N.B. election: Tory leader promises to help synagogues, churches increase security

FREDERICTON — New Brunswick Progressive Conservative Leader Blaine Higgs is promising synagogues, mosques, churches and community organizations more money for security measures, including the installation of surveillance cameras.

With two weeks left in the provincial election campaign, Higgs, who is vying for a third term as premier, said Monday if re-elected his party would take “harder and harder lines on crime.”

“In an ever-changing world, we are increasingly aware of the need to ensure that our public spaces, including places of worship and community gatherings, are secure and protected,” he told reporters in Fredericton.

He said that particularly for religious institutions, “there are growing concerns about safety. That’s why today we are taking action.”

A re-elected Tory government, he said, would amend the terms of the Community Investment Fund to allow non-profits to apply for funding for such things as security cameras and stronger locks on their doors. The fund provides $70,000 every year to each legislative assembly member to support community projects and priorities.

In January, a synagogue in Fredericton was vandalized in what the public safety minister called a “cowardly antisemitic attack.” On Monday Higgs was asked why his government waited until now to make more money available for security.

“I think that everything that we do going forward, we will always say, ‘could it have been done fast enough?'” he said. “…. We will continue to enhance the safety in our communities. This is just one more step.”

Also part of the Tories tough-on-crime agenda is to reject all new applications for supervised drug-injection sites, and to introduce legislation to force people with severe drug addition into treatment.

Meanwhile, Green Party Leader David Coon promised on Monday to decentralize decision-making in hospitals and other health centres by establishing “community health boards.”

“Centralization of management responsibilities by both Liberal and Conservative governments has created management silos within our hospitals, robbing them of the authority to solve problems locally, and opening the health-care system to political meddling,” Coon told reporters in Sackville, N.B.

Community health boards, he added, will be composed of people “who can again participate in decision-making for their local health facilities, as was the case when we had local hospital boards.”

For its part, the Liberal party promised on Monday a community care clinic in the Kennebecasis Valley, which is part of Higgs’s Quispamsis riding in southern New Brunswick. The Liberals have promised to establish 30 community care clinics across the province over the next four years.

“One of the reasons I decided to run in this election was the terrible state of health care in the Kennebecasis Valley, where only one-third of residents can get an appointment within five days” said Aaron Kennedy, the Liberal candidate for the riding.

A Mainstreet Research poll released Friday gave the Liberals 36 per cent support, ahead of the Tories at 32 per cent, with 18 per cent of respondents undecided. The Green Party had 11 per cent and the People’s Alliance party was a distant fourth at one per cent.

Mainstreet’s poll was drawn from an automated telephone survey of 906 adults between Oct.1 and Oct. 3., and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points with a 95 per cent confidence level.

The election is Oct. 21.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 7, 2024.

Hina Alam, The Canadian Press