N.B. Greens open to deal with Conservatives
Leader willing to negotiate with PCs and Liberals in wake of inconclusive election
FREDERICTON — New Brunswick’s political intrigue continued Thursday, with the Green Party leader raising the unlikely prospect of a deal that could hand power to the Progressive Conservatives.
Green Leader David Coon said his party would negotiate with both the Liberals and Tories about a potential agreement to support a throne speech and budget, keeping a minority government from being defeated.
Coon’s proposal, in the wake of Monday’s deadlocked election results, is modelled after the arrangement in British Columbia, where the Greens hold the balance of power in an NDP-led minority government.
Coon said it might be easier for Blaine Higgs’ Tories to achieve a deal because the Greens’ three seats would ensure a majority, while Premier Brian Gallant’s Liberals would be one vote shy of a majority. The Liberals would need to find at least one other member of the legislature to support them on votes of confidence.
“It’s an agreement to support the throne speech and the budget to ensure we have stable government and nothing else. It doesn’t make any promises or commitments around other pieces of legislation or any other matter,” he said Thursday.
The Tories won 22 seats in the 49-seat house, one more than the Liberals but not enough for a majority. The right-of-centre People’s Alliance also won three seats.
Higgs met with the province’s lieutenant-governor on Thursday, and emerged to say Gallant should resign or immediately recall the legislature.
He said Lt.-Gov. Jocelyne Roy Vienneau told him that if Gallant’s Liberals are unable to secure the confidence of the legislature, she will immediately ask the Tories to form a minority government.
“I am calling on Brian Gallant to do the honourable thing and recognize that he lost the election,” Higgs said outside the lieutenant-governor’s residence in Fredericton.
“He does not have a mandate to govern and he is prolonging the inevitable. … If he refuses to resign, he should do what is right for New Brunswick and immediately call the legislature back, so the province has a stable and functioning government.”
Higgs said he had no plans to form a formal coalition government with either of the third parties.
However, he indicated that he was open to a more informal arrangement: “The deal is not something that has to be a signed document that says, ‘Here, I’ll give you this thing, if you give me that.’ ”
On Wednesday, Gallant said he planned to seek a formal alliance with the Greens.
Coon said his party would begin negotiations soon, and his caucus would meet to set its terms on what they would want to see in the budget and throne speeches.
“Both Mr. Gallant and Mr. Higgs have obtained a minority of support from New Brunswickers, and they need to be prepared to discuss governing in a way that respects the majority,” said Coon.
An alliance between the Greens and the Tories would be complicated by the fact that the two parties appear to be far apart on how the province should deal with climate change.
Higgs has said he’ll refund any carbontax revenue to New Brunswickers if Ottawa imposes its own pricing regime on the province. As well, he has promised to join a legal challenge by the Ontario and Saskatchewan governments aimed at killing the federal plan.