NB Poli Podcast

We've gone through all the ridings, we've had the debate, and we've spoken to some experts about the housing file, let's follow up on all fronts and speak about an emerging set of stories that might plague the PC party even further. 

We are stoked to bring you this special #NBVOTES2024 pod with Dr. Julia Woodhall-Melnik & Dr. Tobin Leblanc-Haley on the hot topic of housing. These two have been hard at work laying out the facts and realities of the housing system in NB from their academic positions and we are glad we got to slow them down for a minute to talk about this issue and how the parties and leaders stack up. 

This week Shawn and Brent finish off their predictions about ridings 34-49 and give some analysis about the potential outcomes they predict. They will also take a look at the debate coming out from the leaders on Wednesday the 25th and comment on what each leader needs to do in order to make a difference. 

OK #NBPOLI world this is it. The Writ has officially dropped and we will continue to wrap up some riding predictions as we focus on ridings 20-33. We will not be joined by our Co-Host Joanna Killen any longer because the rules of Rogers broadcasting is that candidates running in the election cannot get "preferred" air time. We get it, but we will miss her as she fights to take the conservative stronghold of Saint John West-Lancaster. Shawn Rouse and Brent Harris will take you on this 4 week whirlwind tour as your hosts and we are looking for new guests to lend some perspective. As always, THANK YOU to our monthly donors who support this podcast. If you appreciate this content and want to support it check out our Patreon account where you can sign up to support us and get more content.  Also, Make sure you check out the riding map that our very own Shawn Rouse built so you can keep up to date on the candidates. https://maphub.net/shawnrouse/nbvotes2024

This week we are back with Shawn to pick up where we left off last week, with Shawn's Riding Map! Join us as we go through EVERY riding in New Brunswick and give our analysis on what's going on, who will win, and what the seat counts might look like after this election. 

Join us as we do a review of the last few months with friend of the pod Shawn Rouse. As we are just a few weeks away from the likely date that the writ will drop for the 2024 #NBPOLI election, has anything changed? Are the PC's still just as doomed? Is Susan Holt catching fire? Or will the drag of the federal liberals cause Green party candidates to get some nods and expand their seat count to be the party that holds the balance of power? Let's get into it! 

Teri McMackin is a resident, former councillor, and soon to announce candidate for the Petitcodiac region in the Sussex-Three Rivers riding. She has been a long time listener and has an astute grasp of the political landscape in the province and region which has helped inform multiple conversations since our podcast started. Let's check-in on the #nbpoli reality. 

This week we get former PC Cabinet Minister Dominic Cardy on the show to have a conversation about New Brunswick Politics. It's been a long time coming to be sure. We speak on a range of topics from the plight of democracy, the Canadian Future Party, and the New Brunswick political landscape.  Wikipedia Bio

Dominic William Cardy[1] MLA (born 25 July 1970) is a Canadian politician and Member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. From the 2018 New Brunswick general election until his expulsion from the caucus in October 2022,[2] Cardy represented the electoral district of Fredericton West-Hanwell for the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick. He now sits as an independent.[3] During his time in government he was the Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development under Blaine Higgs. Since September 2023, Cardy has been the interim leader of the Canadian Future Party, a moderate centrist federal political party which broke away from the Conservative Party of Canada.[4]

Prior to being elected to the New Brunswick legislature, Cardy served as chief of staff of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick caucus and had previously been leader of the New Brunswick New Democratic Party from 2011 to 2017.

Born in the United Kingdom, Cardy moved to Fredericton, New Brunswick with his family when he was a child.[5] He attended Dalhousie University and graduated with a political science degree.[5]

Cardy worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs in 2000 on projects to increase public support for the banning of land mines[5] and for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) between 2001 and 2008. He served as a senior staff member and then country director for NDI in Nepal, Bangladesh and Cambodia.[6]

While a student at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Cardy was elected President of the Nova Scotia NDP's youth wing. He then worked as a party campaigner, political assistant to an NDP MP in Cape Breton, and managed several campaigns at the municipal and federal level.[5]

