Green leader now a target as Higgs raises spectre of 'coalition'

Green Party Leader David Coon finds himself in an unusual position at the outset of his fourth New Brunswick election campaign: on the defensive.

Third parties like the Greens usually have the latitude to promise just about whatever they want, without fear of attack or serious scrutiny, because there's little chance they'll be in a position to implement those commitments.

But with a potentially close election result on Oct. 21 and with Coon confirming he's working on a list of conditions for supporting a Liberal minority government the Greens are now a target.

"We cannot let Susan Holt and David Coon do to New Brunswick what Trudeau and Singh have done to Canada," PC Leader Blaine Higgs said at the start of his campaign.

He was referring to the agreement federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh made in 2022 to support Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's minority Liberal government during confidence votes in the House of Commons.

That allowed Trudeau to avoid a new election but according to Higgs, it has also led to excessive government spending and far-left policies that most Canadians now reject.

"Anyone who thinks it would be different here with a Green-Liberal coalition it won't be," Higgs said.

"That'll be a carbon copy of what we've seen federally."

To be clear, the federal Liberal-NDP deal was not a coalition government as it's usually defined. There were no NDP ministers sitting in Trudeau's cabinet.

Instead, the New Democrats supported the Liberals on key votes, in return for the government acting on several NDP priorities, such as a national dental coverage plan and anti-replacement worker legislation.

It's not unlike how Higgs himself worked with three MLAs from the right-wing populist People's Alliancewhen he led a minority government from 2018 to 2020.

That was different, the PC leader said last week, "because the philosophies are very different."

There is indeed potential common ground between the New Brunswick Liberals and Greens.

They align on opposing Higgs's tight-fisted approach to budgets, his refusal to cap rents and his changes to Policy 713 last year, among others.

But they also have differences.

The Greens have promised to ban glyphosate spraying, for example an idea Liberal party members rejected at a policy convention in February.

Coon has been up front that, if the Greens don't win government and no one else gets a majority of seats, he'll have a wish list ready to take into negotiations.

But he won't say what's on it.

"It's important to prepare for any possibility. We have a very long list now, just from some brainstorming," he said at his campaign launch last Wednesday.

"The platform will be the starting point if we find ourselves in that situation."

Until Coon gets specific, Higgs has the opportunity to raise the spectre of runaway spending and other hypothetical far-left scenarios.

Unfortunately for the Green leader, some of his own candidates are already getting specific.

Wilfred Roussel, a former Liberal MLA now running for the Greens in Shippagan-les-les, told CBC News that a new bridge between Shippagan and Lamque to replace the existing bridge, built in 1960, would be on the party's list of conditions.

"The Green Party is the only party that has said, 'If we get elected, before we make an alliance with any Liberals or Conservatives, we will make sure that this [commitment] is within the package,'" he said.

Comments like that can further feed Higgs's argument that a Liberal-Green deal would indeed be costly.

It also gives Holt and the Liberals, however, the opportunity to put more distance between them and Coon.

"From what we've seen of their promises so far, they're really expensive," Holt said of the Green campaign.

She says Coon's platform, including a pledge to restore rural services that have been cut, would take the province back into deficits, "something we fundamentally disagree with. It's our goal to balance the budget every year. We've committed to that."

Holt's Fredericton North candidate, Luke Randall, who ran for the Greens in 2020, even raised the prospect of "a Higgs-Coon" coalition.

"My expectation is that if David really wants to get work done he would be willing to work with any leader," Randall said using that to make the argument for a Liberal majority.

Last year Coon said he would not make any deals with the PCs as long as Higgs is leader, making Holt his only potential partner.

But the fact that both parties are taking shots at him while accusing each other of being willing to deal with him shows how pivotal he will be if no one wins a majority on Oct. 21.