By james art 
Anyone want to hear about a recent election that polls suggested could easily go to the lunatic right, but instead turned out to be a landslide victory for empaths?
It has a chance to help you sleep before November 5th.
Last week I wrote about the terrifyingly tight race in British Columbia between the center-left NDP and the former British Columbia fringe Conservatives, which was still in the air a few days after the voting closes. Common sense ultimately prevailed (more on that in a second), but someone in the comments section asked – as the stated hope was to report on “a left-wing party in a virtual dead-fight with a MAGA-adjacent competitor, and then handily beat the crap out of them on Election Day” — why didn’t your ambitious new boyfriend from Canada weigh in on the New Brunswick provincial election results instead.
Fair question! The small province of New Brunswick is usually off most people’s radars, including most Canadians, but I don’t have the same excuse since I actually grew up there. I even wrote a book of trivia about the place many years ago, copies of which may still be available at some of the smaller major stops.
About the size of West Virginia, but with less than half the population, NB is best known for being the place people drive through on their way to Nova Scotia or PEI. New Brunswick/Nouveau-Brunswick is also Canada’s only officially bilingual province, home to the world’s largest producer of frozen French fries (thanks mostly to all the potato fields, not the French), and the birthplace of Oskar Gruchwhere he is also known as Oscar Le Grinchaux.
Just imagine all the time Republicans wasted being angry at Sesame Street for its longevity Ronald Grump parody of Dear Leader, when there was an actual illegal, non-white immigrant sitting right there the whole time!
It’s also essentially a subsidiary of the Irving Oil Corporation, which owns nearly every major industry in the province, including (until the sale of the dismal Postmedia chain a few months ago) the rest of the newspapers. You may remember back in 2019 when a cartoonist named Michael de Adair, who was also quietly let go by the WaPo earlier this year, made headlines after being fired for mocking a certain former president. The trash decision was at the behest of the billionaire Irving family, which directly employs one in 12 New Brunswickers, including Blaine Higgs, who worked for Irving Oil for 33 years before becoming premier in 2018 and then six more for free .
Chief Higgs, the oldest Premier in NB history, is running for a third term in office, which is remarkable in itself as he steadfastly refused to learn even basic French. Higgs is also known for being one of the first politicians to import American-style culture war nonsense into Canada, including pandering to the “parental rights” crowd by demonizing trans or non-binary children, notably by removing Sec. of Policy 713 which allowed children to use their preferred names and pronouns in school without needing their parents’ consent.
But au contraire, mon frèrevoters said. The Progressive Conservatives – yes, Canadians are aware that’s an oxymoron – ended up winning just 16 seats out of the available 49 in an upset with the Liberals, led by Susan Holt, who is about to make her premier as NB’s first female premier.
Higgs even lost his own seat in Quispamsis, the same riding where I went to high school. (“Come on, um, Crusaders!”) BeavertonCanada’s response to The onionhad the best headline after his defeat: “New Brunswick has notified the parents of Blaine Higgs that his name is being changed to “former Premier Blaine Higgs”.”
Which would be even funnier if the guy wasn’t 70 and his parents were still around.
I returned back to my home province after attending Wonkette’s Halloween party at Detroit’s Schoenkopf Compound with the welcome news that BC hasn’t completely fallen into the hands of the crazy. But it was damn close. After receiving all postal ballots and two recounts, incumbent Dippers will form a majority government with 47 seats in Victoria to the Tories’ 44 and the Green Party’s two overall.
One of the decisive final results was in Juan de Fuca-Malachat on Vancouver Island, which the NDP’s Dana Lajeunesse initially won by 23 votes, but anything below 100 means an automatic recount. He ended up with 141, which probably came as a relief even to some conservatives after it was revealed that his primary opponent, Marina Sapozhnikova, said the silent part out loud to an awake j-school student on election night.
Sapozhnikov raised his thoughts on reconciliation without being asked, calling the indigenous population “savages” and saying 90 percent of them were on drugs, which did not sit well with potential ingredients coming from a Ukrainian immigrant seeking elected office of the unceded Coast Salish and Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations territories, which have had their own form of government for centuries. Or half of the ingredients anyway. It probably didn’t do much for her reputation as a doctor either, despite being of retirement age.
BC Conservative leader John Rustad has since promised that she will not stand for them in the next election. Which is likely to be sooner rather than later, as the official opposition smells blood in the water and will seek to oust the NDP through a vote of no confidence at the earliest opportunity. Huza. They may even do some rudimentary vetting of applicants next time.
But for now, at least, neither Higgs nor Rustad are screaming that the election was FIXED or STOLEN, unlike many of their supporters. We’ll take that as a win.
[CBC / Snopes / CNN / The Beaverton]