New Brunswick / Nouveau-Brunswick

That was quick!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/31487544

Only 48.2% of New Brunswick voters supported the New Brunswick Liberals, yet the voting system has handed Susan Holt’s Liberals 63.3% of the seats and 100% of the power.

The election results were a misrepresentation of what voters said with their ballots:

• The Liberals got 63.3% of the seats with 48.2% of the vote.
• The Progressive Conservatives got 32.7% of the seats with 35.0% of the vote.
• The Greens got only 4.1% of the seats with 13.8% of the votes, electing only 2 MLAs to represent their 51,523 voters.
• About 44.9% of voters – 168,429 – cast wasted votes that elected no-one.

With proportional representation, where the seats in the New Brunswick legislature matched the popular vote, no single party would have had all the power and parties would have had to work together in the legislature.

First-past-the-post makes New Brunswick appear more divided along linguistic lines than it actually is. The 16 PC seats are all in the English-speaking ridings, so the Liberal victory is in the francophone ridings plus six in Saint John and three in Fredericton. With proportional representation, all three parties will have elected MLAs in all areas of the province.

“Once again, our voting system has distorted the will of the people,” said Vivian Unger, from Fair Vote New Brunswick. This time, it gave the Liberals a majority with 48.2% of the vote. I congratulate the Liberals on their win, but I’d also like to remind them of that time in 2018 that they got the most votes but lost the election. This time, they were running against a very unpopular Premier, and that helped them out. That’s not something they can count on in the future. I hope this win will not prevent them from holding that citizens’ assembly on electoral reform, ASAP. Their members voted for it.”

The New Brunswick Greens put proportional representation in their election platform. For the sake of all New Brunswick voters, it’s time for the New Brunswick Liberals to put proportional representation on their agenda.

Article en français (La Presse)

The Liberals under Susan Holt have won the majority of seats in the New Brunswick election.

At 9 p.m., with 80 per cent of the polls reporting, the Liberals were leading 31 ridings, the Progressive Conservatives were leading in 16 and the Greens were leading in two ridings.

Just before 9 p.m., CBC projected wins for Holt and Green Party Leader David Coon, who both ran for Fredericton seats, but PC Leader Blaine Higgs lost his Quispamsis riding to Liberal Aaron Kennedy.

TIL you can vote any day (except sunday) at a returning office. No need to wait until Oct. 21 with everyone else.

Unreliable narrator: Higgs warns New Brunswickers about a possibility of something better.

Movie Trailer: In a world... where billionaire families don't own everything... where we take care of each other and don't spew hate by mail... where land is shared with the people we stole it from...

_More flyers on the horizon

Campaign Life Coalition has already registered as a third-party advertiser with Elections New Brunswick ahead of the Oct. 21 race, previously telling Brunswick News it plans to issue a voters’ guide and other materials.

Under third-party advertising rules, individuals and groups are entitled to each spend up to $17,600 province-wide on election advertising during the official campaign period.

However, Elections New Brunswick has acknowledged it doesn’t have the power to investigate complaints of collusion between groups, political parties and candidates to get around spending-limit rules. It also doesn’t have the power to levy administrative fines if parties are found to be in violation of the rules.
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Elections New Brunswick asked for both of those powers in a 2019 electoral reform report submitted to the legislature. Only two out of 108 reform recommendations in the report were acted upon, according to Elections New Brunswick.

Campaign Life Coalition postcard is pictured here._

I'm just hearing about this now and I thought it would be worthwhile to share.

There is a Canada-wide boycott of Loblaws planned for May 2024 (and beyond if you're able). This includes any store under the Loblaws umbrella such as: Atlantic Superstore, Shopper's Drug Mart, Save Easy, Your Independent Grocer, No Frills, Esso, and so on.

The goal of the boycott is for Loblaws to reduce prices by 15% and remove "member only pricing" so everyone has access to savings and deals.

The boycott is organized by a group on Reddit. You can find more details about it in this Reddit Thred

A happy byproduct of this will hopefully be more business going to small locally owned stores in your area instead of the two grocery giants. I'm in the Fredericton area so I can recommend Victory Meat Market and Peter's Meats as excellent alternatives with better products, and similar or sometimes lower prices.

Here's hoping there's enough engagement to produce a significant drop in Loblaws sales and they take the voice of the customer seriously.

Looks like we'll have a 50-50 chance of clear skies.

New Brunswick universities are scrambling for information after the federal government announced new caps on international students, set to come into effect for the next school year.

Article en français (Acadie Nouvelle)

While almost every home owner will get a higher property bill this year, can you guess who will get to pay less?

According to provincial assessment figures, the city's largest industrial property, the Irving Oil refinery, has received an assessment increase of 1.66 per cent for 2024.   

However, under provincial government property tax rules, Saint John's 2.5 per cent property tax rate cut has to be shared equally with all property owners. That will reduce municipal property taxes collected on the refinery in 2024 by about $25,000.

Lien en français (Rad-Can)

I’ve just moved here from Reddit after taking a couple weeks hiatus from the sinking ship that is Reddit. Lemmy is taking some getting used to, but it’s nice to see our local subs alive and well over here! I feel like the new kid who just changed schools

I live in Ontario, and this is also a huge problem here.

The solution is to ban dogs from all trails except dog parks, because people won't change, and this problem extends to more than just other trail users; it also contaminates the land and water, too.

Article en français (Rad-Can)

Blaine Higgs began his term as New Brunswick premier promising not to run his government from the top down like he accused his predecessor, Brian Gallant, of doing.

"Today there is too much power in the premier's office," he wrote in a personal letter to voters during the 2018 election campaign.

"The Premier's office ends up making all the decisions. The voices of citizens and elected officials are not allowed to be as strong as they could and should be. I want to be the Premier who says 'No we don't do it that way anymore.'"

Five years later, with his government roiled by a series of cabinet resignations and firings and mounting accusations of his own tendency toward centralized rule, Higgs still maintains he is a leader who values different points of view and is open to learning from those who do not agree with him.