Let Her Cooke
Premier Susan Holt jets from one spotlight to another, with mixed results.
Susan Holt made it back to Fredericton — barely — for the live TV broadcast of her annual State of the Province speech on Thursday night.
The content? In a nutshell, she ticked off several of the interim metrics she laid out last year, acknowledging the government fell short on one big one in particular. But, she said, just give her a bit more time and she’ll get there.
Want to watch the whole thing? Click here. My story on the speech is here.
Radio-Canada took a closer look at Holt’s talk of budget cuts. Spoiler: three of her ministers had good examples of what not to cut.
Holt came to the speech venue directly from the Fredericton airport — I’ll get to that — after a meeting in Ottawa with the prime minister and fellow premiers. While there, she got some additional attention because of comments she made at a news conference with Doug Ford about ICE’s enforcement surge in Maine.
The problem that quickly emerged was that it was impossible to verify what Holt had said. She later explained that a “nuance” hadn’t been clear.
Now, about that flight.
I mentioned a couple of times in the last few weeks that the premier was counting on her Air Canada flight from Ottawa arriving on time to make the speech.
Here’s what we saw on the YFC website around 3:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon:
As people gathered at the Fredericton Convention Centre, word got around that the flight was late — but communications staff insisted she would be there.
Intrepid colleague Silas Brown was among the first to spot this:
Holt’s explanation, and her answers to my questions about the arrangement (and the rationale for the pun in the headline above), are in my story about the speech.
We talked about all of these things on the Shift New Brunswick political panel, which unfortunately is not on the website this week, and on Café Politique:
In Other News
More than three years after legislation on domestic violence was adopted, the CBC’s Savannah Awde reminded us that it still hasn’t been implemented.
The Holt Liberals announced they will reinstitute elections for regional health authority boards, but not before 2030. That announcement was timed to get ahead of Thursday’s news that the province will appeal a court ruling quashing Blaine Higgs’s 2022 dissolution of the two boards. (Brunswick News reported this morning that the government now says it will get the elections organized before 2030.)
A Miramichi man complained that his Liberal MLA had blocked him from his Facebook page for some seemingly innocuous questions.
Some New Brunswickers were surprised that the much-talked-about assessment freeze doesn’t apply to them.
Colleague Sam Farley took a closer look at the issue of First Nations communities running their own police forces.
Bring Down the Lights
I happened upon a rare sight at the legislature last week:
Every six to eight years, the massive chandeliers hanging from the chamber’s ceiling are carefully lowered for cleaning and maintenance. A company from New Hampshire specializing in chandeliers did the work.
Long-time legislature nerds may recall that one of those babies crashed onto the government front bench in November 2002. The house wasn’t sitting that day; the justice minister of the day noted that had it been in session, a by-election would likely have been necessary in his riding.
Two More Items of Note
Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre easily won his review vote at a party convention in Calgary; CBC’s The House devoted its full episode on Saturday to where things go from here.
And longtime Halifax journalist John DeMont had this charming Substack post about the enduring truth of one Maritime stereotype — even when it comes to billionaires.
Calendar Cleanse
With the State of the Province speech delivered and Poilievre’s leadership affirmed, we can look ahead to a busy February.
The premier promised a new consultation initiative soon to ask New Brunswickers what government spending they’d be willing to cut to get that soaring deficit under control. We’ve got two weeks of Public Accounts committee meetings starting at the legislature tomorrow, some of them likely more attention-grabbing than others.
Don Monahan launches his PC leadership campaign on Saturday, Feb. 7 and the EUB hearings on the Tantramar gas plant open next Monday, Feb. 9.
Next month will see the provincial budget on March 17 and that review report on N.B. Power by the end of the month.
Thank You!
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