In 2000, Cardy co-founded NDProgress, a pressure group within the NDP that advocated the modernisation of the party's governance structures and was sympathetic to the Third Way.[3] In writing about the debate within the NDP prior to its 2001 convention between the New Politics Initiative and those such as NDProgress, Cardy wrote "Some want to see the NDP recreated as a mass party based on the ideas of the traditional left, but infused with the energy of the new social movements and the anti-globalization activists. And there are those pushing from another direction, taking inspiration from the European socialists. If I had my choice I would fall firmly into this camp, those who want the party to follow the path laid by social democrats like Gary Doer, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder."[7] He is also an admirer of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.[8][self-published source]

Cardy was campaign director for the NDP in the 2010 provincial election.[9]

Cardy was acclaimed party leader on 2 March 2011 after the only other candidate for the position, Pierre Cyr, was disqualified from the party's 2011 leadership election.[9] At the 2012 New Brunswick New Democratic Party convention, Cardy received an 82 per cent vote of confidence in his leadership from the assembled delegates.[10]

During the 2012 federal NDP leadership race, Cardy backed Thomas Mulcair, and was one of the introductory speakers at his campaign launch.

Cardy was the NDP's candidate in a 25 June 2012 provincial by-election in Rothesay, coming in third with 27 per cent of the vote.

As leader, Cardy recruited a slate of candidates that included several prominent former Conservative and Liberal politicians including former Liberal cabinet minister Kelly Lamrock in Fredericton South; Bev Harrison, a former Conservative and Speaker of the legislature, in Hampton; former Liberal MLA Abel LeBlanc in Saint John-Lancaster and former Liberal candidate John Wilcox in Rothesay.[11] Former party leader Allison Brewer endorsed the Greens due to the policy positions of Cardy's NDP.[12]

In the 2014 provincial election, Cardy ran as the party's candidate in Fredericton West-Hanwell.[12]

Though it received 12.98 per cent of the vote in the 2014 provincial election, an all-time high for the NB NDP and its predecessor, the CCF, the party won no seats in the provincial legislature. Cardy himself lost to Brian Macdonald in Fredericton-Hanwell, and announced in his concession speech that he would resign as party leader effective at the party's next convention,[12] which has been postponed to January 2015. Cardy faced pressure to rescind his resignation and run in the Saint John East by-election which was called following the surprise resignation of newly elected Liberal MLA Gary Keating on 14 October 2014.[13] Cardy announced on 21 October that he would be standing in the by-election, scheduled for 17 November,[14] and delayed his resignation.[15] Cardy placed third in the by-election with 21.88 per cent of the vote.[16]

Cardy agreed to remain as leader after the party's executive rejected his resignation on 10 December 2014 and a letter was signed at the party's provincial council by supporters and former candidates urging him to stay on. The party also offered Cardy a "livable" salary beginning in 2015 due to its improved financial position. Cardy had been working as leader on a volunteer basis since assuming the position in 2011 and had no legislative salary as he was not a member of the provincial legislature.[17]

In early 2015, federal NDP MP Yvon Godin (Acadie—Bathurst) criticised Cardy's leadership and its conduct in the election campaign saying that Cardy had moved the provincial party too far to the centre. "The problem, I think, with the provincial party, with Dominic, was that I think he was too much to the right to even be in the centre, and I think people read into that," said Godin who added: "I think it did hurt the party. People were looking for the NDP, they were doing really well, and [voters] wanted change from the existing parties that we have now, who are serving the big corporations and forgetting about the people. I think that's what happened."[18]

In the summer of 2016, Cardy expressed his support for the proposed Energy East pipeline and supported Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley's position against the Leap Manifesto.[19] He had earlier refused to endorse federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair's leadership, saying he was troubled by positions taking by the federal party during the 2015 federal election, and skipped the April 2016 federal party convention along with the leadership review that occurred during the meeting.[20]

Cardy resigned as party leader, as well as resigning his membership of both the federal and New Brunswick NDP,[21] on 1 January 2017, complaining of party infighting which he attributed to "destructive forces" colluding with CUPE New Brunswick, the province's largest public-sector union against his leadership.[22] Cardy said that he "cannot lead a party where a tiny minority of well-connected members refuse to accept the democratic will of the membership." He added that "[l]imited time and energy is being wasted on infighting before the election," and that "'Some New Democrats unfortunately believe change and openness have had their time. They want to return to an old NDP of true believers, ideological litmus tests and moral victories."[23] Cardy claimed that what he described as his "progressive" platform had been thwarted by both federal and provincial party members and denounced the federal party's non-interventionist stance on the Syrian Civil War as antithetical to his beliefs.[22]

