Shockwaves ripple across province in wake of People's Alliance defections

People's Alliance supporters in New Brunswick found themselves bewildered and without a political home on Thursday, while some francophone Progressive Conservatives were questioning their own futures in their party.

The stunning defection of two Alliance MLAs to the PCs – followed immediately by the dissolution of the Alliance as a party – continued to reverberate both inside the New Brunswick Legislature and across the province.

"It's kind of a sad day. It's kind of an end to it," said Doaktown village councillor Art O'Donnell, who came within 35 votes of getting elected as an Alliance candidate in the 2018 election.

"It was a controversial party but they did stand for some good things, and I feel bad. I feel actually a little bit betrayed by PANB."

Meanwhile, a PC candidate who welcomed Higgs and other Tory ministers to campaign alongside him in the 2020 election said he was tearing up his party membership card in the wake of Wednesday's political earthquake. 

"These two individuals as MLAs in the party they were in, the People's Alliance, reflect what I don't want to be associated with," said Mathieu Gérald Caissie, who ran in Shediac Bay-Dieppe.

He said he feared that having former leader Kris Austin and Miramichi MLA Michelle Conroy join the government would slow the advancement of language equality in the province.

Austin has insisted over the years he doesn't oppose official bilingualism but objects to some of the ways it's been implemented, such as the creation of two language-based regional health authorities and the requirement for bilingual ambulance paramedics.

But those positions have been anathema to francophones who see those measures as constitutionally required and fundamental to their minority-language rights.

Austin and Conroy said Thursday on CBC's Information Morning Fredericton that they still favour merging the health authorities and eliminating the official language commissioner's position.

"I'm not going to change my views just because we changed a colour," Conroy said.

That led the Liberals to accuse Premier Blaine Higgs of making "backroom deals" to weaken language rights in exchange for the two MLAs joining his government.

"What a sad day yesterday," Liberal Leader Roger Melanson said during Question Period in the legislature Thursday, as Austin and Conroy listened from among the PC benches.

​The People's Alliance Party is no more. Leader Kris Austin and Miramichi MLA Michelle Conroy speak with our host, Jeanne Armstrong, about why they decided to cross the floor.