of the 29-member Conservative caucus voiced their frustrations, including four cabinet members. Since then, two ministers have resigned while others have been shuffled out of caucus.
Grievance conservatism
But this parental rights advocacy is only the latest in a series of right-wing policies in New Brunswick.
Despite relatively low popular vote support in the past two provincial elections, Higgs has unapologetically governed from the right since 2018.
Some of his actions are conventional. Higgs lowered taxes for top income earners, ran surpluses and minimized increases to education and health care. He has a contentious relationship with labour and has criticized workers for a weak work ethic.
However, Higgs has gone further than his Conservative counterparts in the region. In doing so, he has burned many bridges.
His relationship with the health-care sector is fraught. Emergency rooms have overflowed at times with residents dying in waiting rooms.
When it was reported a woman was unable to get access to a rape kit, Higgs blamed the nurses for “showing a lack of compassion.” He has also limited abortion access within the province.
Higgs has an equally contentious relationship with Indigenous Peoples. In 2021, New Brunswick directed government employees to halt territorial acknowledgements because the province is involved in a series of legal actions and land claims initiated by First Nations.
Read more: New Brunswick ban on land acknowledgements is a death blow to nation-to-nation relationships
The province also tore up tax-sharing agreements with the Wolastoqey Nation, which Higgs argued were “unfair.”
Though he lacks Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s showmanship, New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs has a hard-line conservative record to make right-wing ideologues giddy.
Unlike some of its previous initiatives, the New Brunswick government’s Policy 713 — an education directive on sexual orientation and gender identity — has put Higgs on the national radar.
Using the language of “parental rights,” the policy now requires parental consent for any name and pronoun changes for students under 16. It also removes language protecting gender identity in sports.
Read more: New Brunswick’s LGBTQ+ safe schools debate makes false opponents of parents and teachers
In response to the changes, six members of the 29-member Conservative caucus voiced their frustrations, including four cabinet members. Since then, two ministers have resigned while others have been shuffled out of caucus.
Grievance conservatism
But this parental rights advocacy is only the latest in a series of right-wing policies in New Brunswick.
Despite relatively low popular vote support in the past two provincial elections, Higgs has unapologetically governed from the right since 2018.
Some of his actions are conventional. Higgs lowered taxes for top income earners, ran surpluses and minimized increases to education and health care. He has a contentious relationship with labour and has criticized workers for a weak work ethic.
However, Higgs has gone further than his Conservative counterparts in the region. In doing so, he has burned many bridges.
His relationship with the health-care sector is fraught. Emergency rooms have overflowed at times with residents dying in waiting rooms.
When it was reported a woman was unable to get access to a rape kit, Higgs blamed the nurses for “showing a lack of compassion.” He has also limited abortion access within the province.
Higgs has an equally contentious relationship with Indigenous Peoples. In 2021, New Brunswick directed government employees to halt territorial acknowledgements because the province is involved in a series of legal actions and land claims initiated by First Nations.
Read more: New Brunswick ban on land acknowledgements is a death blow to nation-to-nation relationships
The province also tore up tax-sharing agreements with the Wolastoqey Nation, which Higgs argued were “unfair.”
Higgs, left, and New Brunswick Aboriginal Affairs Minister Arlene Dunn, right, speak with Chief Alan Polchies Jr. of St. Mary’s First Nation after raising flags as part of National Indigenous Peoples Day in Fredericton, N.B., in June 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Stephen MacGillivray
Proudly unilingual
Higgs’s relationship with New Brunswick’s Acadian francophone population may be his worst. He once ran for the leadership of the Confederation of Regions party — an anglophone-rights party.
Higgs does not speak French and has made little effort to learn it, and has depicted himself as a “target” for being unilingual.
Higgs started his premiership in 2018 by loosening bilingual hiring requirements for paramedic positions, paving the way for unilingual workers in designated anglophone areas.
Recently, the government attempted to “innovate” French immersion by establishing one program with reduced French content. Conservatives argued that French immersion was two-tiered and disadvantaged English Prime students who receive mostly English instruction.
After tremendous pushback from parents and teachers, which Higgs referred to as “a shouting session,” the government walked back its plans.
