The Case For ‘Incremental’ Politics In New Brunswick

David Campbell is a Moncton-based economic development consultant and co-host of the Huddle podcast, Insights. The following piece was originally published on his blog, It’s the Economy, Stupid!, on Substack.

This isn’t a political blog. I avoid partisan politics because I have seen how politicians have messed up good economic development programs because they felt they had to do something different than their predecessor (and then promised to do so strenuously during the election).

But because this toxic form of politics is now coming squarely into the domain of economic development, I will make a few points that are hopefully worthy of the 145 seconds you will need to read this.

In a democracy, politicians should aspire to incremental, consensus-building politics. That’s true even, and especially, in parliamentary democracies like ours where the party in power normally has a mostly free hand to do what they want. In this system, the next party can just come in and undo what the other team did.

There was a time when a premier or prime minister would talk about being the premier/prime minister of all Canadians (or insert your province here). The line was something like: “Yes, we have our disagreements and I won’t change my mind on big issues that I care about, but I respect the fact that people can see things differently. I’ll try to win you over but we will work on finding areas of common ground where we can move ahead together.”

Now, for the most part, it’s something much, much different. I thought the vitriol against Harper was bad. Nothing I have ever seen compared to our current Prime Minister. I realize the “F-word” is now more commonplace than ever but now I see bumper stickers and TicTok videos with a branded “F Trudeau” theme (the U is a maple leaf for effect).

Things are bad. Maybe we should still have some respect for the office and some basic human decency in political discourse. If you poke around social media, you will see things just as bad about Premier Higgs, although they’re not as pervasive.

We have big challenges. New Brunswick needs to bring in thousands more people each year to meet workforce demand. We need growth industries that are export-focused to ensure we can sustainably generate tax revenue to fund public services, even as we decarbonize the entire economy in 25 or so years. We need to have high-quality and accessible public services in all corners of the province. Shortages of everything and unprecedented wait times will blow up any consensus.

Can’t we find a more accommodating form of politics? Forget social media — the algorithm will always reward the nastiest voices; the shock value alone drives clicks.

We have a potential example right here. When Susan Holt, I, and others finished the first draft of the provincial growth plan about five years ago her idea was to take it to the opposition and try to get consensus on the broad strokes of the plan. It was a good idea because if government changed there wouldn’t be a big effort to redo the economic development direction of the province and a one-to-two-year wait for the new government to figure things out.

It was possible the opposition wouldn’t play ball. It was possible the changes they would propose would be a bridge too far. But it was a modest effort at consensus politics.

Our boss at the time said no.

We will see if she has the same approach in opposition. Will she applaud economic development and population growth initiatives that align with her vision? Or will she oppose for the sake of opposition? Will she build goodwill or rant and rave about the apocalypse underway?

There is enormous temptation now to get into the social media gutter: To call politicians names, to exaggerate, to burn any kind of goodwill that might exist. That is what gets the likes and the retweets. It’s a nice dopamine hit to see the counter ticking up.

But we need incremental, consensus-building politics now more than ever.

It’s time.

P.S. Someone told me this is generational, that Millennials and Gen Z will burn longstanding friendships because of a disagreement over pronouns or something. I’m not sure. It might just be my networks, but the old-timers seem to be just as cranky. We need to bring young and old into this new approach to politics.

Huddle publishes commentaries from groups and individuals on important business issues facing the Maritimes. These commentaries do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Huddle. To submit a commentary for consideration, contact editor Mark Leger: [email protected].