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Unifor members, we have an opportunity here in New Brunswick to do what even the members of the PC party and many in caucus have been trying to do – oust Blaine Higgs as the leader of our province.
Bad news Blaine
Under his premiership, New Brunswick made headlines for terrible reasons: people dying in ERs while waiting for care, the worst COVID outcomes in the country, baseless and uninformed attacks on trans and gender-questioning youth, the dramatic exits of 12 PC MLAs, the shocking over-spending on travel nurses, and on and on.
With the unexpected influx of people from other parts of Canada to our beautiful province during and post-COVID, there were absolutely new challenges to face.
The cost of housing skyrocketed. The rental vacancy rate neared zero. Our already-stressed health care system was hit with a one-two-punch of a pandemic and increased demand.
But while workers faced these challenges head-on, Blaine Higgs hasn’t used the biggest opportunity he’s been handed in post-COVID years: hundreds of millions in new revenue for the province.
Instead, this public money – our money for public services and supports – sits unspent while the wait list for access to primary care continues to grow, public sector workers are over-worked and under-paid, and affordability worsens for everyone.
Blaine Higgs is not your parents’ PC
I know we are a province of loyal and caring people, with strong ties to our communities. This can also mean strong ties to the political parties we, or even our family, have s chosen to support for many years.
But Blaine Higgs is not a progressive conservative.
Instead, he is hitching his policies and vision for New Brunswick on candidates who speak against same-sex marriage, forms policy while ignoring expert opinion and hard data – we all remember the premier’s famous “data, my ass” – and spends an incredible amount of time attacking trans kids instead of working with school boards, UNB and the College of Psychologists to fill the 84% of school psychologist positions that remain vacant.
Need more reasons to vote against Blaine Higgs?
How about that his government:
- made scab labour legal in the public sector
- banned three CUPE NB leaders from the legislature… after passing a law that allowed government to unilaterally change workers’ pensions
- ignored teachers’ pleas for more classroom supports for years
- favours a candidate who brings hyper-religious talk into politics, over the objections of party members and longtime PC voters
- and has historically, and continues to diminish francophone communities and the French language itself in New Brunswick.
It’s time for new leadership
Unifor member organizers have been speaking with other members, encouraging them to vote. We have also been volunteering with candidates in ridings where they have a strong chance of defeating a PC incumbent (and you can too!).
New Brunswickers deserve a Premier who will take our calls, who will listen to workers and protect their collective bargaining rights, and who won’t spread misinformation that encourages discrimination or harm to children.
Vote on Monday, October 21
Visit nb.uniforvotes.ca to learn more about how and where to vote. And please – talk to your friends, family, and neighbours and encourage them to vote on Monday, too.
