New Brunswick — Last year, Blaine Higgs fought tooth and nail with Brian Gallant to become premier of the Picture Province and now, just 7 months into his reign, he appears to be looking for a way out.
“I’ll just call an election if they don’t do what I want!” the premier cried out to The Manatee. “I don’t even care if I win or lose — frankly this whole staying up past 8 p.m. thing is getting pretty old anyway.”
It was reported last week by CBC that Higgs was threatening to call a snap election over the inability to come to an agreement with the nursing home workers on their requested changes to their current collective bargaining agreement. Our reporter, however, found that Higgs is actually motivated by more personal reasons.
“These late nights are killing me,” he admitted. “I’m missing The Price is Right daily. I’m tired of being compared to Brian Gallant all the time, I barely ever get to go to bingo. Mainly though, it’s the bedtime thing. I used to be asleep each night by 8:15 and now I’m lucky to even get my jammies on by then — 9 p.m. is way too late for warm milk, you know.”
Reactions in the province were mixed at the threat of another election so soon after the last.
“I really don’t want to have to listen to my boyfriend tell me how important it is to vote again,” complained Fredericton resident Marion McLeod. “I just don’t care. Liberal, Conservative, old guy, young guy — they’re all the same and they all end up sucking anyway. Just as long as that stupid Austin guy doesn’t become premier, I think we’ll be okay.”
Kieth Hammerson of Saint John expressed similar apathy.
“Just another way the government gets to waste our time and our money. But, Higgs is my guy and I’ll be voting with him again if comes to it.”
Our reporter tried to get a reaction from PANB Leader Kris Austin, but he refused to answer our calls, emails, text messages or faxes. His spokesperson did reach out to say that Austin has been too busy “being the change,” although we failed to find evidence of any change whatsoever since he’s been elected as MLA.
Higgs, for his part, is serious about the possibility of another election.
“I just want things to go back to how they used to be when I could go nap when I wanted, eat dinner at the Big Stop each night, put on my housecoat and slippers and watch re-runs of Murder She Wrote and Matlock.”