Provincial byelections in three New Brunswick ridings called for April 24

Provincial byelections in three former Liberal ridings will be held on April 24.

Restigouche-Chaleur, Dieppe, and Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint-Isidore have been vacant since the fall when three veteran Liberal MLAs resigned.

The byelections give Liberal Leader Susan Holt her first chance at winning a seat in the legislature. She said the party will focus on local campaigns rather than pitch broader, provincial issues to voters.

“Our team (is) going to be local champions, and that’s what this election is going to be about,” she said.

“That’s actually what people are telling us they’re missing. Government feels very far away from the people, all of the decisions are being made in one office in Fredericton, and they want local community-based government.”

Premier Blaine Higgs called the byelections on Thursday. He also said he will extend the “leader’s courtesy” to Holt and won’t run a candidate in Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint-Isidore.

“We think that it’s important that Ms. Holt has a chance to come into the legislature and have her views shared directly and have an opportunity to debate the back and forth as opposed to being on the sidelines,” he said.

Holt won’t receive the same courtesy from the Green Party, however. Leader David Coon told reporters the party plans to field candidates in all three races.

“It’s byelections, this is democracy,” he said.

Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint-Isidore is the old riding of Denis Landry, a former interim leader of the provincial Liberals who held a variety of Cabinet posts during his career in provincial politics. Landry was first elected in 1995 and was the last remaining MLA to have served with former Liberal premier Frank McKenna. Landry resigned after becoming the first mayor of Hautes-Terres.

Daniel Guitard, the former Restigouche-Chaleur MLA, also made the jump to municipal politics, becoming the mayor of Belle-Baie. Guitard was first elected to the provincial legislature in 2014 and served as Speaker from 2018 to 2020, presiding over the province’s first minority legislature in a century.

Dieppe was represented by Roger Melanson for over a decade. Melanson also served as interim Liberal leader before Holt was elected last summer.

All three ridings have been dominated by the Liberals for years.

In Dieppe, Melanson won at least 60 per cent of the vote in the three elections he fought under the current boundaries. The riding that is now Restigouche-Chaleur hasn’t gone Conservative since 1974 when Richard Hatfield won his second of four straight majority governments. The area that now encompasses Bathurst East-Nepisiguit-Saint-Isidore has gone blue twice since the province stopped using the old county-based riding system.

Higgs said that he was realistic about his party’s chances in those races when speaking with reporters, but that he hopes people in Francophone-dominated northern ridings keep an open mind.

“I guess I’m not counting on the numbers being increased in the house for us as a result of history,” he said.

“But I would also say that I would encourage the people in these byelections and in the ridings to look at where the province is and where it’s moving towards and try to separate the rhetoric from the facts.”

The PCs have yet to nominate candidates in any of the ridings. Former Petit-Rocher mayor Rachel Boudreau will run for the Greens in Restigouche-Chaleur. Holt will be joined on the slate by former Medavie New Brunswick president Richard Losier in Dieppe. The party is holding a nomination meeting in Restigouche-Chaleur this weekend.