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New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs The man poised to become New Brunswick’s next premier has a well-earned reputation as a tight-fisted fiscal manager whose resume includes 33 years as a senior executive working for one of Canada’s richest families: the Irving clan. Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs, a 64-year-old engineer and former finance minister, was hired by Irving Oil a week after he graduated from the University of New Brunswick. He was eventually promoted to director of distribution, overseeing oil transportation across eastern Canada and New England. His extensive big business experience has informed his approach to politics. Higgs refers to citizens as customers, and his campaign for the Sept. 24 election was replete with references to getting results. “I came from a company where you had to deliver results in order to survive,” Higgs said when he released the Progressive Conservative platform. “(New Brunswickers) are paying the bills but they’re not getting the service to reflect the amount of money being spent.” Higgs had promised to cut government waste and balance the province’s budget in two years — a year earlier than his outgoing rival, Liberal Premier Brian Gallant. And like other right-of-centre politicians, he also promised not to raise taxes, while offering a modest spending plan. “We will set lofty goals and achieve them. We don’t need more taxes, we need results,” Higgs said Friday after Gallant’s government fell on a confidence vote. “We ran a principled campaign and ran on the belief that New Brunswick needs better service from the political leaders.” Tom Bateman, a political science professor at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, says as a former Irving executive, Higgs will face scrutiny when weighing just about any government decision. “There is an imbalance that would create that perception with any government,” he said. “Mr. Higgs would be well aware of that perception and would want to disabuse people of the idea that he was a cipher for the Irving companies.” The company is one of the province’s largest employers, with interests in forestry, pulp and paper, transportation, oil refining and distribution, retail, media outlets and shipbuilding. Canadian Business magazine says the privately owned empire was thought to be worth $7.8 billion, making the Irving family the eighth richest in Canada. “The interactions between public policy and the Irvings are multitudinous,” Bateman said. “It’s a very large and influential group of companies in a province that is very small and short on alternative means of economic development.” Before the election campaign began, the Liberals took aim at Higgs’ business background, saying he has opposed minimum-wage increases, income tax increases for the richest New Brunswickers and a plan to make tuition free for some post-secondary students. “He wants to help the wealthy and large corporations,” Gallant said at the time. “And he’s demonstrated that in his voting record as leader of the Opposition.” The Liberals also produced a series of attack ads, which included the slogan: “Blaine Higgs puts big business first.” However, no […]
