Monica Barley says she'll bring new ideas if elected PC leader

As the only woman and the only candidate without elected experience, Monica Barley may be unique in the Progressive Conservative race.

But the logic behind her candidacy feels familiar.

As a fluently bilingual, 30-something lawyer from the Moncton area, she brings to mind previous successful leadership candidates Bernard Lord and Brian Gallant.

The very day she launched her campaign in May, some PC members were pushing the comparison to Lord the last New Brunswick premier to win two consecutive majority governments.

"If you make that parallel, you're right," said former cabinet minister Claude Williams.

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"She can go to Lameque and understand the culture, understand the people, talk in their same language, and at the end of the day go to St. George, St. Stephen, Saint John, and also the same can apply."

With a father from rural, English New Brunswick and a mother from Quebec, Lord grew up in Moncton's cultural mix.

Francophones considered him one of their own, while anglophones anxious about bilingualism felt that he understood where they were coming from.

It was a potent combination on the electoral map, allowing the PCs to compete in what were considered safe francophone Liberal ridings.

Roots in English, French cultures

Barley also emphasizes her Kent County roots and her familiarity with both cultures.

"I really understand where both are coming from, I believe, and they come from different places," she said during a recent CBC leadership debate.

In this summer's forums around the province, she described herself as the candidate who can beat Gallant in the next election.

She's also been pushing her newness.

Like Lord when he sought the leadership, she has never held elective officeand is explicitly running against politics-as-usual.

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"We can't continue with the same-old, same-old politicians who have been unable to meet the challenges we face," she says in a campaign video.

"We can move New Brunswick forward if we move past the status quo."

That's a trickier gambit.

Lord ran on change when the Liberals had been in office for more than a decade and had accumulated a lot of political baggage.

But Barley's criticism of status-quo politics includes the PC government of David Alward which included ministers such as Williams who are supporting her.

Promises of reform

It also includes her leadership rival Blaine Higgs, the former finance minister who's also running on a platform of doing politics differently.

Higgs saidhe's able to promise reform because he knows the system and knows how to get on with the job on day one an implicit critique of more inexperienced candidates such as Barley.

"We will never solve this if we think every four or eight years, government's going to come through being filled with the only job I can imagine that requires no experience of any kind," he said.

Complex reforms like his overhaul of public-sector pensions took a couple of years to get underway because of political calculations something Higgs says he knows how to avoid thanks to his experience.

"If I thought, you know, you've got to go through that again in year one or two, with another government which you would, because it's people going through a learning curve to me, [the question is] are you going to get there or are you not going to get there?"

Lord's chameleon-like abilities on language also applied to his broader political philosophy; he spoke often of "a balanced" approach between progressivism and conservatism.

"The two go hand in hand," he said at his 2006 re-election campaign launch.

"It's not about only one thing, it's about doing all the things we need to do."

Barley's using the same concept, describing her leadership style as "inclusive, yet decisive."

But her lack of sharp definition has its risks.

In the recent CBC debate, she blasted the Liberal education plan for lacking detail in one breath, saying "there's no real path for anyone to know" how to put it in effect.

But a few minutes later, she said government should not be too specific.

"Politicians have to stay out of it and let the experts, the teachers, the educators do their jobs," she said.

And when she launched her campaign, she said the PCs needed "a leader who is prepared to do things that have never been done before," then refused to tell reporters what those things would be.

"Those details will come," she promised.

Barley's campaign wouldn't make her available for an interview this week to provide those details.

It's a classic play-it-safe move for a candidate widely seen as one of the frontrunners to win Saturday's vote.

It allows PC members to continue to see her as whatever kind of leader they want to see a strategy that worked for Bernard Lord, and that Barley clearly hopes will work for her too.

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