The policy nonetheless led to the resignation of Education Minister Dominic Cardy. In a widely circulated letter, Cardy called out Higgs for his “micromanagement.”
Some argue Higgs moved to the centre during the province’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. But his early support for vaccinations and lockdown measures didn’t reflect his subsequent efforts. New Brunswick re-opened early and stopped reporting weekly case numbers.
Dominic Cardy, New Brunswick’s education minister at the time, releases the province’s back to school plan in August 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He later resigned over tensions with Higgs.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kevin Bissett
Will Higgs win again?
With reports of a leadership review and tensions within his party, an early election is possible.
Though some pollsters report Higgs is either tied with the New Brunswick Liberals or trailing them, he still has a pathway to victory.
Higgs won in 2018 and 2020 by capitalizing on New Brunswick’s linguistic divide. Losing francophone ridings by massive pluralities doesn’t matter because he carried the more plentiful, mostly anglophone ridings.
Academics have observed New Brunswick’s political behaviour tends to follow a diagonal line drawn from Moncton to Grand Falls. Historically, Liberal-Conservative divisions have matched this alignment.
New Brunswick 2020 election results with dividing line. Modified map originally from Elections NB. Elections New Brunswick
This began to change in the 1970s, but has re-emerged as a political strategy. Higgs knows the game and has won twice by playing it.
Higgs practises grievance politics that is as divisive as it is successful. His calculations involve mobilizing a coalition big enough to win but small enough to remain ideologically pure.
He does this through picking issues that, while unpopular broadly, motivate voters within his coalition. Policy 713 is an example: the frustrated voters who cast ballots solely as a form of protest to this issue are few and far between, and unlikely to vote Conservative anyway.
This game is not Higgs’s invention — it’s the new Canadian conservatism. Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and Alberta’s Danielle Smith use the same strategy. Both have platforms that voice suspicions of government, evident during their campaigns for “freedom” during COVID-19 protocols.
Yet Higgs is a more serious threat. He pursues a hard-right agenda without scrutiny. He has imposed his agenda on a centrist province with barely any national media attention.
To his credit, Higgs does not hide who he is. He is open with media and speaks his mind. Canadians — not just New Brunswickers — would be wise to listen.
This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. The Conversation has a variety of fascinating free newsletters.
It was written by: Noah Fry, McMaster University.
Read more:
Politicians believe voters to be more conservative than they really are
Will Danielle Smith veer back to the right and towards Alberta separatism?
Noah Fry is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
NB Policy 713: LGBT school policy change causes political turmoil in Canada
Nadine Yousif - BBC News, Toronto
Mon, July 3, 2023
New Brunswick premier Blaine Higgs has faced calls to resign after forging ahead with controversial changes to an LGBT school policy
A controversial policy change that bars teachers from using a student's preferred pronouns without parental permission will soon go into effect in New Brunswick despite pushback. It has caused political turmoil in the Canadian province.
In May, under Premier Blaine Higgs, New Brunswick announced that a policy to create a safe space for students who identify as LGBT in schools will be amended, with the changes coming into effect on 1 July.
The amendments to the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity policy - also known as Policy 713 - removed explicit mention of allowing students to participate in extracurricular activities, including sports teams, that reflect their gender identity.
More controversially, the changes - as explained by the province's education minister Bill Hogan - also forbid teachers from using the chosen preferred names and pronouns of a student under the age of 16 without the consent of their parents.
In cases where it is not possible to get parental permission, the policy states that a student should be sent to a social worker or a psychologist to develop a plan on how to approach their parents.
Mr Higgs and his right-leaning Progressive Conservative government updated the policy without a legislative vote, due to what they said were "hundreds of complaints from parents and teachers".
The government has been criticised for not providing evidence of these complaints, and the changes have since created a firestorm in the small province of less than a million people.
Two New Brunswick ministers quit in protest, while two others were pushed out by Mr Higgs for not supporting his plan. The premier now faces a growing threat of being ousted from office, as dissidents from his own party have called for a leadership review citing "a pattern of autocratic" governing.
Even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau weighed in, igniting a debate on the issue at the federal level.
At a Pride event earlier in June, Mr Trudeau said that "trans kids in New Brunswick are being told they don't have the right to be their true self, that they need to ask permission".
