Friendly Foes: Long, Weston Pitch Competing Visions For Saint John’s Future
SAINT JOHN – Liberal Wayne Long cast himself as a “riding first” MP who did his best to represent constituent interests in Saint John-Rothesay, even if it meant defying his own prime minister. Conservative Rodney Weston positioned himself as a team player who got things done for the community when he was the MP and lamented that a signature project, Energy East, fell apart after his party left office in 2015.
David Duplessis of the Saint John Region Chamber of Commerce, the moderator for Thursday morning’s forum for Saint John region candidates, had told candidates at the outset to be on their best behaviour, highlighting their strengths, not the weaknesses of their opponents. But candidates like Long and Weston naturally made implicit criticisms even as they sold their own strengths.
Long supported his party on most issues in the past four years but took contrary stands on government decisions like the controversial corporate tax reforms that got him suspended from parliamentary committees. In his own time on the hill, Weston was known as a firm Harper loyalist when it came to votes in the House of Commons and advancing government policy and priorities.
“Saint John needs strong political leadership, it needs someone who is going to stand up to represent this riding in Ottawa,” said Long. “It needs someone who is ‘riding first’ and is always going to represent the constituents here in Ottawa, not be Ottawa’s representative in Saint John-Rothesay.”
In his three-minute pitch (there was a need for brevity with 11 candidates from three ridings taking part), Long didn’t address the pipeline issue, stressing instead his progressive stances on rights issues, infrastructure investments, and the need to protect a coastal city like Saint John from the effects of climate change.
Weston didn’t shy away from the pipeline issue, implying that Energy East failed after he lost the 2015 election to Long because Liberal policies forced TransCanada to ultimately withdraw its proposal.
“There was a lot of hope, a lot of optimism in the air when we left office in 2015,” said Weston. “You know what I’m talking about when I talk about that hope and optimism. There was an opportunity that was coming our way. The first time in a generation that we saw an opportunity like that come our way.”
That opportunity, of course, was Energy East, and though that project is now dead, as Weston puts it, he is now selling a vision of a national energy corridor that includes a pipeline that’s being proposed by Tories at the federal and provincial level.
“It’s pointless to talk about Energy East because [the company] has moved on. It’s dead,” said Weston. “But what I want to do as your Member of Parliament is to make sure the environment is right. If an opportunity like that ever presents itself again, that we’re able to take advantage of that opportunity.”
Of course, his party, like the Liberals, needs Quebec onside for any new project of this kind but that’s a political fight for another day.
For now, Weston and Long are in a two-person race to win this seat, which explains why each man would, to an extent, define himself against the other, which is not the case for other candidates in this race.
Ann McAllister, the Green Party candidate, is more focused on the core positions of her party, refraining from specific, or implied, references to other candidates in the race here.
Addressing a business-minded audience in the forum organized by the chamber and Saint John Real Estate Board, she stressed the economic opportunities in the green economy, favouring job-creation projects like the wind farm that will be constructed on the city’s west side over pipelines that transport fossil fuels.
“The climate crisis we now face is the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century. We need tradespeople and grads from trades programs like NBCC to install renewable energy infrastructure and build our portion of a nation-wide smart grid,” she said.
“Imagine if every suitable roof in the uptown had solar panels. In Saint John, we have old housing stock. The Green Party proposes to retrofit older buildings across Canada financed by grants and zero-percent loans and build new homes for energy conservation and renewable tech. Saint John as an industrial city, a port and an education centre, can execute an abundance of these renewable jobs.”
I should say I don’t think Long and Weston did anything wrong with their implied criticisms of each other and each other’s parties. In this forum, they set themselves apart without any overt attacks on each other – Long positioning himself as the progressive with an independent spirit; Weston, the party loyalist and conservative with his eye on the next energy megaproject. And McAllister too, with her vision for an industrial city that needs federal help to make the transition to a greener future.
All three are “riding first” in their own way.
Mark Leger is the editor of Huddle.
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].