Cardy's appointment as strategic issues director for the opposition Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick was announced by party leader Blaine Higgs on 27 January 2017.[24] Cardy said it is "not my intention" to run for a legislative seat as a Progressive Conservative candidate but that a "great many" of his former colleagues in the NDP would be joining the Progressive Conservatives.[24]

In April 2017, Cardy was promoted to the position of chief of staff to the official opposition New Brunswick Progressive Conservative caucus. Later that month he endorsed Maxime Bernier for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada.[25]

Cardy was elected in the 2018 provincial election as the PC candidate in Fredericton West-Hanwell. He had run unsuccessfully in 2014 in the same riding as a New Democrat.[26]

Cardy was re-elected in the 2020 provincial election.

Cardy was appointed as Minister of Education and Early Childhood Development on 9 November 2018.[27] During his time as department minister, Cardy signed the original version of Policy 713, which took into effect on August 17, 2020.[28]

Minister Cardy spearheaded a plan to remove the Confucius Institute from all New Brunswick schools.[29] While the educational programs for elementary and middle schools were removed for the 2019–2020 school year, high school programs will not be removed until 2022.[29]

Cardy resigned from his position as Minister of Education and Early Childhood Education on October 13, 2022.[30] Announcing his resignation on Twitter, Cardy explained that "At some point, working style and values have to matter." His resignation letter offered a more detailed explanation,[31] citing Premier Higgs' behaviour in a series of incidents. Cardy initially commitment to staying on as a Progressive Conservative but was expelled from caucus a day after resigning as minister.[32][2][3] He was replaced as minister by Bill Hogan.[33]

Cardy remained in the legislature as an independent MLA for the rest of his term, while announcing he would not be running as a candidate in the 2024 New Brunswick general election.[4]

Cardy said he would be voting for Susan Holt and the New Brunswick Liberal Party in the upcoming election in June 2024.[34]

On September 20, 2023, Cardy announced that he was in the process of founding a new federal political party, tentatively named the "Canadian Future Party" to occupy the middle ground between the Justin Trudeau-led Liberal Party of Canada and the Pierre Poilievre-led Conservative Party of Canada. Prior to its launch as a party, the group had been known first as "Centre Ice Conservatives" and then as "Centre Ice Canadians."[35][4] On July 22, 2024, Elections Canada recognized the Canadian Future Party as eligible for registration, pending it standing a candidate for election.[36][37]

In July 2024, Cardy was arrested in Toronto for disturbing the peace after engaging in a confrontation at a pro-Palestine protest. According to Cardy, he chanted "Free Palestine from Hamas". Authorities stated that Cardy "behaved in a confrontational manner towards other protesters and did not follow police directions" to leave the area. He was released without charges.[38][39]

This long-awaited discussion with maritime economic expert and travelling Oxford scholar Donald J. Savoie is upon us. With a staggering intellect on the topic, experience working with Prime Ministers like Brian Mulroney, and a different take on globalization, you won't want to miss this.  More about Donald J. Savoie. 

Donald Joseph Savoie CC ONB FRSC (born 1947) is a Canadian public administration and regional economic development scholar. He serves as a professor at l'Université de Moncton. In 2015, he was awarded the Killam Prize for his contribution to the field of social sciences.[1][2]

Savoie has published many books, journal articles, and essays in edited collections.[3] His publications include Federal–Provincial Collaboration, Breaking the Bargain: Public Servants, Ministers, and Parliament, Governing from the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics, Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney: In Search of a New Bureaucracy,[4] and What Is Government Good At? A Canadian Answer.