"Trans kids need to feel safe, not targeted by politicians," he said.
In response, federal Conservative opposition leader Pierre Poilievre told Mr Trudeau to "butt out" of New Brunswick politics.
"The prime minister has no business in decisions that should rest with provinces and parents," Mr Poilievre said.
What is Policy 713? And why was it changed?
Initially passed in 2020 after a decade of consultations, Policy 713 in its original form asked for parental consent in order to formally change students' names or pronouns, but made it mandatory to use a student's preferred name if it is not possible to get permission from a parent.
It also allowed students to participate on sporting teams and use washrooms consistent with their gender identity.
Nicki Lyons-MacFarlane, who volunteers with LGBT youth in the city of Fredericton, said the policy has benefited many such students in the province.
"Students have been validated and affirmed by this policy," they told the BBC. "If anything, it has saved lives."
They added that in light of the changes, students now fear being mis-gendered or outed to their families.
Mr Higgs' government said the changes to the policy are about "ensuring parents also feel respected". In a recent interview with the CBC, the premier, who has been in office since 2018, said he has seen "a tremendous amount of outpouring support" for his stance.
Prime Minister Trudeau criticised the policy change.
But the changes have been the subject of fierce opposition from parts of the public in New Brunswick.
Several local protests have been held, and school psychologists and social workers have filed grievances with the government.
The province's child and youth advocate, Kelly Lamrock, has called the new policy "shoddy and inadvertently discriminatory".
Donald Wright, a professor of political science at the University of New Brunswick, said the changes to Policy 713 came as a surprise for some, and have been the topic of conversation for many in the province. But Mr Wright added the premier is known for supporting "wedge issues" that are typically divisive.
"He believes that enough New Brunswickers will support him on this," he said.
The move, however, has proven to be a remarkable political gamble for the premier, Mr Wright said.
"He has lost a quarter of his cabinet," he said. "That is not insignificant."
Hadeel Ibrahim, a reporter who has covered the issue for CBC in New Brunswick, said the changes to Policy 713 were the final straw for those who have previously opposed Mr Higgs' other policies and his style of governance.
"Some people are saying there is a de-emphasis on the 'progressive' part of 'Progressive Conservative', because they believe he is going too far to the right," Ms Ibrahim said.
The rest of Canada weighs in
The debate over the policy in New Brunswick quickly spread beyond the province's borders.
LGBT advocates in other parts of Canada have raised concern Mr Higgs' move is a sign of "American-style politics" on gender identity seeping into Canadian society. Laws restricting and regulating the lives of transgender youth are part of a rising trend in the US, with numerous states passing laws that relate to transgender people.
If US firms 'go woke', do they really go broke?
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, a national civil rights group, has threatened the premier with a lawsuit, arguing the changes to Policy 713 are "unlawful and unconstitutional".
But there has also been some support. Action4Canada, a conservative Christian group based in British Columbia, touted it as a "heroic decision" and a test case.
"Premier Higgs and (Education) Minister Bill Hogan have courageously and unapologetically taken the first steps, in Canada, towards protecting children from going down a path of destruction," the group said in a statement.
The debate comes at the heels of other controversies on LGBT issues and schools that have taken place across the country. Earlier in June, a Catholic school board in the Toronto area voted against flying the Pride flag outside its main offices, prompting a student walk-out in protest.
A poll commissioned by Canadian think-tank Second Street of 1,523 people in early May - before New Brunswick's policy changes were announced - suggested that 57% of Canadians believe parents have a right to be informed by a school if a child wants to change their gender identity.
"I don't think it is too surprising that parents want to know what their kids are up to in school," said think-tank president Colin Craig of the results.
Ms Ibrahim said that no official polling has been done on the policy change in New Brunswick. As a result, it has been difficult to discern just how much local support the premier has on this issue.
As the amended policy comes into effect on Saturday, some teachers in New Brunswick have already stated that they will not follow it.
A handful of school boards have said they will develop their own policies that will allow teachers to use a students' chosen name and pronouns informally, regardless of parental consent or age.
Given the political and public reaction, Mr Wright at the University of New Brunswick said there appears to be more support for Policy 713 in its original form than the amendments.
And with his future as leader now on the line, Mr Wright said the premier may have "misplayed his cards".
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