Higgs warned of 'too much power in premier's office' in 2018. His 2023 critics agree

Blaine Higgs began his term as New Brunswick premier promising not to run his government from the top down like he accused his predecessor, Brian Gallant, of doing.

"Today there is too much power in the premier's office," he wrote in a personal letter to voters during the 2018 election campaign. 

"The Premier's office ends up making all the decisions. The voices of citizens and elected officials are not allowed to be as strong as they could and should be. I want to be the Premier who says 'No we don't do it that way anymore.'"

Five years later, with his government roiled by a series of cabinet resignations and firings and mounting accusations of his own tendency toward centralized rule, Higgs still maintains he is a leader who values different points of view and is open to learning from those who do not agree with him.

"I'm never happy when someone quits and walks away because the way we find balance — and the way we respect each other's views in doing so — is how we improve democracy," Higgs told CBC News last week. 

But a growing list of government MLAs and ex-ministers claim that is not the Blaine Higgs they know.

Three weeks ago, former social development minister Dorothy Shephard resigned from cabinet in opposition to the government changing Policy 713, which provides guidance for the treatment of LGBTQ students in schools.

In interviews about the decision, Shephard expressed specific concerns about the policy change but also a long simmering frustration about Higgs making decisions on his own and bypassing ministers by running departments directly from his office.

"There's no conversation with the premier's office. It's all a direct line from the premier's office to the deputy minister," she said.

The criticism was nearly identical to one made nine months ago by former education minister Dominic Cardy in his resignation letter from cabinet.

Cardy claimed major government policy shifts, such as the ill-fated attempt to overhaul French immersion in schools or to disband elected representation on health boards, were increasingly personal decisions being made directly by the premier.

"Your order to abolish the democratically elected Regional Health Authorities without informing Cabinet represents a steady consolidation of power in your own hands," Cardy wrote in the letter.

The New Brunswick Progressive Conservative party had told voters in 2018 that with Higgs as leader it would delegate power and "move decisions closer to communities," but Cardy described the opposite happening, especially, he said, after the party went from a minority to a majority government in 2020.

At the time, Cardy's letter was viewed as incendiary and disloyal. It triggered his expulsion from the government caucus and forced him to sit in the legislature as an independent.