New Brunswick Deserves Better Leadership
From shockingly wasteful spending on travel nurses, to ignoring data, refusing to collaborate, alienating most of his closest allies in cabinet and more - Premier Higgs has shown he’s not doing his job as premier to help you. Here’s what at stake this election.
Improving Health Care
The NB Auditor General wrote in a scathing report that Higgs’ wasteful use of $173 million on private travel nurse companies between 2022 and 2024 posed an “undue risk” to New Brunswick.
In keeping with much of the Higgs government’s actions, the AG noted this costly use of travel nurses showed “a lack of data-driven decision-making, no vendor-selection process and no proper contract development, management or oversight.”
New Brunswickers deserve better than having their public funds wasted on the premier’s stop-gap projects.
We deserve to see improvements to health care that include recruiting and retaining more health care workers, reducing ER wait times, and connecting the nearly 85,000 New Brunswickers on the waitlist with a primary care physician.
Respecting Workers’ Rights
In 2022, Premier Higgs’ government passed a law that allows the province to hire replacement workers - scabs - in the event of a labour disruption. This strips public sector workers of their Charter right to free and fair collective bargaining, increases the likelihood of much longer strikes, and puts lives at risk when untrained scabs are brought in to do the work of professionals.
Then in 2023, Higgs made New Brunswick the only province where the government can make retroactive changes to workers’ retirement plans and leave seniors on a fixed income suddenly earning far less from their pensions. This is wildly disrespectful to the province’s seniors.
As workers, we fight hard for the money we earn and count on for our retirement. We deserve a provincial leader who won’t trample our hard-won rights and freedoms and take money from seniors.
Reducing the Cost of Living
Between the massive increase in the cost of housing, the nearly 10% annual increases from NB Power, and the rising cost of food and other necessities, New Brunswickers need action from their provincial government.
According to Statistics Canada, average rents in New Brunswick increased 34.2 per cent in the last four years - among the highest increases across Canada.
Premier Higgs’ policies are taking more money from workers’ pockets, allowing costs to climb higher, and putting less of our public funds into the public services and infrastructure New Brunswickers need. We deserve a government that will address the financial pressures facing workers and their families.
Helping Kids Learn, Grow and Thrive
The Higgs government’s approach to education has been to publicly criticize teachers and education councils, launch toxic and untruthful attacks about vulnerable trans students, and threaten to dismantle French immersion programs.
Meanwhile, teachers have been sounding alarms for years that inflation has eaten away at education budgets and they are struggling to provide even basic classroom necessities for students. Instead of funding schools, putting some of those budget surpluses to good use for New Brunswick children, Higgs has instead focused on hateful attacks on trans children and the policies designed to provide them with safe and supportive learning environments.
There is no space for hate in our province.
New Brunswickers deserve a government that will focus on delivering high-quality education, supporting teachers and students so we can support the next generation of workers and leaders.
Premier Blaine Higgs has shown he is not the leader New Brunswickers need.
Commit to vote on October 21, 2024. Together, workers can elect a government that will invest in our futures and work respectfully and collaboratively in the best interests of every New Brunswicker.
