Will the re-election of Doug Ford in Ontario bode well for other Progressive Conservative premiers as well?
Don Desserud, a political science professor at UPEI, says you don’t usually hear a lot about the relationships between premiers unless they’ve gone sour.
“I’m going way back to the late 1990’s – the relationship between Premier McKenna in New Brunswick, of course, and Premier Lucien Bouchard was quite poor. You couldn’t even put them in the same room together. It’s more likely you have a problem between a Prime Minister and a Premier because premiers are not rivals.”
Desserud says there will be closer communication when needed with two premiers that are closely aligned.
“If you have two premiers that get along well, that gives a signal to their staff that when New Brunswick calls, answer the phone. That can be useful, that can be important,” Desserud said.
Desserud, a close observer of Maritime and national politics, says Premier Higgs and Ford seem to get along well but he’s cautious about overstating the relationship between the two provinces, especially when talking about a big province like Ontario and a small province like New Brunswick.
“The relationship between New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia is actually far more important in terms of finding areas of economic cooperation and other policy similarities than you would with a province like Ontario,” said Desserud. “Ontario doesn’t need New Brunswick trade, for example, but we do need products from Ontario.”
