MLA Don Monahan enters provincial PC leadership race

There’s now a second declared candidate for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick.

Arcadia-Butternut Valley-Maple Hills MLA Don Monahan officially launched his campaign in Fredericton on Saturday.

In an interview with CBC News, Monahan differentiated himself from both former premier Blaine Higgs and leadership rival Daniel Allain.

The first-term MLA said he considered some of the contentious moves by the Higgs government — such as a plan to replace French immersion and a stricter Policy 713 on students choosing their own pronouns in school — to have been settled in the last election.

“I think that voters have made their decision in the last general election of 2024 on Policy 713 and the way things need to be handled,” he said.

He said he would not bring back those issues without a consultation with PC party members — something Higgs faced criticism for not doing within his caucus and party.

“If we're going to work together and form policies and ideas that are going to unite people … we have to be the voice and the leader of the community we represent,” he said, referring to the party.

Monahan said he chose to run as a candidate in 2024 knowing the divisions within the party over Higgs’s approach, but he wanted to support the then-premier’s approach to balancing the budget.

“I must admit it was an interesting time making my decision to run under some of those issues that were occurring,” Monahan said.

“But I believed in the greater good. I believed in what we did in the province, more specifically in terms of fiscal restraint and maintaining a balanced budget, because you have to keep your house in order if you want to do future projects and future spending.”

Allain, the only other declared candidate in the leadership race, voted with the Liberal opposition in June 2023 on a motion calling for more study on Policy 713.

He was dropped from cabinet and decided not to run in 2024, though he volunteered for the campaigns of PC candidates in the Moncton area.

Monahan called Allain “a very stand-up gentleman” and wouldn’t comment on the former cabinet minister’s decision to sit out the last election.

Party members will choose their leader “based on the pros and cons of of all candidates who may enter the race. … I want unity and I want people to work together. And I don't want the party to continue to air their dirty laundry in public.”