Blaine Higgs embraces challenges and they are many

Blaine Higgs ends 2018 holding what he says is the only job that allows him to turn around New Brunswick's dire fortunes: premier.

And he has rushed into the task.

But the job is one he also once acknowledged is much more difficult than the post of finance minister he held from 2010 to 2014.

In 2012, he said his single-minded focus on reducing government spending was easier than then-premier David Alward's need to balance myriad other competing priorities.

A finance minister would have firm views "on how aggressive we can be" with the budget, he said back then.

"The premier, on the other hand, has to balance not only that aspect of our priorities, but all the other priorities that are in the system, and all of the other demands he has across the province. So his challenge is much greater than mine."

Now Higgs is the premier, and finds himself in the thick of one of those challenges, perhaps the toughest of all in New Brunswick: language rights.

He was sworn in vowing to drop a judicial review launched by the previous Liberal government to clarify its bilingualism obligations. He said a court review wasn't necessary and would only slow down his efforts to fix staff shortages at Ambulance New Brunswick.

But he was persuaded to reverse himself and let government lawyers move ahead with a Jan. 24 hearing. It will determine whether the recommendations of labour arbitrator John McEvoy go against the Official Languages Act and language provisions of the Constitution.

I have never been averse to changing my mind if I learn more on a particular issue.- Blaine Higgs, premier

"I have never been averse to changing my mind if I learn more on a particular issue," Higgs said in a year-end interview.

"In this situation, what I learned is that the Constitution and the way it's worded would suggest that there needs to be clarity."

Higgs also decided that while the province waited for a ruling on McEvoy's recommendations, it would go ahead and implement them in the interest of ensuring people get life-saving ambulance service.

So on Dec. 20, Health Minister Ted Flemming directed Ambulance New Brunswick to waive bilingual requirements in temporary paramedic hirings in regions where the government believes demand for second-language service is low.

"The only caveat for me was that we don't lose time here in providing service," Higgs said. "So if we want to carry on [in court] to get a final answer, that's fine, but we're not going to lose time in delivering service. That was kind of the compromise."

Compromise was not something Higgs spoke of fondly as finance minister.

As Alward's finance minister, he complained, often openly, that his own Tory colleagues stymied his balanced-budget plan by worrying more about getting re-elected than about sound fiscal management.

That's one reason he ran for the party leadership in 2016. He couldn't impose his will on the government from the position of finance minister, he said.

"I wasn't the premier."

WorkSafeNBchanges

His first few weeks in the job have borne out that view. "You just can make things happen," he said, citing legislation rewriting the powers of a tribunal for WorkSafeNB appeals.

When the PCs were sworn in Nov. 9, the government had a report in hand recommending changes to the law that would rein in soaring premiums paid by employers.

Higgs says officials told him that they could have a bill ready "in the spring, sometime in February or March So I said, 'In the meantime, we're going to pay the highest rates in the country and that'll likely carry on for a year or more?'

"They said, 'Yeah, it would take a while for the transition.' I said, 'What can we do to speed it up?'"

A bill was ready Nov. 27 and became law 15 days later, in time to roll back part of the scheduled Jan. 1 premium increase.

"What really was exciting was the Worksafe folks themselves were shocked at the speed at which we could actually move," Higgs said. "What it said to me is that if we can do that on this issue, we can do it on other issues."

A rush into a legal quagmire?

But speeding to a solution on the more complicated issue of bilingual ambulances is starting to look like a rush into a legal quagmire.

Besides the McEvoy judicial review, another court challenge is looming in response to Flemming's announcement of weaker hiring requirements.

Murielle and Danny Sonier of Moncton plan to return to court to ask a judge to force the province to comply with a 2017 consent order that settled their lawsuit over a lack of bilingual service.

Watch Harry Forestell's full interview with Premier Blaine Higgs

Premier Blaine Higgs reflects on 2018

6 years ago

Duration 24:55

Premier Blaine Higgs talks to the CBC's Harry Forestell about the biggest issues in 2018 and looks forward to 2019.

That order, signed by both the province and Ambulance New Brunswick as well as the judge in the case, included a commitment to bilingual ambulances everywhere in the province.

The apparent contradiction between that order and the McEvoy recommendation is why the previous Liberal government asked the court to review McEvoy.

The premier says implementing McEvoy immediately is a temporary step, until bilingual staffing is ramped up and the legal issues are sorted out.

But it's a step he was determined to take right away.

"If someone said to me we're going to wait [for a decision on McEvoy] and service will be at risk in the interim, I would not have agreed to it," he said. "But as long as we can do both, we all get an answer at the end of the day."

'It is never because of language'

But even Ambulance New Brunswick is arguing there was no urgency because service would not be at risk.

"Ambulances are never off the road because of language requirements," spokesperson Chisholm Pothier said in an email statement.

"There are other reasons why ambulances are out of service ... but it is never because of language."

And Higgs's own deputy premier, Shippagan-Lameque-Miscou MLA Robert Gauvin the only francophone in the government warned that the controversy had brought him close to resigning, and that he would spend the holidays pondering his future with the party.

It is an indication that, on this issue at least, Higgs's appetite for quick decision-making may not be easily reconciled with what he once called "all of the other priorities in the system" that a premier has to consider.