NDP boss focusing on fiscal restraint

Published July 19, 2010, Brett Bundale, Telegraph-Journal, Page A1

Roger Duguay is knocking on doors in his hometown of Tracadie-Sheila with a message: The New Democratic Party of New Brunswick will rein in the runaway spending of successive Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments.

It's an attempt to shake off the NDP's long-held reputation as a party bent on big spending and big government.

While the provincial NDP has never been able to earn or dispel that reputation, the NDP leader is working to convince voters his party is a fiscally responsible alternative to the Grits and the Tories.

Observers say the new focus could pay off as taxpayers look for a party to slay the province's growing deficits and debt load.

"I'm going door to door, talking with people about our position, and I'm finding more and more supporters," said Duguay, who has been credited with bringing new supporters under the NDP banner, including francophones and northern New Brunswickers.

"We can't continue to run our province with artificial money," he added. "We won't change our core principles but the fact that we have a huge debt means the province can't spread money left and right."

Duguay said the party will stand up for the concerns of middle-class New Brunswickers in the legislature.

"We have to stop giving handouts to companies like Atcon while middle-class New Brunswickers are struggling to make ends meet," he said.

Duguay, 46, won a contested leadership race in 2007 to become the sixth leader of the NDP in New Brunswick.

Before entering the political arena, Duguay served as a priest in the diocese of Bathurst for ten years, volunteered for the Red Cross and worked on community development projects in Haiti. He is currently a supply teacher in school district 5.

Although the NDP's focus on balancing the books might seem out of character, Rob Moir said it's a return to the party's roots.

The UNB Saint John economics professor and a two-time federal NDP candidate said the focus on fiscal responsibility is true to the tradition of Tommy Douglas, former Baptist minister, premier of Saskatchewan, federal NDP leader, and father of universal public health care in Canada.

"Tommy Douglas (was) the first premier to stop deficit financing," Moir said. "From an economics point of view he knew that in order to bring in good jobs you need an educated workforce. If you want people to be at work and productive then they have to be healthy.

"These are investments we make as a society in part because they are the right thing to do, the moral thing to do, but also because it's just darn good economics," he said. "Taxpayers want a party that spends wisely and that's what the NDP represents."

Don Desserud, a political scientist at the University of New Brunswick, agrees there is a fiscally prudent streak in the NDP that will appeal to New Brunswickers.

"The NDP focuses on balancing the books for the very sensible reason that if you are not fiscally responsible you won't have the money to spend on social programs," he said. "They call that Tommy Douglas socialism and it has the potential to win over New Brunswickers if they sell it right."

Desserud said Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter's NDP government could provide some credibility for the party in the Maritimes.

"People kept saying the NDP was a western party, but Nova Scotia has changed that," he said.

But whether the NDP can muster a full slate of candidates and appeal to a broad enough base of New Brunswickers to win the election will be a challenge, he said.

Dominic Cardy, the campaign director for the provincial NDP, said the party currently has 12 candidates nominated for the upcoming election and has potential candidates for the rest of the province's ridings.

"We're way ahead of where we've usually been, but we still have a ways to go," he said, adding that the party's early fundraising push is paying off with a mix of corporate, union and private donations.