His biography Harrison McCain: Single-Minded Purpose was shortlisted for the National Business Book Award (2014).[5]

He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1993[6] and promoted to Companion of the Order of Canada in 2022.[7]

• Federal–Provincial Collaboration, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1981
• An overview of the importance of federal–provincial relations on regional development: the restructuring of 1982, Moncton: Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, 1984 (ISBN 0-88659-003-5)
• Regional Economic Development: Canada’s Search for Solutions, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986, reprinted 1987.
• La lutte pour le développement: le cas du Nord Est, Québec, Les presses de l’Université du Québec, 1988.
• Regional Policy in a Changing World, New York: Plenum Press, 1990.
• The Politics of Public Spending in Canada, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990, reprinted 1990 and 1991.
• The Politics of Language, Kingston: Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, Queen's University, 1991, 23 p. ( ISBN 0-88911-586-9 )
• Regional Economic Development: Canada's Search for Solutions, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992, 341 p.
• Globalization and Governance, Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Management Development, 1993, 37 p. ( ISBN 0-662-98781-0 )
• Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney: In Search of a New Bureaucracy, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994, reprinted 1994, 1995.
• Rethinking Canada's regional development policy: a view of the Atlantic, Moncton: Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, 1997, 67 p.
• Governing from the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics Archived 7 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999, reprinted 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004 and 2006.
• Community Economic Development in Atlantic Canada: False Hope or Panacea, Moncton: Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, 2000, 131 p.
• Aboriginal Economic Development in New Brunswick [permanent dead link], Moncton: Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, 2000, 143 p.
• Pulling Against Gravity: Economic Development in New Brunswick During the McKenna Years, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001
• Breaking the Bargain: Public Servants, Ministers, and Parliament Archived 15 September 2014 at archive.today, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003, reprinted 2003, 2004, 336 p.
• Visiting Grandchildren: Economic Development in the Maritimes Archived 7 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006, reprinted 2006.
• Court Government and the Collapse of Accountability in Canada and the United Kingdom Archived 7 December 2014 at the Wayback Machine, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008, reprinted 2008.
• I'm From Bouctouche, Me, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2009, 316 p. (A memoir.)
• Power: Where Is It?, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010.
• Whatever Happened to the Music Teacher? How Government Decides How and Why, Montreal, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013, reprinted 2014, 336 p.
• Harrison McCain: Single-Minded Purpose, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2013, 336 p.
• What Is Government Good At?: A Canadian Answer, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2015, reprinted 2016, 388 p.
• Looking for Bootstraps: Economic Development in the Maritimes, Halifax: Nimbus Publishing, 2017, 440 p.
• Democracy in Canada: The Disintegration of Our Institutions Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019, 504 p.
• Thanks for the Business: K.C. Irving, Arthur Irving and the Story of Irving Oil, Halifax: Nimbus, 2020.

• New Challenges of Governance, Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Management / Presses de l'Université Laval, 1995, 306 p. ( ISBN 2 -7637-7445-8 )
• Managing Incoherence: The dilemma of coordination and accountability, Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Management Development, 1995 ( ISBN 0-662-61696-0 )
• Taking Stock: Assessing Public Sector Reforms, Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, 1998, 311 p. ( ISBN 2-7637-7574-8 )
• Governance in the Twenty-first Century: Revitalizing the Public Service, Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, 2001, 328 p. ( ISBN 2-7637-7765-1 )

• Les provinces maritimes : un regard sur l'avenir / The Maritime Provinces: looking to the future, Moncton: Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, 1994, 288 p (. ISBN 0-88659-027-2 )

• The Struggle for Development: the case of the North East, Moncton: Presses de l'Université du Québec / Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, 1988, 282 p.
• New Brunswick in 2000, Moncton: Canadian Institute for Research on Regional Development, 1989, 200 p. ( ISBN 0-88659-018-3 )
• The challenges of the fishing industry in New Brunswick, Moncton: Acadia Publishing, 1992, 282 p. ( ISBN 2-7600-0208-X )

• Essais sur le développement régional, Montreal: University Press of Montreal, 1986, 242 p. ( ISBN 2-7606-0735-6 )

This week we are following up on some new polling data rumors we have heard that have shown Susan Holt is trailing in her riding against Green candidate Simon Oulette and PC candidate Nicole Carlin. Blain Higgs is meeting with pretty unorthodox Christian pastors such as Phill Hutchings for prayer meetings, we've got a looming political gaf with PC Candidate in Sussex, and some energy politics to throw into the mix as well.